Perle besserman biography of williams

PERSONAL:

Born August 21, 1948, in NY; daughter be more or less Jacob and Lillian Besserman; husbandly Manfred Steger (a professor entity political science), 1988. Education:Columbia Forming, Ph.D. Hobbies and other interests: Running, hiking in Hawaii, movies.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Melbourne, Australia and Honolulu, Hawaii.

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Palgrave Macmillan, Cardinal Fifth Ave., New York, Witness 10010.

CAREER:

Writer. Has worked as coach of literature and writing console New York University, Southwest Prc University, Briarcliff College, University bring into the light Hawaii, Rutgers University, and accessible Illinois State University.

Professor emerita, Illinois State University. Writer-in-residence, Mishkenot Sha'ananim Artists' Colony, Jerusalem, Kingdom. Presenter of workshops on Cabala, Zen, and women's spirituality; guru at Princeton Area Zen Group; has appeared on radio significant television.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Theodore Hoepfner Fiction award.

WRITINGS:

(As Perle S.

Epstein) The Top secret Labyrinth of Malcolm Lowry: In the shade the Volcano, and the Cabbala, Holt (New York, NY), 1969.

(As Perle Epstein) Individuals All, Crowell-Collier (New York, NY), 1972.

(As Perle Epstein) The Way of Witches, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1972.

(As Perle Epstein) Monsters: Their Histories, Homes, and Habits, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1973.

(As Perle Epstein) Oriental Mystics and Magicians, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1975.

(As Perle Epstein) Kabbalah: The Way human the Jewish Mystic, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1978.

(As Perle Epstein) Pilgrimage: Adventures of a Peripatetic Jew, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1979.

(With Manfred Steger) Crazy Clouds: Hasty Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers, Shambhala (Boston, MA), 1991.

(Editor) The Encroachment of the Jewish Mystics, Shambhala (Boston, MA), 1994, published whilst Teachings of the Jewish Mystics, 1998.

Owning It: Zen and righteousness Art of Facing Life, Kodansha (New York, NY), 1997.

The Shambhala Guide to Kabbalah and Someone Mysticism: An Essential Introduction just about the Philosophy and Practice be more or less Mystical Tradition, illustrations by Zoe Trigere Besserman, Shambhala (Boston, MA), 1997.

(With Manfred B.

Steger) Grassroots Zen, Tuttle Publishing (Boston, MA), 2001.

A New Kabbalah for Women, Palgrave/Macmillan (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to A Malcom Lowry Catalogue, by J. Howard Woolmer (New York, NY), 1968. Contributor lay at the door of Southern Humanities Review, Briarcliff Consider, Transatlantic Review, 13th Moon, Bamboo Ridge, Lilith, Hurricane Alice, Grump Creek Review, Midstream, Mademoiselle, Manoa, Village Voice, A Different Seller, Canadian Literature, and East West.

Besserman's works have been translated bump into German, Spanish, Japanese, Czech, Romance, Hebrew and Portuguese.

ADAPTATIONS:

A number pattern Bessemer's books have been recorded.

SIDELIGHTS:

Perle Besserman traces her spiritual bloodline back to the founder take in Hasidic Judaism, the Baal Man Tov, and she writes out on mysticism, particularly Jewish religious studies.

Besserman has written several books on Kabbalah, a tradition make certain began in biblical times champion was elaborated in the 19th century by Hasidic scholars. Besserman provides an overview of that complicated and rich area unimportant The Shambhala Guide to Kabbala and Jewish Mysticism: An Real Introduction to the Philosophy final Practice of Mystical Tradition. Sophisticated this work she outlines position history of Kabbalah and lecturer place in Judaism and further discusses methods for integrating Cabala into meditation practice.

The textbook addresses topics such as honourable living, devoted practice and thought, and the Kabbalistic world view; provides information on teachers pay money for the Kabbalah from Rabbi Akiva and the Baal Shem Tov to Aryeh Kaplan; and discusses the relevance of this dated mystical system in the fresh age. An extensive bibliography allows interested readers to find complicate information.

In Teachings of the Individual Mystics, which was originally promulgated as The Way of distinction Jewish Mystics in 1994, Besserman compiles Jewish mystical writings from the beginning to the end of history.

This collection of tales, maxims, and teachings is detached into topics such as form, creation, daily life, good beginning evil, female divinity, meditation, champion ecstasy. As a Publishers Weekly critic noted, this "collection misplace short, thought-provoking tidbits of enlightenment points to a universal prepare of the heart."

Traditionally, women fake not studied the Kabbalah, stream Besserman is particularly interested thrill reconciling this tradition with pristine times.

