What is Jewish meditation?
‘Meditation’ is a word used extensively today, and it has connotations that do not sit easily with Jewish mystical practices. If you think of meditation simply as a means of relaxation, then you will not understand why Jewish mystics follow practices that can be highly complex. The typical Jewish meditation appears far from relaxing. A deeper grasp of the term meditation paves the way for my discussion of Jewish mystical practices. We must recognise that there are, in broad terms, two different ways of thinking. The first is normal, everyday rational thought – thinking about things you have to do, or about ideas, or about people around you. The second is, by comparison, less logical and less oriented to immediate everyday goals. This second is a more penetrating kind of thinking. It involves shifting the centre of gravity of the mind away from the sense of ‘I’ which normally dominates our goals. Like all meditative practices, Jewish mystical techniques are directed towards enhancing th
