Academic literature on the topic 'Kabbalistic traditions'
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Journal articles on the topic "Kabbalistic traditions"
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Laura, Heidi. "Collected traditions and scattered secrets. Eclecticism and esotericism in the works of the 14th century ashkenazi kabbalist Menahem Ziyyoni of Cologne." Nordisk Judaistik/Scandinavian Jewish Studies 20, no. 1-2 (September 1, 1999): 19–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.30752/nj.69556.
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There are many examples of authors of mystical works who consciously chose to retreat the role of copyists and collectors of already existing traditions. The emphasis in Kabbalistic works is on recording mystical tradition, while personal reports of mystical experiences or clearly individual expositions of mystical themes are rarely found in the large corpus of Kabbalistic works. This article attempts to illuminate the special place of mosaic works and collectanea in Kabbalistic literature and its specific character, using the works of an unjustly neglected 14th century kabbalist as a focus. The writings of Ashkenazi kabbalist Menahem Ziyyoni are exemplary of the problem of collected works. Kabbalistic anthological works had an especially golden period in the 14th century. The mosaic works of the 14th century became a new way of continuing the zoharic project of an overarching hermeneutical system, which integrated and legitimated a number of different interpretations of the same text.
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Weiss, Judith. "Covert Jewish Sources of Christian Kabbalah: the Case of Guillaume Postel and ʿIyyun Traditions." Medieval Encounters 26, no. 1 (May 4, 2020): 1–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700674-12340058.
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Abstract The article focuses on Guillaume Postel’s Latin Zohar Commentary (1553), with the aim of uncovering a hitherto unknown influence of the medieval ʿIyyun Corpus on Postel’s Kabbalistic thought. Following a prefatory methodological exposition it is demonstrated that in addition to the more common Kabbalistic doctrines, such as those of the Zohar and other central theosophical-Kabbalistic treatises, Postel was also influenced by a different trend of Kabbalah, namely, the anonymous thirteenth-century mystical corpus originating in Languedoc, designated in scholarship as the ʿIyyun Writings. A reliable analysis of Kabbalistic Christian writings requires acquaintance with the writers’ sources, especially given the extent and divergence of medieval Kabbalistic literature. Therefore, we cannot make do with locating overt citations or references to known Kabbalistic treatises found in these writings, but also aim at uncovering covert Kabbalistic traditions which influenced them, as in the case of Postel and the ʿIyyun Corpus.
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Rubenstein, Jeffrey L. "From Mythic Motifs to Sustained Myth: The Revision of Rabbinic Traditions in Medieval Midrashim." Harvard Theological Review 89, no. 2 (April 1996): 131–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017816000031953.
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Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the mythic dimension of rabbinic thought. Much of this work emerged from debates between scholars of Jewish mysticism over the origins of kabbalistic myth. Should these origins be sought in external traditions that influenced medieval Judaism or within the rabbinic tradition? As is well known, Gershom Scholem claimed that the rabbis rejected myth in order to forge a Judaism based on rationality and law. Moshe Idel, on the other hand, argues that mythic conceptions and specifically the mythicization of Torah appear in rabbinic literature. While the medieval kabbalists elaborated and developed these ideas, they inherited a mythic worldview from the rabbis. Scholars are now increasingly likely to characterize many classical rabbinic sources as mythic. Medieval myth need not have been due to external influence, but should be seen as an internal development within Judaism. Despite the appearance of mythic thought in rabbinic literature, however, a tremendous gulf remains between rabbinic and kabbalistic myth. The full-blown theogonic and cosmogonic myths of the kabbalists, the complex divine structure of the Sefirot, and the detailed expressions of the theurgic effect of ritual (that is, the effect that specific rituals have upon God or the Sefirot) represent a mode of mythic thinking far more comprehensive than that of the rabbis. In rabbinic literature one finds mythic motifs—succinct, independent, and self–contained expressions—not fully developed myths. How exactly did rabbinic myth develop into medieval mystical myth?
