Selected as a Union of American Hebrew
Congregations (UAHC)
“Significant Jewish
Book”
“Rabbi Kushner is a beautiful
storyteller.” —Los
Angeles Times
Jacob was running away from home. One
night he lay down in the wilderness to sleep and had one of the
great mystical experiences of Western religion. He dreamed
there was a ladder, with angels ascending and descending,
stretched between heaven and earth. For thousands of years,
people have tried to overhear what the messengers came down to
tell Jacob, and us.
Now in a daring blend of scholarship and
imagination, psychology and history, Lawrence Kushner gathers
an inspiring range of interpretations of Genesis 28:16 given by
sages, from Shmuel bar Nachmani in third-century Palestine to
Hannah Rachel Werbermacher of Ludomir who lived in Poland two
hundred years ago. Through a fascinating new literary genre and
Kushner’s creative reconstruction of the teachers’
lives and times, we enter the study halls and sit at the feet
of these spiritual masters to learn what each discovered about
God’s Self and ourselves as they ascend and descend
Jacob’s ladder.
In this illuminating journey, our
spiritual guides ask and answer the fundamental questions of
human experience: Who am I? Who is God? What is God’s
role in history? What is the nature of evil? How should I
relate to God and other people? Could the universe really have
a self?
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner brilliantly
reclaims a millennium of Jewish spirituality for contemporary
seekers of all faiths and backgrounds. God Was in This Place & I, i Did Not Know is about God and about you; it is about
discovering God’s place in the universe, and yours.
“Kushner has taught me more about
God and my own Christianity than any other teacher I have
known…. A bold attempt to translate the flavor of
mystical Judaism into the life of the twentieth-century person,
Jew and non-Jew alike, and he has been successful.”
—Rev.
Robert G. Trache, rector, Immanuel
Church-on-the-Hill
“A brilliant fabric of classic and
rabbinic interpretations, medieval commentary, Hasidic
insights, and literary criticism which warms us and sustains
us.”
—Dr.
Norman J. Cohen, dean and professor
of midrash, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of
Religion, New York
“We have another Buber here, a
Heschel…. [Kushner] expresses the truly profound with
joy, lightness and humor…. Anyone who loves the Book will
love this book.”
—Father
M. Basil Pennington, Saint
Joseph’s Abbey
“This strong, imaginative, open and
profound book invites reading, rereading, talking and
absorbing. Readers will be amazed and moved by the depth of
insights that one biblical phrase has evoked in Jewish
consciousness throughout the centuries.”
—Rabbi
Rachel Cowan, director of Jewish
life, Nathan Cummings Foundation
“A beautiful book which uses both
reason and art…to bring the author and the reader closer
to God.”
—David
Mamet, playwright
“A rich and intriguing book which,
like the ladder of its metaphor, contains both many rungs of
meaning as well as insights into the process of Jewish
theology.”
—M. Scott
Peck, M.D., author of The Road Less Traveled
