From Kabbalah to Class Struggle

From Kabbalah to Class Struggle
Author: Mikhail Krutikov
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2010-11-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 080477725X

From Kabbalah to Class Struggle is an intellectual biography of Meir Wiener (1893–1941), an Austrian Jewish intellectual and a student of Jewish mysticism who emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1926 and reinvented himself as a Marxist scholar and Yiddish writer. His dramatic life story offers a fascinating glimpse into the complexities and controversies of Jewish intellectual and cultural history of pre-war Europe. Wiener made a remarkable career as a Yiddish scholar and writer in the Stalinist Soviet Union and left an unfinished novel about Jewish intellectual bohemia of Weimar Berlin. He was a brilliant intellectual, a controversial thinker, a committed communist, and a great Yiddish scholar—who personally knew Lenin and Rabbi Kook, corresponded with Martin Buber and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and argued with Gershom Scholem and Georg Lukács. His intellectual biography brings Yiddish to the forefront of the intellectual discourse of interwar Europe.

The Poetry of Kabbalah

The Poetry of Kabbalah
Author: Peter Cole
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 541
Release: 2012-04-10
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0300169167

Introduces renderings of, and commentary on, Kabbalistic verse that emerged directly from Jewish mysticism and that reveals the foundations of both language and existence itself.

Zohar, the Book of Enlightenment

Zohar, the Book of Enlightenment
Author: Daniel Chanan Matt
Publisher: Paulist Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1983
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780809123872

This is the first translation with commentary of selections from The Zohar, the major text of the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. This work was written in 13th-century Spain by Moses de Leon, a Spanish scholar.

Origins of the Kabbalah

Origins of the Kabbalah
Author: Gershom Gerhard Scholem
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 511
Release: 2019-02-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0691184305

With the publication of The Origins of the Kabbalah in 1950, one of the most important scholars of our century brought the obscure world of Jewish mysticism to a wider audience for the first time. A crucial work in the oeuvre of Gershom Scholem, this book details the beginnings of the Kabbalah in twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern France and Spain, showing its rich tradition of repeated attempts to achieve and portray direct experiences of God. The Origins of the Kabbalah is a contribution not only to the history of Jewish medieval mysticism, but also to the study of medieval mysticism in general. Now with a new foreword by David Biale, this book remains essential reading for students of the history of religion.

Kabbalah and Literature

Kabbalah and Literature
Author: Kitty Millet
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2024-01-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 150135969X

Focuses on a range of Jewish and non-Jewish writers to examine the intersection of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, and secular Jewish literatures. Kabbalah and Literature shows how the Jewish mystical tradition contributes to the renewal of literature in a modern, global, and increasingly disconnected age. Kitty Millet explores Kabbalah's conceptual underpinnings, aesthetic principles, tenets, and signifiers to demonstrate how literature's absorption of kabbalistic material has altered its ontology, function, and the tasks it sets for itself. Reading writers from Europe and the Americas, Kitty Millet maps how the kabbalist's desire to "recover Eden" transforms into a latent messianic drive only intuitable through text. Thus it charts a journey of sorts, a migration of Jewish mystical material embedded surreptitiously within text in order to shift ever so slightly at times the range of the literary to encompass an aesthetic vision not easily reducible to the literal, the known, the allegorical, or even the philosophical. In this way, Kabbalah and Literature proposes a novel, intuitive approach, shifting focus away from the Jewish text's epistemological elements to embrace its "secrets."

Absorbing Perfections

Absorbing Perfections
Author: Moshe Idel
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 686
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300135076

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.

The Kabbalah (Routledge Revivals)

The Kabbalah (Routledge Revivals)
Author: Christian D Ginsburg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2015-06-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317588886

Originally published in 1925, Christian D. Ginsburg examines the origins of the system of religious philosophy, the Kabbalah, and its influence on Judaism. Ginsburg also explores the ways in which academics have approached the Kabbalah, with a detailed timeline of their findings.

‘Our Place in al-Andalus’

‘Our Place in al-Andalus’
Author: Gil Anidjar
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780804741217

This book offers a reading of Andalusi, Jewish, and Arabic texts that represent the 12th and 13th centuries as the end of el-Andalus (Islamic Spain).

Introduction to the Book of Zohar, Volume 1

Introduction to the Book of Zohar, Volume 1
Author: Yehudah Ashlag
Publisher: Laitman Kabbalah Publishers
Total Pages: 612
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 0973231564

The Science of Kabbalah (Pticha) is the first in a series of texts that Rav Michael Laitman, Kabbalist and scientist, designed to introduce readers to the special language and terminology of the Kabbalah. Here, Rav Laitman reveals authentic Kabbalah in a manner that is both rational and mature. Readers are gradually led to an understanding of the logical design of the Universe and the life whose home it is. The Science of Kabbalah, a revolutionary work that is unmatched in its clarity, depth, and appeal to the intellect, will enable readers to approach the more technical works of Baal HaSulam (Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag), such as 'Talmud Eser Sefirot' and Zohar. Although scientists and philosophers will delight in its illumination, laymen will also enjoy the satisfying answers to the riddles of life that only authentic Kabbalah provides. Now, travel through the pages and prepare for an astonishing journey into the 'Upper Worlds'.