Download or read book Kabbalah Research in the Wissenschaft des Judentums 1820 1880 written by George Y. Kohler and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-03-18 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years more and more scholars have become aware of the fact that the 19th century movement of the Wissenschaft des Judentums engaged in essential research of kabbalistic texts and thinkers. The legend of Wissenschaft’s neglect for the mystic traditions of Judaism is no longer sustainable. However, the true extent of this enterprise of German Jewish scholars is not yet known. This book will give an overview of what the leading figures have actually achieved: Landauer, Jellinek, Jost, Graetz, Steinschneider and others. It is true that their theological evaluation of the "worth" of kabbalah for what they believed was the ‘essence of Judaism’ yielded overall negative results, but this rejection was rationally founded and rather suggests a true concern for Judaism that transcended their own emancipation and assimilation as German Jews.

Download or read book Occult Roots of Religious Studies written by Yves Mühlematter and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historiographers of religious studies have written the history of this discipline primarily as a rationalization of ideological, most prominently theological and phenomenological ideas: first through the establishment of comparative, philological and sociological methods and secondly through the demand for intentional neutrality. This interpretation caused important roots in occult-esoteric traditions to be repressed. This process of “purification” (Latour) is not to be equated with the origin of the academic studies. De facto, the elimination of idealistic theories took time and only happened later. One example concerning the early entanglement is Tibetology, where many researchers and respected chair holders were influenced by theosophical ideas or were even members of the Theosophical Society. Similarly, the emergence of comparatistics cannot be understood without taking into account perennialist ideas of esoteric provenance, which hold that all religions have a common origin. In this perspective, it is not only the history of religious studies which must be revisited, but also the partial shaping of religious studies by these traditions, insofar as it saw itself as a counter-model to occult ideas.

Download or read book Kabbalah and Literature written by Kitty Millet and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2024-01-11 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focuses on a range of Jewish and non-Jewish writers to examine the intersection of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, and secular Jewish literatures. Kabbalah and Literature shows how the Jewish mystical tradition contributes to the renewal of literature in a modern, global, and increasingly disconnected age. Kitty Millet explores Kabbalah's conceptual underpinnings, aesthetic principles, tenets, and signifiers to demonstrate how literature's absorption of kabbalistic material has altered its ontology, function, and the tasks it sets for itself. Reading writers from Europe and the Americas, Kitty Millet maps how the kabbalist's desire to "recover Eden" transforms into a latent messianic drive only intuitable through text. Thus it charts a journey of sorts, a migration of Jewish mystical material embedded surreptitiously within text in order to shift ever so slightly at times the range of the literary to encompass an aesthetic vision not easily reducible to the literal, the known, the allegorical, or even the philosophical. In this way, Kabbalah and Literature proposes a novel, intuitive approach, shifting focus away from the Jewish text's epistemological elements to embrace its "secrets."

Download or read book Kabbalah in America written by Brian Ogren and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-06 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kabbalah in America includes chapters from leading experts in a variety of fields and is the first-ever comprehensive treatment of the title subject from colonial times until the present. As the first of its kind, it will set the tone for all future scholarship on the subject.

Download or read book Mystifying Kabbalah written by Boaz Huss and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chapter 1: The modern concept of mysticism -- Chapter 2: Jewish mysticism and national theology -- Chapter 3: The new age of Kabbalah research -- Chapter 4: "Authorized guardians": the rejection of occult and contemporary Kabbalah -- Chapter 5: The mystification of Kabbalah: Abraham Abulafia in contemporary Kabbalah.

Download or read book A History of Kabbalah written by Jonathan Garb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-23 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan Garb's A History of Kabbalah: From the Early Modern Period to the Present Day is a lucid and sophisticated account of the multifaceted nature of Jewish mysticism, focusing on its development from the spiritual revolution that took place in Safed in the sixteenth century until the present. Opening the secrets of the kabbalah to a wider audience, Garb judiciously argued that how important the mystical and esoteric tradition has been in Jewish history and in the cultural and intellectual life of Europe more generally. One of the more methodologically innovative aspects of Garb's book is his contention that kabbalah became a major factor in the religious life of Jews in the modern age due to print and others forms of rapid communication, a process that has magnified significantly in recent years due to the digital revolution. Informative and provocative, A History of Kabbalah will surely be of interest to a wide readership.

Download or read book The Formation of a Modern Rabbi written by Samuel Joseph Kessler and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2022-12-16 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intellectual biography that critically engages Adolf Jellinek’s scholarship and communal activities Adolf Jellinek (1821–1893), the Czech-born, German-educated, liberal chief rabbi of Vienna, was the most famous Jewish preacher in Central Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. As an innovative rhetorician, Jellinek helped mold and define the modern synagogue sermon into an instrument for expressing Jewish religious and ethical values for a new era. As a historian, he made groundbreaking contributions to the study of the Zohar and medieval Jewish mysticism. Jellinek was emblematic of rabbi-as-scholar-preacher during the earliest, formative years of communal synagogues as urban religious space. In a world that was rapidly losing the felt and remembered past of premodern Jewish society, the rabbi, with Jellinek as prime exemplar, took hold of the Sabbath sermon as an instrument to define and mold Judaism and Jewish values for a new world.

