Author: Matt GOLDISH
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674037758
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
In the mid-seventeenth century, Shabbatai Zvi, a rabbi from Izmir, claimed to be the Jewish messiah, and convinced a great many Jews to believe him. The movement surrounding this messianic pretender was enormous, and Shabbatai's mission seemed to be affirmed by the numerous supporting prophecies of believers. The story of Shabbatai and his prophets has mainly been explored by specialists in Jewish mysticism. Only a few scholars have placed this large-scale movement in its social and historical context. Matt Goldish shifts the focus of Sabbatean studies from the theology of Lurianic Kabbalah to the widespread seventeenth-century belief in latter-day prophecy. The intense expectations of the messiah in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam form the necessary backdrop for understanding the success of Sabbateanism. The seventeenth century was a time of deep intellectual and political ferment as Europe moved into the modern era. The strains of the Jewish mysticism, Christian millenarianism, scientific innovation, and political transformation all contributed to the development of the Sabbatean movement. By placing Sabbateanism in this broad cultural context, Goldish integrates this Jewish messianic movement into the early modern world, making its story accessible to scholars and students alike. Table of Contents: Preface Prologue 1. Messianic Prophecy in the Early Modern Context 2. Nathan of Gaza and the Roots of Sabbatean Prophecy 3. From Mystical Vision to Prophetic Explosion 4. Opponents and Observers Respond 5. Prophecy after Shabbatais Apostasy Notes Index Reviews of this book: Goldish looks at the Jewish messianic surge of the 17th century, which culminated with the Sabbatean movement, and places it in a broader multidimensional context...He has produced a well-written, scholarly addition and modification to the literature. --Paul Kaplan, Library Journal
Author: Cengiz Sisman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019069856X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 339
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Book Description
"This is the first comprehensive social, intellectual and religious history of the wide-spread Sabbatean movement from its birth in the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century to the Republic of Turkey in the first half of the twentieth century, claiming that they owed their survival to the internalization of the Kabbalistic "burden of silence"--
Author: Gary K. Waite
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351108972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Jews and Muslims in Seventeenth-Century Discourse explores for the first time the extent to which the unusual religious diversity and tolerance of the Dutch Republic affected how its residents regarded Jews and Muslims. Analyzing an array of vernacular publications, this book reveals how Dutch writers, especially those within the nonconformist and spiritualist camps, expressed positive attitudes toward religious diversity in general, and Jews and Muslims in particular. Through covering the Eighty Years War (1568-1648) and the post-war era, it also highlights how the Dutch search for allies against Spain led them to approach Muslim rulers. The Dutch were assisted in this by their positive relations with Jews, and were thus able to shape a more affirmative portrayal of Islam. Revealing noticeable differences in language and tone between English and Dutch publications and exploring societal attitudes and culture, Jews and Muslims in Seventeenth-Century Discourse is ideal for students of British and Dutch early-modern cultural, intellectual, and religious history.
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.
Author: Shmuel Feiner
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812201892
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
Throughout the eighteenth century, an ever-sharper distinction emerged between Jews of the old order and those who were self-consciously of a new world. As aspirations for liberation clashed with adherence to tradition, as national, ethnic, cultural, and other alternatives emerged and a long, circuitous search for identity began, it was no longer evident that the definition of Jewishness would be based on the beliefs and practices surrounding the study of the Torah. In The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe Shmuel Feiner reconstructs this evolution by listening to the voices of those who participated in the process and by deciphering its cultural codes and meanings. On the one hand, a great majority of observant Jews still accepted the authority of the Talmud and the leadership of the rabbis; on the other, there was a gradually more conspicuous minority of "Epicureans" and "freethinkers." As the ground shifted, each individual was marked according to his or her place on the path between faith and heresy, between devoutness and permissiveness or indifference. Building on his award-winning Jewish Enlightenment, Feiner unfolds the story of critics of religion, mostly Ashkenazic Jews, who did not take active part in the secular intellectual revival known as the Haskalah. In open or concealed rebellion, Feiner's subjects lived primarily in the cities of western and central Europe—Altona-Hamburg, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Breslau, and Prague. They participated as "fashionable" Jews adopting the habits and clothing of the surrounding Gentile society. Several also adopted the deist worldview of Enlightenment Europe, rejecting faith in revelation, the authority of Scripture, and the obligation to observe the commandments. Peering into the synagogue, observing individuals in the coffeehouse or strolling the boulevards, and peeking into the bedroom, Feiner recovers forgotten critics of religion from both the margins and the center of Jewish discourse. His is a pioneering work on the origins of one of the most significant transformations of modern Jewish history.
Author: Raphael Patai
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140086366X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 634
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Book Description
In this monumental work, Raphael Patai opens up an entirely new field of cultural history by tracing Jewish alchemy from antiquity to the nineteenth century. Until now there has been little attention given to the significant role that Jews played in the field of alchemy. Here, drawing on an enormous range of previously unexplored sources, Patai reveals that Jews were major players in what was for centuries one of humanity's most compelling intellectual obsessions. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Michael L. Morgan
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253014778
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 455
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Book Description
Over the centuries, the messianic tradition has provided the language through which modern Jewish philosophers, socialists, and Zionists envisioned a utopian future. Michael L. Morgan, Steven Weitzman, and an international group of leading scholars ask new questions and provide new ways of thinking about this enduring Jewish idea. Using the writings of Gershom Scholem, which ranged over the history of messianic belief and its conflicted role in the Jewish imagination, these essays put aside the boundaries that divide history from philosophy and religion to offer new perspectives on the role and relevance of messianism today.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781933379470
Category : Cabala
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Author: Jonathan Karp
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108138217
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1927
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Book Description
This seventh volume of The Cambridge History of Judaism provides an authoritative and detailed overview of early modern Jewish history, from 1500 to 1815. The essays, written by an international team of scholars, situate the Jewish experience in relation to the multiple political, intellectual and cultural currents of the period. They also explore and problematize the 'modernization' of world Jewry over this period from a global perspective, covering Jews in the Islamic world and in the Americas, as well as in Europe, with many chapters straddling the conventional lines of division between Sephardic, Ashkenazic, and Mizrahi history. The most up-to-date, comprehensive, and authoritative work in this field currently available, this volume will serve as an essential reference tool and ideal point of entry for advanced students and scholars of early modern Jewish history.
Author: Damien Tricoire
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000624994
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
Eschatology played a central role in both politics and society throughout the early modern period. It inspired people to strive for social and political change, including sometimes by violent means, and prompted in return strong reactions against their religious activism. From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, numerous apocalyptical and messianic movements came to the fore across Eurasia and North Africa, raising questions about possible interconnections. Why were eschatological movements so pervasive in early modern times? This volume provides some answers to this question by exploring the interconnected histories of confessions and religions from Moscow to Cusco. It offers a broad picture of Christian and, to a lesser extent, Jewish and Islamic eschatological movements from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, thereby bridging important and long-standing gaps in the historiography. Apocalypse Now will appeal to both researchers and students of the history of early modern religion and politics in the Christian, Jewish and Islamic worlds. By exploring connections between numerous eschatological movements, it gives a fresh insight into one of the most promising fields of European and global history.
