Rabbi Avraham Arieh Trugman, once a familiar face in Denver where he helped set up the local chapter of the National Council of Synagogue Youth, is a man of many fascinations.
In recent years, the rabbi — who today runs Israel’s Ohr Chadash program — has grown increasingly visible as a writer, speaker and teacher.
In all of these pursuits, he shares his knowledge of, and considerable enthusiasm for, the mystical dimensions of Judaism. He has already penned such books on Jewish music and dreams, and this year has released two more volumes, both published by Devora.
As in his earlier works, Rabbi Trugman’s approach is grounded in Orthodox Judaism, but he takes an open-minded and alternative perspective to many of his subjects which lends them an almost New Age flavor. His considerable knowledge of Kabbalah and related fields of Jewish mysticism no doubt plays a large role in why his work lends itself to a wider audience than one might expect.
In The Mystical Nature of Light, he boldly approaches that most ubiquitous, yet most elusive, of phenomena. Light is everywhere and omnipresent, Rabbi Trugman points out — our very lives and that of virtually every living thing on earth is dependent upon it — and yet we can’t touch or feel it.
No wonder, then, that Jewish mystics and writers have long been fascinated with its power and centrality. Rabbi Trugman contemplates not only the recurring importance of light in the Torah but its pervasive presence in the oral tradition, Kabbalah and chasidus.
He writes substantive passages on light, both as an emanation of the Divine presence and as a symbol of human knowledge and revelation; as a metaphorical opposite of darkness; and in its relationship to such human attributes as love and healing.
For the more strictly mystical reader, Rabbi Trugman offers discussions on the paradoxical nature of light in science and how light can be observed and studied through the Hebrew alphabet.
There are additional examinations of the importance of light’s “manifestations,” such as colors and the rainbow, which are among the book’s highlights.
Since light is itself largely an abstraction to our perception — and since Jewish mysticism by its nature delves deeply into the abstract — some parts of The Mystical Nature of Light can make for pretty dense reading.
Rabbi Trugman is a patient and affable teacher, however, and his gentle encouragement does much to ease the way.
That he evinces great and undisguised enthusiasm for such great mysteries, and is able to communicate that enthusiasm, also helps.
Less elusive intellectually, perhaps — but certainly no less so in spiritual terms — is the subject of Rabbi Trugman’s second current book, Return Again: The Dynamics of Reincarnation.
The author’s kabbalistic and chasidic orientation are even more in evidence in this book, in which a strong and sometimes persuasive case is put forward for reincarnation.
Rabbi Trugman seems aware that this is likely to be a tough sell among many Jews, for whom reincarnation and all other references to afterlife experiences are considered, if not formally taboo, religiously incorrect.
Jewish perspectives on the survival of the soul are widely varied, of course.
The author’s arguments in favor of reincarnation lean solidly in the direction of that world to come, but suggest that the soul’s journey might be a considerably longer and more varied one than a vague agnostic might suspect.
Rabbi Trugman illustrates how reincarnation has always been an element of Jewish scripture and thinking, from the Bible to the Zohar, and argues how it can be seen as a sensible part of the soul’s journey.
He provides an interesting chapter of “soul histories” — including such notables as Moses, Aaron, Rabbi Akiba and the Ba’al Shem Tov — in an effort to illustrate the inherent Jewishness of reincarnation.
In a chapter entitled “Dynamics of Reincarnation,” Rabbi Trugman even illustrates how the whole thing might work. These are largely based on the teachings of the seminal kabbalist known as the Arizal and they are — at the very least — fascinating to read.
Whether or not these discussions will make any individual actually start to believe in reincarnation seems not to be Rabbi Trugman’s intention. He seems content to lay out the documentation, evidence and logic on the table and leave it up to the reader.
If the reader chooses to do so, Return Again is an excellent and informative starting point.
If the reader chooses otherwise, the book is still a fascinating and thought-provoking examination of a subject that remains mysterious and largely unexplored in the modern Jewish world.
