Tormented Master

Tormented Master PDF Author: Arthur Green
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817369074
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
“If Hasidism begins in the life-enhancing spirituality of the Baal Shem Tov, it concludes in the tortuous, elitist and utterly fascinating career of Nahman of Bratslav (1722–1810) whose biography and teaching Arthur Green has set forth in his comprehensive, moving, and subtle study, Tormented Master. “Arthur Green has managed to lead us through the thickets of the Bratslaver discourse with a grace and facility thus far unequaled in the English language literature on Hasidism. Tormented Master is a model of clarity and percipience, balancing awed respect and honor for its subject with a ruthless pursuit of documented truth. . . . Tormented Master is sufficiently open to the agonies of religion in general and the issues of modern religion in particular to make Nahman a thinker utterly relevant to our time. “Nahman of Bratslav is unique in the history of Judaism, Green emphasizes, for having made the individual’s quest for intimacy with God the center of the religious way. He was a Kierkegaard before his time, believing in the utter abandon of the life of faith and the risk of paradoxicality. . . . He was, more than all others, the predecessor of Kafka, whose tales, like Nahman’s, have no explicit key and rankle, flush and irritate the spirit, compelling us—even in our failure to understand—to acknowledge their potency and challenge.” —New York Times

Tormented Master

Tormented Master PDF Author: Arthur Green
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817369074
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406

Get Book

Book Description
“If Hasidism begins in the life-enhancing spirituality of the Baal Shem Tov, it concludes in the tortuous, elitist and utterly fascinating career of Nahman of Bratslav (1722–1810) whose biography and teaching Arthur Green has set forth in his comprehensive, moving, and subtle study, Tormented Master. “Arthur Green has managed to lead us through the thickets of the Bratslaver discourse with a grace and facility thus far unequaled in the English language literature on Hasidism. Tormented Master is a model of clarity and percipience, balancing awed respect and honor for its subject with a ruthless pursuit of documented truth. . . . Tormented Master is sufficiently open to the agonies of religion in general and the issues of modern religion in particular to make Nahman a thinker utterly relevant to our time. “Nahman of Bratslav is unique in the history of Judaism, Green emphasizes, for having made the individual’s quest for intimacy with God the center of the religious way. He was a Kierkegaard before his time, believing in the utter abandon of the life of faith and the risk of paradoxicality. . . . He was, more than all others, the predecessor of Kafka, whose tales, like Nahman’s, have no explicit key and rankle, flush and irritate the spirit, compelling us—even in our failure to understand—to acknowledge their potency and challenge.” —New York Times

Tormented Master

Tormented Master PDF Author: Dr. Arthur Green
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 1580237509
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
“A major contribution to the understanding of Hasidic Wisdom and thought; it brings the reader closer to Hasidism’s greatest teller of tales.” —Elie Wiesel The search for spiritual meaning drives great leaders in all religions. This classic work explores the personality and religious quest of Nahman of Bratslav (1772–1810), one of Hasidism’s major figures. It unlocks the great themes of spiritual searching that make him a figure of universal religious importance. In this major biography, Dr. Arthur Green—teacher, scholar, and spiritual seeker—explores the great personal conflicts and inner torments that lay at the source of Nahman’s teachings. He reveals Nahman to have been marked at an early age by an exaggerated sense of sin and morbidity that later characterized his life and thought. While subject to rapid mood swings and even paranoia, Nahman is a model of spiritual and personal struggle who speaks to all generations. Green’s analysis of this troubled personality provides an important key to Nahman’s famous tales, making his teachings accessible for people of all faiths, all backgrounds. “If there is any single feature about Nahman’s tales, and indeed about Nahman’s life as well, that makes them unique in the history of Judaism, it is just this: their essential motif is one of quest. Nahman, both as teller and as hero of these tales, is Nahman the seeker. He has already told us, outside the tales, of his refusal ever to stand on any one rung, of his call for constant growth, of his need to open himself up to ever-new and more demanding challenges to his faith. The tales now affirm this endless quest...” —from Excursus II. The Tales

Tormented Master

Tormented Master PDF Author: Arthur Green
Publisher: Jewish Lights Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
"A major contribution to the understanding of Hasidic Wisdom and thought; it brings the reader closer to Hasidism's greatest teller of tales." --Elie Wiesel The search for spiritual meaning drives great leaders in all religions. This classic work explores the personality and religious quest of Nahman of Bratslav (1772-1810), one of Hasidism's major figures. It unlocks the great themes of spiritual searching that make him a figure of universal religious importance. In this major biography, Dr. Arthur Green--teacher, scholar, and spiritual seeker--explores the great personal conflicts and inner torments that lay at the source of Nahman's teachings. He reveals Nahman to have been marked at an early age by an exaggerated sense of sin and morbidity that later characterized his life and thought. While subject to rapid mood swings and even paranoia, Nahman is a model of spiritual and personal struggle who speaks to all generations. Green's analysis of this troubled personality provides an important key to Nahman's famous tales, making his teachings accessible for people of all faiths, all backgrounds. "If there is any single feature about Nahman's tales, and indeed about Nahman's life as well, that makes them unique in the history of Judaism, it is just this: their essential motif is one of quest. Nahman, both as teller and as hero of these tales, is Nahman the seeker. He has already told us, outside the tales, of his refusal ever to stand on any one rung, of his call for constant growth, of his need to open himself up to ever-new and more demanding challenges to his faith. The tales now affirm this endless quest..." --from Excursus II. The Tales

