Download or read book Post Sabbatian Sabbatianism written by Betsalʼel Naʼor and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Sabbatian Heresy written by Pawel Maciejko and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pronouncements of Sabbatai Tsevi (1626-76) gave rise to Sabbatianism, a key messianic movement in Judaism that spread across Jewish communities in Europe, Asia, and North Africa. The movement, which featured a set of theological doctrines in which Jewish Kabbalistic tradition merged with Muslim and later Christian elements, suffered a setback with Tsevi's conversion to Islam in 1666. Nonetheless, for another hundred and fifty years, Sabbatianism continued to exist as a heretical underground movement. It provoked intense opposition from rabbinic authorities for another century and had a significant impact on central developments of later Judaism, such as the Haskalah, the Reform movement, Hasidism, and the secularization of Jewish society. This volume provides a selection of the most original and influential texts composed by Sabbatai Tsevi and his followers, complemented by fragments of the works of their rabbinic opponents and contemporary observers and some literary works inspired by Sabbatianism. An introduction and annotations by Pawe_ Maciejko provide historical, political, and social context for the documents.

Download or read book The Pursuit of Heresy written by Elisheva Carlebach and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rabbi Moses Hagiz, one of the most prominent and influential Jewish leaders of seventeenth-century Amsterdam, devoted his career to restoring rabbinic authority. His most prominent talent was as a polemicist, and he campaigned ceaselessly against Jewish heresy in an attempt to unify the rabbinate. During Hagiz's lifetime there was an overall decline in rabbinic authority, which the author argues was the result of migration and assimilation.

Download or read book Scholar and Kabbalist The Life and Work of Gershom Scholem written by Mirjam Zadoff and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The articles collected in Scholar and Kabbalist: The Life and Work of Gershom Scholem offer new and fresh insights into the life and work of Gershom Scholem, one of the most prominent German-Jewish intellectuals of the 20th century.

Download or read book The Mixed Multitude written by Paweł Maciejko and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1756, Jacob Frank, an Ottoman Jew who had returned to the Poland of his birth, was discovered leading a group of fellow travelers in a suspect religious service. At the request of the local rabbis, Polish authorities arrested the participants. Jewish authorities contacted the bishop in whose diocese the service had taken place and argued that since the rites of Frank's followers involved the practice of magic and immoral conduct, both Jews and Christians should condemn them and burn them at the stake. The scheme backfired, as the Frankists took the opportunity to ally themselves with the Church, presenting themselves as Contra-Talmudists who believed in a triune God. As a Turkish subject, Frank was released and temporarily expelled to the Ottoman territories, but the others were found guilty of breaking numerous halakhic prohibitions and were subject to a Jewish ban of excommunication. While they professed their adherence to everything that was commanded by God in the Old Testament, they asserted as well that the Rabbis of old had introduced innumerable lies and misconstructions in their interpretations of that holy book. Who were Jacob Frank and his followers? To most Christians, they seemed to be members of a Jewish sect; to Jewish reformers, they formed a group making a valiant if misguided attempt to bring an end to the power of the rabbis; and to more traditional Jews, they were heretics to be suppressed by the rabbinate. What is undeniable is that by the late eighteenth century, the Frankists numbered in the tens of thousands and had a significant political and ideological influence on non-Jewish communities throughout eastern and central Europe. Based on extensive archival research in Poland, the Czech Republic, Israel, Germany, the United States, and the Vatican, The Mixed Multitude is the first comprehensive study of Frank and Frankism in more than a century and offers an important new perspective on Jewish-Christian relations in the Age of Enlightenment.

Download or read book Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi 1666 1816 written by Ada Rapoport-Albert and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-03 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely and fascinating study of an early modern movement that transcended traditional Jewish gender paradigms and allowed women to express their spirituality freely in the public arena.

Download or read book Messianic Mysticism written by Isaiah Tishby and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2008-04-01 with total page 605 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tishby's seminal study, based largely on manuscripts he discovered, shows Luzzatto as one of the most profound mystics in the history of Jewish culture.

Download or read book Shalom Shar abi and the Kabbalists of Beit El written by Pinchas Giller and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-02-19 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jerusalem kabbalists of the Beit El Yeshivah are the most influential school of kabbalah in modernity. The school is associated with the writings and personality of a charismatic eighteenth-century Yemenite Rabbi, Shalom Shar'abi, considered by his acolytes to be divinely inspired by the prophet Elijah. Shar'abi initiated what is still the most active school of mysticism in contemporary Middle Eastern Jewry. Today, this meditative tradition is rising in popularity not only in Jerusalem, but throughout the Jewish World. Pinchas Giller examines the characteristic mystical practices of the Beit El School. The dominant practice is that of ritual prayer with mystical "intentions," or kavvanot. The kavvanot themselves are the product of thousands of years of development and incorporate many traditions and bodies of lore. Giller examines the archaeology of the kavvanot literature, the principle aspect of which is the meditation on God's sacred names while reciting prayers, the development of particular rituals, and the innovative mystical and devotional practices of the Beit El kabbalists.

Download or read book The Limits of Orthodox Theology written by Marc B. Shapiro and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-16 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes issue with the widespread assumption that Maimonides' famous Thirteen Principles are the last word in Orthodox Jewish theology.

