This is a daring work. It tries both to deepen spirituality and to deflate its pretensions. The journey toward spiritual integrity requires relentless honesty, self-criticism, truthfulness, and insistence on truth. Cohen is a wise and amicable companion on an arduous journey.

Alan Mittleman, The Jewish Theological Seminary

Martin S. Cohen has written a deeply insightful book that distills decades of his life as a working rabbi and scholar. His book is a remarkably accessible, learned and meditative primer on the 'gates' that lead toward the paradoxical, unfathomable, metaphorical—and yet vividly real—joy of life lived in communion with God.

John A. Jillions, St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary

Short indeed is the list of contemporary authors able through the force of their prose to awaken moderns to the worship of God with the graceful persuasiveness of Martin S. Cohen, whose writing flows both from his prodigious learning and from his unwavering commitment to intellectual integrity. But there is the medium to consider as well as the message: by resurrecting the classical prose style of Jewish antiquity, Cohen manages to offer his response to cynicism and post-modernism in language that will be resonant with moderns precisely because it is so evocatively traditional and so unequivocally honest.

Admiel Kosman, University of Potsdam