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.

The Greatest Mirror

The Greatest Mirror
Author: Andrei A. Orlov
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2017-09-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1438466927

The idea of a heavenly double—an angelic twin of an earthbound human—can be found in Christian, Manichaean, Islamic, and Kabbalistic traditions. Scholars have long traced the lineage of these ideas to Greco-Roman and Iranian sources. In The Greatest Mirror, Andrei A. Orlov shows that heavenly twin imagery drew in large part from early Jewish writings. The Jewish pseudepigrapha—books from the Second Temple period that were attributed to biblical figures but excluded from the Hebrew Bible—contain accounts of heavenly twins in the form of spirits, images, faces, children, mirrors, and angels of the Presence. Orlov provides a comprehensive analysis of these traditions in their full historical and interpretive complexity. He focuses on heavenly alter egos of Enoch, Moses, Jacob, Joseph, and Aseneth in often neglected books, including Animal Apocalypse, Book of the Watchers, 2 Enoch, Ladder of Jacob, and Joseph and Aseneth, some of which are preserved solely in the Slavonic language.

All Religion Is Inter-Religion

All Religion Is Inter-Religion
Author: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2019-07-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1350062227

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.

Saturn's Jews

Saturn's Jews
Author: Moshe Idel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2011-09-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1441137319

This book explores the phenomenon of Saturnism, namely the belief that the planet Saturn, the seventh known planet in ancient astrology, was appointed upon the Jews, who celebrated the Sabbath, the seventh day of the Jewish week. Moshe Idel details how the anonymous, late 14th century Sefer Ha-Peliyah was to have disturbing consequences in the Jewish world three centuries later, interweaving luminaries with the cultural, historical, religious, and philosophical concepts of their day, and demonstrating how cultural agents were inadvertently instrumental in the mid-17th-century mass-movement Sabbateanism that led to the conviction that Sabbatai Tzevi was the Messiah. Exploring how the tragic misperception of the Jewish Sabbath by the non-Jewish world led to a linkage of Jews with sorcery in 14th and 15th-century Europe, associating their holy day with the witches' 'Sabbat' gathering, Idel brings this wide-ranging study into the present day with an analysis of 20th-century scholarship and thought influenced by Saturnism, particularly lingering themes related to melancholy in the works of Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel
Author: Edward K. Kaplan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2019-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0827618271

This is the first volume of the first biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the outstanding Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. Edward K. Kaplan and Samuel H. Dresner trace Heschel's life from his birth in Warsaw in 1907 to his emigration to the United States in 1940, describing his roots in Hasidic culture, his experiences in Poland and Germany, and his relations with Martin Buber. "This first volume of a remarkable biography of one of the greatest Jewish thinkers and social activists of his generation must take its place in every home, in every library, Jewish and gentile alike. Written with warmth, passion, and grace, it offers the reader an insight into the man Heschel, whose teaching has uniquely influenced modern theology and inspired moral commitment."--Elie Wiesel "This book is simply stunning! . . . The authors . . . have a profound understanding of Heschel's inner life, and they use all this information in order to craft a powerful portrait of a human being."--Jack Riemer, Commonweal "Th[is] long-awaited biography of Heschel cover[s] the author's youth in Warsaw and education in Vilna and Berlin. . . . Kaplan and Dresner's biography will hold broad popular interest while providing academics an important starting point from which to investigate critically the life and thought of this important thinker."--Zachary Braiterman, Religious Studies Review "Critical, careful attention [is paid] to Heschel's words."--Laurie Adlerstein, New York Times Book Review

Heidegger and Kabbalah

Heidegger and Kabbalah
Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0253042585

While many scholars have noted Martin Heidegger's indebtedness to Christian mystical sources, as well as his affinity with Taoism and Buddhism, Elliot R. Wolfson expands connections between Heidegger's thought and kabbalistic material. By arguing that the Jewish esoteric tradition impacted Heidegger, Wolfson presents an alternative way of understanding the history of Western philosophy. Wolfson's comparison between Heidegger and kabbalah sheds light on key concepts such as hermeneutics, temporality, language, and being and nothingness, while yielding surprising reflections on their common philosophical ground. Given Heidegger's involvement with National Socialism and his use of antisemitic language, these innovative readings are all the more remarkable for their juxtaposition of incongruent fields of discourse. Wolfson's entanglement with Heidegger and kabbalah not only enhances understandings of both but, more profoundly, serves as an ethical corrective to their respective ethnocentrism and essentialism. Wolfson masterfully illustrates the redemptive capacity of thought to illuminate common ground in seemingly disparate philosophical traditions.