Download or read book Maimonides Review of Philosophy and Religion Volume 2 2023 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-09-04 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Maimonides Review of Philosophy and Religion is an annual collection of double-blind peer-reviewed articles that seeks to provide a broad international arena for an intellectual exchange of ideas between the disciplines of philosophy, theology, religion, cultural history, and literature and to showcase their multifarious junctures within the framework of Jewish studies. Contributions to the Review place special thematic emphasis on scepticism within Jewish thought and its links to other religious traditions and secular worldviews. The Review is interested in the tension at the heart of matters of reason and faith, rationalism and mysticism, theory and practice, narrativity and normativity, doubt and dogma.

Download or read book Jewish Historiography Between Past and Future written by Paul Mendes-Flohr and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-07-22 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its modest beginnings in 1818 Berlin, Wissenschaft des Judentums has burgeoned into a scholarly discipline pursued by a vast cadre of scholars. Now constituting a global community, these scholars continue to draw their inspiration from the determined pioneers of Wissenschaft des Judentums in nineteenth and twentieth Germany. Beyond setting the highest standards of philological and historiographical research, German Wissenschaft des Judentums had a seminal role in creating modern Jewish discourse in which cultural memory supplemented traditional Jewish learning. The secular character of modern Jewish Studies, initially pursued largely in German and subsequently in other vernacular languages (e.g. French, Dutch, Italian, modern Hebrew, Russian), greatly facilitated an exchange with non-Jewish scholars, and thereby encouraging mutual understanding and respect. The present volume is based on papers delivered at a conference, sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem, by scholars from North American, Europe, and Israel. The papers and attendant deliberations explored ramified historical and methodological issues. Taken as a whole, the volume represents a tribute to the two hundred year legacy of Wissenschaft des Judentums and its singular contribution to not only modern Jewish self-understand but also to the unfolding of humanistic cultural discourse.

Download or read book New Paths in Jewish and Religious Studies written by Glenn Dynner and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-15 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work of Elliot R. Wolfson has profoundly influenced the fields of Jewish studies as well as philosophy and religion more broadly. His radically new approaches have created pioneering ways of analyzing texts and thinking about religion through the lens of gender, sexuality, and feminist theory. The contributors to New Paths in Jewish and Religious Studies: Essays in Honor of Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, many of whom are internationally renowned scholars, hearken from diverse fields. Each has learned from and collaborated with Wolfson as student or colleague, and each has expanded the new scholarly directions initiated by Wolfson’s groundbreaking work. Wolfson’s scholarship gives us innovative ways to think about Judaism and a fresh understanding of religion. Not only a scholar, Wolfson is one of the most important Jewish thinkers of our day. Chapters are grouped according to the categories of religion, Jewish thought and philosophy, and a focused section on Kabbalah, Wolfson’s primary specialization. The volume concludes with a bibliography of Wolfson’s published work and a selection of his poetry.

Download or read book Salo Baron written by Rebecca Kobrin and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1930, Columbia University appointed Salo Baron to be the Nathan L. Miller Professor of Jewish History, Literature, and Institutions—marking a turning point in the history of Jewish studies in America. Baron not only became perhaps the most accomplished scholar of Jewish history in the twentieth century, the author of many books including the eighteen-volume A Social and Religious History of the Jews. He also created a program and a discipline, mentoring hundreds of scholars, establishing major institutions including the first academic center to study Israel in the United States, building Columbia’s Judaica collection, intervening as a public intellectual, and exerting an unparalleled influence on what it meant to study the Jewish past. This book brings together leading scholars to consider how Baron transformed the course of Jewish studies in the United States. From a variety of perspectives, they reflect on his contributions to the study of Jewish history, literature, and culture, as well as his scholarship, activism, and mentorship. Among many distinguished contributors, David Sorkin engages with Baron’s arguments on Jewish emancipation; Francesca Trivellato puts him in conversation with economic history; David Engel examines his use of anti-Semitism as an analytical category; Deborah Lipstadt explores his testimony at the trial of Adolf Eichmann; and Robert Chazan and Jane Gerber, both once Baron’s doctoral students, offer personal and intellectual reminiscences. Together, they testify to Baron’s singular legacy in shaping Jewish studies in America.

