Absorbing Perfections

In this wide-ranging discussion of Kabbalah—from the mystical trends of medieval Judaism to modern Hasidism—one of the world’s foremost scholars considers different visions of the nature of the sacred text and of the methods to interpret it. Moshe Idel takes as a starting point the fact that the postbiblical Jewish world lost its geographical center with the destruction of the temple and so was left with a textual center, the Holy Book. Idel argues that a text-oriented religion produced language-centered forms of mysticism. Against this background, the author demonstrates how various Jewish mystics amplified the content of the Scriptures so as to include everything: the world, or God, for example. Thus the text becomes a major realm for contemplation, and the interpretation of the text frequently becomes an encounter with the deepest realms of reality. Idel delineates the particular hermeneutics belonging to Jewish mysticism, investigates the progressive filling of the text with secrets and hidden levels of meaning, and considers in detail the various interpretive strategies needed to decodify the arcane dimensions of the text.

In Old World, New Mirrors Moshe Idel turns his gaze on figures as diverse as Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, Franz Kafka and Franz Rosenzweig, Arnaldo Momigliano and Paul Celan, Abraham Heschel and George Steiner to reflect on their relationships to Judaism in a cosmopolitan, mostly European, context.

In its historical development from late antiquity to the present, western esotericism has repeatedly been the issue of polemical discourse. This volume engages the polemical structures that underlie esoteric identities and the controversy about esoteric currents in European history.

A study of the life and work of 'the Maggid"—a major figure in the mystical thought of early Hasidism Enshrined in Jewish memory simply as "the Maggid" (preacher), Rabbi Dov Ber Friedman of Mezritsh (1704-1772) played a critical role in the formation of Hasidism, the movement of mystical renewal that became one of the most important and successful forces in modern Jewish life. In Speaking Infinities, Ariel Evan Mayse turns to the homilies of the Maggid to explore the place of words in mystical experience. He argues that the Maggid's theory of language is the key to unpacking his abstract mystical theology as well as his teachings on the devotional life and religious practice. Mayse shows how Dov Ber's vision of language emerges from his encounters with Ba'al Shem Tov (the BeSHT), the founder of Hasidic Judaism, whose teaching put forward a vision of radical divine immanence. Taking the BeSHT's notion of God's immanence as a kind of linguistic vitality echoing in the cosmos, Dov Ber developed a theory of language in which all human tongues, even in their mundane forms, have the potential to become sacred when returned to their divine source. Analyzing homilies and theological meditations on language, Mayse demonstrates that Dov Ber was an innovative thinker and contends that, in many respects, it was Dov Ber, rather than the BeSHT, who was the true founder of Hasidism as it took root, and the foremost shaper of its early theology. Speaking Infinities offers an exploration of this introspective mystic's life, gleaned from scattered anecdotes, legends, and historical sources, distinguishing the historical personage from the figure that emerges from the composite array of textual and oral traditions that have shaped the memory of the Maggid and his legacy.

After Franz Kafka died in 1924, his novels and short stories were published in ways that downplayed both their author's roots in Prague and his engagement with Jewish tradition and language, so as to secure their place in the German literary canon. Now, nearly a century after Kafka began to create his fictions, Germany, Israel, and the Czech Republic lay claim to his legacy. Kafka's Jewish Languages brings Kafka's stature as a specifically Jewish writer into focus. David Suchoff explores the Yiddish and modern Hebrew that inspired Kafka's vision of tradition. Citing the Jewish sources crucial to the development of Kafka's style, the book demonstrates the intimate relationship between the author's Jewish modes of expression and the larger literary significance of his works. Suchoff shows how "The Judgment" evokes Yiddish as a language of comic curse and examines how Yiddish, African American, and culturally Zionist voices appear in the unfinished novel, Amerika. In his reading of The Trial, Suchoff highlights the black humor Kafka learned from the Yiddish theater, and he interprets The Castle in light of Kafka's involvement with the renewal of the Hebrew language. Finally, he uncovers the Yiddish and Hebrew meanings behind Kafka's "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse-Folk" and considers the recent legal case in Tel Aviv over the possession of Kafka's missing manuscripts as a parable of the transnational meanings of his writing.

Ascensions on high took many forms in Jewish mysticism and they permeated most of its history from its inception until Hasidism. The book surveys the various categories, with an emphasis on the architectural images of the ascent, like the resort to images of pillars, lines, and ladders. After surveying the variety of scholarly approaches to religion, the author also offers what he proposes as an eclectic approach, and a perspectivist one. The latter recommends to examine religious phenomena from a variety of perspectives. The author investigates the specific issue of the pillar in Jewish mysticism by comparing it to the archaic resort to pillars recurring in rural societies. Given the fact that the ascent of the soul and pillars constituted the concerns of two main Romanian scholars of religion, Ioan P. Culianu and Mircea Eliade, Idel resorts to their views, and in the Concluding Remarks analyzes the emergence of Eliade's vision of Judaism on the basis of neglected sources.

Written in southern Italy in the tenth century, Shabbatai Donnolo s "Sefer Hakhmoni" is one of the earliest commentaries on "Sefer Ye irah." The volume offers the critical text, an annotated English translation, and a comprehensive introduction to Donnolo and his works.

A Legacy of Catholic-Jewish Dialogue: The Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Jerusalem Lectures chronicles the lecture series about faith, culture, and interreligious dialogue. Each lecture is written by some of the world's leading experts in the field of Catholic-Jewish relations.