Product Description
by Robert M. Haralick (Author)
This book-length meditation on the Hebrew alphabet offers profound insights into many important ideas found in Jewish thought. From time immemorial, the Hebrew alphabet has been considered to be more than a collection of individual letters. Indeed, the essence of each letter of the Hebrew alphabet can be seen as a fundamental building block of the world. Jewish scholars throughout the ages have meditated on these letters, deriving spiritual inspiration in the process. In The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters, Robert M. Haralick looks closely at each of the Hebrew characters, helping us to gain insight from this remarkable tradition. Drawing primarily upon traditional kabbalistic and chasidic thought, Haralick combines his own insights with those of great Jewish personalities such as Moshe Chayim Luzzatto and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, as well as drawing upon classical texts, including the Bahir, the Zohar, the Midrash, and the Talmud. One of Haralick's main sources of inspiration is the ancient Jewish art of gematria, where each letter has a numerical value as does each combination of letters. Through this traditional methodology, Haralick shows his readers the many, often dazzling, ways that the Hebrew alphabet has been examined.
Author Biography
Robert M. Haralick holds the Boeing Clairmont Egtvedt professorship of electrical engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition, and is listed in Who's Who in America. He has published over 400 professional scientific papers in the area of computer vision and pattern recognition. Professor Haralick has been a student of chasidic philosophy and Kabbalah since he was a graduate student at the University of Kansas, where he received a Ph.D. in 1969. He was introduced to Chabad Chasidut by Rabbi Aharon Goldstein and subsequently met the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, of blessed memory, who was acquainted with an early version of this book. He is a member of the Lubavitcher congregation Shaarei Tefillah.