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Sachs-Shmueli, Leore. "Maimonides’s Rationalization of the Incest Taboo, Its Reception in Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah, and Their Affinity to Aquinas." Harvard Theological Review 114, no. 3 (July 2021): 371–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017816021000249.
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AbstractThis article discusses Maimonides’s rationale for the incest taboo and traces its reception in Christian and kabbalistic traditions in the thirteenth century. Tracing the reception of Maimonides’s view enables recognition of the resemblance between Maimonides and Aquinas, the ambivalent stance toward Maimonides’s explanation expressed by Nahmanides, and the incorporation of Maimonides’s reasoning in one of the most systematic and enigmatic works of kabbalistic rationalization of the commandments, the Castilian Kabbalist Joseph of Hamadan’s The Book of the Rationales of the Negative Commandments. R. Joseph’s acceptance of Maimonidean principles and his integration of them in the theurgic Kabbalah reveal a conflict in the heart of its system and teach us about an important aspect of the theory of sexuality in Kabbalah. The inquiry offered here examines the inter-relations between divergent medieval religious trends in constructing the role of sexuality. Instead of the common presentation of Kabbalah as diverging from the ascetic positions of Jewish philosophy and Christianity, this analysis will elucidate Kabbalah’s continuity with them.
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Sachs-Shmueli, Leore. "Shagar’s Mystical Space: Moving between the Languages of Kabbalah, Hasidism, and Rav Kook." Religions 13, no. 1 (December 23, 2021): 10. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel13010010.
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This paper presents an analysis of the conflictual relationship between Shagar’s [Shimon Gershon Rosenberg] use of kabbalistic and Hasidic traditions and his search for mysticism via psychoanalysis and Continental philosophy. The study will shed light upon the tension between how Shagar defined and understood mysticism and how he defined kabbalistic language and the gap between his explicit and his implicit attitudes towards Kabbalah. I propose that mysticism was the central religious space that Shagar sought to create from his conflicting stance. Nonetheless, despite Shagar’s attempt to present himself as a direct theological descendant of the kabbalistic tradition, by way of his use of terms such as “the shattering of the vessels”, “Nothingness”, and “silence”, I will attempt to expose the dissonance between his yearning for this language and his rejection of it. My main analysis, at the heart of the article, will be based on the not-yet-released recording of his introductory lecture on Da’at Tevunot. It will be accompanied by a variety of sources from his books (edited by his pupils) to complete the picture.
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Karlsson, Thomas. "Kabbalah in Sweden." Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 20 (January 1, 2008): 88–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67329.
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This article examines the history of Kabbalah in Sweden. The reader is presented with an overall view to Kabbalah in Sweden: first, the Johannes Bureus and the Nordic Kabbalah, Kabbalah after Bureus, Kabbalistic literature, and last, Kabbalah in Sweden today. When the Kabbalah reached Sweden it was mainly the non-Jewish Kabbalah that gained influence, even if its Jewish roots were acknowledged. Johannes Bureus unites, in a similar fashion as do the Christian Kabbalists in continental Europe, Christian motifs with the symbolic world of the Kabbalah. Bureus, however, adds runes, ancient Norse gods and Gothic ideas in his own unique manner. The Kabbalah invites speculation and the search for correspondences which has caused the Kabbalah in Sweden to be united with a number of other traditions. Bureus combined the Kabbalah with runes and Gothicism; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we can find the Kabbalah in Freemasonry and Esoteric societies, while the Kabbalah in the twentieth century and onwards has been associated with New Age, Parapsychology and Indian Mysticism. Apart from Bureus, most Kabbalists in Sweden have followed the trends that flourished in the rest of the world. Bureus was the first to create a specifically Swedish interpretation of the Kabbalah.
