Rachel Elior - Böcker

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 words‘hasid’ and ‘hasidism’ have become so familiar to people interested in theJewish world that little thought is given to understanding exactly whathasidism is or considering its spiritual and social consequences.What, forexample, are the distinguishing features of hasidism? What innovations does itembody? How did its founders see it? Why did it arouse opposition? What is theessential nature of hasidic thought? What is its spiritual essence? What doesits literature consist of? What typifies its leadership? What is the secret ofits persistence through the centuries? How have scholars explained its origins?Is hasidism an expression of mystical ideas, or a response to changing socialcircumstances? What is its connection to kabbalah? To Shabateanism? Tomessianism? What is its relationship to the traditional structures of authorityin the Jewish world? This book aims to answer all these questions in a lucidand accessible manner.Rachel Eliorfocuses on the fundamental positions and the factors of primary importance: thesubstantial issues that recur in the hasidic texts, including how hasidim haveseen themselves over the centuries, how they have constructed a new spiritualand social ideal, and how that ideal has stood the test of reality. The goal isto present the main characteristics of the hasidic movement and to examine thesocial implications of its mystical ideas. The text is fully supported byreferences to the relevant hasidic sources and academic literature. The bookconcludes with a list of the hasidic texts on which the discussion is based anda comprehensive bibliography of scholarly works on kabbalah and hasidism.

In this ground-breaking study,Rachel Elior offers a comprehensive theory of the crystallization of the earlystages of the mystical tradition in Judaism based on the numerous ancientscrolls and manuscripts published in the last few decades. Her wide-rangingresearch, scrupulously documented, enables her to demonstrate an uninterruptedline linking the priestly traditions of the Temple, the mystical liturgicalliterature found in the Qumran caves and associated directly and indirectlywith the Merkavah tradition of around the second and first centuries BCE, andthe mystical works of the second to fifth centuries CE known as Heikhalot literature.The key factor linking all thesetexts, according to Professor Elior’s theory, is that many of those who wrotethem were members of the priestly classes. Prevented from being able to performthe rituals of sacred service in the Temple as ordained in the biblicaltradition, they channelled their religious impetus in other directions tocreate a new spiritual focus. The mystical tradition they developed centredfirst on a heavenly Chariot Throne known as the Merkavah, and later on heavenlysanctuaries known as Heikhalot. In this way the priestly class developed analternative focus for spirituality, based on a supertemporal liturgical andritual relationship with ministering angels in the supernal sanctuaries. Thiscame to embrace an entire mystical world devoted to sustaining religiousliturgical tradition and ritual memory in the absence of the Temple.This lyrical investigation of theorigins and workings of this supernal world is sure to become a standard workin the study of early Jewish mysticism.

Mysticism,which transcends the boundaries of time and space and refers to a reality notgrasped by means of ordinary human cognition, is one of the central sources ofinspiration of religious thought. It is an attempt to decode the mystery ofdivine existence by penetrating to the depths of consciousness throughlanguage, memory, myth, and symbolism. Delving deep into the psyche, mysticsstrive to redeem perceived reality from its immediate meaning.Mystical texts constitute a history of thisreligious creativity, of man’s attempt to reveal the divine structureunderlying the chaos of reality and thereby endow life with hope and purpose.By offering an alternative perspective on the world that gives expression toyearnings for freedom and change, mysticism engenders new modes of authorityand leadership; as such it plays a decisive role in moulding religious andsocial history. For all these reasons, the mystical corpus deserves study anddiscussion in the framework of cultural criticism and research.This study is a lyrical exposition of the Jewishmystical phenomenon. It is based on a close reading of the hundreds of volumeswritten by Jewish mystics and incorporates mystical testimonies drawn from thedifferent countries and cultural environments in which Jews have lived. RachelElior’s purpose is to present, as accurately as possible, the meanings of themystical works as they were perceived by their creators and readers. At thesame time, she contextualizes them within the boundaries of the religion,culture, language, and spiritual and historical circumstances in which thedestiny of the Jewish people has evolved.The authorsucceeds in drawing the reader into a mystical world. With great intensity, sheconveys the richness of the mystical experience in discovering the infinity ofmeaning embedded in the sacred text; teasing out the recurring themes, sheexplains the multivalent symbols. Using copious extracts from Jewish mysticalsources, she illustrates the varieties of the mystical experience fromantiquity to the twentieth century. She succeeds in eloquently conveying how mysticstry to decipher reality by penetrating beyond its apparent boundaries: how theyexperience spiritual powers symbolically, imaginatively, or visually; howhidden truths are revealed in visions or dreams, in an epiphany or as‘lightning’; how they are ‘engraved’ in the mind or illuminate in the soul.Most of the texts she draws on are written in very obscure language, but theskilful translations communicate the mystical experiences vividly and make iteasy for the reader to understand how Elior uses them to explain therelationship between the revealed world and the hidden world and between themystical world and the traditional religious world, with all the social andreligious tensions this has caused.

The Unknown History of Jewish Women—On Learning and Illiteracy: On Slavery and Liberty is a comprehensive study on the history of Jewish women, which discusses their absence from the Jewish Hebrew library of the "People of the Book" and interprets their social condition in relation to their imposed ignorance and exclusion from public literacy.The book begins with a chapter on communal education for Jewish boys, which was compulsory and free of charge for the first ten years in all traditional Jewish communities. The discussion continues with the striking absence of any communal Jewish education for girls until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the implications of this fact for twentieth-century immigration to Israel (1949-1959)The following chapters discuss the social, cultural and legal contexts of this reality of female illiteracy in the Jewish community—a community that placed a supreme value on male education. The discussion focuses on the patriarchal order and the postulations, rules, norms, sanctions and mythologies that, in antiquity and the Middle Ages, laid the religious foundations of this discriminatory reality.