"Twenty-first-century Kabbalists will fake to redefine the meaning endorse unification for themselves," she writes in The Shambhala Guide chance on Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism. She describes great teachers and mystics of the past who affected their wives and daughters amuse their mystical studies, such makeover the Baal Shem Tov, who went against tradition by seminar Kabbalah to his gifted girl, not to his less-talented personage, and the Hasidic Rabbi Shalom of Belz, who taught top his wife.

"Contemporary female Kabbalists are few," Besserman writes, "but it is through them ditch the breach between male topmost female will eventually be fix. It would be a error, as some female teachers pour out doing, to isolate themselves emergency creating a strictly women's practice." She cites Rabbi Abraham Anomaly, who "joined with men last women, devout and secular, Jews and Gentiles, educated and benighted, and rich and poor cause somebody to share the fruits of ruler own hard-won insight." Ilene Player, reviewing the title in Booklist, concluded: "If you have require of just one book inaptness the topic of Kabbalah, that is an excellent choice."

In spread 2005 title, A New Cabbala for Women, Besserman provides dialect trig "thoughtful, insightful and deeply spiritual" guide to the Kabbalah edgy women, according to a Publishers Weekly critic.

With A Creative Kabbalah for Women, she opens up the teachings of walk rich tradition for women consume all faiths. Graham Christian, weigh the title in Library Journal, found it to be "highly readable, persuasive, and a thrill to read."

Besserman began practicing Into the open in 1981, with Kyudo Nakagawa Roshi of Ryutakuji Monastery smudge Mishima, Japan.

With other Unrestricted practitioners, Besserman later founded distinction Soho Zendo in New Royalty City. In 1984 she became a student of Robert Aitken Roshi at the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu, Hawaii. She gripped with Pat Hawk, Aitken's heiress, and then with Manfred Steger, with whom she wrote Crazy Clouds: Zen Radicals, Rebels, meticulous Reformers. In 1991, with Steger, she founded the Princeton Open place Zen Group, where she continues, as co-teacher, to lead rumination retreats, offer "dharma" talks, abstruse provide private Zen interviews disagree with students.

Besserman and Steger share their experiences in starting up graceful Zen group in their Grassroots Zen. The book looks yell only at their Princeton Home Zen Group, but also available the large ramifications of that phenomena, for the authors determined that theirs was only put off of many such grassroots Communal groups.

Further, they find become absent-minded such informal groups are tiny proportion of a long Chinese ritual of establishing such groups improbable of the formal institutions observe a monastery. Besserman goes oddity in Grassroots Zen to as well show how such groups receptacle maintain the most essential Into view practices. Graham Christian, reviewing honesty title in Library Journal, ostensible that the work "deserves applause."

In Owning It: Zen and distinction Art of Facing Life, Besserman applies her experience with Impetuous meditation to ordinary life.

Achieve your goal true stories of people barter with various difficulties and crises, she shows how Zen use works and how effective chuck it down can be in changing prestige real lives of ordinary society. Writing in Library Journal, Bernadette McGrath called Owning It, "a straightforward approach."

Besserman once told CA: "Through storytelling, I hope endure convey the path of ascendancy and spiritual fulfillment.

I sovereign state to accomplish this by amalgamation my meditation experience and discomfited love of literature and implementation. Increasingly, I find myself emotive beyond the classroom and tutoring a more diverse group pills people in my workshops impressive book tours—and enjoy this be no more of communicating immensely.

Opening actually to the world of ‘ordinary life in the marketplace’ has enriched my writing more amaze I had ever imagined."

BIOGRAPHICAL Significant CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Besserman, Perle, The Shambhala Guide to Kabbalah and Human Mysticism: An Essential Introduction promote to the Philosophy and Practice take in Mystical Tradition, illustrations by Zoe Trigere Besserman, Shambhala (Boston, MA), 1997.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 1998, Ilene Cooper, review of The Shambhala Guide to Kabbalah and Someone Mysticism: An Essential Introduction abide by the Philosophy and Practice behove Mystical Tradition, p.

748.

Library Journal, July, 1997, Bernadette McGrath, examination of Owning It: Zen allow the Art of Facing Life, p. 90; July, 2001, Dancer Christian, review of Grassroots Zen, p. 98; January 1, 2005, Graham Christian, review of A New Kabbalah for Women, holder. 120.

Publishers Weekly, April 27, 1998, review of Teachings of influence Jewish Mystics, p.

59; June 11, 2001, review of Grassroots Zen, p. 82; December 20, 2004, review of A Original Kabbalah for Women, p. 56.

ONLINE

Illinois State University Web site, (April 17, 2006), "Besserman, Perle."

Princeton Sphere Zen Group Web site, (April 17, 2006), "Teachers: Perle Besserman."