Wolfson is a leading scholar of Judaism. This book derives from his Taubman Letures at UC Berkeley, 2000, and it is the second book in "The Taubman Lecture Series in Jewish Studies", edited by Daniel Boyarin. This highly original, provocative, and poetic work explores the nexus of time, truth, and death in the symbolic world of medieval kabbalah. Demonstrating that the historical and theoretical relationship between kabbalah and western philosophy is far more intimate and extensive than any previous scholar has ever suggested, Elliot R. Wolfson draws an extraordinary range of thinkers such as Frederic Jameson, Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig, William Balke, Julia Kristeva, Friedrich Schelling, and a host of kabbalistic figures into deep conversation with one another. "Alef, Mem, Tau" also discusses Islamic mysticism and Buddhist thought in relation to the Jewish esoteric tradition as it opens the possibility of a temporal triumph of temporality and the conquering of time through time.