Imagery Techniques in Modern Jewish Mysticism

Imagery Techniques in Modern Jewish Mysticism
Author: Daniel Reiser
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2018-07-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110535882

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This book analyzes and describes the development and aspects of imagery techniques, a primary mode of mystical experience, in twentieth century Jewish mysticism. These techniques, in contrast to linguistic techniques in medieval Kabbalah and in contrast to early Hasidism, have all the characteristics of a full screenplay, a long and complicated plot woven together from many scenes, a kind of a feature film. Research on this development and nature of the imagery experience is carried out through comparison to similar developments in philosophy and psychology and is fruitfully contextualized within broader trends of western and eastern mysticism.

Kabbalah

Kabbalah
Author: Shahar Arzy
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2015-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300152361

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"In this original study, Moshe Idel, an eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism and thought, and the cognitive neuroscientist and neurologist Shahar Arzy combine their considerable expertise to explore the mysteries of the Kabbalah from an entirely new perspective: that of the human brain. In lieu of the theological, sociological, and psychoanalytic approaches that have generally dominated the study of ecstatic mystical experiences, the authors endeavor to decode the brain mechanisms underlying these phenomena. Arzy and Idel analyze first-person descriptions to explore the Kabbalistic techniques employed by most prominent Jewish mystics to effect bodily reduplications, dissociations, and other phenomena, and compare them with recent neurological observationsand modern-day laboratory experiments. The resultant study offers readers a scientific, more brain-based understanding of how ecstatic Kabbalists achieved their most precious mystical experiences. The study further demonstrates how these Kabbalists have long functioned as pioneering investigators of the human self"--

Mystifying Kabbalah

Mystifying Kabbalah
Author: Boaz Huss
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2020
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0190086963

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Chapter 1: The modern concept of mysticism -- Chapter 2: Jewish mysticism and national theology -- Chapter 3: The new age of Kabbalah research -- Chapter 4: "Authorized guardians": the rejection of occult and contemporary Kabbalah -- Chapter 5: The mystification of Kabbalah: Abraham Abulafia in contemporary Kabbalah.

A History of Kabbalah

A History of Kabbalah
Author: Jonathan Garb
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 525
Release: 2020-07-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1108882978

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Jonathan Garb's A History of Kabbalah: From the Early Modern Period to the Present Day is a lucid and sophisticated account of the multifaceted nature of Jewish mysticism, focusing on its development from the spiritual revolution that took place in Safed in the sixteenth century until the present. Opening the secrets of the kabbalah to a wider audience, Garb judiciously argued that how important the mystical and esoteric tradition has been in Jewish history and in the cultural and intellectual life of Europe more generally. One of the more methodologically innovative aspects of Garb's book is his contention that kabbalah became a major factor in the religious life of Jews in the modern age due to print and others forms of rapid communication, a process that has magnified significantly in recent years due to the digital revolution. Informative and provocative, A History of Kabbalah will surely be of interest to a wide readership.

Hasidism, Suffering, and Renewal

Hasidism, Suffering, and Renewal
Author: Don Seeman
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 438
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 143848402X

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Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (1889–1943) was a remarkable Hasidic mystic, leader, and educator. He confronted the secularization and dislocation of Polish Jews after World War I, the failure of the traditional educational system, and the devastation of the Holocaust, in which he lost all his close family and eventually his own life. Thanks to a new critical edition of his Warsaw Ghetto sermons, scholars have begun to reassess the relationship between Shapira's literary and educational attainments, his prewar mysticism, and his Holocaust experience, and to reexamine the question of faith—or its collapse—in the Warsaw Ghetto. This interdisciplinary volume, the first such work devoted to a twentieth-century Hasidic leader, integrates social and intellectual history along with theological, literary, and anthropological analyses of Shapira's legacy. It raises theoretical and methodological questions related to the study of Jewish thought and mysticism, but also contributes to contemporary conversations about topics such as spiritual renewal and radical religious experience, the literature of suffering, and perhaps most pressingly, the question of faith and meaning—or their rupture—in the wake of genocide.

Canonization and Alterity

Canonization and Alterity
Author: Gilad Sharvit
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2020-07-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110668173

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This volume offers an examination of varied forms of expressions of heresy in Jewish history, thought and literature. Contributions explore the formative role of the figure of the heretic and of heretic thought in the development of the Jewish traditions from antiquity to the 20th century. Chapters explore the role of heresy in the Hellenic period and Rabbinic literature; the significance of heresy to Kabbalah, and the critical and often formative importance the challenge of heresy plays for modern thinkers such as Spinoza, Freud, and Derrida, and literary figures such as Kafka, Tchernikhovsky, and I.B. Singer. Examining heresy as a boundary issue constitutive for the formation of Jewish tradition, this book contributes to a better understanding of the significance of the figure of the heretic for tradition more generally.

The Way of Splendor

The Way of Splendor
Author: Edward Hoffman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2007
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 9780742552494

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Dr. Edward Hoffman, world-renowned thinker and writer in humanistic psychology, reveals how the Kabbalah exerted a profound influence on the establishment and growth of Western psychological thought. With a new introduction and updated bibliography, The Way of Splendor: The 25th Anniversary begins with an historical presentation of Kabalistic metaphysics and cosmology, then discusses the psychological dimensions of Kabbalah on such topics as dreams, meditation, sexuality, community, health and emotions.

Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah

Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah
Author: Jonathan Garb
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2011-05-15
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0226282074

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Theory of shamanism, trance, and modern Kabbalah -- The shamanic process: descent and fiery transformations -- Empowerment through trance -- Shamanic Hasidism -- Hasidic trance -- Trance and the nomian.

Enchanted Chains

Enchanted Chains
Author: Moshe Idel
Publisher:
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2005
Genre: Cabala
ISBN:

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Theology, Fantasy, and the Imagination

Theology, Fantasy, and the Imagination
Author: Andrew D. Thrasher
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2023-07-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1978712197

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Theology, Fantasy, and the Imagination offers analyses of the theological, philosophical, and religious imagination found in fantasy literature, the theological imagination, and table-top games. Part I offers an invocation to the study through a theological reflection of the “old magic.” Part II analyzes classical Christian fantasy—ranging from dogmatic theological reflection on the fantastic imagination to analyses of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Part III analyzes the post-Christian turn in fantasy after about 1960 through today—featuring methodological, theological, and philosophical essays that reflect a movement beyond Christianity in the fantasy literature and writings of Rabbi Shagar, Ursula le Guin, Terry Pratchett, Robert Jordan and David Eddings, and Brandon Sanderson and Orson Scott Card. Part IV closes with two analyses of the religious and philosophical dimensions of table-top games, including Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: the Gathering. Theology, Fantasy, and the Imagination offers astute analyses of how theological fantasy actually is by articulating the religious, philosophical, and theological dimensions of the fantastic imagination.