Download or read book Modern Jewish Theology written by Samuel J. Kessler and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Studia Philonica Annual XXXI 2019 written by David T. Runia and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2019-11-20 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies on Philo and Hellenistic Judaism from experts in the field The Studia Philonica Annual is a scholarly journal devoted to the study of Hellenistic Judaism, particularly the writings and thought of the Hellenistic-Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria. This volume includes articles on allegory, Platonic interpretations of the law, rhetoric, and Philo’s thoughts on reincarnation. Features: Articles on aspects of Hellenistic Judaism written by scholars from around the world Comprehensive bibliography and book reviews

Download or read book Louis Jacobs and the Quest for a Contemporary Jewish Theology written by Miri Freud-Kandel and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-15 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Louis Jacobs, the quest—the process of engaging with and thinking about Jewish faith—was a lifelong pursuit. He offered a model in the 1960s, a period characterized by general religious crisis, of an observant, committed, but intellectually curious Judaism that empowered individual seekers to address challenges to faith. In Orthodox Judaism at the time a battle was under way for religious control. Generating a widespread controversy in British Jewry known as the ‘Jacobs Affair’, his thought offers a lens for examining the trajectory of Orthodoxy. In a contemporary context marked by the changing cultural and intellectual concerns of a ‘post-secular’ age, the focus of some of these debates over religious control has shifted. Yet Jacobs’ emphasis on a personal quest is as relevant as ever, perhaps more so. This first book-length analysis of his theology unpacks the building blocks of his thought. It argues that, despite its particularities and limitations, his approach can provide a powerful model for contemporary religious seekers in the context of a growing impetus away from established, denominationally bound forms of religion. Many orthodox believers across a range of faiths continue to prefer the certainty of unquestionable religious truth claims rather than pursuing a subjective search for religious meaning. For those seeking alternative models for the contemporary Jewish quest, a reconsideration of Jacobs’ theology can offer valuable tools.

Download or read book Rabbi Leo Baeck written by Michael A. Meyer and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-11-20 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rabbi, educator, intellectual, and community leader, Leo Baeck (1873-1956) was one of the most important Jewish figures of prewar Germany. The publication of his 1905 Das Wesen des Judentums (The Essence of Judaism) established him as a major voice for liberal Judaism. He served as a chaplain to the German army during the First World War and in the years following, resisting the call of political Zionism, he expressed his commitment to the belief in a vibrant place for Jews in a new Germany. This hope was dashed with the rise of Nazism, and from 1933 on, and continuing even after his deportation to Theresienstadt, he worked tirelessly in his capacity as a leader of the German Jewish community to offer his coreligionists whatever practical, intellectual, and spiritual support remained possible. While others after the war worked to rebuild German Jewish life from the ashes, a disillusioned Baeck pronounced the effort misguided and spent the rest of his life in England. Yet his name is perhaps best-known today from the Leo Baeck Institutes in New York, London, Berlin, and Jerusalem dedicated to the preservation of the cultural heritage of German-speaking Jewry. Michael A. Meyer has written a biography that gives equal consideration to Leo Baeck's place as a courageous community leader and as one of the most significant Jewish religious thinkers of the twentieth century, comparable to such better-known figures as Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Abraham Joshua Heschel. According to Meyer, to understand Baeck fully, one must probe not only his thought and public activity but also his personality. Generally described as gentle and kind, he could also be combative when necessary, and a streak of puritanism and an outsized veneration for martyrdom ran through his psychological makeup. Drawing on a broad variety of sources, some coming to light only in recent years, but especially turning to Baeck's own writings, Meyer presents a complex and nuanced image of one of the most noteworthy personalities in the Jewish history of our age.

Download or read book Origins of the Kabbalah written by Gershom Gerhard Scholem and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the publication of The Origins of the Kabbalah in 1950, one of the most important scholars of our century brought the obscure world of Jewish mysticism to a wider audience for the first time. A crucial work in the oeuvre of Gershom Scholem, this book details the beginnings of the Kabbalah in twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern France and Spain, showing its rich tradition of repeated attempts to achieve and portray direct experiences of God. The Origins of the Kabbalah is a contribution not only to the history of Jewish medieval mysticism, but also to the study of medieval mysticism in general. Now with a new foreword by David Biale, this book remains essential reading for students of the history of religion.

Download or read book Kabbalah in Print written by Andrea Gondos and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2020-11-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrates the impact of print culture on the spread of Jewish mysticism, focusing on Kabbalistic study guides by R. Yissakhar Baer of seventeenth-century Prague. How did Jewish mysticism go from arcane knowledge to popular spirituality? Kabbalah in Print examines the cultural impact of printing on the popularization, circulation, and transmission of Kabbalah in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Zohar, in particular, generated a large secondary literature of study guides and reference works that aimed to ease the linguistic and conceptual challenges of the text. The arrival of printed classics of Kabbalah was soon followed by the appearance of new literary genres—anthologies, digests, lexicons, and other learning aids—that mediated mystical primary sources to a community of readers not versed in this lore. A detailed investigation of the four works by R. Yissakhar Baer (ca.1580–ca.1629) of Prague sheds light on the literary strategies, pedagogic concerns, and religious motivations of secondary elites, a new cadre of authors empowered by the opportunities that printing opened up. Andrea Gondos highlights shifting intellectual and cultural boundaries in the early modern period, when the transmission of Kabbalah became a meeting point connecting various strata of Jewish society as well as Jewish and Christian intellectuals. Andrea Gondos is Emmy Noether Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Jewish Studies at Free University Berlin, Germany. She is the coeditor (with Daniel Maoz) of From Antiquity to the Postmodern World: Contemporary Jewish Studies in Canada.