Author: Rachel Elior
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791410455
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
This book is a study of the Habad Hasidism movement, an influential part of the Hasidic Movement, which originated in the eigteenth century. Habad was founded by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1813) who established a Hasidic community in Belorussia and who set forth the new Habad doctrine in a book entitled Tanya (Likutey Amarim). This doctrine expounded the mystical ideas underlying the quest for God. Its essential innovation lay in the formulation of a religious outlook which concentrated upon perceiving the divinity: its essence, its nature, the stages of its manifestation, its characteristics, its perfection, its differing wills, its processes, the significance of its revelation and the possibilities of its perception. This conception generated a profound transformation of religious worship and was the cause of great controversy throughout the Jewish world.
The Paradoxical Ascent to God
Author: Rachel Elior
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791410455
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
This book is a study of the Habad Hasidism movement, an influential part of the Hasidic Movement, which originated in the eigteenth century. Habad was founded by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1813) who established a Hasidic community in Belorussia and who set forth the new Habad doctrine in a book entitled Tanya (Likutey Amarim). This doctrine expounded the mystical ideas underlying the quest for God. Its essential innovation lay in the formulation of a religious outlook which concentrated upon perceiving the divinity: its essence, its nature, the stages of its manifestation, its characteristics, its perfection, its differing wills, its processes, the significance of its revelation and the possibilities of its perception. This conception generated a profound transformation of religious worship and was the cause of great controversy throughout the Jewish world.
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791410455
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
This book is a study of the Habad Hasidism movement, an influential part of the Hasidic Movement, which originated in the eigteenth century. Habad was founded by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1813) who established a Hasidic community in Belorussia and who set forth the new Habad doctrine in a book entitled Tanya (Likutey Amarim). This doctrine expounded the mystical ideas underlying the quest for God. Its essential innovation lay in the formulation of a religious outlook which concentrated upon perceiving the divinity: its essence, its nature, the stages of its manifestation, its characteristics, its perfection, its differing wills, its processes, the significance of its revelation and the possibilities of its perception. This conception generated a profound transformation of religious worship and was the cause of great controversy throughout the Jewish world.
Menachem Mendel Schneerson
Author: Ezra Glinter
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300280378
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 391
Book Description
The life and thought of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, one of the most influential—and controversial—rabbis in modern Judaism “Accessible, informed, and balanced. . . . The author manages to tread on fragile ground with aplomb. . . . An exceptional tool for understanding.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, one of the world’s best-known Hasidic groups, is driven by the belief that we are on the verge of the messianic age. The man most recognized for the movement’s success is the seventh and last Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), believed by many of his followers to be the Messiah. While hope of redemption has sustained the Jewish people through exile and persecution, it has also upended Jewish society with its apocalyptic and anarchic tendencies. So it is not surprising that Schneerson’s messianic fervor made him one of the most controversial rabbinic leaders of the twentieth century. How did he go from being an ordinary rabbi’s son in the Russian Empire to achieving status as a mystical sage? How did he revitalize a centuries-old Hasidic movement, construct an outreach empire of unprecedented scope, and earn the admiration and condemnation of political, communal, and religious leaders in America and abroad? Ezra Glinter’s deeply researched account is the first biography of Schneerson to combine a nonpartisan view of his life, work, and impact with an insider’s understanding of the ideology that drove him and that continues to inspire the Chabad-Lubavitch movement today.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300280378
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 391
Book Description
The life and thought of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, one of the most influential—and controversial—rabbis in modern Judaism “Accessible, informed, and balanced. . . . The author manages to tread on fragile ground with aplomb. . . . An exceptional tool for understanding.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, one of the world’s best-known Hasidic groups, is driven by the belief that we are on the verge of the messianic age. The man most recognized for the movement’s success is the seventh and last Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), believed by many of his followers to be the Messiah. While hope of redemption has sustained the Jewish people through exile and persecution, it has also upended Jewish society with its apocalyptic and anarchic tendencies. So it is not surprising that Schneerson’s messianic fervor made him one of the most controversial rabbinic leaders of the twentieth century. How did he go from being an ordinary rabbi’s son in the Russian Empire to achieving status as a mystical sage? How did he revitalize a centuries-old Hasidic movement, construct an outreach empire of unprecedented scope, and earn the admiration and condemnation of political, communal, and religious leaders in America and abroad? Ezra Glinter’s deeply researched account is the first biography of Schneerson to combine a nonpartisan view of his life, work, and impact with an insider’s understanding of the ideology that drove him and that continues to inspire the Chabad-Lubavitch movement today.
