Veda And Torah

Enlarges our understanding of the term "scripture" through a comparative study of Veda and Torah.

This book stands at the crossroads between Jerusalem and Benares and opens a long awaited conversation between two ancient religious traditions. It represents the first serious attempt by a group of eminent scholars of Judaic and Indian studies to take seriously the cross-cultural resonances among the Judaic and Hindu traditions. The essays in the first part of the volume explore the historical connections and influences between the two traditions, including evidence of borrowed elements and the adaptation of Jewish Indian communities to Hindu culture. The essays in the second part focus primarily on resonances between particular conceptual complexes and practices in the two traditions, including comparative analyses of representations of Veda and Torah, legal formulations of dharma and halakhah, and conceptions of union with the Divine in Hindu Tantra and Kabbalah.

In Torah and Dharma: Jewish Seekers in Eastern Religions, psychologist Dr. Judith Linzer explores the phenomenon of Jews seeking spiritual fulfillment in Eastern religions, particularly Buddhism. Written with the intention of encouraging unity and understanding amongst all Jews, Torah and Dharma will allow those who are not seeking meaning outside of traditional Judaism to better understand those who are, and it will provide comfort and inspiration to those embarking on a spiritual quest of their own.

This work is subtitled, "Om Shalom: Explorations of a Jewish Yogi". It expresses insights, connections and syntheses between the traditions of Judaism, including Jewish mysticism and kabala; the Western Mystical Tradition, including Theosophy and related subjects; and the Eastern Spiritual Tradition as expressed through Indian Yoga and Vedanta. It contains a succinct summary of basic spiritual principles distilled from years of study, meditation and self-transformation.The improved and expanded second edition contains new material on Hebrew Mantras and Jewish Healing Meditation, along with other additions and revisions. Learn about aspects of Yoga beyond the mat and Judaism beyond religion, and the many connections between these two ancient spiritual traditions. Includes practical guides to basic Yoga and Jewish meditation and healing meditation and their theoretical underpinnings. This Second Edition is the same as the other one listed, just with a different ISBN for different distribution.

This work provides an anthology of close textual readings and examinations of a wide range of topics by leading scholars in interreligious scholarship and Hindu-Jewish dialogue, offering innovative approaches to categories such as ritual, sacrifice, ethics, and theology while underscoring affinities between Hindu and Jewish philosophy and religion

Abraham Abulafia, the founder of the ecstatic Kabbalah, exposed a mysticism that includes a deep interest in language as a universe in itself, to be studied as the philosophers study nature, in order to attain higher knowledge than natural science and speculative philosophy. The status of Hebrew as the natural, intellectual, and primordial language is discussed against the background of the medieval speculations regarding this topic. Abulafia proposed an elaborate hermeneutical system, unique in the whole Kabbalistic literature, for both its systematic exposition and the eccentric exegetical devices it describes. Various versions of this sevenfold system occur in several manuscripts that are collected and analyzed here in detail for the first time. Torah was regarded by Abulafia as the most important text, reflecting the constitution of the intellectual world and being identical with the Active intellect and even to God Himself. On the other hand, Torah was interpreted in Abulafia's Kabbalah as an allegory to the psychological processes of the mystic, an approach different from the regular Kabbalistic interpretation of this text as a symbolic corpus reflecting the divine intrasefirotic life.

Reproduction of the original: Mystic Christianity by Yogi Ramacharaka

Examines how embodiment is conceived and experienced in South Asian religions. Refiguring the Body provides a sustained interrogation of categories and models of the body grounded in the distinctive idioms of South Asian religions, particularly Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The contributors engage prevailing theories of the body in the Western academy that derive from philosophy, social theory, and feminist and gender studies. At the same time, they recognize the limitations of applying Western theoretical models as the default epistemological framework for understanding notions of embodiment that derive from non-Western cultures. Divided into three sections, this collection of essays explores material bodies, embodied selves, and perfected forms of embodiment; divine bodies and devotional bodies; and gendered logics defining male and female bodies. The contributors seek to establish theory parity in scholarly investigations and to re-figure body theories by taking seriously the contributions of South Asian discourses to theorizing the body. Barbara A. Holdrege is Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the South Asian Studies Committee at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her books include Bhakti and Embodiment: Fashioning Divine Bodies and Devotional Bodies in Kṛṣṇạ Bhakti and Veda and Torah: Transcending the Textuality of Scripture, also published by SUNY Press. Karen Pechilis is NEH Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Comparative Religion Department at Drew University. Her books include Interpreting Devotion: The Poetry and Legacy of a Female Bhakti Saint of India and The Embodiment of Bhakti.