The Exegetical Craft of the Zohar: Toward an Appreciation

AJS Review ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eliezer Segal
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Jewish Philosophy ◽  
Biblical Commentaries ◽  
Guide Of The Perplexed

As a consequence of the specialization that thrives in current humanistic studies, it is not surprising that scholarship has tended to classify the literary creations of the past into fixed compartments. In the study of medieval Judaism, it is particularly common to follow the traditional division of disciplines into philosophy, Kabbalah, and rabbinism—a categorization that was indeed promoted by the medievals themselves. Following this way of thinking, the study of Rashi's biblical commentaries would be assigned to one class of scholars devoted to the study of rabbinic Judaism; Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed to experts in Jewish philosophy; and the Zohar to yet a third group consisting of specialists in Jewish mysticism.

The Rabbinic God and Mediaeval Judaism

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-390
Author(s):  
Dov Weiss
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
Essential Unity ◽  
Jewish Philosophy ◽  
The One ◽  
Modern Judaism

From the earliest stages of Wissenschaft des Judentums, scholars of Judaism typically read statements about God in the classical sources of Judaism with a mediaeval philosophical lens. By doing so, they sought to demonstrate the essential unity and continuity between rabbinic Judaism, later mediaeval Jewish philosophy and modern Judaism. In the late 1980s, the Maimonidean hold on rabbinic scholarship began to crack when the ‘revisionist school’ sought to drive a wedge between rabbinic Judaism, on the one hand, and Maimonidean Judaism, on the other hand, by highlighting the deep continuities and links between rabbinic Judaism and mediaeval Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah). The revisionist scholars regarded rabbinic Judaism as a pre-cursor to mediaeval Kabbalah rather than mediaeval Jewish philosophy. This article provides the history of scholarship on these two methods of reading rabbinic texts and then proposes that scholars adopt a third method. That is, building on the work of recent scholarship, we should confront theological rabbinic texts on their own terms, without the guiding hand of either mediaeval Jewish framework.

Four Entered Paradise Revisited

1995 ◽  
Vol 88 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-133
Author(s):  
Alon Goshen Gottstein
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
History Of Scholarship

The story of the four who enteredpardes, or the orchard, is thecrux interpretumof the study of ancient Jewish mysticism. The answer to the question of how much mysticism existed in rabbinic Judaism depends on the interpretation of this story. In the history of scholarship of the past several decades, two major approaches have been taken. One approach, spearheaded by Gershom Scholem, although by no means initiated by him, sees in this story a record or some testimony of a mystical experience. The various terms employed, and in particular the termpardes, are seen as expressive of a heavenly ascent into paradise, and thus as a testimony of a mystical experience. The other approach, which consciously seeks to tone down the mystical and ecstatic element of thepardesstory, sees in this story a parable. If it is a parable, then we do not have a record or testimony of an event of a mystical nature. Of course, even if the story is parabolic, the question of the subject of the parable remains open. Ephraim E. Urbach, who first took this line of interpretation, suggested that the story is a parable, and not a mystical record. The story refers, however, to the study ofmaʿaseh merkabah(“the work or story of the divine chariot,” referred to in the first chapter of Ezekiel), and thus retains esoteric significance.

The Study of Heikhalot Literature: Between Mystical Experience and Textual Artifact

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ra'Anan S. Boustan
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Complex Material ◽  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
Heterogeneous Nature ◽  
Material Conditions

This essay outlines the fundamental methodological and empirical advances that the study of Heikhalot literature has experienced during the past 25 years with the aim of encouraging specialists and enabling non-specialists to approach this complex material with greater precision and sophistication. The field of early Jewish mysticism has been profoundly shaped by the increasing integration in the humanities of cultural and material histories, resulting in an increased focus on scribal practice and other material conditions that shaped the production and transmission of these texts. Against previous assumptions, recent research has shown Heikhalot literature to be a radically unstable literature. This article will review the research tools (editions, concordances, translations, etc.) that now allow for careful analysis of Heikhalot and related texts. Tracing recent research, I demonstrate how our new understanding of the fluid and heterogeneous nature of the Heikhalot corpus will better enable scholars to pursue the important work of understanding its social and religious significance, within the broader landscape of late antique and medieval religions.