Kabbalistic Visions
Author: Sanford L. Drob
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000787427
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
In 1944, C. G. Jung experienced a series of visions which he later described as "the most tremendous things I have ever experienced." Central to these visions was the "mystic marriage as it appears in the Kabbalistic tradition", and Jung’s experience of himself as "Rabbi Simon ben Jochai," the presumed author of the sacred Kabbalistic text, the Zohar. Kabbalistic Visions explores Jung’s 1944 Kabbalistic visions, the impact of Jewish mysticism on Jungian psychology, Jung’s archetypal interpretation of Kabbalistic symbolism, and his claim late in life that a Hasidic rabbi, the Maggid of Mezhirech, anticipated his entire psychology. This book places Jung’s encounter with the Kabbalah in the context of the earlier visions and meditations of his Red Book, his abiding interests in Gnosticism and alchemy, and what many regard to be his Anti-Semitism and flirtation with National Socialism. Kabbalistic Visions is the first full-length study of Jung and Jewish mysticism in any language and the first book to present a comprehensive Jungian/archetypal interpretation of Kabbalistic symbolism.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000787427
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
In 1944, C. G. Jung experienced a series of visions which he later described as "the most tremendous things I have ever experienced." Central to these visions was the "mystic marriage as it appears in the Kabbalistic tradition", and Jung’s experience of himself as "Rabbi Simon ben Jochai," the presumed author of the sacred Kabbalistic text, the Zohar. Kabbalistic Visions explores Jung’s 1944 Kabbalistic visions, the impact of Jewish mysticism on Jungian psychology, Jung’s archetypal interpretation of Kabbalistic symbolism, and his claim late in life that a Hasidic rabbi, the Maggid of Mezhirech, anticipated his entire psychology. This book places Jung’s encounter with the Kabbalah in the context of the earlier visions and meditations of his Red Book, his abiding interests in Gnosticism and alchemy, and what many regard to be his Anti-Semitism and flirtation with National Socialism. Kabbalistic Visions is the first full-length study of Jung and Jewish mysticism in any language and the first book to present a comprehensive Jungian/archetypal interpretation of Kabbalistic symbolism.
Redemption in the Lurianic Kabbalah and its Branches
Author: Redemption in the Lurianic Kabbalah and its Branches
Publisher: Josef Blaha
ISBN: 8011002759
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
The book Redemption in the Lurianic Kabbalah and Its Branches deals with a little known aspect of Rabbi Luria’s mystic teaching, about Redemption. The author of the book is grateful to Prof. Ronit Meroz from Tel Aviv University for her book on this subject which was Prof. Meroz’s doctoral work at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1988. The author of this book has taught this subject to US students at the University in Prague for several semesters. Rabbi Luria influenced in an immense way not only Judaism, but even some Christian thinkers, as for example the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz and the modern theologian Jürgen Moltmann. Everybody will agree that our world needs improvement, and the teaching of Rabbi Luria offers a sort of hope for a better world.
Publisher: Josef Blaha
ISBN: 8011002759
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
The book Redemption in the Lurianic Kabbalah and Its Branches deals with a little known aspect of Rabbi Luria’s mystic teaching, about Redemption. The author of the book is grateful to Prof. Ronit Meroz from Tel Aviv University for her book on this subject which was Prof. Meroz’s doctoral work at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1988. The author of this book has taught this subject to US students at the University in Prague for several semesters. Rabbi Luria influenced in an immense way not only Judaism, but even some Christian thinkers, as for example the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz and the modern theologian Jürgen Moltmann. Everybody will agree that our world needs improvement, and the teaching of Rabbi Luria offers a sort of hope for a better world.
Does Judaism Condone Violence?
Author: Alan L. Mittleman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691271089
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
A philosophical case against religious violence We live in an age beset by religiously inspired violence. Terms such as “holy war” are the stock-in-trade of the evening news. But what is the relationship between holiness and violence? Can acts such as murder ever truly be described as holy? In Does Judaism Condone Violence?, Alan Mittleman offers a searching philosophical investigation of such questions in the Jewish tradition. Jewish texts feature episodes of divinely inspired violence, and the position of the Jews as God’s chosen people has been invoked to justify violent acts today. Are these justifications valid? Or does our understanding of the holy entail an ethic that argues against violence? Reconstructing the concept of the holy through a philosophical examination of biblical texts, Mittleman finds that the holy and the good are inextricably linked, and that our experience of holiness is authenticated through its moral consequences. Our understanding of the holy develops through reflection on God’s creation of the natural world, and our values emerge through our relations with that world. Ultimately, Mittleman concludes, religious justifications for violence cannot be sustained. Lucid and incisive, Does Judaism Condone Violence? is a powerful counterargument to those who claim that the holy is irrational and amoral. With philosophical implications that extend far beyond the Jewish tradition, this book should be read by anyone concerned about the troubling connection between holiness and violence.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691271089
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
A philosophical case against religious violence We live in an age beset by religiously inspired violence. Terms such as “holy war” are the stock-in-trade of the evening news. But what is the relationship between holiness and violence? Can acts such as murder ever truly be described as holy? In Does Judaism Condone Violence?, Alan Mittleman offers a searching philosophical investigation of such questions in the Jewish tradition. Jewish texts feature episodes of divinely inspired violence, and the position of the Jews as God’s chosen people has been invoked to justify violent acts today. Are these justifications valid? Or does our understanding of the holy entail an ethic that argues against violence? Reconstructing the concept of the holy through a philosophical examination of biblical texts, Mittleman finds that the holy and the good are inextricably linked, and that our experience of holiness is authenticated through its moral consequences. Our understanding of the holy develops through reflection on God’s creation of the natural world, and our values emerge through our relations with that world. Ultimately, Mittleman concludes, religious justifications for violence cannot be sustained. Lucid and incisive, Does Judaism Condone Violence? is a powerful counterargument to those who claim that the holy is irrational and amoral. With philosophical implications that extend far beyond the Jewish tradition, this book should be read by anyone concerned about the troubling connection between holiness and violence.
