Accounting for the Commandments in Medieval Judaism

Accounting for the Commandments in Medieval Judaism PDF Author: Jeremy P. Brown
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004460942
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Accounting for the Commandments in Medieval Judaism explores the discursive formation of the commandments as a generative matrix of Jewish thought and life in the posttalmudic period. Each study sheds light on how medieval Jews crafted the commandments out of theretofore underdetermined material. By systematizing, representing, or interrogating the amorphous category of commandment, medieval Jewish authors across both the Islamic and Christian spheres of influence sought to explain, justify, and characterize Israel’s legal system, divine revelation, the cosmos, and even the divine order. This volume correlates bodies of knowledge—such as jurisprudence, philosophy, ethics, pietism, and kabbalah—that are normally treated in isolation into a single conversation about a shared constitutional concern.

Accounting for the Commandments in Medieval Judaism

Accounting for the Commandments in Medieval Judaism PDF Author: Jeremy P. Brown
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004460942
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book Here

Book Description
Accounting for the Commandments in Medieval Judaism explores the discursive formation of the commandments as a generative matrix of Jewish thought and life in the posttalmudic period. Each study sheds light on how medieval Jews crafted the commandments out of theretofore underdetermined material. By systematizing, representing, or interrogating the amorphous category of commandment, medieval Jewish authors across both the Islamic and Christian spheres of influence sought to explain, justify, and characterize Israel’s legal system, divine revelation, the cosmos, and even the divine order. This volume correlates bodies of knowledge—such as jurisprudence, philosophy, ethics, pietism, and kabbalah—that are normally treated in isolation into a single conversation about a shared constitutional concern.

Problems and Parables of Law

Problems and Parables of Law PDF Author: Josef Stern
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791438237
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
A rigorous analysis of Maimonides' and Nahmanides' explanations of the Mosaic commandments that challenges received notions of the relation between these two seminal thinkers.

Jewish Studies on Premodern Periods

Jewish Studies on Premodern Periods PDF Author: Carl S. Ehrlich
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110418878
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
This volume examines new developments in the fields of premodern Jewish studies over the last thirty years. The essays in this volume, written by leading experts, are grouped into four overarching temporal areas: the First Temple, Second Temple, Rabbinic, and Medieval periods. These time periods are analyzed through four thematic methodological lenses: the social scientific (history and society), the textual (texts and literature), the material (art, architecture, and archaeology), and the philosophical (religion and thought). Some essays offer a comprehensive look at the state of the field, while others look at specific examples illustrative of their temporal and thematic areas of inquiry. The volume presents a snapshot of the state of the field, encompassing new perspectives, directions, and methodologies, as well as the questions that will animate the field as it develops further. It will be of interest to scholars and students in the field, as well as to educated readers looking to understand the changing face of Jewish studies as a discipline advancing human knowledge

Secrecy and Esoteric Writing in Kabbalistic Literature

Secrecy and Esoteric Writing in Kabbalistic Literature PDF Author: Jonathan Dauber
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512822760
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Secrecy and Esoteric Writing in Kabbalistic Literature examines the strategies of esoteric writing that Kabbalists have used to conceal secrets in their writings, such that casual readers will only understand the surface meaning of their texts while those with greater insight will grasp the internal meaning. In addition to a broad description of esoteric writing throughout the long literary history of Kabbalah, this work analyzes kabbalistic secrecy in light of contemporary theories of secrecy. It also presents case studies of esoteric writing in the work of four of the first kabbalistic authors—Abraham ben David, Isaac the Blind, Ezra ben Solomon, and Asher ben David—and thereby helps recast our understanding of the earliest stages of kabbalistic literary history. The book will interest scholars in Jewish mysticism and Jewish philosophy, as well as those working in medieval Jewish history. Throughout, Jonathan V. Dauber has endeavored to write an accessible work that does not require extensive prior knowledge of kabbalistic thought. Accordingly, it finds points of contact between scholars of various religious traditions.

