The Zimzum of Love

The Zimzum of Love
Author: Rob Bell
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2014-10-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0062194259

As he revolutionized traditional teaching on hell in the phenomenal New York Times bestseller Love Wins, Rob Bell now transforms how we understand and practice marriage in The Zimzum of Love, co-written with his wife, Kristen. Despite the divorce statistics, people are still committing to each other, instinctively believing and hoping that theirs is a sacred union that will last forever. Yet when these couples encounter problems, they often lack the resources that keep them connected to this greater mystery surrounding marriage. Rob and Kristen Bell introduce a startling new way of looking at marriage, The Zimzum of Love. Zimzum is a Hebrew term where God, in order to have a relationship with the world, contracts, creating space for the creation to exist. In marriage, zimzum is the dynamic energy field between two partners, in which each person contracts to allow the other to flourish. Mastering this field, this give and take of energy, is the secret to what makes marriage flourish. Rob and Kristen Bell are brutally honest about their own struggles, their ups and downs, as together they pass along what matters most for couples. In this wise book, they explore the secret of what makes a happy union—probing the mystery at the heart of the extraordinary emotional connection that binds two people. With his down-to-earth charm, a dose of whimsy, and memorable stories, Rob, writing with his wife Kristen, changes how we consider marriage, providing insight that can help all of us create satisfying and sacred unions of our own.

Zimzum

Zimzum
Author: Christoph Schulte
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2023-11-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1512824364

Zimzum

Zimzum
Author: Gordon Lish
Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press
Total Pages: 96
Release: 2005-11-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781560257998

Call it zimzum: how we manage the scandal of our progress from desire to the void, through contraction and distractedness. In this perilously original work, composed of six rigorously crafted parts—and informed by a desperately libidinous, grotesquely comic rage—one of the most controversial figures in contemporary American letters brilliantly captures our humanity and Zeitgeist. Central to the novel is the ravishing shriek of a man who seeks to preserve what little there is left to him. It is as if his head were in an ever-tightening vise as he frantically seeks connection with others, knowing all the while the futility of the enterprise. He yearns for some carnal knowledge. He is obsessed with the successful operation of a sexual device. His lover is insensitive, self-absorbed. What is he—a former insane asylum inmate, whose motto used to be "share and share alike," but is now "fair is fair"—supposed to do? Exuberant in the music of its ordinary utterances, anguished and poignant in its declaration of the facts of life, Zimzum is Lish's most compelling novel.

Zimzum

Zimzum
Author: Gordon Lish
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Total Pages: 122
Release: 1993
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

"Call it zimzum: how we manage the scandal of our progress from desire to the void, through contraction and distractedness." "In this perilously original work, composed of six rigorously crafted parts - and informed by a desperately libidinous, grotesquely comic rage - one of the most controversial figures in contemporary American letters brilliantly captures our humanity and Zeitgeist. Central to the novel is the ravishing shriek of a man who seeks to preserve what little there is left to him." "It is as if his head were in an ever-tightening vise as he frantically seeks connection with others, knowing all the while the futility of the enterprise. He yearns for some carnal knowledge. He is obsessed with the successful operation of a sexual device. His lover is insensitive, self-absorbed. What is he - a former insane asylum inmate, whose motto used to be "share and share alike;" but is now "fair is fair" - supposed to do?" "Exuberant in the music of its ordinary utterances, anguished and poignant in its declaration of the facts of life, Zimzum is Lish's most compelling novel to date."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Thinking God

Thinking God
Author: Alan Brill
Publisher: KTAV Publishing House, Inc.
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2002
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780881257267

This work is the first study in any language of the thought and writings of Rabbi Zadok HaKohen of Lublin (1823-1900), who created a blend of ecstatic Hasidism and intellectual Talmud study. With extensive citations of his writings, it will be an entry point to his thought for many American readers. To illuminate R. Zadok's innovative spiritual path, in which one attains mystical experience through intellectual study of Torah, Brill explores the realm of spiritual psychology with particular attention to individual growth, sin, determinism, and pluralism. He shows that R. Zadok's thought combined mystical, Aristotelian, and psychological elements. This work also sheds important light on Lithuanian talmudic intellectualism and Polish Hasidism. It is the first book to present a critical, analytical portrait of hasidic theology. Particular attention is paid to R. Zadok's teacher, Rabbi Mordekhai Leiner of Izbica, whose individualistic philosophy undergirds R. Zadok's teachings on the subject of free will. Finally, this superb study addresses the question of how a Jewish thinker in a traditional milieu was able to derive a theology with many elements we would consider modern, even though he was largely insulated from and, in theory, opposed to contemporary Western, non-religious thinkers. Published in association with Yeshiva University Press

Interpreting Judaism in a Postmodern Age

Interpreting Judaism in a Postmodern Age
Author: Steven Kepnes
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 412
Release: 1996
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780814746752

