Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia

Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia
Author: Moshe Idel
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 1988-12-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780887068324

Abraham Abulafia, the founder of the ecstatic Kabbalah, exposed a mysticism that includes a deep interest in language as a universe in itself, to be studied as the philosophers study nature, in order to attain higher knowledge than natural science and speculative philosophy. The status of Hebrew as the natural, intellectual, and primordial language is discussed against the background of the medieval speculations regarding this topic.

Abraham Abulafia’s Esotericism

Abraham Abulafia’s Esotericism
Author: Moshe Idel
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 636
Release: 2020-10-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110598779

This book focuses on Abraham Abulafia's esoteric thought in relation to Maimonides, Maimonideans, and Islamic thought in the line of Leo Strauss' theory of the history of philosophy. A survey of Abulafia's sources leads into an analysis of the esoteric meaning on the famous parable of the three rings, considering also the possible connection between this parable, which Abdulafia inserted into a book dedicated to his student, the 13th century rabbi Nathan the wise, and the Lessing's Play "Nathan the Wise." The book also examines Abulafia's universalistic understanding of the nature of the Bible, the Hebrew language, and the people of Israel (or the Sinaic revelation). The universal aspects of Abulafia’s thought have been put in relief against the more widespread Kabbalistic views which are predominantly particularistic. A number of texts have also been identified here for the first time as authored by Abulafia.

Veda and Torah

Veda and Torah
Author: Barbara A. Holdrege
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 784
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1438406959

Enlarges our understanding of the term "scripture" through a comparative study of Veda and Torah.

Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism

Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism
Author: Alfred L. Ivry
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 548
Release: 2013-10-28
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1136650121

First Published in 1998. This is the proceedings of the International Conference held by The Institute of Jewish Studies, University College London, 1994, in Celebration of its Fortieth Anniversary. Dedicated to the memory and academic legacy of its Founder Alexander Altmann.

Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures

Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures
Author: Gad Freudenthal
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 561
Release: 2011
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1107001455

Provides the first comprehensive overview by world-renowned experts of what we know today of medieval Jews' engagement with the sciences.

Old Worlds, New Mirrors

Old Worlds, New Mirrors
Author: Moshe Idel
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2010
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0812241304

In Old Worlds, New Mirrors Moshe Idel turns his gaze on figures as diverse as Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, Franz Kafka and Franz Rosenzweig, Arnaldo Momigliano and Paul Celan, Abraham Heschel and George Steiner to reflect on their relationships to Judaism in a cosmopolitan, mostly European, context.

Jerome Rothenberg's Experimental Poetry and Jewish Tradition

Jerome Rothenberg's Experimental Poetry and Jewish Tradition
Author: Christine A. Meilicke
Publisher: Lehigh University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780934223768

"On a more specific level, this book analyses Rothenberg's use of postmodern "appropriative strategies," such as collage, assemblage, palimpsest, parody, pastiche, forgery, found poetry, and theft. These strategies illustrate the concept, practice, and problematics of appropriation." "Embracing postmodern experimentation and drawing on heterodox Jewish sources, Rothenberg constructs a contemporary American Jewish identity that does not rely on institutionalized Judaism."--Jacket.

Judeities

Judeities
Author: Bettina Bergo
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2009-08-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0823226433

Invited to answer questions about his relationship to Judaism, Jacques Derrida spoke through Franz Kafka: As for myself, I could imagine another Abraham.He explores the movement between growing up Jewish, becoming Jewish,and Jewish beingor existence. In his essay The Other Abraham,which appears here in English for the first time, he imagines other Abrahams in light of the proclaimed universalism of philosophy and its recent fragmentation into philosophemes.Thus we no longer confront Judaismbut Judeity,multiple Judaisms and Jewish existences, manifold ways of being and writing as a Jew--in Derrida's case, as a French-speaking Algerian deprived of, then restored to French nationality in the 1940s.Contributions contrast Derrida's thought with philosophical predecessors such as Rosenzweig, Levinas, Celan, and Scholem, and trace confluences between deconstruction and Kabbalah. Derrida's relationship to the universalist aspirations in contemporary theology is also discussed, and an evaluation is offered of his late autobiographical writings.

A River Flows from Eden

A River Flows from Eden
Author: Melila Hellner-Eshed
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2009-06-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0804776245

In the Zohar, the jewel in the crown of Jewish mystical literature, the verse "A river flows from Eden to water the garden" (Genesis 2:10) symbolizes the river of divine plenty that unceasingly flows from the depths of divinity into the garden of reality. Hellner-Eshed's book investigates the flow of this river in the world of the Zoharic heroes, Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai and his disciples, as they embark upon their wondrous spiritual adventures. By focusing on the Zohar's language of mystical experience and its unique features, the author is able to provide remarkable scholarly insight into the mystical dimensions of the Zohar, namely the human quest for an enhanced experience of the living presence of the divine and the Zohar's great call to awaken human consciousness.

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.