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Werthmann, Tanja. "“Spirit to Spirit”: The Imagery of the Kiss in theZoharand its Possible Sources." Harvard Theological Review 111, no. 4 (October 2018): 586–609. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017816018000287.
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AbstractThe study explores the character and meaning of the imagery of the kiss in theZoharas an expression of dynamic union. In order to demonstrate the formation of a specific structure of ideas and their dynamics within Kabbalistic theosophy, theZoharicimagery found in the pericopeTerumahhas been situated here within the context of numerous sources, from which theZohar, through direct or indirect transmission, could have drawn its key elements. The metaphor of the kiss, which allows the Zoharic homily to embrace several central Kabbalistic concepts of love, presents love as a universal power, being comprised of two Neoplatonic notions, the hypostatic relation and the principle of “being contained in each other.” The analysis of the various sources across ancient Greek, medieval Islamic, and Christian traditions amounts to a different characterization of the meaning adduced thus far in scholarship regarding eros in Jewish mysticism and suggests a more plausible trajectory of influence of Greek sources in the early Kabbalah.
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Siegel, Irene. "A Judeo-Arab-Muslim Continuum: Edmond Amran El Maleh's Poetics of Fragments." PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 132, no. 1 (January 2017): 16–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2017.132.1.16.
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The work of Jewish Moroccan writer Edmond Amran El Maleh (1917–2010) explores the coextensive experience of Muslims and Jews in Morocco and the larger Arab-Mediterranean region, tracing a continuum of Judeo-Arab-Muslim affiliation. This notion of affiliation is reflected in a highly dynamic, fluid poetics, fed by a secular engagement with Jewish and Islamic mystical traditions and with a range of modernist and postcolonial writers. El Maleh found deep inspiration in Walter Benjamin's work on the ethical dimension of allegory as informed by kabbalistic notions of language. The chaotic profusion of events and images in El Maleh's third novel, Mille ans, un jour (“A Thousand Years, One Day”) reflects Benjamin's “Kabbalistic shard” and his valorization of the “scraps of history.” This discursive mode challenges the totalizing narratives and racialized binaries undergirding forms of violence that El Maleh identifies in colonialism and fascism, as well as in contemporary Zionism. His work thus aims to dissolve the false oppositional binary through which the identities of Jew and Arab have come to be understood.
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Wineman, Aryeh. "The Metamorphosis of Narrative Traditions: Two Stories from Sixteenth-Century Safed." AJS Review 10, no. 2 (1985): 165–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0364009400001331.
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A storehouse of narratives can be found within the literature which emerged from and gave expression to the spiritual developments in sixteenth-century Safed. These include legends, moral tales and exempla, anecdotes, and parables which can be garnered from the volumes of the kabbalistic ethical works and other literature of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries. In this study we shall seek to explore two such narratives of that period, stories which, while quite different from one another in character, both draw upon much earlier narrative traditions which have been subtly but radically remolded. The immediate aim of tracing the prehistory of these two stories and their routes of metamorphosis and of comparing the Safed stories with the sources which lie behind them is to clarify the literary and historical significance of the two narratives in the precise form which they acquired in the Safed experience. On a broader scale, such exploration might serve to exemplify the transformation of narrative traditions under the impact of a worldview and a cultural-spiritual milieu.
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Pittle, Kevin D. "Jewish Mystical Insights for Christian Anthropologists." OKH Journal: Anthropological Ethnography and Analysis Through the Eyes of Christian Faith 7, no. 1 (January 31, 2023): 1–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.18251/okh.v7i1.179.