Twelve Jewish studies scholars interpret Jewish texts from various postmodern critical stances, finding resonances between the theories of interpretation and the texts themselves e.g. "the word" as cosmology in both deconstructionism and the Torah. The papers examine deconstruction and the bible, Talmudic cultural poetics, Kabbalistic Hermeneutics, struggles over the Hebrew canon, postmodernism and the Holocaust, Zionism and post-Zionist discourses, and Jewish feminist identity. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Kenosis Creativity Architecture

Kenosis Creativity Architecture
Author: Randall S. Lindstrom
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2021-03-21
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000347729

Kenosis Creativity Architecture locates and explores creativity’s grounding in the ancient concept of kenosis, the “emptying” that allows creativity to happen; that makes appearance possible. It concretises that grounding through architecture—a primal expression of human creativity—critically examining, for the first time, kenotic instantiations evidenced in four iconic, international projects; works by Kahn, Pei, Ando, and Libeskind. Then, in a final turn, the potentiality of architecture’s own emptying is probed. Architect and author Randall Lindstrom draws on Western and Eastern philosophy, including that of Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, Vattimo, Nishida, and Nishitani, as well as on the theology of Christianity, Judaism, and aspects of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam. Every chapter expands the argument that, if responsiveness to our world is taken seriously—if proper and sustainable responses are to be realised—then a deeper understanding of creativity, and so kenosis, is essential. This book opens-up a way of thinking about creativity and humanity’s readiness to be creative. It thereby presents a crucial enquiry—at the nexus of architecture, philosophy, and theology—for researchers, graduate and postgraduate students, and practitioners alike.

Hasidism Incarnate

Hasidism Incarnate
Author: Shaul Magid
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2014-12-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0804793468

Hasidism Incarnate contends that much of modern Judaism in the West developed in reaction to Christianity and in defense of Judaism as a unique tradition. Ironically enough, this occurred even as modern Judaism increasingly dovetailed with Christianity with regard to its ethos, aesthetics, and attitude toward ritual and faith. Shaul Magid argues that the Hasidic movement in Eastern Europe constitutes an alternative "modernity," one that opens a new window on Jewish theological history. Unlike Judaism in German lands, Hasidism did not develop under a "Christian gaze" and had no need to be apologetic of its positions. Unburdened by an apologetic agenda (at least toward Christianity), it offered a particular reading of medieval Jewish Kabbalah filtered through a focus on the charismatic leader that resulted in a religious worldview that has much in common with Christianity. It is not that Hasidic masters knew about Christianity; rather, the basic tenets of Christianity remained present, albeit often in veiled form, in much kabbalistic teaching that Hasidism took up in its portrayal of the charismatic figure of the zaddik, whom it often described in supernatural terms.

Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought

Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought
Author: Lenn E. Goodman
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1438404409

This book deals primarily with the problem of the one and the many. The problems of creation, of evil, of revelation, and of ethics are all treated as special cases of the general problem of relating the finite to the infinite, the many to the one. The authors focus on the unifying theme of mediation, the means by which the Absolute relates to the here and now. The principal figures studied include Philo, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Isaac Israeli, Avicenna, Ibn Gabirol, Al-Ghazâlî, Abraham Ibn Daud, Maimonides, Averroes, Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, Gersonides, Nahmanides, Ibn Falaquera, Narboni, Albalag, Leone Ebreo (Judah Abarbanel), and Spinoza, as well as such Kabbalistic thinkers as Bahir, Cordovero, Luria, Moses de Leon, Ya'akov ben Sheshet, Isaac the Blind, Menahem Renanti, Shem Tov ben Shem Tov, Azriel of Gerona, Alemanno, Luzzato, Cordovero, and Abraham Herrera. The authors include David Winston, John Dillon, Carl Mathis, Bernard McGinn, Arthur Hyman, Alfred Ivry, Lenn E. Goodman, Menachem Kellner, David Burrell, Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, David Bleich, Seymour Feldman, Steven Katz, Moshe Idel, David Novak, Hubert Dethier, Richard Popkin, and Robert McLaren. Taken together, these essays offer an impressive historical survey of the ideas, achievements, and philosophic struggles of a group of men who worked to form a unique and durable tradition that bridged the gap between rival confessions and sects—mystics, rationalists, and empiricists; Jews, Christians, and Muslims. This is a philosophic source whose vitality is not yet exhausted.

The Faith of the Mithnagdim

The Faith of the Mithnagdim
Author: Allan Nadler
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 1999-07-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780801861826

The Faith of the Mithnagdim is the first study of the theological roots of the Mithnagdic objection to Hasidism. Allan Nadler's pioneering effort fills the void in scholarship on Mithnagdic thought and corrects the impression that there were no compelling theological alternatives to Hasidism during the period of its rapid spread across Eastern Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. In Nadler's account, Mithnagdism emerges as a highly developed religious outlook that is essentially conservative, deeply dualistic, and profoundly pessimistic about humanity's spiritual potential—all in stark contrast to Hasidism's optimism and aggressive encouragement of mysticism and religious rapture among its followers.