Hasidism: The Third Century

1996 ◽  
pp. 415-426
Author(s):  
Joseph Dan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Orthodox Judaism ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mystical Tradition ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter examines the third century of hasidism, considered the most enduring phenomenon in Orthodox Judaism in modern times. Gershom Scholem described hasidism as the ‘last phase’ in a Jewish mystical tradition that spanned nearly two millennia. Yet at the conclusion of his account of the movement in the last chapter of Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, he appeared, with some regret, to view his subject as a phenomenon of the past. The contrast between this view of hasidic history and the reality of Jewish life in the late twentieth century could not be greater. The hasidism of today cannot be treated as a lifeless relic from the past. It appears to have made a complete adjustment to twentieth-century technology, the mass media, and the intricate politics of democratic societies without surrendering its traditional identity in the process.

Prague’s Rabbinic Culture: Halakhah and Kabbalah

2010 ◽  
pp. 40-63
Author(s):  
Sharon Flatto
Keyword(s):  
Court System ◽  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
Unique Approach ◽  
Jewish Philosophy

This chapter chronicles the continued importance of halakhah and Kabbalah within the rabbinic culture and surveys Prague's largely overlooked talmudic academies, Jewish court system, and numerous rabbinic scholars. It considers the kabbalist and poet Avigdor Kara, who composed the well-known elegy Et kol hatela'ah and the famed Judah Loew ben Bezalel, who was commonly referred to as the Maharal. It also explains that the Maharal was a prolific and influential author who was best known for his unique approach to the aggadah, ethics, Jewish philosophy, and mysticism. The chapter describes Prague's leading rabbis during the late sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, such as Ephraim Solomon of Luntshitz, popularly referred to as Keli Yakar. It recounts Pragues' long tradition of Jewish mysticism, kabbalistic study, and publication of important kabbalistic works.

How Far was Krochmal Influenced by the Gaon Sherira ben Hanina in his Description of the Development of Oral Torah?

2002 ◽  
pp. 203-212
Author(s):  
Margarete Schlüter
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Guide Of The Perplexed

This chapter concerns Nahman Krochmal (1785–1840), a key figure in the development of Jewish spirituality in central and eastern Europe. It examines the extent to which Krochmal’s writings were influenced by the gaon of Pumbedita in Babylonia, Sherira (c.906–1006). Krochmal summed up his spiritual life and work in his incomplete study, Moreh nevukhei hazeman (‘guide of the perplexed of the time’). Its central theme is the Oral Torah, one of the pillars of rabbinic Judaism. In Krochmal’s time the Oral Torah was subjected to heavy criticism. But almost 850 years before Krochmal’s Moreh nevukhei hazeman, Sherira wrote a letter as a response to a series of questions concerning the formation of the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the Talmuds, etc., posed to him by Jacob ben Nissim on behalf of the holy community of Kairouan in North Africa.

Afterlife

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Ghost Story ◽  
Life After Death ◽  
The Past ◽  
Poetic Justice ◽  
Way Of Thinking

From classical antiquity onwards, writing about life after death has consistently served as a situation for questions of literary theory. The locations of the afterlife are hypotheticals and counterfactuals; they are the site of theory itself. Questions about authorship, for instance, have been articulated through the myth of Orpheus (in the forms recorded by Virgil and Ovid). The story of Orpheus tells of a poet who must go into the underworld to find the material for a tale of survivorship and loss, raising questions about the sources of creative inspiration, the art of trauma, and the suffering of the authentic artist. Dante’s imagined structures of an afterlife, in which punishments fit crimes with an apt poetic justice, have similarly been enlisted into one of the most important theoretical debates of the 20th century between formalists and historicists. The afterlife as a supplement to life’s time has also been used as a way of thinking about temporality and the implications for narrative as a literary mode that works with and through the philosophy of time. One of the most influential aspects of the literature of the afterlife to resonate in literary theory has been the ghost story. In its greatest manifestations, from Hamlet to The Turn of the Screw to Beloved, the ghost story forces its readers to acknowledge those elements of the past that refuse to be laid to rest, and it has therefore served as a vehicle for psychoanalytic questions about how processes of individual or collective memory are depicted in literary texts. In poststructuralist theory, the notion of the hauntological has also built its concepts in dialogue with earlier literary ghosts and become a way of thinking about language and its uncanny slippage between presence and absence. Subsequent critical work continued to develop hauntology into a way of understanding temporality and cultural history. Finally, the notion of prosopopoeia, or the voicing of the dead through writing, is perhaps the most far-reaching way of understanding the prevalence of dead voices as a literary trope, which reflects something of the processes of reading and writing themselves. The afterlife has therefore been a crucial source of generative metaphors for literary theory, as well as a topic and setting with an important literary history.