Birth-Throes of the Israeli Homeland

Birth-Throes of the Israeli Homeland
Author: David Ohana
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2020-05-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000067483

The book brings forth various perspectives on the Israeli "homeland" (moledet) from various known Israeli intellectuals such as Boaz Evron, Menachem Brinker, Jacqueline Kahanoff and more. Binding together various academic fields to deal with the question of the essence of the Israeli homeland: from the examination of the status of the Israeli homeland by such known sociologist as Michael Feige, to the historical analysis of Robert Wistrich of the place Israel occupies in history in relation to historical antisemitism. The study also examines various movements that bear significant importance on the development of the notion of the Israeli homeland in Israeli society: Such movement as "The New Hebrews" and Hebrewism are examined both historically in relation to their place in Zionist history and ideologically in comparison with other prominent movements. Drawing on the work of Jacqueline Kahanoff to provide a unique Mediterranean model for the Israeli homeland, the volume examines prominent models among the Religious Zionist sector of Israeli society regarding the relation of the biblical homeland to the actual homeland of our times. Discussing the various interpretations of the concept of the nation and its land in the discourse of Hebrew and Israeli identity, the book is a key resource for scholars interested in nationalism, philosophy, modern Jewish history and Israeli Studies.

Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality

Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality
Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 799
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004449345

No one theory of time is pursued in the essays of this volume, but a major theme that threads them together is Wolfson’s signature idea of the timeswerve as a linear circularity or a circular linearity, expressions that are meant to avoid the conventional split between the two temporal modalities of the line and the circle.

Interdisciplinary Handbook of Trauma and Culture

Interdisciplinary Handbook of Trauma and Culture
Author: Yochai Ataria
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2016-09-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 3319294040

This lofty volume analyzes a circular cultural relationship: not only how trauma is reflected in cultural processes and products, but also how trauma itself acts as a critical shaper of literature, the visual and performing arts, architecture, and religion and mythmaking. The political power of trauma is seen through US, Israeli, and Japanese art forms as they reflect varied roles of perpetrator, victim, and witness. Traumatic complexities are traced from spirituality to movement, philosophy to trauma theory. And essays on authors such as Kafka, Plath, and Cormac McCarthy examine how narrative can blur the boundaries of personal and collective experience. Among the topics covered: Television: a traumatic culture. From Hiroshima to Fukushima: comics and animation as subversive agents of memory in Japan. The death of the witness in the era of testimony: Primo Levi and Georges Perec. Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and the possibility of writing a traumatic history of religion. Placing collective trauma within its social context: the case of the 9/11 attacks. Killing the killer: rampage and gun rights as a syndrome. This volume appeals to multiple readerships including researchers and clinicians, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and media researchers.

Derrida's Marrano Passover

Derrida's Marrano Passover
Author: Agata Bielik-Robson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2022-12-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501392638

In this first ever monograph on Jacques Derrida's 'Toledo confession' – where he portrayed himself as 'sort of a Marrano of the French Catholic culture' – Agata Bielik-Robson shows Derrida's marranismo to be a literary experiment of auto-fiction. She looks at all possible aspects of Derrida's Marrano identification in order to demonstrate that it ultimately constitutes a trope of non-identitarian evasion that permeates all his works: just as Marranos cannot be characterized as either Jewish or Christian, so is Derrida's 'universal Marranism' an invitation to think philosophically, politically and – last but not least – metaphysically without rigid categories of identity and belonging. By concentrating on Derrida's deliberate choice of marranismo, Bielik-Robson shows that it penetrates deep into the very core of his late thinking, constantly drawing on the literary works of Kafka, Celan, Joyce, Cixous and Valéry, and throws a new light on his early works, most of all: Of Grammatology, Dissemination and 'Différance'. She also offers a completely new interpretation of many of Derrida's works only seemingly non-related to the Marrano issue, like Glas, Given Time: Counterfeit Money, Death Penalty Seminar, and Specters of Marx. In these new readings, this book demonstrates that the Marrano Derrida is not a marginal auto-biographical figure overshadowed by Derrida the Philosopher: it is one and the same thinker who discovered marranismo as a literary trope of openness, offering up a new genre of philosophical story-telling which centers around Derrida's Marrano 'auto-fable'.