Author: Moshe IdelPublisher: Jason Aronson, Incorporated
ISBN: 1461629160
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 254
Book Description
To find more information about Rowman & Littlefield titles please visit us at www.rowmanlittlefield.com.
Jewish Mystical Leaders and Leadership in the 13th Century
Author: Moshe IdelPublisher: Jason Aronson, Incorporated
ISBN: 1461629160
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 254
Book Description
To find more information about Rowman & Littlefield titles please visit us at www.rowmanlittlefield.com.
Kabbalah and Jewish Modernity
Author: Roni WeinsteinPublisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1800857306
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
Roni Weinstein’s sociological reading of the kabbalistic ideas of the early modern period suggests that they gained acceptance because they met the needs of contemporary Jewish society. Although these ideas were presented as continuing a tradition, their goal was reformation: few aspects of Jewish life were not changed in consequence. This broadly based and innovative study challenges accepted ideas on the origins of Jewish modernity, and also shows how Counter-Reformation Catholicism affected these developments.
The Scandal of Kabbalah
Author: Yaacob DweckPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691162158
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
How the Jewish culture war over Kabbalah began The Scandal of Kabbalah is the first book about the origins of a culture war that began in early modern Europe and continues to this day: the debate between kabbalists and their critics on the nature of Judaism and the meaning of religious tradition. From its medieval beginnings as an esoteric form of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah spread throughout the early modern world and became a central feature of Jewish life. Scholars have long studied the revolutionary impact of Kabbalah, but, as Yaacob Dweck argues, they have misunderstood the character and timing of opposition to it. Drawing on a range of previously unexamined sources, this book tells the story of the first criticism of Kabbalah, Ari Nohem, written by Leon Modena in Venice in 1639. In this scathing indictment of Venetian Jews who had embraced Kabbalah as an authentic form of ancient esotericism, Modena proved the recent origins of Kabbalah and sought to convince his readers to return to the spiritualized rationalism of Maimonides. The Scandal of Kabbalah examines the hallmarks of Jewish modernity displayed by Modena's attack—a critical analysis of sacred texts, skepticism about religious truths, and self-consciousness about the past—and shows how these qualities and the later history of his polemic challenge conventional understandings of the relationship between Kabbalah and modernity. Dweck argues that Kabbalah was the subject of critical inquiry in the very period it came to dominate Jewish life rather than centuries later as most scholars have thought.
Teaching Mysticism
Author: William B. ParsonsPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199751196
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
The term ''mysticism'' has never been consistently defined or employed, either in religious traditions or in academic discourse. The essays in this volume offer ways of defining what mysticism is, as well as methods for grappling with its complexity in a classroom.This volume addresses the diverse literature surrounding mysticism in four interrelated parts. The first part includes essays on the tradition and context of mysticism, devoted to drawing out and examining the mystical element in many religious traditions. The second part engages traditions and religio-cultural strands in which ''mysticism'' is linked to other terms, such as shamanism, esotericism, and Gnosticism. The volume's third part focuses on methodological strategies for defining ''mysticism,'' with respect to varying social spaces. The final essays show how contemporary social issues and movements have impacted the meaning, study, and pedagogy of mysticism.Teaching Mysticism presents pedagogical reflections on how best to communicate mysticism from a variety of institutional spaces. It surveys the broad range of meanings of mysticism, its utilization in the traditions, the theories and methods that have been used to understand it, and provides critical insight into the resulting controversies.
The Bible and Jews in Medieval Spain
Author: Norman RothPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000348113
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468
Book Description
The Bible and Jews in Medieval Spain examines the grammatical, exegetical, philosophical and mystical interpretations of the Bible that took place in Spain during the medieval period. The Bible was the foundation of Jewish culture in medieval Spain. Following the scientific analysis of Hebrew grammar which emerged in al-Andalus in the ninth and tenth centuries, biblical exegesis broke free of homiletic interpretation and explored the text on grammatical and contextual terms. While some of the earliest commentary was in Arabic, scholars began using Hebrew more regularly during this period. The first complete biblical commentaries in Hebrew were written by Abraham Ibn ‘Ezra, and this set the standard for the generations that followed. This book analyses the approach and unique contributions of these commentaries, moving on to those of later Christian Spain, including the Qimhi family, Nahmanides and his followers and the esoteric-mystical tradition. Major topics in the commentaries are compared and contrasted. Thus, a unified picture of the whole fabric of Hebrew commentary in medieval Spain emerges. In addition, the book describes the many Spanish Jewish biblical manuscripts that have remained and details the history of printed editions and Spanish translations (for Jews and Christians) by medieval Spanish Jews. This book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval Spain, as well as those interested in the history of religion and cultural history.
