Rabbi Jill Hammer has taken an ancient Jewish mystical text and transformed it into a contemporary guide for meditative practice. In Return to the Place, Rabbi Hammer guides the reader through the story of creation as the ancient text of the Sefer Yetzirah draws readers in and invites them to become participants in the book’s vibrant incantations, bringing the Creator’s sacred energy into the world.
The Sefer Yetzirah is a creation story like none other, describing the creation of the world in cryptic, mystical, poetic text. Rabbi Jill Hammer has taken a fresh look at this text that scholars believe goes back to the sixth century CE, embracing this text with healing intention.
Through guided meditations at each step along the way, Rabbi Hammer allows readers to dig deeply into the text to experience the potential power of these ancient writings. Hammer builds a thought-provoking bridge from the past to the present—translating the text and focusing on its key aspects to give readers a relevant focus for contemplation.
Sefer Yetzirah has been called the foundational text of Jewish mysticism, but despite many scholarly attempts to explain it, readers still find its language baffling and its message indecipherable. Now Rabbi Jill Hammer has clarified the text for us all. Without ruining its mystery, she reveals its cosmic vision of “space, time, and body-soul.” Beyond this, she has created a new-ancient meditative practice based on this mystical masterpiece. Her superb achievement is a gift for all of us!
–Dr. Daniel Matt, author of The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism
Rabbi Jill Hammer’s Return to the Place: The Magic, Meditation, and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah is a major event — both for the Jewish world and far beyond it. As in all her writing, teaching, and spiritual leadership, Rabbi Hammer here displays her unique combination of scholarly rigor, spiritual depth, ritual innovation, and poetic virtuosity. Rabbi Hammer, one of the most original religious guides of our time, opens up for us a text that has fascinated mystics and philosophers for more than a millennium – and yet has remained deeply mysterious. Return to the Place shows us that the Sefer Yetzirah is a “doorway into the deep structure of creation” — with the power to transform the cosmos as well as each person’s most intimate experience. She writes that her discovery of the Sefer Yetzirah made her feel she had “come home”; but her readers will feel that it is she who has given them a new “home” within the age-old traditions of Jewish and world spirituality.
–Dr. Nathaniel Berman, author of Divine and Demonic in the Poetic Mythology of the Zohar
Rabbi Jill Hammer’s new opus, Return to the Place: The Magic, Meditation, and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah, is a tour de force—at once scholarly, whimsical, deeply poetic, and eminently accessible. In it, Hammer combines translation, commentary, and meditations with her uniquely seasoned sensibility, one that balances feminine and masculine, sensual and philosophical. Calling the Book of Creation an incantation, Hammer takes on a difficult assignment. She pushes back the heavy curtain that has kept this cryptic text hidden and impenetrable, and invites us into its cosmic landscapes. Hammer does this with graceful intelligence and without ever disavowing the physical body of the reader, or our capacity to embrace the body of the world. This volume is a rare gift that comes—echad ba-dor, once in a generation.
–Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, author of The Receiving: Reclaiming Jewish Women’s Wisdom
Like its subject, the mysterious Book of Creation, Return to the Place brilliantly defies categorization. It is a detailed commentary, a bold spirit-guide, and a valuable work of scholarship. It is both audacious and perspicacious. And no one could have written it but Rabbi Dr. Jill Hammer.
–Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson, author of Enlightenment by Trial and Error: Ten Years on the Slippery Slopes of Jewish Spirituality, Post-Modern Buddhism, and Other Mystical Heresies and Everything is God: The Radical Path of Non-Dual Judaism
Rabbi Jill Hammer has restored a seemingly arcane ancient text, the Sefer Yetzirah, or Book of Creation, into what it was always meant to be: a manual for ritual and meditative practices. In simple prose she returns each verse to its organic experience in the body, using focused visualizations that carry us directly into the ‘knowing’ offered by the text. This is a book to peruse and experience over time and one that will endure as an important commentary on kabbalists’ profound wisdom of inner states of being. Rabbi Hammer’s voice is one you can trust and with her gentle prodding, the Book of Creation will bring you back to the Place at your core where divinity awaits. I highly recommend it to all seekers of the Truth.
–Dr. Catherine Shainberg, author of Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming: Awakening the Visionary Life
The Sefer Yetsirah, the Book of Creation, is both appreciated for its mystery and respected for its difficulty. Rabbi Hammer’s Return to the Place takes giant strides in clarifying the work for contemporary practitioners and scholars. The introduction is both precise and heartfelt, a combination that is as wonderful as it is rare. Her translation is supple, while her commentary is clear and meaningful. Return to the Place brings the fascination of this ancient work into the present.
–Dr. Marla Segol, author of Word and Image in Medieval Kabbalah: The Texts, Commentaries, and Diagrams of the Sefer Yetsirah
Jill Hammer 