Alef, Mem, Tau

Alef, Mem, Tau PDF Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520246195
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Alef, Mem, Tau also discusses Islamic mysticism and Buddhist thought in relation to the Jewish esoteric tradition as it opens the possibility of a temporal triumph of temporality and the conquering of time through time."

Alef, Mem, Tau

Alef, Mem, Tau PDF Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520246195
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Alef, Mem, Tau also discusses Islamic mysticism and Buddhist thought in relation to the Jewish esoteric tradition as it opens the possibility of a temporal triumph of temporality and the conquering of time through time."

A New Physiognomy of Jewish Thinking

A New Physiognomy of Jewish Thinking PDF Author: Aubrey L. Glazer
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826438970
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
A New Physiognomy of Jewish Thinking is a search for authenticity that combines critical thinking with a yearning for heartfelt poetics. A physiognomy of thinking addresses the figure of a life lived where theory and praxis are unified. This study explores how the critical essays on music of German-Jewish thinker, Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (1903-1969) necessarily accompany the downfall of metaphysics. By scrutinizing a critical juncture in modern intellectual history, marked in 1931 by Adorno's founding of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, neglected applications of Critical Theory to Jewish Thought become possible. This study proffers a constructive justification of a critical standpoint, reconstructively shown how such ideals are seen under the genealogical proviso of re/cognizing their original meaning. Re/cognition of A New Physiognomy of Jewish Thinking redresses neglected applications of Negative Dialectics, the poetics of God, the metaphysics of musical thinking, reification in Zionism, the transpoetics of Physics and Metaphysics, as well as correlating Aesthetic Theory to Jewish Law (halakhah).

Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism

Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism PDF Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019153515X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Are mysticism and morality compatible or at odds with one another? If mystical experience embraces a form of non-dual consciousness, then in such a state of mind, the regulative dichotomy so basic to ethical discretion would seemingly be transcended and the very foundation for ethical decisions undermined. Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism is an investigation of the relationship of the mystical and moral as it is expressed in the particular tradition of Jewish mysticism known as the Kabbalah. The particular themes discussed include the denigration of the non-Jew as the ontic other in kabbalistic anthropology and the eschatological crossing of that boundary anticipated in the instituition of religious conversion; the overcoming of the distinction between good and evil in the mystical experience of the underlying unity of all things; divine suffering and the ideal of spiritual poverty as the foundation for transmoral ethics and hypernomian lawfulness.

On Wings of Moonlight

On Wings of Moonlight PDF Author: Barbara Ellen Galli
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773576614
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
On Wings of Moonlight - a phrase taken from one of the poems - illuminates the poetic and philosophic kinship between Wolfson, Franz Rosenzweig, one of his influences since graduate school, and Paul Celan. Displaying a deep knowledge of the literary, philosophical, Jewish, and feminist traditions informing Wolfson's academic work, Galli argues that his prose cannot be fully appreciated without consideration of its poetic dimensions.

Luminal Darkness

Luminal Darkness PDF Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: ONEWorld Publications
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Renowned as one of the world’s most astute interpreters of Kabbalistic texts, Elliot Wolfson offers an illuminating and original presentation of Kabbalah. Combining its wisdom with Western philosophical heritage from Plato to Heidegger and beyond, synergy guides his elucidation of the fundamentals of Jewish mysticism and shapes his taxonomy of Kabbalistic thought. A deeply dialectical thinker, Wolfson holds seemingly paradoxical tenets in tandem: Medieval Judaism and American modernity; the ‘tradition’ of Kabbalah and postmodern philosophy; sexual body and human spirit; ontological truth and religious imagination; revelation and occultation; good and evil; left and right – none of these, he writes, are diametrically opposite. Rather, they are dialectical poles with which to think and through which to intuit, tools to gaining a deeper understanding of the Jewish mystical tradition and its meaning for the twenty-first century. An insightful collection of seminal essays written between 1986 and 1998, Luminal Darkness reveals the unmistakably poetic nature of this important scholar’s creative process, and delineates the evolution of his thinking on the role and importance of the Zohar in Kabbalistic tradition. Author Elliot R. Wolfson is the Judge Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew Studies at New York University. He is currently the Editor of the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy and the author of several award-winning books on Jewish mysticism and the Kabbalah.

Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality

Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality PDF Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004449345
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 799

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Book Description
No one theory of time is pursued in these essays, but a major theme that threads them together is Wolfson’s signature idea of the timeswerve as a linear circularity or a circular linearity, expressions that are meant to avoid the conventional split between the two temporal modalities of the line and the circle. The conception of time elicited by Wolfson from a host of philosophical and mystical sources—both Jewish and non-Jewish—buttresses the contention that it is precisely structural invariability that engenders interpretive variation. This hermeneutical axiom is justified, in turn, by the presumption regarding the cadence of time as the constant return of what has always been what is yet to be. The telling of time wells forth from the time of telling. One cannot speak of the being of time, consequently, except from the standpoint of the time of being, nor of the time of being except from the standpoint of the being of time.