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The Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, as reflected in ethnohistoric documents underwriting the beliefs and practices of contemporary neo-kabbalists, practitioners of shamanic Judaism, Jewitchery, and other para-Judaic spiritualities (including Hermetic Qabalah and Christian Cabala) illustrate a cosmological theory of “kabbalistic perspectivism” analogous to the Amazonian perspectivism reported by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1998). Consideration of kabbalistic perspectivism provides Messianic Jewish, gentile Christian, and other religiously committed anthropologists opportunity for practicing comparative theology. It also may serve as a model for developing “methodological possibilianism,” an ontologically-oriented complement to the epistemological model of critical realism popularized by Christian anthropologists Paul Hiebert and Charles Kraft.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Kabbalistic traditions"
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Marvell, Leon, of Western Sydney Hawkesbury University, Faculty of Social Inquiry, and School of Humanities. "Hermes Recidivus: a postmodern reading of the recrudescence of the Hermetic imaginary." THESIS_FSI_HUM_Marvell_L.xml, 1998. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/114.
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It is proposed that there exist unmistakable resonances of the Hermetic world-view in much of the science of the modern period. Hermes Recidivus examines key figurations operating within both the imaginaries of Hermeticism and modern(ist) science with a view to developing a postmodern critical position in regard to the discourse of the modernist scientific project. It is proposed that a re-examination of the notions surrounding these key figurations may provide new hermeneutical tools, and that the imaginary of Hermeticism represents a potentially rich resource from which to develop alternative modes of critical enquiry. It is furthermore proposed that the mechanism by which these Hermetic resonances are perpetuated within the discourse of modernist science takes the form of a logic of the imaginary associated with key figurations within Hermeticism. Certain figural elements associated with the Hermetic imaginary seem to possess a constancy that travels across temporal and disciplinary barriers, encouraging the assumption that these figures are central organising principles within both Hermeticism and modern science. Specifically these figurations are those of the anima mundi and the Gnostic 'alien light' or spintheros. It is proposed that these figurations take the form of 'ideal objects' within both the discourses of Hermeticism and modernist science. The individual chapters respectively examine the relevance of the Hermetic imaginary to Artificial Intelligence research and cybernetic theory; occidental and oriental traditions of the 'subtle body' and their relevance to developing a postmodern perspective on the question of mind-body dualism; the 'metaphysical geometry' of key figures within the Hermetic and Kabbalistic traditions and their resonances within mathematical 'catastrophe theory' as developed by Rene Thom; the Hermetic alchemy of Robbert Fludd as revealed in his text Truth's Golden Harrow, and its relevance in regard to the subject-object split of modern(ist) scientific consciousness and, finally, the influence of Kabbalistic and Hermetic figuration on the development of Leibniz's monadological philosophy and on the notion of the 'field' in contemporary physical theoryDoctor of Philosophy (PhD)
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Berman, N. A. ""מעלות תאומיות שאינן מתאימות" "Improper twins" : the ambivalent "Other Side" in the Zohar and kabbalistic tradition." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2014. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1435419/.
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This thesis explores the portrayals of the demonic, the Sitra Aḥra, the “Other Side,” in the Zohar and closely related texts. Such portrayals form a key theme in the Zohar, a collection of 13th century mystical, mythological, and homiletical texts, written in Spain. In proposing new approaches to this theme, the thesis also advances new ways of understanding the work’s literary virtuosity and ontological innovativeness. At the rhetorical level, the thesis focuses on close readings, attending to the distinctive ways Zoharic texts employ “schemes” and “tropes” (Quintilian) in a manner that constructs and manages ambivalence about the divine/demonic relationship. This methodology grows out of a rejection of past scholarly approaches, which tended to read such texts as reflective of large-scale cultural-historical phenomena, such as the putative divide between Gnosticism and Neoplatonism. Such approaches bypass the distinctiveness of Zoharic writing, in which all precursor texts, be they scriptural, rabbinic, or theological, become transformed into elements of novel literary works. At the ontological level, the thesis rejects the unreflective notions of “catharsis” that have often guided past Zohar scholarship’s understandings of the relationship between the divine and the demonic. The inadequacy of such notions appears particularly when Zoharic texts’ literary specificities are foregrounded. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, the thesis illuminates the phenomenon that Zoharic texts continually portray the recurrent emergence, collapse, and re-consolidation of divine subjects and structures as inextricably bound up with that of demonic subjects and structures. The approach taken by the thesis highlights the centrality of “abjection” (Kristeva) for the emergence of differentiated subjects, human or divine. Reading the Zohar in this way facilitates a comprehensive embrace of the distinctiveness of its textuality and an explication of its vision of the ways the differentiation of divine and human subjects from their “Others” is both indispensable and yet ultimately impossible.
