The Seventh Telling - Tapa dura

"You are dead to me," Stephanie's father said when she'd married Sidney. Thirty years there was no contact, until her mother died, and then only a terse note. So begins a journey into the kabbalah, the spiritual discipline hidden within the folds of Jewish history. Stephanie and Sidney have been studying with Moshe Katan, a kabbalist who shared his learning only when he perceived a kabbalistic intervention might be necessary to save the life of Rivkah, his wife. For that reason alone he taught the course that opened Sidney's and Stephanie's eyes, a byproduct of what was intended primarily for Rivkah. What has happened to Moshe and Rivkah we do not know, only that their house is now being used for an extraordinary storytelling, a spiritual discipline to share with those willing to risk examining the very core of their beliefs. THE SEVENTH TELLING is a roller coaster ride through all four worlds of the Kabbalah, a story of transformation, of Moshe, Rivkah, Sidney and Stephanie and, quite possibly, of the reader as well.

Mitchell Chefitz, founder and director of The Havurah of South Florida, teaches at Havurah institutes and rabbinic conferences, and has edited a nationally syndicated weekly Torah Column. He lives in Pinecrest, Florida.