The New Age of Kabbalah Research

2020 ◽  
pp. 62-101
Author(s):  
Boaz Huss
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Age ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter examines the new directions and perspectives that emerged in the research of Jewish mysticism in the late twentieth century. It discusses the theoretical and methodological changes that transpired that undermined many of Buber and Scholem’s basic assumptions but also the perseverance—and even intensification—of the use of the term mysticism as a fundamental category. The chapter demonstrates that the changes that occurred within the field were to a great extent delineated by the theological logic of the research field. The chapter examines definitions of mysticism among Kabbalah researchers and identifies their modern theological suppositions. This theological paradigm, I maintain, explains the ideological affinities between Kabbalah research and today’s alternative spiritual movements, first and foremost, the New Age.

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.

Not Only Forgotten but Never Known: The Life and Contributions of Jiří Langer

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-205
Author(s):  
Martin A. Schulman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
Freudian Theory ◽  
Psychoanalytic Understanding ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Jiří Langer was one of the first contributors to a psychoanalytic understanding of Jewish rituals and Jewish mysticism through his book The Eroticism of Kabbalah and two articles published in Imago in the 1920s and 1930s. He also was a practising Chassidic Jew, the only one to publish in an analytic journal until the late twentieth century. This article deals with his transition from an assimilated Prague family to a Belzer Chassid, his interpretation of Jewish symbols through a Freudian lens as well as his friendship with Kafka. The article also tries to understand the appeal of Chassidism as an outlet for his homosexual desires and as a regulator of his self-esteem. Langer's life, although short, was a fascinating journey of self-discovery and an attempt to synthesize Jewish mysticism, cultural anthropology and Freudian theory.

The Wisdom of Indigo Children: An Emphatic Restatement of the Value of American Children

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 60-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah W. Whedon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Young People ◽  
Attention Deficit Disorder ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
New Age ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
American Children ◽  
Twentieth Century America ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

In late twentieth-century America the notion of Indigo children emerged. Said to have indigo-colored auras and unique spiritual abilities, these young people have had difficulty fitting into social institutions and are often diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. This article argues that good children turned bad through psychological illness were reinscribed as good with the aid of New Age beliefs and practices. These New Age components included ideas about auras, millennialism, and personal transformation.

A New-Age Search for Order

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Gray White
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
New Age ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Post Modernism ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Great Awakenings ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter demonstrates that Americans felt alone, angry, alienated, and isolated in the 1990s, and that they marched with likeminded people to both express these feelings and to find ways to take personal responsibility for their healing and renewal. This chapter compares the late twentieth century to the early twentieth century search for order that historians Robert Weibe and TJ Jackson Lears discuss. It also looks at the periods of Great Awakenings for points of comparison. To show why Americans were so disquieted, this chapter discusses the 1990s and the dislocations that impacted Americans by defining the new reality of postmodernism. It concludes by explaining how the different marches relate to post-modernism and why marches matter.

scholarly journals Religious Faith as Cultural Heritage at the Refuge for World Truths

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 207
Author(s):  
Aaron Raverty
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
New Age ◽  
Interreligious Dialogue ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Old Spanish ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Faith undergirds the Refuge for World Truths, a multireligious heritage-scape that emerged out of an old Spanish land grant adjacent to the Wild West mining and ranching town of Crestone, Colorado. Established by an entrepreneurial husband-and-wife team in the late twentieth century, the Refuge’s spiritual centers were founded upon different faith commitments. Christian, [Sufi] Muslim, and Baha’i centers adhere to a monotheistic faith and claim divine revelation as the source of their presence in the Refuge. New Age, polytheistic, and nontheistic groups base their faith claim on the personal mystical revelations of “Glenn,” a local peripatetic and self-described prophet who hailed the arrival of the original couple. Two stints of ethnographic research point to the spiritual centers’ public ritual performances as both invitations to pilgrims to intensify this faith and as functional cogs in the integration and continuity of the heritage-scape’s ritual economy. Finally, the faith expressions underlying the Refuge for World Truths allow this unique locality to champion interreligious dialogue as a method for addressing diversity and negotiating potential onsite conflict on the path to peaceful mutuality.

Nine Centuries of Man

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Gender Expectations ◽  
Court Records ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Police Reports ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Scottish History ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

What did it mean to be a man in Scotland over the past nine centuries? Scotland, with its stereotypes of the kilted warrior and the industrial ‘hard man’, has long been characterised in masculine terms, but there has been little historical exploration of masculinity in a wider context. This interdisciplinary collection examines a diverse range of the multiple and changing forms of masculinities from the late eleventh to the late twentieth century, exploring the ways in which Scottish society through the ages defined expectations for men and their behaviour. How men reacted to those expectations is examined through sources such as documentary materials, medieval seals, romances, poetry, begging letters, police reports and court records, charity records, oral histories and personal correspondence. Focusing upon the wide range of activities and roles undertaken by men – work, fatherhood and play, violence and war, sex and commerce – the book also illustrates the range of masculinities that affected or were internalised by men. Together, the chapters illustrate some of the ways Scotland’s gender expectations have changed over the centuries and how, more generally, masculinities have informed the path of Scottish history

Trey Ellis's Platitudes: Redefining Black Voices

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-76
Author(s):  
Quan Manh Ha
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
Black Voices ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
One Year ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Trey Ellis has emerged as a prominent African American writer of the late-twentieth century, despite the small number of his published works. “The New Black Aesthetic,” an essay that he first published in CaUaloo in 1989, one year after the publication of his first novel, Platitudes, stands as a manifesto that defines and articulates his perspective on the emerging black literary voices and culture of the time, and on “the future of African American artistic expression” in the postmodern era.1 According to Eric Lott, Ellis's novel parodies the literary and cultural conflict between such male experimental writers as lshmael Reed and such female realist writers as Alice Walker.2 Thus, Ellis's primary purpose in writing Platitudes is to redefine how African Americans should be represented in fiction, implying that neither of the dominant approaches can completely articulate late-twentieth-century black experience when practiced in isolation. In its final passages, Platitudes represents a synthesis of the two literary modes or styles, and it embodies quite fully the diversity of black cultural identities at the end of the twentieth century as it extends African American literature beyond racial issues. In this way, the novel exemplifies the literary agenda that Ellis suggests in his theoretical essay.

A New Denominational Historiography?

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-263
Author(s):  
John F. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Recent Analysis ◽  
General Factor ◽  
Religious Organization ◽  
Religious Institution ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
American Society ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Over the last decade, a noteworthy number of published studies have, in one fashion or another, been defined with reference to religious denominations. This is an arresting fact, for, coincidentally, the status of religious denominations in the society has been called into question. Some formerly powerful bodies have lost membership (at least relatively speaking) and now experience reduced influence, while newer forms of religious organization(s)—e.g., parachurch groups and loosely structured movements—have flourished. The most compelling recent analysis of religion in modern American society gives relatively little attention to them. Why, then, have publications in large numbers appeared, in scale almost seeming to be correlated inversely to this trend?No single answer to this question is adequate. Surely one general factor is that historians often “work out of phase” with contemporary social change. If denominations have been displaced as a form of religious institution in society in the late twentieth century, then their prominence in earlier eras is all the more intriguing.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document