“Authorized Guardians”

2020 ◽  
pp. 102-131
Author(s):  
Boaz Huss

The chapter examines phenomena that remained outside the scope of what was considered Jewish mysticism: the topics scholars chose to ignore. It discusses how researchers of Jewish mysticism relate to contemporary Hasidic and Kabbalistic movements and examines why the category was not applied to these movements. The chapter examines the claim of Buber, Scholem, and many of their followers that the Hasidism of the eighteenth century was the final stage of Jewish mysticism. It reveals why later forms of Kabbalah and Hasidism were not regarded as authentic expressions of Jewish mysticism, and why they did not, therefore, receive any scholarly attention but were the object of contempt. In this chapter, I show that the disregard of Scholem and his pupils toward the Kabbalistic formations of their times derived from a national-theological position and an Orientalist ambivalence. The researchers of Jewish mysticism—who viewed themselves as the authorized guardians of the Kabbalah—believed that the authentic continuation of the Jewish mystical tradition was rather to be found in academic research, which would reveal the historical significance of Kabbalah and Hasidism, and their mystical and metaphysical origins.

1985 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-75
Author(s):  
Alun C. Davies

With the recent publication of David S. Landes's Revolution in Time (1983) the business of clockmaking has begun to receive the scholarly attention that its historical significance warrants. In this finely etched case study, Mr. Davies draws on a remarkable business record—Samuel Roberts's Register of Clocks—to document a previously obscure chapter in the history of this frequently neglected business: the crafting, sale, and distribution of grandfather clocks in eighteenth-century rural Wales. And if, as Landes contends, “the consumption of timepieces may well be the best proxy measure of modernization,” then Davies's study illuminates a key development in the rise of the modern world.


2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-317
Author(s):  
Kurt Wurmli

Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata are recognized as the most influential creators of the contemporary Japanese dance form known today as butoh. Since its wild and avant-garde beginnings in the late 1950s, butoh has evolved into an established and appreciated art form throughout the world. Despite its popularity and strong influences on the international modern dance world, butoh only recently became an accepted subject for academic research in Japan as well as in the West. With the new opening of butoh research centers and archives—such as the Ohno Dance Studio Archives at BANK ART 1929 in Yokohama, the Kazuo Ohno Archives at Bologna University in Italy, and the Hijikata Tatsumi Archives at Keio University in Tokyo—serious scholarly attention has been given to the art of butoh's founders. However, the lack of firsthand sources by butoh artists reflecting their own work still poses great limitations for a deep understanding of the art form. Kazuo Ohno's World from Without and Within is not only the first full-length book in English about the master's life and work, but also offers a rare inside view of butoh.


Author(s):  
Byron L. Sherwin

This chapter evaluates Judah Loew's influence upon the Jewish mystical tradition which succeeded him. Rabbi Loew's writings made a significant impact upon the two major trends in the history of Jewish mysticism which flourished after his death: Sabbateanism and Hasidism. One may discover Loew's influences in the writings of Nathan of Gaza, the principal Sabbatean theologian. Indeed, Nathan's idea of salvation by faith rather than by deeds, an atypical notion in the history of Jewish messianism, may be traced directly to Loew's treatise on messianism. More profound and direct than his influence on Sabbateanism, however, was Judah Loew's impact upon Hasidism. Not only his literary style, but also many of Rabbi Loew's attitudes and views echo throughout Hasidic literature. Hasidic interest in Judah Loew reached its acme in the Przysucha-Kotsk school. One may also discern some influence of Judah Loew upon at least two additional Hasidic figures: Shneur Zalman of Liady and Gershon Hanokh Leiner of Radzyn.


Germinal ◽  
2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Émile Zola
Keyword(s):  

The Grégoires’ property, La Piolaine, was situated two kilometres to the east of Montsou, on the Joiselle road. It was a large square house of no particular style, built at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Of the vast lands which had originally depended...


1996 ◽  
pp. 415-426
Author(s):  
Joseph Dan

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.


2016 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-303
Author(s):  
Jetze Touber

Lactantius’s treatise De mortibus persecutorum, which celebrates the end of the persecutions of Christians in the Roman empire, was lost for six centuries. Its discovery in 1678 was a European event which set the sophisticated machinery of information exchange in the republic of letters in motion. Scholars joined forces in expounding the historical significance of the patristic text. However, this collective enterprise was also bound up with theological-political interests. Editors and commentators were all affected by affairs of state and ecclesiastical policy, which conditioned their engagement with the treatise. This article reviews the editorial history of De mortibus persecutorum, during the three decades in which it attracted scholarly attention, and it highlights the specific interests of the scholars involved. The focus will be on Gijsbert Cuper (1644–1716), often depicted as an exemplary member of the republic of letters. His paper legacy allows us to recover the theological-political concerns which informed his investigations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (20) ◽  
pp. 8705
Author(s):  
Pedro Luengo

The topic of museum illumination and conservation has been richly developed in recent years to take steps toward a zero-energy building concept. Most artworks preserved in museums’ expositions were designed for specifically defined light contexts, wherein daylight and seasonal changes were part of the artistic effect, an issue which has received little scholarly attention. From this premise, this paper aims to prove that defining the original illuminative context of artworks is required for a sustainable conservation, perception, and ultimate interpretation. To do this, a selection of seventeenth and eighteenth century churches and palaces from Europe, the Americas, and Asia will be presented using modern conservation frameworks for artworks. The results demonstrate that both aspects, chosen materials and light exposure, were connected, allowing the spaces to be effective without consuming too much electric lighting. This leads to a discussion about if museum displays should incorporate this context, if it is a more sustainable solution, and if it presents the artworks more accurately to visitors, even as other problems may arise.


Author(s):  
Kenneth Stow

This text presents an historical interpretation of the diary of an eighteenth-century Jewish woman who resisted the efforts of the papal authorities to force her religious conversion. After being seized by the papal police in Rome in May 1749, Anna del Monte, a Jew, kept a diary detailing her captors' efforts over the next thirteen days to force her conversion to Catholicism. Anna's powerful chronicle of her ordeal at the hands of authorities of the Roman Catholic Church, originally circulated by her brother Tranquillo in 1793, receives its first English-language translation along with an insightful interpretation in this book of the incident's legal and historical significance. The book's analysis of Anna's dramatic story of prejudice, injustice, resistance, and survival during her two-week imprisonment in the Roman House of Converts—and her brother's later efforts to protest state-sanctioned, religion-based abuses—provides a detailed view of the separate forces on either side of the struggle between religious and civil law in the years just prior to the massive political and social upheavals in America and Europe.


2014 ◽  
Vol 132 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Straub

Abstract Recent research on melodrama has stressed its versatility and ubiquity by approaching it as a mode of expression rather than a theatrical genre. A variety of contexts in which melodrama is at work have been explored, but only little scholarly attention has been paid to the relationship between melodrama and novels, short stories and novellas. This article proposes a typology of melodrama in narrative prose fiction, examining four different categories: Melodrama and Sentimentalism, Depiction of Melodramatic Performances in Narrative Prose Fiction, Theatrical Antics and Aesthetics in Narrative Prose Fiction and Meta-Melodrama. Its aim is to clarify the ways in which melodrama, ever since its early days on the stages of late eighteenth-century Europe, has interacted with fictional prose narratives, thereby shaping the literary imagination in the Anglophone world.


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