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Marvell, Leon. "Hermes Recidivus: a postmodern reading of the recrudescence of the Hermetic imaginary." Thesis, 1998. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/114.
Full textAbstract:
It is proposed that there exist unmistakable resonances of the Hermetic world-view in much of the science of the modern period. Hermes Recidivus examines key figurations operating within both the imaginaries of Hermeticism and modern(ist) science with a view to developing a postmodern critical position in regard to the discourse of the modernist scientific project. It is proposed that a re-examination of the notions surrounding these key figurations may provide new hermeneutical tools, and that the imaginary of Hermeticism represents a potentially rich resource from which to develop alternative modes of critical enquiry. It is furthermore proposed that the mechanism by which these Hermetic resonances are perpetuated within the discourse of modernist science takes the form of a logic of the imaginary associated with key figurations within Hermeticism. Certain figural elements associated with the Hermetic imaginary seem to possess a constancy that travels across temporal and disciplinary barriers, encouraging the assumption that these figures are central organising principles within both Hermeticism and modern science. Specifically these figurations are those of the anima mundi and the Gnostic 'alien light' or spintheros. It is proposed that these figurations take the form of 'ideal objects' within both the discourses of Hermeticism and modernist science. The individual chapters respectively examine the relevance of the Hermetic imaginary to Artificial Intelligence research and cybernetic theory; occidental and oriental traditions of the 'subtle body' and their relevance to developing a postmodern perspective on the question of mind-body dualism; the 'metaphysical geometry' of key figures within the Hermetic and Kabbalistic traditions and their resonances within mathematical 'catastrophe theory' as developed by Rene Thom; the Hermetic alchemy of Robbert Fludd as revealed in his text Truth's Golden Harrow, and its relevance in regard to the subject-object split of modern(ist) scientific consciousness and, finally, the influence of Kabbalistic and Hermetic figuration on the development of Leibniz's monadological philosophy and on the notion of the 'field' in contemporary physical theory
Books on the topic "Kabbalistic traditions"
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Dobin, Joel C. Kabbalistic astrology: The sacred tradition of the Hebrew sages. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1999.
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The Kabbalistic Tradition. London: Penguin Group UK, 2010.
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Halbertal, Moshe. Nahmanides. Translated by Daniel Tabak. Yale University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300140910.001.0001.
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A broad, systematic account of one of the most original and creative kabbalists, biblical interpreters, and Talmudic scholars the Jewish tradition has ever produced, Rabbi Moses b. Nahman (1194-1270), known in English as Nahmanides, was the greatest Talmudic scholar of the thirteenth century and one of the deepest and most original biblical interpreters. Beyond his monumental scholastic achievements, Nahmanides was a distinguished kabbalist and mystic, and in his commentary on the Torah he dispensed esoteric kabbalistic teachings that he termed “By Way of Truth.” This broad, systematic account of Nahmanides's thought explores his conception of halakhah and his approach to the central concerns of medieval Jewish thought, including notions of God, history, revelation, and the reasons for the commandments. The relationship between Nahmanides's kabbalah and mysticism and the existential religious drive that nourishes them, as well as the legal and exoteric aspects of his thinking, are at the center of the book's portrayal of Nahmanides as a complex and transformative thinker.
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Fleer, Gedaliah. Healing in the Kabbalistic Tradition. Frederick Fell Publishers, 2000.
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Diamond, James A. Naming an Unnamable God. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198805694.003.0004.