Hasidic Art and the Kabbalah
Author: Batsheva Goldman-Ida
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004290265
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 488
Book Description
Hasidic Art and the Kabbalah presents eight case studies of manuscripts, ritual objects, and folk art developed by Hasidic masters in the mid-eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries, whose form and decoration relate to sources in the Zohar, German Pietism, and Safed Kabbalah. Examined at the delicate and difficult to define interface between seemingly simple, folk art and complex ideological and conceptual outlooks which contain deep, abstract symbols, the study touches on aspects of object history, intellectual history, the decorative arts, and the history of religion. Based on original texts, the focus of this volume is on the subjective experience of the user at the moment of ritual, applying tenets of process philosophy and literary theory – Wolfgang Iser, Gaston Bachelard, and Walter Benjamin – to the analysis of objects.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004290265
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 488
Book Description
Hasidic Art and the Kabbalah presents eight case studies of manuscripts, ritual objects, and folk art developed by Hasidic masters in the mid-eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries, whose form and decoration relate to sources in the Zohar, German Pietism, and Safed Kabbalah. Examined at the delicate and difficult to define interface between seemingly simple, folk art and complex ideological and conceptual outlooks which contain deep, abstract symbols, the study touches on aspects of object history, intellectual history, the decorative arts, and the history of religion. Based on original texts, the focus of this volume is on the subjective experience of the user at the moment of ritual, applying tenets of process philosophy and literary theory – Wolfgang Iser, Gaston Bachelard, and Walter Benjamin – to the analysis of objects.
Essential Papers on Kabbalah
Author: Lawrence Fine
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814726291
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 561
Book Description
Concentrating on the theosophical/theurgical trend of Kabbalah, 15 essays, reprinted from academic journals and often translated from Hebrew, examine the body of literature that grew up between the 12th and 18th centuries from several approaches. They cover mystical motifs and theological ideas, mystical leadership and personalities, and devotional practices and mystical experience. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814726291
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 561
Book Description
Concentrating on the theosophical/theurgical trend of Kabbalah, 15 essays, reprinted from academic journals and often translated from Hebrew, examine the body of literature that grew up between the 12th and 18th centuries from several approaches. They cover mystical motifs and theological ideas, mystical leadership and personalities, and devotional practices and mystical experience. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology
Author: Steven Kepnes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108244157
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 513
Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology offers an overview of Jewish theology, an aspect of Judaism that is equal in importance to law and ethics. Covering the period from antiquity to the present, the volume focuses on what Jews believe about God and also about the relation of God to humans and the world. Parts I and II cover exciting new research in Jewish biblical and rabbinic theology, medieval philosophy, Kabbalah (mysticism), and liturgy. Parts III and IV turn to modern theology with an exploration of works by leading figures, such as Rabbi Abraham I. Kook, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as the relation of theology to issues such as feminism and the Holocaust, and the relation of Judaism to other world religions. In Part V, the book explores how the insights of analytic philosophy have been integrated with Jewish theology.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108244157
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 513
Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology offers an overview of Jewish theology, an aspect of Judaism that is equal in importance to law and ethics. Covering the period from antiquity to the present, the volume focuses on what Jews believe about God and also about the relation of God to humans and the world. Parts I and II cover exciting new research in Jewish biblical and rabbinic theology, medieval philosophy, Kabbalah (mysticism), and liturgy. Parts III and IV turn to modern theology with an exploration of works by leading figures, such as Rabbi Abraham I. Kook, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as the relation of theology to issues such as feminism and the Holocaust, and the relation of Judaism to other world religions. In Part V, the book explores how the insights of analytic philosophy have been integrated with Jewish theology.
Open Secret
Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231146310
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 473
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.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231146310
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 473
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.
Jewish Theology for a Postmodern Age
Author: Miriam Feldmann Kaye
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1789624231
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 173
Book Description
Through a critical study of the writings of Rav Shagar and Tamar Ross, Miriam Feldmann Kaye asks how Jewish theology can survive the tide of postmodernism and its refutation of a single, objective, and ultimate truth, and suggests how aspects of postmodernism might be conceived of as a potential resource for rejuvenating religion.
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1789624231
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 173
Book Description
Through a critical study of the writings of Rav Shagar and Tamar Ross, Miriam Feldmann Kaye asks how Jewish theology can survive the tide of postmodernism and its refutation of a single, objective, and ultimate truth, and suggests how aspects of postmodernism might be conceived of as a potential resource for rejuvenating religion.