Crime-Mystery-Detective Stories | Laurie R. King and Lawrence W. Raphael (essay date 2001)
Laurie R. King and Lawrence W. Raphael (essay date 2001)
SOURCE: King, Laurie R., and Lawrence W. Raphael. Forward and Introduction to Criminal Kabbalah: An Intriguing Anthology of Jewish Mystery & Detective Fiction, edited by Lawrence W. Raphael, pp. 7-8; 11-16. Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2001.
[In the following forward and introduction to a Jewish crime-mystery-detective anthology, King and Raphael define the term kabbalah and discuss the connections between Jewish mystical thought and the crime-mystery-detective genre.]
FORWARD: CRIME AND KABBALAH
Criminal Kabbalah, the Kabbalah of crime—what does an esoteric form of mysticism have to do with common lawbreakers? Nothing, we declare with indignation. And yet …
The word Kabbalah grows from the Hebrew root kbl, which has to do with things received. Specifically, Kabbalah is a system (or, this being Judaism, a number of systems) by which...
[The entire page is 2616 words long]
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