From Tiberias, With Love

From Tiberias With Love is a journey to rediscovering the magic and mystery, the intimacy and depth of a lost moment in the history of a remarkably relevant conscious community in the Galilee that still has much to teach us. In the year 1777, a group of spiritual seekers from Eastern European set sail in search of a promised land, far away from the internal and external conflicts plaguing those souls seeking the infinite within this finite world. Some who set sail identified with the burgeoning Jewish spiritual renewal movement of Hasidism, while others seem to have just come along for the ride. Weathering challenges both socioeconomic and geographic, this emigrating group sought to establish a center for a burgeoning hasidic ethos that would radiate to the Diaspora from its renewed center in the Holy Land in Palestine. Tiberian Hasidism provides a model of an intensive contemplative life that is particularly appealing to contemporary spiritual seekers for many reasons, including: its deep focus on mystical theology; devotional practice; and the ecstasy of deep friendship rather than allegiance to an institutionalized religion. This volume focuses on the teachings of letters of love from Vitebsker and Kalisker in Tiberias to their disciples in Eastern Europe known as the Iggrot Qodesh, still so ripe for excavation, offering an authentic roadmap to future contemplative pathways ripe for our age.