New Perspectives in Post-Rabbinic Judaism - Böcker

Whether extroversive, introversive or some further hybrid, the process of the soul touching the fullness of its divine origins is itself undergoing transformation in the contemporary twenty-first century cultural matrices of Israel. Touching but not touching, or Touching God, what the mystics call mati v’lo mati, occurs throughout mystical poetics surrounding the unitive experience otherwise known as devekut. Rather than sketch out theological datum of the poetry at hand, this study seeks to explore the reality of devotional experience behind the poetic record and its correlations with contemporary Hasidic literature being written in Israel.From this collection of annotated translations, poetry returns to its conversation with pathways in thinking throughout Continental philosophy, revealing lost pathways of a vibrant Judaism. Selections include the devotional poetry of: Schulamith Hava HaLevi; Haya Esther; Haviva Pedaya; Zelda Schneerson Mishkovsky; Yonadav Kaplun; Haya Esther; Tamar Elad-Appelbaum; Agi Mishol; Admiel Kosman; and Binyamin Shevili.

This volume seeks to honour Professor Gillman’s contributions to Jewish scholarship and education by collecting essays by his colleagues and students that discuss the issues most central to his work, namely Jewish theology, Conservative Judaism and Jewish education.

Justice in the City argues, based on the rabbinic textual tradition, especially the Babylonian Talmud, and utilizing French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas' framework of interpersonal ethics, that a just city should be a community of obligation. That is, in a community thus conceived, the privilege of citizenship is the assumption of the obligations of the city towards Others who are not always in view - workers, the poor, the homeless. These Others form a constitutive part of the city. The second part of the book is a close analysis of homelessness, labor, and restorative justice from within the theory that was developed. This title will be useful for scholars and students in Jewish studies, especially rabbinic literature and Jewish thought, but also for those interested in contemporary urban issues.

Whether extroversive, introversive or some further hybrid, the process of the soul touching the fullness of its divine origins is itself undergoing transformation in the contemporary twenty-first century cultural matrices of Israel. Touching but not touching, or Touching God, what the mystics call mati v’lo mati, occurs throughout mystical poetics surrounding the unitive experience otherwise known as devekut. Rather than sketch out theological datum of the poetry at hand, this study seeks to explore the reality of devotional experience behind the poetic record and its correlations with contemporary Hasidic literature being written in Israel.From this collection of annotated translations, poetry returns to its conversation with pathways in thinking throughout Continental philosophy, revealing lost pathways of a vibrant Judaism. Selections include the devotional poetry of: Schulamith Hava HaLevi; Haya Esther; Haviva Pedaya; Zelda Schneerson Mishkovsky; Yonadav Kaplun; Haya Esther; Tamar Elad-Appelbaum; Agi Mishol; Admiel Kosman; and Binyamin Shevili.

Tangle of Matter & Ghost: Leonard Cohen’s Post-Secular Songbook of Mysticism(s) Jewish & beyond analyzes the lyrical poetry of Leonard Cohen through a post-secular lens. The volume fuses sophisticated theory and popular culture with critical analysis that is lacking in most of the rock n’ roll biographies about Leonard Cohen. How does this mystical maestro’s songbook emerge to illuminate questions of meaning making in a post-secular context when correlated with thinkers like Charles Taylor, Edward S. Casey, Jurgen Habermas, Slavoj Žižek, Jeffrey Kripal and Harold Bloom along with others. Cohen’s mysticism is also analyzed in relationship to Kabbalah, Hasidism and Rinzai Buddhism. Tangle of Matter & Ghost presents a unique inter-disciplinary approach to Jewish philosophy and literary studies with wide appeal for diverse audiences and readership.

Tangle of Matter & Ghost: Leonard Cohen's Post-Secular Songbook of Mysticism(s) Jewish & beyond analyzes the lyrical poetry of Leonard Cohen through a post-secular lens. The volume fuses sophisticated theory and popular culture with critical analysis that is lacking in most of the rock n’ roll biographies about Leonard Cohen. How does this mystical maestro’s songbook emerge to illuminate questions of meaning making in a post-secular context when correlated with thinkers like Charles Taylor, Edward S. Casey, Jurgen Habermas, Slavoj Žižek, Jeffrey Kripal and Harold Bloom along with others. Cohen’s mysticism is also analyzed in relationship to Kabbalah, Hasidism and Rinzai Buddhism. Tangle of Matter & Ghost presents a unique inter-disciplinary approach to Jewish philosophy and literary studies with wide appeal for diverse audiences and readership.

Piety and Rebellion examines the span of the Hasidic textual tradition from its earliest phases to the 20th century. The essays collected in this volume focus on the tension between Hasidic fidelity to tradition and its rebellious attempt to push the devotional life beyond the borders of conventional religious practice. Many of the essays exhibit a comparative perspective deployed to better articulate the innovative spirit, and traditional challenges, Hasidism presents to the traditional Jewish world. Piety and Rebellion is an attempt to present Hasidism as one case whereby maximalist religion can yield a rebellious challenge to conventional conceptions of religious thought and practice.

Piety and Rebellion examines the span of the Hasidic textual tradition from its earliest phases to the 20th century. The essays collected in this volume focus on the tension between Hasidic fidelity to tradition and its rebellious attempt to push the devotional life beyond the borders of conventional religious practice. Many of the essays exhibit a comparative perspective deployed to better articulate the innovative spirit, and traditional challenges, Hasidism presents to the traditional Jewish world. Piety and Rebellion is an attempt to present Hasidism as one case whereby maximalist religion can yield a rebellious challenge to conventional conceptions of religious thought and practice.

Much post-Holocaust Jewish thought published in North America has assumed that the Holocaust shattered traditional religious categories that had been used by Jews to account for historical catastrophes. But most traditional Jewish thinkers during the war saw no such overwhelming of tradition in the death and suffering delivered to Jews by Nazis. Through a comparative reading of postwar North American and wartime Orthodox Jewish texts about the Holocaust, Barbara Krawcowicz shows that these sources differ in the paradigms—modern and historicist for North American thinkers, traditional and covenantal for Orthodox thinkers—in which they emplot historical events.

Nature and Norm: Judaism, Christianity and the Theopolitical Problem is a book about the encounter between Jewish and Christian thought and the fact-value divide that invites the unsettling recognition of the dramatic acosmism that shadows and undermines a considerable number of modern and contemporary Jewish and Christian thought systems. By exposing the forced option presented to Jewish and Christian thinkers by the continued appropriation of the fact-value divide, Nature and Norm motivates Jewish and Christian thinkers to perform an immanent critique of the failure of their thought systems to advance rational theopolitical claims and exercise the authority and freedom to assert their claims as reasonable hypotheses that hold the potential for enacting effective change in our current historical moment.

In the sixteenth century, the famous kabbalist Isaac Luria transmitted a secret trove of highly complex mystical practices to a select groups of students. These meditations were designed to capitalize on sleep and death states in order to effectively split one’s soul into multiple parts, and which, when properly performed, permitted the adept to free oneself from the cycle of rebirth. Through an in-depth analysis of these contemplative practices within the broader context of Lurianic literature, Zvi Ish-Shalom guides us on a penetrating scholarly journey into a realm of mystical teachings and practices never before available in English, illuminating a radically monistic vision of reality at the heart of Kabbalistic metaphysics and practice.