Personality and Deviance

Personality and Deviance PDF Author: S. Giora Shoham
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Shoham presents existentialist and object-relationship personality theory using mythology as a projection of human behavior. Through the myth of Don Juan as well as the personality of Casanova, he highlights the biological parameter of the personality and the thought of Kierkegaard and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. He concludes by relating the dynamics of personality to the predisposition of crime and madness.

Shi'i Theology in Iran

Shi'i Theology in Iran PDF Author: Ori Goldberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136649042
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Metaphor and identity. The discursive personality -- Stuck in the middle with you -- A double edged sword -- Anxiety and discourse. Theology and duality -- Mediated deliverance -- Faith. Wheel within a wheel -- Faith as core and structure -- Silence fraught with meaning.

The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe

The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe PDF 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.

Martin Buber on Myth (RLE Myth)

Martin Buber on Myth (RLE Myth) PDF Author: S. Daniel Breslauer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317555988
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
This book, first published in 1990, summarizes and evaluates the contribution of Martin Buber as a theorist of myth. Buber provides explicit guidelines for understanding and evaluating myths. He describes reality as twofold: people live either in a world of things, to which they relate as a subject controlling its objects, or in a world of self-conscious others, with whom one relates as fellow subjects. Human beings require both types of reality, but also a means of moving from one to the other. Buber understands myths as one such means by which people pass from I-It reality to I-You meeting. In studying myths, he focuses on the myths in the traditions he knows best, but offers his advice and interpretation of mythology and scholarship about mythology generally.

Absorbing Perfections

Absorbing Perfections PDF Author: Moshe Idel
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300135076
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 686

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Book Description
In this wide-ranging discussion of Kabbalah—from the mystical trends of medieval Judaism to modern Hasidism—one of the world’s foremost scholars considers different visions of the nature of the sacred text and of the methods to interpret it. Moshe Idel takes as a starting point the fact that the postbiblical Jewish world lost its geographical center with the destruction of the temple and so was left with a textual center, the Holy Book. Idel argues that a text-oriented religion produced language-centered forms of mysticism. Against this background, the author demonstrates how various Jewish mystics amplified the content of the Scriptures so as to include everything: the world, or God, for example. Thus the text becomes a major realm for contemplation, and the interpretation of the text frequently becomes an encounter with the deepest realms of reality. Idel delineates the particular hermeneutics belonging to Jewish mysticism, investigates the progressive filling of the text with secrets and hidden levels of meaning, and considers in detail the various interpretive strategies needed to decodify the arcane dimensions of the text.

A Tormented Soul

A Tormented Soul PDF Author: Virgil Furfaro
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1450213006
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Drawing upon his extraordinary life growing up in Italy, studying the classics at St. Louis University in Naples, and becoming ordained as a Vocationist priest, Fr. Virgil Furfaro shares his innermost thoughts and emotions in this stirring collection of poetry, A Tormented Soul. Furfaro is a true renaissance man—a "consummate doer, thinker, and dreamer" as described by one of his parishioners—and with his poetry proposes a return to the classical ideals, ones that will lead the sterile modern age back to the great values and legends of the past. With his nostalgic look toward the ancient world, Furfaro proposes that yesterday's poetry become today's reality. Of his poetry, Furfaro writes that it "is born from combining the fertile moments of my mind with a psychological, physical, and spiritual anguish that has characterized and tormented me for most of my life." This statement is personified within such poems as "A Cross to See" which explores not only this holiest of Christian symbols, but Furfaro's own tribulations and "Disenchantment," a haunting verse that reveals the deceptiveness of nature. At once powerful in scope, yet elegant in its simplicity, A Tormented Soul reaches to the very essence of our souls, plucks the strings of our hearts, and sets us upon the path to enlightenment.

Variations on the Theme Galina Ustvolskaya

Variations on the Theme Galina Ustvolskaya PDF Author: Semyon Bokman
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1796042714
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
There is neither in the music history nor in the history of art such a closed and contradictory composer and creator as Galina Ustvolskaya. The music of Galina Ustvolskaya (excepting commissioned works written not for internal reasons but for necessity) is a kind of mysterious ritual. What is her music about? What ideas dominate it? Ustvolskaya’s music art is not big in volume, but with a huge degree of tension, it has concentrated the main ideological problems and contradictions of our time. What is culture? What is spirituality? What is the role of art in life? Do we need them? Is it possible to exclude these phenomena and concepts from our being? And why is our era passing away? The book is full of allusions. This is a kind of deductive method, with the help of which the author tries to understand and explain the talented composer who is a drop of water in an ocean reflecting the leading trends and tendencies of twentieth-century art.