The Language of Flowers: Knowledge, Power and Ecology in Precolonial Bunyoro

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 107-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane Doyle
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
Environmental Knowledge ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
African Culture ◽  
Limited Evidence ◽  
The Past ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Western Uganda

The absence of writing from indigenous sub-Saharan cultures has often been identified as one of the key elements that distinguished African societies from those of Europe and Asia. Literacy permits an extension of the range of human intercourse, increased bureaucratic and commercial complexity, and an enlargement and stabilization of political scale. Some scholars suggest that it also encourages a more abstract and detached way of thinking about present-day problems. Writing is, moreover, commonly assumed to transform people's understanding of the past. The evidence, therefore, that the kingdom of Bunyoro in western Uganda possessed an indigenous form of writing is potentially of great significance. In this paper I examine the limited evidence that such a method of communication did exist, before analyzing its function and importance. I will argue that the use of a coded language of flowers in Bunyoro requires a reassessment of how power was exercised in precolonial interlacustrine kingdoms, of the nature of environmental knowledge in hierarchical African societies, and of Bunyoro's place in the historiography of east Africa.It is especially interesting that the form of writing that developed in Bunyoro was based on a floral code, as the absence of both writing and flowers in African culture have been used by Jack Goody as evidence of African culture's separateness from that of “Eurasia.” Goody has written that African peoples generally did not make significant use of flowers in worship, gift-giving or decoration. He does “not know of any indigenous use of odours,” nor of plants playing a role in stories or myths. This is thought to be because of Africa's “simple” agriculture, “non-complex” societies and absence of a “culture of luxury.”

Texts Don't have Ideologies

1995 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Fowl
Keyword(s):  
Social Practices ◽  
Ideological Criticism ◽  
Competing Interests ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Accepted Practice ◽  
A Site

AbstractOver the past fifteen years "ideological criticism" of the Bible has grown to become an accepted practice within the academy. It has provided a site where feminists, Marxists, liberation theologians and other interested parties have been able to engage in discussion aimed largely at displaying the wide variety of competing interests operating in both the production and interpretation of the Bible. Unfortunately, it is common among ideological critics of the Bible to speak of biblical texts as having ideologies. The thrust of this article is to claim that this way of thinking confuses a wide range of issues concerning the relationships between texts and the social practices which both generated those texts and are sustained by interpretations of particular texts. This position is defended by an examination of the various ways in which the Abraham story was read from Genesis through Philo, Paul, and Justin Martyr.

scholarly journals Olinda: memória e esquecimento

2001 ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Virgínia Pontual ◽  
Vera Milet
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
Historical Preservation ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Historical Sites ◽  
Cultural Marketing

Este artigo discute as recentes práticas urbanísticas em sítios históricos, destacando aquelas exaltadas, por uns, como um novo e eficiente modo de pensar as cidades e criticadas, por outros, como “culturalismo de mercado”. A essas críticas acrescenta-se outro argumento: o de que tais práticas usam a história do lugar como valor cultural, mas intervêm esvanecendo a sua especificidade e singularidade. Adotando a reconstituição histórica da formação do sítio de Olinda, responde à seguinte indagação: que práticas dos urbanistas levam ao esquecimento ou à memória da história do lugar? Assim, estão relatados fatos do passado que parecem denotar destruição e perda. No decorrer do artigo relaciona-se essa discussão aos relatos de memorialistas e textos de historiadores que informam sobre a formação da então vila da Capitania de Pernambuco.Palavras-chave: história; urbanismo; práticas urbanísticas; organização urbanística; memória; esquecimento. Abstract: This article discusses recent urban practices in historical sites. It highlights those practices which have been praised by some professionals for being a new and efficient way of thinking about towns and cities and criticised by others for being "cultural marketing". Another argument put forward is that some practices consider the history of a place as a cultural value but weaken its uniqueness and singularity through intervention. The article explores the reconstitution of the historical formation of the site of Olinda by answering the following question: which urban planning practices lead to the weakening or the strengthening of the historical preservation of a place? Thus, facts of the past are cited that seem to indicate why the result was destruction and loss. Throughout the article the discussion is related to the descriptions of annalists and texts of historians who report the formation of the then small town in the Captaincy of Pernambuco.Keywords: history; urban planning; practices; urban formation; memory; forgetfulness.

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