Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism

Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism PDF Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199277796
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
"Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism is an investigation of the relationship of the mystical and moral viewed through the prism of the kabbalistic tradition. Elliot R. Wolfson's analysis focuses in particular on the multi-layered corpus of Zohar, the major sourcebook of theosophic symbolism that has informed the variegated evolution of kabbalastic thought and practice."--BOOK JACKET.

Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism

Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism PDF Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199277796
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism is an investigation of the relationship of the mystical and moral viewed through the prism of the kabbalistic tradition. Elliot R. Wolfson's analysis focuses in particular on the multi-layered corpus of Zohar, the major sourcebook of theosophic symbolism that has informed the variegated evolution of kabbalastic thought and practice."--BOOK JACKET.

Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism

Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism PDF Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019153515X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Are mysticism and morality compatible or at odds with one another? If mystical experience embraces a form of non-dual consciousness, then in such a state of mind, the regulative dichotomy so basic to ethical discretion would seemingly be transcended and the very foundation for ethical decisions undermined. Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism is an investigation of the relationship of the mystical and moral as it is expressed in the particular tradition of Jewish mysticism known as the Kabbalah. The particular themes discussed include the denigration of the non-Jew as the ontic other in kabbalistic anthropology and the eschatological crossing of that boundary anticipated in the instituition of religious conversion; the overcoming of the distinction between good and evil in the mystical experience of the underlying unity of all things; divine suffering and the ideal of spiritual poverty as the foundation for transmoral ethics and hypernomian lawfulness.

“And They Shall Be One Flesh”: On The Language of Mystical Union in Judaism

“And They Shall Be One Flesh”: On The Language of Mystical Union in Judaism PDF 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.

Jewish Ethics: The Basics

Jewish Ethics: The Basics PDF Author: Geoffrey D. Claussen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 104022380X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 135

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Book Description
Jewish Ethics: The Basics demonstrates how ancient and contemporary ideas have shaped and reshaped Jewish traditions about how to act toward others. Readers are introduced to foundational questions, controversies, and diverse ethical conclusions developed by Jewish thinkers throughout the ages. Topics addressed include: • Assumptions about Authority • Love, Compassion, Justice and Humility • Human Rights, War, Land and Power • Gender and Sexuality • Personal and Social Ethics • Environmental and Animal Ethics • Bioethical Issues Concise, readable and engaging, this is the ideal introduction for anyone interested in religious ethics, secular traditions, Judaism, and the field of Jewish ethics.

All Religion Is Inter-Religion

All Religion Is Inter-Religion PDF Author: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350062227
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
All Religion Is Inter-Religion analyses the ways inter-religious relations have contributed both historically and philosophically to the constructions of the category of “religion” as a distinct subject of study. Regarded as contemporary classics, Steven M. Wasserstrom's Religion after Religion (1999) and Between Muslim and Jew (1995) provided a theoretical reorientation for the study of religion away from hierophanies and ultimacy, and toward lived history and deep pluralism. This book distills and systematizes this reorientation into nine theses on the study of religion. Drawing on these theses--and Wasserstrom's opus more generally--a distinguished group of his colleagues and former students demonstrate that religions can, and must, be understood through encounters in real time and space, through the complex relations they create and maintain between people, and between people and their pasts. The book also features an afterword by Wasserstrom himself, which poses nine riddles to students of religion based on his personal experiences working on religion at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Mystical Resistance

Mystical Resistance PDF Author: Ellen Davina Haskell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190600438
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Mystical Resistance reveals the kabbalistic masterpiece Sefer ha-Zohar, commonly known as the Zohar, as a rich source for understanding Jewish resistance to Christian authority. Composed against a backdrop of rising religious intolerance, the Zohar's subversive mystical narratives critique the changing relationship between Western Europe's Christian majority and its Jewish minority.

A Covenant of Creatures

A Covenant of Creatures PDF Author: Michael Fagenblat
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804774684
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
"I am not a particularly Jewish thinker," said Emmanuel Levinas, "I am just a thinker." This book argues against the idea, affirmed by Levinas himself, that Totality and Infinity and Otherwise Than Being separate philosophy from Judaism. By reading Levinas's philosophical works through the prism of Judaic texts and ideas, Michael Fagenblat argues that what Levinas called "ethics" is as much a hermeneutical product wrought from the Judaic heritage as a series of phenomenological observations. Decoding the Levinas's philosophy of Judaism within a Heideggerian and Pauline framework, Fagenblat uses biblical, rabbinic, and Maimonidean texts to provide sustained interpretations of the philosopher's work. Ultimately he calls for a reconsideration of the relation between tradition and philosophy, and of the meaning of faith after the death of epistemology.

A History of Kabbalah

A History of Kabbalah PDF 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.

Yearnings of the Soul

Yearnings of the Soul PDF Author: Jonathan Garb
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022629580X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Jonathan Garb's "Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah" is an original, path-breaking study of the renderings of the "heart and soul" in the works of major, minor, and obscure but important figures of modern Kabbalah. Garb has unearthed a treasure-trove of neglected figures and texts, bringing into dialogue their views on heart and soul with those found in other religious and secular authorities. There is no other study that comes close to the territory Garb covers or, for that matter, provides the historical and cultural context necessary for understanding the rise of such psychological renderings in the works of the modern Kabbalists. His analysis shows that any attempt to essentialize the multiple and varied understandings of heart and soul in Jewish mysticism is mistaken. Analyzing text and figure in context on a case-by-case basis Garb is able to provide comparison without being reductive. This is an invaluable contribution to the discipline that cements Garb as the leading scholar of modern Kabbalah.

Hidden Intercourse

Hidden Intercourse PDF Author: Wouter J. Hanegraaff
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047443586
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 566

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Book Description
From rumours about gnostic orgies in antiquity to the explicit erotic symbolism of alchemical texts, from the subtly coded eroticism of medieval kabbalah to the sexual magic practiced by contemporary occultists and countercultural translations of Asian Tantra, the history of Western esotericism is rich in references to the domains of eros and sexuality. This volume, which brings together an impressive array of top-level specialists, is the first to analyze the eroticism of the esoteric without sensationalism or cheap generalizations, but on the basis of expert scholarship and attention to textual and historical detail. While there are few other domains where the imagination may so easily run wild, the various contributions seek to distinguish fact from fiction--only to find that historical realities are sometimes even stranger than the fantasies. In doing so, they reveal the outlines of a largely unknown history spanning more than twenty centuries.