Download or read book written by Aryeh Kaplan and published by Weiser Books. This book was released on 1997-05-01 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in its 7th printing since republication in 1997, the Sefer Yetzirah has established itself as a primary source for all serious students of Kabbalah. Rabbi Kaplan's translation of this oldest and most mysterious of all Kabbalistic texts provides a unique perspective on the meditative and magical aspects of Kabbalah. He expounds on the dynamics of the spiritual domain, the worlds of Sefirot, souls and angels. This translation is based on Gra version of the Sefer Yetzirah and includes the author's extraordinary commentary on all its mystical aspects including kabbalistic astrology, Ezekiel's vision and the 231 gates. Also included are three alternative versions to make this volume the most complete work on the Sefer Yetzirah available in English.
Download or read book The Contemporary Torah written by David E. S. Stein and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2006-08-01 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In most cases references to God are in gender-neutral language. The Tetragammaton, the unpronounceable four-letter name for the Divine, appears in this translation in unvocalized Hebrew to convey that the Name is something totally "other" - beyond translation, gender, speech, and understanding. In some instances, however, male imagery depicting God is preserved because it reflects biblical society's view of gender roles."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Rashi s Commentary on the Torah written by Eric Lawee and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Jewish Book Council Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award in Scholarship This book explores the reception history of the most important Jewish Bible commentary ever composed, the Commentary on the Torah of Rashi (Shlomo Yitzhaki; 1040-1105). Though the Commentary has benefited from enormous scholarly attention, analysis of diverse reactions to it has been surprisingly scant. Viewing its path to preeminence through a diverse array of religious, intellectual, literary, and sociocultural lenses, Eric Lawee focuses on processes of the Commentary's canonization and on a hitherto unexamined--and wholly unexpected--feature of its reception: critical, and at times astonishingly harsh, resistance to it. Lawee shows how and why, despite such resistance, Rashi's interpretation of the Torah became an exegetical classic, a staple in the curriculum, a source of shared religious vocabulary for Jews across time and place, and a foundational text that shaped the Jewish nation's collective identity. The book takes as its larger integrating perspective processes of canonicity as they shape how traditions flourish, disintegrate, or evolve. Rashi's scriptural magnum opus, the foremost work of Franco-German (Ashkenazic) biblical scholarship, faced stiff competition for canonical supremacy in the form of rationalist reconfigurations of Judaism as they developed in Mediterranean seats of learning. It nevertheless emerged triumphant in an intense battle for Judaism's future that unfolded in late medieval and early modern times. Investigation of the reception of the Commentary throws light on issues in Jewish scholarship and spirituality that continue to stir reflection, and even passionate debate, in the Jewish world today.
Download or read book The Classic Tales written by Ellen Frankel and published by Jason Aronson, Incorporated. This book was released on 1993-07-01 with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three hundred Jewish tales in this extraordinary volume span three continents and four millennia. Culled from traditional sources—the Bible, Talmud, Midrash, hasidic texts, and oral folklore—and retold in modern English by Ellen Frankel, these stories represent the brightest jewels in the vast treasure chest of Jewish lore. Beautifully clothed in contemporary language, these classic tales sparkle with the gentle and insightful humor of the Jewish folk imagination. And like so much of Jewish literature, these stories abound in allusions to classic Jewish texts. Biblical cadences, phrases from the prayer book, and ideas from Jewish proverbs and heroic legends resonate in the air when these tales are read or told aloud. In The Classic Tales, history sheds its dust to become as intimate as family memory. While the breadth and depth of this book make it completely unique, three special features also help distinguish it: God appears without gender (though certainly not without personality); women characters, so often nameless in the original biblical text, wear their midrashic names (e.g., Noah's wife Naamah, Abraham's mother Amitlai, Lot's wife Edith); and many tales of Sephardic origin have been included to correct the common American bias toward Eastern European sources. What's more, this volume has been uniquely designed to be of use to educators, rabbis, parents, and students. It features a chronological table of contents as well as six separate indexes?arranged by Jewish holidays, Torah and Haftorah readings, character types, symbols, topics, and proper names and places—to make the tales easily referenced in a wide variety of ways. Anyone who needs a story to inspire a child, to illustrate a point, to develop a sermon, or just to uplift his or her own thirsting soul will find just the right one in The Classic Tales.