Routledge Handbook on Sufism

Routledge Handbook on Sufism PDF Author: Lloyd Ridgeon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351706470
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 779

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Book Description
This is a chronological history of the Sufi tradition, divided in to three sections, early, middle and modern periods. The book comprises 35 independent chapters with easily identifiable themes and/or geographical threads, all written by recognised experts in the field. The volume outlines the origins and early developments of Sufism by assessing the formative thinkers and practitioners and investigating specific pietistic themes. The middle period contains an examination of the emergence of the Sufi Orders and illustrates the diversity of the tradition. This middle period also analyses the fate of Sufism during the time of the Gunpowder Empires. Finally, the end period includes representative surveys of Sufism in several countries, both in the West and in traditional "Islamic" regions. This comprehensive and up-to-date collection of studies provides a guide to the Sufi tradition. The Handbook is a valuable resource for students and researchers with an interest in religion, Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern Studies.

Laws of the Spirit

Laws of the Spirit PDF Author: Ariel Evan Mayse
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503638987
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description
The compelling vision of religious life and practice found in Hasidic sources has made it the most enduring and successful Jewish movement of spiritual renewal of all time. In this book, Ariel Evan Mayse grapples with one of Hasidism's most vexing questions: how did a religious movement known for its radical views about immanence, revelation, and the imperative to serve God with joy simultaneously produce strict adherence to the structures and obligations of Jewish law? Exploring the movement from its emergence in the mid-1700s until 1815, Mayse argues that the exceptionality of Hasidism lies not in whether its leaders broke or upheld rabbinic norms, but in the movement's vivid attempt to rethink the purpose of Jewish ritual and practice. Rather than focusing on the commandments as law, he turns to the methods and vocabulary of ritual studies as a more productive way to reckon with the contradictions and tensions of this religious movement as well as its remarkable intellectual vitality. Mayse examines the full range of Hasidic texts from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, from homilies and theological treatises to hagiography, letters, and legal writings, reading them together with contemporary theories of ritual. Arguing against the notion that spiritual integrity requires unshackling oneself from tradition, Laws of the Spirit is a sweeping attempt to rethink the meaning and significance of religious practice in early Hasidism.

A History of Kabbalah

A History of Kabbalah PDF Author: Jonathan Garb
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108882978
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
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.

Jewish Culture and Creativity

Jewish Culture and Creativity PDF Author: Eitan P. Fishbane
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 521

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Book Description
Jewish Culture and Creativity honors the wide-ranging scholarship of Prof. Michael Fishbane with contributions of his students on subjects that cover the gamut of Jewish studies, from biblical and rabbinic literature to medieval and modern Jewish culture, and concluding with case studies of the creative application of Prof. Fishbane’s thought and theology in contemporary Jewish life. The innovative scholarship represented in this volume offers critical new perspectives from antiquity to contemporary Judaism and will serve as a stimulus for new directions in and beyond the field of Jewish studies.

Jewish Women's History from Antiquity to the Present

Jewish Women's History from Antiquity to the Present PDF Author: Rebecca Lynn Winer
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814346324
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 701

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Book Description
This publication is significant within the field of Jewish studies and beyond; the essays include comparative material and have the potential to reach scholarly audiences in many related fields but are written to be accessible to all, with the introductions in every chapter aimed at orienting the enthusiast from outside academia to each time and place.

Oxford Bibliographies

Oxford Bibliographies PDF Author: Ilan Stavans
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199913701
Category : Hispanic Americans
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"An emerging field of study that explores the Hispanic minority in the United States, Latino Studies is enriched by an interdisciplinary perspective. Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, demographers, linguists, as well as religion, ethnicity, and culture scholars, among others, bring a varied, multifaceted approach to the understanding of a people whose roots are all over the Americas and whose permanent home is north of the Rio Grande. Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies offers an authoritative, trustworthy, and up-to-date intellectual map to this ever-changing discipline."--Editorial page.