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One of the most crucial sources for divulging knowledge about the nature of God and his relationship with his creation are the various names by which God is identified throughout the Hebrew Bible and the rabbinic corpus. This chapter examines those names, especially the Tetragrammaton, based on God’s revelation to Moses recorded in Exodus of the name “I will be who I will be.” Close readings of the biblical narratives as interpreted by all the Jewish intellectual traditions, including rabbinic/midrashic, rationalist/philosophical, and kabbalistic/mystical, reveal a God of “becoming” rather than the philosophical God of “being.” The encounter and dialogue, between Moses and God, out of which the name emerges is the moment that transformatively envisages all future divine–human encounters.
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The Kabbalistic Tradition An Anthology Of Jewish Mysticism. Penguin Books, 2009.
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Koussa, Karim El. Kabbalistic Visions: And the Secrets of the Phoenician Tradition. Sunbury Press, Inc., 2021.
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Koussa, Karim El. Kabbalistic Visions: And the Secrets of the Phoenician Tradition. Sunbury Press, Inc., 2021.
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Flatto, Sharon. Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth-century Prague. Liverpool University Press, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781904113393.001.0001.
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Kabbalah played a surprisingly prominent and far-reaching role in eighteenth-century Prague. This book uncovers the centrality of this mystical tradition for Prague's influential Jewish community and its pre-eminent rabbinic authority, Ezekiel Landau, chief rabbi from 1754 to 1793. A rabbinic leader who is best known for his halakhic responsa collection the Noda biyehudah, Landau is generally considered a staunch opponent of esoteric practices and public kabbalistic discourse. This book challenges this portrayal, exposing the importance of Kabbalah in his work and thought and demonstrating his novel use of teachings from diverse kabbalistic schools. It also identifies the historical events and cultural forces underlying his reluctance to discuss Kabbalah publicly, including the rise of the hasidic movement and the acculturation spurred by the 1781 Habsburg Toleranzpatent. The book offers the first systematic overview of the eighteenth-century Jewish community of Prague, and the first critical account of Landau's life and writings, which continue to shape Jewish law and rabbinic thought to this day. Extensively examining Landau's rabbinic corpus, as well as a variety of archival and published German, Yiddish, and Hebrew sources, the book provides a unique glimpse into the spiritual and psychological world of eighteenth-century Prague Jewry. By unravelling and exploring the many diverse threads that were woven into the fabric of Prague's eighteenth-century Jewish life, the book offers a comprehensive portrayal of rabbinic culture at its height in one of the largest and most important centres of European Jewry.
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Ostriker, Alicia. The Wandering Jewess. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198722618.003.0011.
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This chapter discusses the author’s development as a feminist poet who began wrestling with the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition in the mid-1980s, focusing primarily on two of her books. The Nakedness of the Fathers (1994) is part midrash, part autobiography, re-telling biblical narratives from Genesis to Job and beyond, from a Jewish woman’s perspective. The book combines poetry and prose; it concludes by anticipating ‘the return of the Mother’, who in Kabbalistic tradition is called Shekhinah and is understood to be the female half of an androgynous Godhead. The Volcano Sequence (2002) is an experimental volume of poems which address a slippery ‘you’ that is sometimes the God of the Hebrew Bible, sometimes the speaker’s Mother, sometimes the Shekhinah. The chapter concludes by discussing poetry and prose engaged in analogous projects intended to re-define the nature of God and of the Sacred with emphasis on the sacred female.
Book chapters on the topic "Kabbalistic traditions"
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"Merging Traditions: The Sha’ar haShamayim Yeshiva." In Kabbalistic Circles in Jerusalem (1896-1948), 64–95. BRILL, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004321649_004.
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Halbertal, Moshe. "Death, Sin, Law, and Redemption." In Nahmanides, 103–36. Yale University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300140910.003.0004.
