Author: Brian Ogren
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004290311
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Time and eternity are concepts that have occupied an important place within Jewish mystical thought. This present volume gives pride of place to these concepts, and is one of the first works to bring together diverse voices on the subject. It offers a multivalent picture of the topic of time and eternity, not only by including contributions from an array of academics who are leaders in their fields, but by proposing six diverse approaches to time and eternity in Jewish mysticism: the theoretical approach to temporality, philosophical definitions, the idea of time and pre-existence, the idea of historical time, the idea of experiential time, and finally, the idea of eternity beyond time. This multivocal treatment of Jewish mysticism and time as based on variant academic approaches is novel, and it should lay the groundwork for further discussion and exploration.
Author: Abraham Joshua Heschel
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466800097
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 127
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Book Description
Elegant, passionate, and filled with the love of God's creation, Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath has been hailed as a classic of Jewish spirituality ever since its original publication--and has been read by thousands of people seeking meaning in modern life. In this brief yet profound meditation on the meaning of the Seventh Day, Heschel, one of the most widely respected religious leaders of the twentieth century, introduced the influential idea of an 'architecture of holiness" that appears not in space but in time. Judaism, he argues, is a religion of time: it finds meaning not in space and the materials things that fill it but in time and the eternity that imbues it, so that 'the Sabbaths are our great catherdrals.' Featuring black-and-white illustrations by Ilya Schor
Author: Alan Mittleman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198796498
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
This volume explores concepts of holiness in different periods of Jewish history and bodies of Jewish literature to offer preliminary reflections on their theological and philosophical import today.
Author: Nadia Al-Bagdadi
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 6155225389
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
The attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, followed by similarly dreadful acts of terror, prompted a new interest in the field of the apocalyptic. There is a steady output of literature on the subject (also referred to as “the End Times.) This book analyzes this continuously published literature and opens up a new perspective on these views of the apocalypse. The thirteen essays in this volume focus on the dimensions, consequences and transformations of Apocalypticism. The authors explore the everyday relevance of the apocalyptic in contemporary society, culture, and politics, side by side with the various histories of apocalyptic ideas and movements. In particular, they seek to better understand the ways in which perceptions of the apocalypse diverge in the American, European, and Arab worlds. Leading experts in the field re-evaluate some of the traditional views on the apocalypse in light of recent political and cultural events, and, go beyond empirical facts to reconsider the potential of the apocalyptic. This last point is the focal point of the book.
Author: Adam Afterman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004328734
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
In “And They Shall Be One Flesh”: On the Language of Mystical Union in Judaism, Adam Afterman offers an extensive study of mystical union and embodiment in Judaism. Afterman argues that Philo was the first to articulate the notion of unio mystica in Judaism and is the source of the henōsis mysticism in the later Neoplatonic tradition. The study provides a detailed analysis of the Jewish medieval trends that developed different forms of mystical union and mystical embodiment through the divine name and spirit. The book argues that the development of unitive mysticism in Judaism is the fruit of the creative synthesis of rabbinic Judaism and Hellenistic and Arab philosophy, and a natural outcome of the theological articulation of the idea of monotheism itself.
Author: Moshe Idel
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110598779
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 636
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Book Description
This book focuses on Abraham Abulafia's esoteric thought in relation to Maimonides, Maimonideans, and Islamic thought in the line of Leo Strauss' theory of the history of philosophy. A survey of Abulafia's sources leads into an analysis of the esoteric meaning on the famous parable of the three rings, considering also the possible connection between this parable, which Abdulafia inserted into a book dedicated to his student, the 13th century rabbi Nathan the wise, and the Lessing's Play "Nathan the Wise." The book also examines Abulafia's universalistic understanding of the nature of the Bible, the Hebrew language, and the people of Israel (or the Sinaic revelation). The universal aspects of Abulafia’s thought have been put in relief against the more widespread Kabbalistic views which are predominantly particularistic. A number of texts have also been identified here for the first time as authored by Abulafia.
Author: Brian Ogren
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004330631
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
In The Beginning of the World in Renaissance Jewish Thought, Brian Ogren offers a deep analysis of late fifteenth century Italian Jewish thought concerning the creation of the world and the beginning of time. Ogren’s book is the very first to seriously juxtapose the thought of the great Jewish thinker Yohanan Alemanno, Alemanno’s famed Christian interlocutor, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the important Iberian exegete active in Italy, Isaac Abravanel, and Abravanel’s renowned philosopher son Judah, known as Leone Ebreo. By bringing these thinkers together, this book presents a new understanding of early modern uses of Jewish texts and hermeneutics. Ogren successfully demonstrates that the syntheses of philosophy and Kabbalah carried out by these four intellectuals in their quests to understand the beginning itself marked a new beginning in Western thought, characterized by simultaneous continuity and rupture.
Author: Michael Tilly
Publisher: Kohlhammer Verlag
ISBN: 317032585X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 608
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Book Description
Judaism, the oldest of the Abrahamic religions, is one of the pillars of modern civilization. A collective of internationally renowned experts cooperated in a singular academic enterprise to portray Judaism from its transformation as a Temple cult to its broad contemporary varieties. In three volumes the long-running book series "Die Religionen der Menschheit" (Religions of Humanity) presents for the first time a complete and compelling view on Jewish life now and then - a fascinating portrait of the Jewish people with its ability to adapt itself to most different cultural settings, always maintaining its strong and unique identity. Volume II presents Jewish literature and thinking: the Jewish Bible; Hellenistic, Tannaitic, Amoraic and Gaonic literature to medieval and modern genres. Chapters on mysticism, Piyyut, Liturgy and Prayer complete the volume.
Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253042585
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
While many scholars have noted Martin Heidegger's indebtedness to Christian mystical sources, as well as his affinity with Taoism and Buddhism, Elliot R. Wolfson expands connections between Heidegger's thought and kabbalistic material. By arguing that the Jewish esoteric tradition impacted Heidegger, Wolfson presents an alternative way of understanding the history of Western philosophy. Wolfson's comparison between Heidegger and kabbalah sheds light on key concepts such as hermeneutics, temporality, language, and being and nothingness, while yielding surprising reflections on their common philosophical ground. Given Heidegger's involvement with National Socialism and his use of antisemitic language, these innovative readings are all the more remarkable for their juxtaposition of incongruent fields of discourse. Wolfson's entanglement with Heidegger and kabbalah not only enhances understandings of both but, more profoundly, serves as an ethical corrective to their respective ethnocentrism and essentialism. Wolfson masterfully illustrates the redemptive capacity of thought to illuminate common ground in seemingly disparate philosophical traditions.
Author: Gilad Sharvit
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110671581
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
This volume offers an examination of varied forms of expressions of heresy in Jewish history, thought and literature. Contributions explore the formative role of the figure of the heretic and of heretic thought in the development of the Jewish traditions from antiquity to the 20th century. Chapters explore the role of heresy in the Hellenic period and Rabbinic literature; the significance of heresy to Kabbalah, and the critical and often formative importance the challenge of heresy plays for modern thinkers such as Spinoza, Freud, and Derrida, and literary figures such as Kafka, Tchernikhovsky, and I.B. Singer. Examining heresy as a boundary issue constitutive for the formation of Jewish tradition, this book contributes to a better understanding of the significance of the figure of the heretic for tradition more generally.
