Isaiah Horowitz’s Shnei Luhot Ha-Berit and the Pietistic Transformation of Jewish Theology

Isaiah Horowitz’s Shnei Luhot Ha-Berit and the Pietistic Transformation of Jewish Theology PDF Author: Joseph Citron
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004461124
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
In this book, Joseph Citron offers the first comprehensive analysis of Prague Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz’s (c.1565-c.1626) magnum opus of Jewish ethical literature, the Shnei Luhot Ha-Berit. Citron’s close philological analysis reveals the pioneering nature of the work in creating an organic Jewish theological system rooted in the mystical structures of Kabbalah, cultivating an orthodoxy in thought and legal practice based upon its principles. It provided a platform for laypeople to attain great spiritual heights by emphasising that God could be served and cleaved to through mundane activity, and that Judaism demanded deep emotion and joy as much as Talmudic erudition or meticulous observance. The Shelah's paradigms significantly influenced 17th-century Sabbatean movement, the 18th-century Hasidic movement, and Jewish Orthodoxy in the 19th century. The book is essential for scholars and laypeople alike wishing to understand the evolution of Judaism in Central and Eastern Europe in the early modern period.

Isaiah Horowitz’s Shnei Luhot Ha-Berit and the Pietistic Transformation of Jewish Theology

Isaiah Horowitz’s Shnei Luhot Ha-Berit and the Pietistic Transformation of Jewish Theology PDF Author: Joseph Citron
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004461124
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this book, Joseph Citron offers the first comprehensive analysis of Prague Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz’s (c.1565-c.1626) magnum opus of Jewish ethical literature, the Shnei Luhot Ha-Berit. Citron’s close philological analysis reveals the pioneering nature of the work in creating an organic Jewish theological system rooted in the mystical structures of Kabbalah, cultivating an orthodoxy in thought and legal practice based upon its principles. It provided a platform for laypeople to attain great spiritual heights by emphasising that God could be served and cleaved to through mundane activity, and that Judaism demanded deep emotion and joy as much as Talmudic erudition or meticulous observance. The Shelah's paradigms significantly influenced 17th-century Sabbatean movement, the 18th-century Hasidic movement, and Jewish Orthodoxy in the 19th century. The book is essential for scholars and laypeople alike wishing to understand the evolution of Judaism in Central and Eastern Europe in the early modern period.

Isaiah Horowitz's Shnei Luhot Ha-Berit and the Pietistic Transformation of Jewish Theology

Isaiah Horowitz's Shnei Luhot Ha-Berit and the Pietistic Transformation of Jewish Theology PDF Author: Joseph Citron
Publisher: Studies in Jewish History and
ISBN: 9789004461116
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"In this book, Joseph Citron offers the first comprehensive analysis of Prague Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz's (1565-1629) magnum opus of Jewish ethical literature, the Shnei Luhot Ha-Berit. Citron's close philological analysis reveals the pioneering nature of the work in creating an organic Jewish theological system rooted in the mystical structures of Kabbalah, cultivating an orthodoxy in thought and legal practice based upon its principles. Emotion, psychology, self-actualisation and joy are all presented as essential facets of religious life, significantly influencing the 17th-century Sabbatean movement, the 18th-century Hasidic movement, and the Orthodox movement of the 19th century. The book is essential for scholars and laypeople alike wishing to understand the evolution of European Judaism in the early modern period"--

Isaiah Horowitz"s Shenei Luhot Haberit (Shelah)

Isaiah Horowitz Author: Joseph Zechariah Francis Citron
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
This thesis provides the first comprehensive analysis of Isaiah Horowitz's 1649 magnum opus, the Shenei Luhot Haberit (Shelah) and its contribution towards Jewish Thought. Horowitz's work is an 844-paged encyclopaedia which presents the mystical kabbalah as the authoritative philosophy of Judaism, explaining how it informs all other areas of Jewish Thought. In this manner, Horowitz reinterpreted classical Jewish beliefs along kabbalistic lines and developed a concept of Jewish Orthodoxy 200 years before the term became widespread. Horowitz's contribution towards Jewish mysticism is best understood as a reconfiguration of esoteric concepts into ordinary modes of behaviour: unlike his kabbalistic predecessors, Horowitz argued that mystical union with God is achieved through everyday activities and not exclusively through extraordinary meditative states. Furthermore, Horowitz broke with the time-honoured separation between the legal and mystical spheres by showing how kabbalah is necessary in order to decide matters of Jewish law. By inserting many kabbalistic customs into the Shelah and conferring texts such as the Zohar with authoritative legal status, Horowitz directed Ashkenazic Judaism along kabbalistic lines in the 17th century. Horowitz also cultivated an ethos of pietism which emphasised world-affirmation and joy: two dominant themes in the Shelah are that every Jew can serve God through sanctifying the material world and that religious conduct is empty without passion and enthusiasm. This culminates in an eschatological vision where the messiah will arrive after the realm of evil has been purified through personal and national transformation. The Shelah was a highly influential work, and this study provides an important aid for scholars trying to understand the intellectual and religious development of diffuse Jewish movements ranging from the Sabbateans in the 17th century, the Hasidism and their opponents in the 18th century and the Orthodox in the 19th century.