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This chapter explores the existential foundations of Nahmanides's worldview. It analyzes the primary elements of the human condition: death, sin, and redemption. It talks also about Nahmanides's view that humanity's fate and existential condition reflect the divine drama itself. The chapter clarifies Nahmanides's conception of the Godhead, the chain of being, and the universe. It talks about Nahmanides's Talmudic novellae that provide two references to his kabbalistic traditions. One reference concerns the difference between a vow and an oath, while the other discusses the theory of prophecy in an aggadic context. It also explains how Nahmanides's kabbalistic ideas do not shape his particular halakhic determinations, even if kabbalah more broadly supplies the internal meaning of religious praxis.
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Flatto, Sharon. "Lurianic Kabbalah: Berur, Final Sparks, and the Mission of Exile." In Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth-century Prague, 172–90. Liverpool University Press, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781904113393.003.0012.
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This chapter talks about Lurianic Kabbalah as the dominant kabbalistic school that had a prominent place in Ezekiel Landau's writings despite the tremendous influence of Cordoverian doctrines in central and eastern Europe during the eighteenth century. It explains Lurianic Kabbalah as the branch of Kabbalah that primarily deals with complex systems of theosophical and theurgical doctrines at the expense of ecstatic traditions. It also cites the ideal of devekut and the modes of worship promoted in ecstatic Kabbalah that play a subsidiary role in most Lurianic works. The chapter recounts how Landau frequently uses the precise linguistic phrases, terms, and ideas found in Lurianic writings, which reveal his deep immersion in Lurianic Kabbalah during his youth in Poland. It mentions Hayim Vital, who wrote one of the first and most comprehensive books of Lurianic theosophy, the Ets hayim or Shemonah she'arim.
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Franks, Paul. "From World-Soul to Universal Organism." In Schelling's Philosophy, 71–92. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198812814.003.0005.
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What is the world-soul referred to in Schelling’s 1797 treatise? Is he committed to the untenable view that the cosmos is alive? First, I argue that Schelling deploys a strategy pioneered by Maimon: the retrieval, within a post-critical framework, of Platonic and kabbalistic traditions consolidated in the Renaissance. In his essay on the world-soul as hypothesis, however, Maimon’s argument, though motivated by Kant’s interest in Blumenbach, remains pre-critical. Then I offer an interpretation of Schelling’s world-soul as an organizing principle intended to unify organic and non-organic matter, a principle that organizes forces by means of feedback and equilibration, and that is intended to provide the non-teleological basis for evolution into non-living bodies, living bodies, and ultimately conscious agents. According to Schelling’s understanding of Kant’s critical turn, the world-soul is a physicalized version of a Platonic-kabbalistic concept that plays a role within a post-critical, dynamic and evolutionary account of nature.
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Halbertal, Moshe. "Custom and the History of Halakhah." In Nahmanides, 67–102. Yale University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300140910.003.0003.
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This chapter focuses on Nahmanides's conception of halakhic history and his role within it, including his self-consciousness as a halakhist. It explains the complex interrelationships between halakhah and kabbalah in Nahmanides's thought. It also describes how Nahmanides's prodigious creativity in the field of halakhah stood in a certain tension with his self-consciousness as a kabbalist. The chapter looks into Nahmanides's conception of kabbalah that developed from discord with contemporary kabbalists, such as R. Azriel of Gerona and R. Jacob b. Sheshet. It also recounts the great flowering of kabbalistic literature at the end of the thirteenth century that culminated in the creative and innovative Zohar and stood in opposition to the traditional character of Nahmanides's kabbalah and his disciples.
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Krawczyk, Aryeh M. "PERITEXTUAL ENCODING FOR THE METATRON / YAHOEL THEME IN THE KABBALISTIC SEFER HA-OT , OR “BOOK OF THE SIGN,” BY R. ABRAHAM ABULAFIA (1240–1292)." In Scribal Habits in Near Eastern Manuscript Traditions, 125–40. Gorgias Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.31826/9781463241964-009.