A Mahzor from Worms
Author: Katrin Kogman-AppelPublisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674064542
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
The Leipzig Mahzor is one of the most lavish Hebrew illuminated manuscripts of all time. A prayer book used during Jewish holidays, it was produced in the Middle Ages for the Jewish community of Worms in the German Rhineland. Though Worms was a vibrant center of Judaism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and drew celebrated rabbis, little is known about the city's Jews in the later Middle Ages. In the pages of its famous book, Katrin Kogman-Appel discovers a portal into the life of this fourteenth-century community. Medieval mahzorim were used only for special services in the synagogue and "belonged" to the whole congregation, so their visual imagery reflected the local cultural associations and beliefs. The Leipzig Mahzor pays homage to one of Worms's most illustrious scholars, Eleazar ben Judah. Its imagery reveals how his Ashkenazi Pietist worldview and involvement in mysticism shaped the community's religious practice. Kogman-Appel draws attention to the Mahzor's innovations, including its strategy for avoiding visual representation of God and its depiction of customs such as the washing of dishes before Passover, something less common in other mahzorim. In addition to decoding its iconography, Kogman-Appel approaches the manuscript as a ritual object that preserved a sense of identity and cohesion within a community facing a wide range of threats to its stability and security.
From Sanctuary to Boardroom
Author: Hal M. LewisPublisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742552289
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
From Sanctuary to Boardroom: A Jewish Approach to Leadership examines key Jewish texts on leadership and applies these concepts to today's issues associated with leading and managing organizations. Discussing authority, charisma, uses and abuses of power, and shared power, Lewis offers an understanding of classical models of Jewish leadership and translates these models into issues and questions which are the core of contemporary concern of existing and future Jewish leaders.
From Something to Nothing
Author: Harry FoxPublisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527535037
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 562
Book Description
Jewish mysticism approaches God as no-thing or nothing, reflecting Judaism’s traditional identification of God as incorporeal. Whereas technical philosophical language often employed to discuss Jewish mysticism has a tendency to ward off otherwise interested readers, this study sufficiently breaks down the technical language of Jewish mysticism in its various expressions to allow a beginner to benefit from what may otherwise be indescribable and only approached by consideration of what is not rather than what is. Integral to the title, From Something to Nothing, is the concept that God cannot be something, because that would be restricting, so God is simply no-thing. Ironically, the conventional religious expression for the biblical notion of creation is “something from nothing”, whereas the title of this volume is its precise opposite, which may at first seem to be illogical – creation in reverse. However, in a volume dedicated to various deliberations on magic and mysticism, the ultimate reality may receive expression as nothingness, that is, no-thingness, no quality associated with things. What adds to our difficulty today is that nothingness is inextricably linked with silence. Is silence also an element or indication of an ultimate reality or its absence? Or is it merely the reflection of nothing whatsoever? This is at the heart of modern debates between atheists and believers. Believers feel that even this silence speaks to this ultimate reality, whereas atheists claim that if you cannot show it, then you do not know it. In other words, believers are victims of their own wishful thinking. From Something to Nothing memorializes Canadian mystic and scholar Zalman Schachter Shalomi, z”l, engaging in particular aspects that he addressed at some phase of his colourful and erudite life, providing the reader with a broad spectrum of both phenomenological and intellectual topics.
Medieval Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Egypt
Author: Joachim J.M.S. YeshayaPublisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004191844
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 364
Book Description
Moses ben Abraham Darʿī, born in Alexandria into a family of Moroccan Jewish immigrants, lived in Egypt in the middle of the twelfth century. Though he visited Damascus and Jerusalem, he spent most of his professional life as a physician and poet in the Karaite community of Fusṭāṭ-Cairo. This study offers an annotated edition of secular poems taken from the earliest manuscript, NLR Evr. I 802, dated to the fifteenth century. The Hebrew text and Judaeo-Arabic heading of each poem are provided in the original order attested in the manuscript. The introduction to this edition seeks to evaluate Darʿī’s poetry in the light of the Andalusian-Hebrew poetical tradition and within the context of Hebrew literary activity in the Muslim East. “This learned book displays sound, rigorous scholarship in the best tradition of the philological-historical method... It also provides solid ground for further work by scholars with different agendas, different scholarly interests and different methodologies in the study of medieval Hebrew poetry. On all accounts, it is a welcome and most valuable addition to the field.” Esperanza Alfonso, CCHS-CSIC "Yeshaya's work is an excellent contribution to the study of both medieval Hebrew poetry and Karaitica, showing Darʿī to be a central representative of Hebrew poets writing in the Muslim East and, most importantly, a charming author, whose Karaiteness only adds to the attraction." Riikka Tuori
Einblicke in die "British Jewish Studies"
Author: Rebekka DenzPublisher: Universitätsverlag Potsdam
ISBN: 3869561777
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
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