The Power of Kabbalah, the book, is written by Yehuda Berg, the son of Rav Berg and, like someone born into a foreign culture, Yehuda comes across as naturally fluent and entirely at home with his subject, with a simple way of expressing concepts that have seemed shrouded in obscurity for centuries.
This is not a dry exposition of intellectual ideas. It is a thoroughly practical handbook of wisdom. Yehuda Berg describes our true nature, the nature of the universe and the underlying reason for our discontent.
One of the greatest lessons of this book is that our deepest desire is to be the cause of our own fulfilment, and that we achieve this by resisting our reactive impulses and making proactive choices at every step in our lives. He gives many examples, drawn from all areas of life, of how we might offer this resistance and make a better choice. I have lived for many years with the wisdom of proactivity, which I learned from Steven Covey's wonderful book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. But I have to say that, despite those many years of working with proactivity, this new book seriously deepened my understanding of what proactivity was all about, and especially the spiritual dimension behind such actions. This greater understanding has helped me to take proactive decisions with increased confidence, and I have made several such decisions as a direct result of my contact with this book.
The discussions of scientific theory compared to Kabbalistic teaching I found absolutely fascinating, with striking parallels in the Big Bang theory and the ten-dimensional superstring theory of the universe.
Yehuda Berg also provides a good introduction to the 72 "Names of God", their origin and relevance to our lives. This may be a step too far for some readers and needs to be approached with an open mind. But as the author says of the whole book, "Don't believe a word of what you read. There must be tangible results in your direct experience. When that happens, you will feel the truth of Kabbalah in your body and soul, and you will come to know the wisdom of the sages in your heart."
Whether you are a complete newcomer to the Kabbalah, or have already been introduced, there is something to learn from this book. It has become a treasured possession for me; one that I will want to dip into often and read through more than once.