Download or read book Hineini in Our Lives written by Dr. Norman J. Cohen and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2011-10-06 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One simple, powerful word—hineini—contains the key to deepening your relationship with God and with others. Hineini (Here I am!). This single spoken word appears only fourteen times in the Bible–each time in a memorable and meaningful story: Abraham offering Isaac as a sacrifice to God, Jacob deceiving his father for Esau’s birthright, Moses answering the call that comes from the Burning Bush. Scholar and popular teacher Norman Cohen explores each of these powerful stories and shows what each can reveal about you as parent, spouse, sibling, lover, and friend. By probing these dynamic biblical relationships, Cohen challenges you to think about the ways you relate to the people in your life and God. And, to add other fascinating perspectives to the conversation, eleven insightful authors and teachers share personal reflections that exemplify each of the hineini passages.
Download or read book With Reverence for the Word written by Jane Dammen McAuliffe and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-14 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume represents the first trilateral exploration of medieval scriptural interpretation. During the medieval period the three exegetical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam produced a vast literature, one of great diversity but also one of numerous cross-cultural similarities.
Download or read book The Dual Truth Volumes I II written by Ephraim Chamiel and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 951 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores three schools of fascinating, talented, and gifted scholars whose philosophies assimilated the Jewish and secular cultures of their respective homelands: they include halakhists from Rabbi Ettlinger to Rabbi Eliezer Berkowitz; Jewish philosophers from Isaac Bernays to Yeshayau Leibowitz; and biblical commentators such as Samuel David Luzzatto and Rabbi Umberto Cassuto. Running like a thread through their philosophies is the attempt to reconcile the Jewish belief in revelation with Western culture, Western philosophy, and the conclusions of scientific research. Among these attempts is Luzzatto’s “dual truth” approach. The Dual Truth is the sequel to the Ephraim Chamiel’s previous book The Middle Way, which focused on the challenges faced by members of the “Middle Trend” in nineteenth-century Jewish thought.
Download or read book Mysticism Magic and Kabbalah in Ashkenazi Judaism written by Karl-Erich Grözinger and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 1995 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After World War II, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (1921-2007) published works in English and German by eminent Israeli scholars, in this way introducing them to a wider audience in Europe and North America. The series he founded for that purpose, Studia Judaica, continues to offer a platform for scholarly studies and editions that cover all eras in the history of the Jewish religion.
Download or read book Further Studies of the Narratives in the Book of Genesis written by Dr. Martin Sicker and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stories in the Book of Genesis have been studied intensely for more than two millennia, providing a virtual mountain of commentary on every aspect of the narratives contained therein. Viewed from a traditional perspective, the stories related in Genesis are essentially graphic philosophical and theological narratives designed to convey profound ideas and insights that would otherwise be found only in tomes designed for students of philosophy and theology. A close substantive examination of these narratives, as presented in the Masoretic text, but often lost in translation where the subtleties of the Hebrew wording are glossed over, will reveal a treasure trove of insights into the fundamental issues of religious belief, the divine-human relationship, free will and determinism, the complex nature of humankind, and theodicy. The present work contains six ‘deep dive’ studies of selected narratives in the book of Genesis that continue to address questions of theological significance in addition to the relationship of man to the Creator, as well as to his fellow man. The first study in this collection focuses on The First Verse of the book of Genesis and explores the vast implications of its seven Hebrew terms, as considered by commentators for two millennia. The second, The Garden of Eden, deals with the moral implications of the relationship between man and God. The third, The Covenant, deals with the reasons why Abraham was chosen to be the progenitor of the civilization ultimately destined to change the course of human history. The fourth, Jacob’s Dream, explores the symbolisms and implications of this tale of interaction between man and the celestial world. The fifth, The Joseph Saga, probes the question of man’s free will and divine providential intervention in human affairs. The sixth, Jacob’s Final Days, examines in depth the Patriarch Jacob’s reflections on the legacy he leaves behind as he departs the scene. It is the hope and expectation of the author of these studies that the reader will come away from them with even more questions about the biblical texts than they had before. As will be seen there has always been little consensus over the centuries about the meanings of these essentially ‘right brain’ texts, primarily because they are constructed and written in a manner that tends to challenge ‘left brain’ analysis. Nonetheless, their study remains intellectually important because the topics they deal with are of great pertinence to contemporary society.
