Kabbalah books, my websites and me

Covers of Kabbalah related books

I have a long history with books on Kabbalah and organizing them on the web. As I just reached a milestone in this process, let me share the timeline so far.

1984 – My earliest memory of Kabbalah happened while still in highschool. I distinctly remember a girl, I didn’t know till then, coming up to me at school and asking whether it is true that the Kabbalah predicted that the world would end that year. I don’t recall my answer but remember hers, when I asked why she was asking me. She was told that I would know, being interested in Kabbalah.  This being my earliest memory of Kabbalah I wonder what did I do or say to deserve this reputation. I think I will never know.

1991-1992 – I studied in the rabbinic program of Leo Baeck College in London for a year. I stayed in the dormitory of the college which was on the campus itself along with the library. I got the access code to the library, so I spent many a night reading there, including Kabbalah books. I wanted to know and understand it but not necessarily from a  religious perspective. I did not want to practice it, my interest was and is more academic.

1994 – Made my first website.

1996 – Made my first personal website at por.gabor.com address. Unfortunately I have no record backup or image of it; that site is gone.

2000 May – I registered my own web domain “pgabor.com where I have my own personal website ever since. Even in its earliest incarnation it had a list of Kabbalah books. As far as I recall I moved that from the previous por.gabor.com address. The earliest copy the Wayback machine has of my list is from January 27, 2001.

List of Kabbalah books at pgabor.com

2006 September – I started my librarian masters program.

2007 October – I created a separate website dedicated to Kabbalah books at sefarim.net. That site is gone now too,  This is the earliest copy you can find it online is from December 31, 2007. Technical side note: first it was a custom PHP/MySql based website but by 2011 I moved it to WordPress.

Logo and header of sefarim.net

2008 March – I earned my MLIS (Masters in Library and Information Science) degree from University of Washington.

2010 July – Registered “kabbalahbooks.co” domain and moved the content of the sefarim.net website over there. At the time the “.co” domains were hyped as the best new thing for those who didn’t manage to get a good “.com” domain. I was hoping that with this more SEO friendly name the site could grow its audience. The first copy the Wayback machine has of this site is from May 4, 2013, see here.

2014 August – Created a website for Jewish books in general at JewishBookWorld.org .

2017 July – As I didn’t find the time to update the kabbalahbooks.co website for years I had let its domain expire with the idea of simplifying my life. At its peak I had listed over 600 books in seven categories.

2019 January – Even thought the focus of JewishBookWorld.org  was sharing newly published books I started to add about one book a (week)day from my list of academic/scholarly Kabbalah books to that site.

2019 August 23 – Here is the milestone I mentioned in the intro. I just finished re-adding the last book from my old list with “Secrets From the Lost Bible by Kenneth Hanson. From this point on I will just add new books on Kabbalah as I learn about them.

So without further due let me introduce a new page on this website, the full list of books I gathered from an Academic/scholarly perspective. Every book on this list has its own page on this site. I also posted my other lists of Kabbalah related books include, but for these clicking on the book titles you get to the corresponding page on Amazon: Commercial, Fiction, Meditation, Popularizer, Religious, Qabalah.

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