Oxford History of Modern German Theology

Oxford History of Modern German Theology PDF Author: Barrett
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198845766
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 830

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Book Description
From the closing decades of the eighteenth century, German theology has been a major intellectual force within modern western thought, closely connected to important developments in idealism, romanticism, historicism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. Despite its influential legacy, however, no recent attempts have sought to offer an overview of its history and development. Oxford History of Modern German Theology, Vol. I: 1781-1848, the first of a three-volume series, provides the most comprehensive multi-authored overview of German theology from the period from 1781-1848. Kaplan and Vander Schel cover categories frequently omitted from earlier overviews of the time period, such as the place of Judaism in modern German society, race and religion, and the impact of social history in shaping theological debate. Rather than focusing on individual figures alone, Oxford History of Modern German Theology, Vol. I: 1781-1848 describes the narrative arc of the period by focusing on broader intellectual and cultural movements, ongoing debates, and significant events. It furthermore provides a historical introduction to each of the chronological subsections that divides the book. Moreover, unlike previous efforts to introduce this time period and geographical region, the volume offers chapters covering such previously neglected topics as religious orders, the influence of Romantic art, secularism, religious freedom, and important but overlooked scholarly initiatives such as the Corpus Reformatorum. Attention to such matters will make this volume an invaluable repository of scholarship and knowledge and an indispensable reference resource for decades to come.

Life & Teachings of Isaiah Horowitz

Life & Teachings of Isaiah Horowitz PDF Author: Eugene Newman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description


The Transformation of Judaism

The Transformation of Judaism PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725211041
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
An eminent scholar of the history of Judaism, Jacob Neusner shows in this work how Judaism changed from a philosophy to a religion between 200 and 400 C.E. 'The Transformation of Judaism' is a work both revolutionary in its method and unprecedented in its results. Comparing earlier and later sets of Judaic writings, Neusner sets forth how philosophy - abstract, elegant, orderly, and intellectual - turned into religion - tangible, down-to-earth, chaotic, and concrete. In the process, he offers an account of the birth of Judaism that has become normative. Moreover, Neusner's methodology can be applied to the study of religions other than Judaism because it examines the underpinnings of how a society sees the world (philosophy), orders itself (politics), and sustains itself (economics).

Shnei Luhot Ha-Brit

Shnei Luhot Ha-Brit PDF Author: Philip Horowitz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description


Hekhalot Literature in Translation

Hekhalot Literature in Translation PDF Author: James Davila
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004252169
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 451

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Book Description
The Hekhalot literature is a motley collection of textually fluid and often textually corrupt documents in Hebrew and Aramaic which deal with mystical themes pertaining especially to God's throne-chariot (the Merkavah). They were composed between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, with roots in earlier traditions and a long and complex subsequent history of transmission. This volume presents English translations of eclectic critical texts, with a full apparatus of variants, of most of the major Hekhalot documents: Hekhalot Rabbati; Sar Torah; Hekhalot Zutarti; Ma'aseh Merkavah; Merkavah Rabba; briefer macroforms: The Chapter of R. Nehuniah ben HaQanah, The Great Seal-Fearsome Crown, Sar Panim, The Ascent of Elijah ben Avuyah, and The Youth; and the Hekhalot fragments from the Cairo Geniza.

Descenders to the Chariot

Descenders to the Chariot PDF Author: James Davila
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004496998
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
The Hekhalot literature is a bizarre conglomeration of Jewish esoteric and revelatory texts in Hebrew and Aramaic, produced sometime between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages and surviving in medieval manuscripts. These texts claims to describe the self-induced spiritual experiences of the "descenders to the chariot" and to reveal the techniques that permitted these magico-religious practitioners to view for themselves Ezekiel's Merkavah as well as to gain control of angels and a supernatural mastery of Torah. Drawing on epigraphic and archaeological evidence from the Middle East, anthropological models, and a wide range of cross-cultural evidence, this book aims to show that the Hekhalot literature preserves the teachings and rituals of real religious functionaries who flourished in late antiquity and who were quite like the functionaries anthopologists call shamans.

Arthur Green: Hasidism for Tomorrow

Arthur Green: Hasidism for Tomorrow PDF Author: Hava Tirosh-Samuelson
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004308423
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Arthur Green is Rector of the post-denominational Rabbinical School and Irving Brudnick Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Religion at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts. Originally ordained as a Conservative rabbi, Green considers himself a neo-Hasidic Jew, identifying with none of the established Jewish denominations. He combines historical knowledge of the Jewish mystical tradition with an original constructive theology. Recognized as both a rabbi and a scholar, Green has sought to make spiritual pursuit an essential part of committed Jewish life. Through scholarship, educational work, and popular teaching, he has contributed to the growth and vitality of Judaism in America and helped promote neo-Hasidism as Jewish spirituality for the 21st century.