Download or read book Aspects of Jewish Metarational Thought written by Martin Sicker and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2005 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Judaism has always had adherents that, driven by both awe and love of God, strove to penetrate the mystery of divine wisdom and grasp what the philosopher deemed to be beyond the reach of man's rational faculty, as well as to explore other mysteries that seem to leap out from the pages of Scripture. These metarational leaps of intellect and imagination generally fit into the categories of the exoteric and the esoteric, referring to teachings traditionally considered suitable for public instruction and those deemed inappropriate for such purpose. The exoteric includes those attempts at intellectually and spiritually bridging the gap between God and man, that one finds strewn throughout the pages of the classical literature of Judaism. The esoteric includes those speculations and practices that have been more or less systematized and formulated and presented as mystical doctrines, that have been characterized since the Middle Ages as Kabbalah. The opening chapters of Aspects of Jewish Metarational Thought consider the question of the relationship between finite man and the unknowable God, and how the divine-human communication essential to that relationship takes place. Other chapters consider the purpose behind human existence and the critical aspects of the biblical account of the creation, issues relating to the idea of a visionary ascent to the celestial realm, the influence of metarational considerations on normative Jewish religious practice, and the special attributes believed to inhere in the Hebrew language and the role that these have played in metarational biblical interpretation from antiquity to the present.
Download or read book Further Studies in the Five Books of Moses written by Dr. Martin Sicker and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2021-06-06 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eight studies in this volume focus on additional aspects of the narratives in the Five Books of Moses that have frequently been glossed over by commentators, ancient and modern, and remain contentious to this very day. These studies address subjects such as the primal mission of man in the creation narrative, the ‘covenant between the pieces,’ the symbolism of circumcision, the story of Jacob and his four wives, and the rape of Dinah, as depicted in the book of Genesis; the story of the exodus from Egypt as related in the book of Exodus; the reason for the premature death of the sons of Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, and the reason for the dietary laws, as set forth in the book of Leviticus. Although these studies do not claim to resolve the issues they examine, it is their purpose to stimulate further interest in the complexities of the ancient biblical narratives and the hidden insights about human nature they provide.
Download or read book Reader s Guide to Judaism written by Michael Terry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 1768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reader's Guide to Judaism is a survey of English-language translations of the most important primary texts in the Jewish tradition. The field is assessed in some 470 essays discussing individuals (Martin Buber, Gluckel of Hameln), literature (Genesis, Ladino Literature), thought and beliefs (Holiness, Bioethics), practice (Dietary Laws, Passover), history (Venice, Baghdadi Jews of India), and arts and material culture (Synagogue Architecture, Costume). The emphasis is on Judaism, rather than on Jewish studies more broadly.
Download or read book Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature written by and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Europe's Jewish minority culture was subjected to a barrage of public images proclaiming the dominance of the Christian majority. This book is the first to explore the Jewish response to this assault in the development of a visual culture through which Jews could affirmatively construct their identity as a people. It demonstrates how medieval Jews gave voice to messages of protest and dreams of subversion by actively appropriating and transforming the quintessential symbols of the dominant culture.