Download or read book A Jewish Guide to the Mysterious written by Rabbi Pinchas Taylor and published by Mosaica Press. This book was released on 2020-06-15 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern science is the most accurate lens of reality that humanity has developed so far. Science is crucial to humanity’s health, safety, and development. Still, the lens of science only “sees” a thin slice of the totality of existence. Much of the human experience cannot be simply explained by standard quantifiable tests. Many people have become aware of the limits and shortcomings of scientific knowledge and have also realized that our perpetual hunger for spiritual understanding is real and undeniable. Many of us sense that there is something beyond. Throughout various periods of history and various cultures and societies, people have been interested in the mysterious and the paranormal. This yearning is rooted in the soul’s search for true spirituality. A Jewish Guide to the Mysterious, written by one of contemporary Judaism’s leading scholars and teachers, clearly explains classic Torah views on intriguing phenomena, such as dreams, astrology, time travel, alien life, reincarnation, ESP and auras, angels, demons, ghosts, and even such topics as the lost city of Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle. Read this fascinating book and be amazed.

Download or read book Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah written by Frederick E Greenspahn and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past generation, scholars have devoted increasing attention to the diverse forms that Jewish mysticism has taken both in the past and today: what was once called “nonsense” by Jewish scholars has generated important research and attention both within the academy and beyond, as demonstrated by the popular fascination with figures such as Madonna and Demi Moore and the growing interest in spirituality. In Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah, leading experts introduce the history of this scholarship as well as the most recent insights and debates that currently animate the field in a way that is accessible to a broad audience. From mystical outpourings in ancient Palestine to the Kabbalah Centre, and from attitudes towards gender to mystical contributions to Jewish messianic movements, this volume explores the various expressions of Jewish mysticism from antiquity to the present day in an engaging style appropriate for students and non-specialists alike.

Download or read book Rethinking the Messianic Idea in Judaism written by Michael L. Morgan and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-28 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the centuries, the messianic tradition has provided the language through which modern Jewish philosophers, socialists, and Zionists envisioned a utopian future. Michael L. Morgan, Steven Weitzman, and an international group of leading scholars ask new questions and provide new ways of thinking about this enduring Jewish idea. Using the writings of Gershom Scholem, which ranged over the history of messianic belief and its conflicted role in the Jewish imagination, these essays put aside the boundaries that divide history from philosophy and religion to offer new perspectives on the role and relevance of messianism today.

Download or read book Haskalah written by Olga Litvak and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2012-12-13 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Commonly translated as the “Jewish Enlightenment,” the Haskalah propelled Jews into modern life. Olga Litvak argues that the idea of a Jewish modernity, championed by adherents of this movement, did not originate in Western Europe’s age of reason. Litvak contends that the Haskalah spearheaded a Jewish religious revival, better understood against the background of Eastern European Romanticism. Based on imaginative and historically grounded readings of primary sources, Litvak presents a compelling case for rethinking the relationship between the Haskalah and the experience of political and social emancipation. Most importantly, she challenges the prevailing view that the Haskalah provided the philosophical mainspring for Jewish liberalism. In Litvak’s ambitious interpretation, nineteenth-century Eastern European intellectuals emerge as the authors of a Jewish Romantic revolution. Fueled by contradictory longings both for community and for personal freedom, the poets and scholars associated with the Haskalah questioned the moral costs of civic equality and the achievement of middle-class status. In the nineteenth century, their conservative approach to culture as the cure for the spiritual ills of the modern individual provided a powerful argument for the development of Jewish nationalism. Today, their ideas are equally resonant in contemporary debates about the ramifications of secularization for the future of Judaism.

Download or read book The Messianic Idea in Judaism written by Gershom Scholem and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2011-11-23 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insightful collection of essays on the Kabbalah and Jewish spirituality—from the preeminent scholar of Jewish mysticism. Gershom Scholem was the master builder of historical studies of the Kabbalah. When he began to work on this neglected field, the few who studied these texts were either amateurs who were looking for occult wisdom, or old-style Kabbalists who were seeking guidance on their spiritual journeys. His work broke with the outlook of the scholars of the previous century in Judaica—die Wissenschaft des Judentums, the Science of Judaism—whose orientation he rejected, calling their “disregard for the most vital aspects of the Jewish people as a collective entity: a form of “censorship of the Jewish past.” The major founders of modern Jewish historical studies in the nineteenth century, Leopold Zunz and Abraham Geiger, had ignored the Kabbalah; it did not fit into their account of the Jewish religion as rational and worthy of respect by “enlightened” minds. The only exception was the historian Heinrich Graetz. He had paid substantial attention to its texts and to their most explosive exponent, the false Messiah Sabbatai Zevi, but Graetz had depicted the Kabbalah and all that flowed from it as an unworthy revolt from the underground of Jewish life against its reasonable, law-abiding, and learned mainstream. Scholem conducted a continuing polemic with Zunz, Geiger, and Graetz by bringing into view a Jewish past more varied, more vital, and more interesting than any idealized portrait could reveal. —from the Foreword by Arthur Hertzberg, 1995

Download or read book Megilat Sefer The Autobiography of Rabbi Jacob Emden 1697 1776 written by Jacob Emden and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2011 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The autobiography of Rabbi Jacob Emden (1697-1776), now available for the first time in English translation. Translated directly from the original manuscript with notes.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Judaism and Law written by Christine Hayes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-17 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to Judaism and Law provides a conceptual and historical account of the Jewish understanding of law.

Download or read book The Cambridge History of Judaism Volume 2 The Hellenistic Age written by William David Davies and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 766 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.