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"Kabbalistic Influences:." In Tradition, Interpretation, and Change, 219–54. Hebrew Union College Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvd7w76t.11.
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Huss, Boaz. "The Mystification of Kabbalah." In Mystifying Kabbalah, 132–56. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190086961.003.0006.
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This chapter examines how the application of the category of “mysticism” to Kabbalah and Hasidism shaped the image and practice of Kabbalah among the broader public. Subjugation of the Kabbalah to the category of mysticism led to an emphasis on Kabbalistic phenomena that were similar to what was perceived as mysticism, for example, reports of visions, ascension to other worlds, and union with God. Researchers assumed ecstatic visions and experiences underlay Kabbalistic texts, even when the text did not mention them. The chapter focuses on analyzing how the hegemonic perception of Kabbalah as “Jewish mysticism” led to a growing interest in the writings of the thirteenth-century Kabbalist Avraham Abulafia and to his description as the Jewish “mystic” par excellence. Despite Abulafia’s rejection from the traditional Kabbalistic canon, he became a current Kabbalistic cultural hero.
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Michaelson, Jay. "“To make a man in wholeness, stable and possessing eternal life”." In The Heresy of Jacob Frank, 91—C4.N35. Oxford University PressNew York, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197530634.003.0005.
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Abstract The Frankist quest, discussed in chapter 4, is to access the “world behind the curtain” and attain immortality. This journey, from baptism to Edom to Das—Frank’s term for his new religion, which may be understood as gnosis, the primary goal of Western esotericism—is a staged process involving secret keys, new clothes, rule over animals, mythical creatures drawn from Kabbalistic traditions, uniting with the Maiden, and finally passing through the “curtain” to meet the Big Brother. The quest is both heroic and tragic: Frank’s questing tales are chivalric and triumphalist, but his own mission has failed, which he blames on his followers. Chapter 4 engages with this material in the context of Leon Festinger’s classic study When Prophecy Fails and its subsequent critics. Preached by a failed leader in a borrowed castle in 1784, Frank’s myths promise power and immortality.
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Flatto, Sharon. "Prague’s Rabbinic Culture: Halakhah and Kabbalah." In Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth-century Prague, 40–63. Liverpool University Press, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781904113393.003.0003.
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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.
Conference papers on the topic "Kabbalistic traditions"
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Kochetkova, Uliana E. "SIGNIFICANCE OF DECIPHERING THE ADAM ALPHABET IN THE HISTORY OF PHONETIC RESEARCH." In 49th International Philological Conference in Memory of Professor Ludmila Verbitskaya (1936–2019). St. Petersburg State University, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.21638/11701/9785288062353.28.
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This study aims to consider the significance of deciphering the Hebrew alphabet for the history of phonetic thought. Hermetic and Kabbalistic teachings endowed the Hebrew language with a divine meaning. Traditionally considered as given to Adam by God, this alphabet was called the Alphabet of Adam. The novelty and relevance of the current work are defined by the lack of a comprehensive description of the relationship between these traditional ideas and phonetics. The need for it is caused by the earlier observations about the possible influence of the 17th century concepts on the results of later measurements of vowels with tuning forks, and by the widespread opinion about the low significance of this period in linguistic science history. Though there can be found some publications devoted to concrete authors of the 16th–17th centuries, their contribution to the development of phonetic sciences has not yet been acknowledged. The current research is based on primary and secondary sources in Latin, English, French and Russian. The analysis showed that deciphering the vowels of Hebrew alphabet led to the first attempt to accurately describe vowel acoustic features, the empirical study of their articulatory characteristics and to the search for the “ideal” alphabet built of iconic signs. It also allowed the authors to develop methods for teaching deaf-mutes and systematize vowels. Thus the initial hypothesis about the significance of deciphering the Alphabet of Adam for the history of phonetic thought was confirmed. Refs 25.