Download or read book Jacob and His Sons written by Martin Sicker and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2007 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sagas of Jacob and his sons are presented in the biblical book of Genesis in a series of sometimes seemingly unrelated episodes. In this book, the author undertakes to show that these episodes are all intimately connected and were selected to illustrate the problems faced by Jacob in coping with the sibling rivalries among his dozen sons and welding them into a collective body capable of giving birth to a nation. The focus in Jacob and His Sons is on what the biblical text is telling us, explicitly as well as implicitly, about the world in which they lived and how the historical conditions came into being for them ultimately to become transformed into a nation. In the struggle to comprehend the biblical text, the author has consulted a wide range of commentaries and studies written over a period of some two millennia that have sought to understand the biblical texts from a wide variety of perspectives, many of which are presented for the reader's consideration, including many sources inaccessible to those without a working knowledge of Hebrew.
Download or read book Studies of the Narratives in the Book of Genesis written by Martin Sicker and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stories in the book of Genesis have been studied intensely for more than two millennia, providing a virtual mountain of commentary on every aspect of the narratives contained therein. Viewed from a traditional perspective, the stories related in Genesis are essentially graphic philosophical and theological narratives designed to convey profound ideas and insights that would otherwise be found only in tomes designed for students of philosophy and theology. A close substantive examination of these narratives, as presented in the Masoretic text but often lost in translation where the subtleties of the Hebrew wording are glossed over, will reveal a treasure trove of insights into the fundamental issues of religious belief, the divine-human relationship, freewill and determinism, the complex nature of humankind, and theodicy, to name a few of the issues dealt with in the narratives. The present work contains four “deep dive” studies of key interrelated narratives in the first twenty-two chapters of Genesis that address the questions of the nature of man and his relationship to God and, most critically, the distinction between divine justice and human justice. It is the hope and expectation of the author of these studies that the reader will come away from them with even more questions about the biblical texts than they had before. As will be seen, there has always been little consensus over the centuries about the meanings of these essentially right-brained texts, primarily because they are constructed and written in a manner that tends to challenge left-brained analysis. Nonetheless, they remain intellectually important because the topics they deal with are of great pertinence to contemporary society.
Download or read book Karaite Judaism written by Meira Polliack and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-07-18 with total page 1013 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Karaism is a Jewish religious movement of a scripturalist and messianic nature, which emerged in the Middle Ages in the areas of Persia-Iraq and Palestine and has maintained its unique and varied forms of identity and existence until the present day, undergoing resurgent cycles of creativity, within its major geographical centres of the Middle-East, Byzantium-Turkey, the Crimea and Eastern Europe. This Guide to Karaite Studies contains thirty-seven chapters which cover all the main areas of medieval and modern Karaite history and literature, including geographical and chronological subdivisions, and special sections devoted to the history of research, manuscripts and printing, as well as detailed bibliographies, index and illustrations. The substantial volume reflects the current state of scholarship in this rapidly growing sub-field of Jewish Studies, as analysed by an international team of experts and taught in various universities throughout Europe, Israel and the United States.
Download or read book Tree of Souls written by Howard Schwartz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-01 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first anthology of Jewish mythology in English, Tree of Souls reveals a mythical tradition as rich and as fascinating as any in the world. Drawing from the Bible, the Pseudepigrapha, the Talmud and Midrash, the kabbalistic literature, medieval folklore, Hasidic texts, and oral lore collected in the modern era, Schwartz has gathered together nearly 700 of the key Jewish myths. The myths themselves are marvelous. We read of Adams diamond and the Land of Eretz (where it is always dark), the fall of Lucifer and the quarrel of the sun and the moon, the Treasury of Souls and the Divine Chariot. We discover new tales about the great figures of the Hebrew Bible, from Adam to Moses; stories about God's Bride, the Shekhinah, and the evil temptress, Lilith; plus many tales about angels and demons, spirits and vampires, giant beasts and the Golem. Equally important, Schwartz provides a wealth of additional information. For each myth, he includes extensive commentary, revealing the source of the myth and explaining how it relates to other Jewish myths as well as to world literature (for instance, comparing Eves release of evil into the world with Pandoras). For ease of use, Schwartz divides the volume into ten books, Myths of God, Myths of Creation, Myths of Heaven, Myths of Hell, Myths of the Holy Word, Myths of the Holy Time, Myths of the Holy People, Myths of the Holy Land, Myths of Exile, and Myths of the Messiah.