Eternity Now

Eternity Now PDF Author: Wojciech Tworek
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438475551
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Demonstrates that Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s teachings regarding time and history enabled Habad’s growth into a mass Jewish movement. The Habad movement, formed in eighteenth-century Belarus, has developed into one of the most influential streams of Hasidic Judaism. Drawing on both mystical sermons and legal writings of its founder, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady (1745–1812), Eternity Now provides the first account of the historiosophical dimensions of early Habad doctrine. Challenging the commonly held view that Shneur Zalman was primarily concerned with supratemporal transcendence, Wojciech Tworek reveals the importance of time and history in his teachings. Tworek argues that the worldly dimensions of Shneur Zalman’s thought were largely responsible for the rapid growth of Habad at the turn of the nineteenth century and fostered its transformation from an elitist circle into a mass movement. Tworek’s readings of Hebrew and Yiddish sources demonstrate the implications of these ideas not only for male scholars but also for non-scholars, Jewish women, and even non-Jews. Philosophical and kabbalistic thought joined together to form a model of religious experience attractive to a broad audience, laying an ideological foundation for the missionary messianism that was to become a hallmark of Habad in the twentieth century. “The description of Shneur Zalman’s teachings as a ‘dynamic and often inharmonious body that changes and adjusts according to temporal circumstances’ is a thoughtful way of approaching the textual mire of Hasidic sources. Tworek draws upon various corpora without attempting to systematize the teachings into a coherent theological system, revealing their vitality through his analysis of this critical theme.” — Ariel Evan Mayse, editor of From the Depth of the Well: An Anthology of Jewish Mysticism

Imagery Techniques in Modern Jewish Mysticism

Imagery Techniques in Modern Jewish Mysticism PDF Author: Daniel Reiser
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110535882
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
This book analyzes and describes the development and aspects of imagery techniques, a primary mode of mystical experience, in twentieth century Jewish mysticism. These techniques, in contrast to linguistic techniques in medieval Kabbalah and in contrast to early Hasidism, have all the characteristics of a full screenplay, a long and complicated plot woven together from many scenes, a kind of a feature film. Research on this development and nature of the imagery experience is carried out through comparison to similar developments in philosophy and psychology and is fruitfully contextualized within broader trends of western and eastern mysticism.

The World Unclaimed

The World Unclaimed PDF Author: Lilian Alweiss
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 082141464X
Category : Philosophy, German
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Annotation In, Martin Heidegger set out an anti-Cartesian attack on Husserl that argued Cartesian philosophy falsely separates the subject from the world. In turn, Alweiss (philosophy, Trinity College, Ireland) contends that Heidegger failed in his attempt to, in her words, "reclaim the world." She defends Husserl's work, detailing the epistemological debate between the two philosophers, and thereby examining a central concern of modern analytic philosophy as it played out in the very different tradition of Continental thinking. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Open Secret

Open Secret PDF Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231146310
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) was the seventh and seemingly last Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. Marked by conflicting tendencies, Schneerson was a radical messianic visionary who promoted a conservative political agenda, a reclusive contemplative who built a hasidic sect into an international movement, and a man dedicated to the exposition of mysteries who nevertheless harbored many secrets. Schneerson astutely masked views that might be deemed heterodox by the canons of orthodoxy while engineering a fundamentalist ideology that could subvert traditional gender hierarchy, the halakhic distinction between permissible and forbidden, and the social-anthropological division between Jew and Gentile. While most literature on the Rebbe focuses on whether or not he identified with the role of Messiah, Elliot R. Wolfson, a leading scholar of Jewish mysticism and the phenomenology of religious experience, concentrates instead on Schneerson's apocalyptic sensibility and his promotion of a mystical consciousness that undermines all discrimination. For Schneerson, the ploy of secrecy is crucial to the dissemination of the messianic secret. To be enlightened messianically is to be delivered from all conceptual limitations, even the very notion of becoming emancipated from limitation. The ultimate liberation, or true and complete redemption, fuses the believer into an infinite essence beyond all duality, even the duality of being emancipated and not emancipated--an emancipation, in other words, that emancipates one from the bind of emancipation. At its deepest level, Schneerson's eschatological orientation discerned that a spiritual master, if he be true, must dispose of the mask of mastery. Situating Habad's thought within the evolution of kabbalistic mysticism, the history of Western philosophy, and Mahayana Buddhism, Wolfson articulates Schneerson's rich theology and profound philosophy, concentrating on the nature of apophatic embodiment, semiotic materiality, hypernomian transvaluation, nondifferentiated alterity, and atemporal temporality.