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As Light Before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist

Eitan P. Fishbane

This book explores the mystical thought of Isaac ben Samuel of Akko, a major medieval kabbalist whose work has until now received relatively little attention. Through consideration of an extensive ... More

This book explores the mystical thought of Isaac ben Samuel of Akko, a major medieval kabbalist whose work has until now received relatively little attention. Through consideration of an extensive literary corpus, including much that still remains in manuscript, this study examines an array of themes and questions that have great applicability to the comparative study of mysticism and the broader study of religion. These include prayer and the nature of mystical experience; meditative concentration directed to God; and the power of mental intention, authority, creativity, and the transmission of wisdom.Less

Contemplative Nation: A Philosophical Account of Jewish Theological Language

Cass Fisher

This book challenges the long-standing view that theology is not a vital part of the Jewish tradition. For political and philosophical reasons, both scholars of Judaism and Jewish thinkers have ... More

This book challenges the long-standing view that theology is not a vital part of the Jewish tradition. For political and philosophical reasons, both scholars of Judaism and Jewish thinkers have sought to minimize the role of theology in Judaism. This book constructs a new model for understanding Jewish theological language that emphasizes the central role of theological reflection in Judaism and the close relationship between theological reflection and religious practice in the Jewish tradition. Drawing on diverse philosophical resources, the book's model of Jewish theology embraces the multiple forms and functions of Jewish theological language. The book demonstrates the utility of this model by undertaking close readings of an early rabbinic commentary on the book of Exodus (Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael) and a work of modern philosophical theology (Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption). These readings advance the discussion of theology in rabbinics and modern Jewish thought and provide resources for constructive Jewish theology.Less

Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism

Shaul Magid

Hasidism Incarnate argues that much of modern Judaism in the west developed under what it calls a “Christian gaze,” that is, reacting to Christianity by defending Judaism, positing that Judaism is ... More

Hasidism Incarnate argues that much of modern Judaism in the west developed under what it calls a “Christian gaze,” that is, reacting to Christianity by defending Judaism, positing that Judaism is unlike Christianity. This is done, ironically, while modern Judaism is being constructed as quite similar to Christianity in terms of its ethos, aesthetics, and attitude toward ritual and faith. Hasidism, unlike Judaism in Western Europe, is not developing under a “Christian gaze” and thus does not need to be apologetic of its positions. Free from an apologetic agenda (at least toward Christianity) what we find in Hasidism is a particular reading of medieval Jewish Kabbalah filtered through a focus on the charismatic leader that produces a religious world-view that shares a great deal with basic tenets of Christianity. This is because the basic many of the basic tenets of Christianity remained present, albeit often veiled, in much of kabbalistic teaching that was adopted in Hasidism to portray its notion of the charismatic figure (zaddik), often in supernatural terms. Hasidism Incarnate offer close readings of classical Hasidic texts to show the “Christian” tropes, which may have originally been “Jewish,” that lie beneath the surface of this multi-layered and textured literature.Less

Jewish Dogs: An Image and Its Interpreters

Kenneth Stow

This is not a study of “anti-Semitism” or “anti-Judaism.” Instead, this book argues that to anchor claims of supersession, Catholics have viewed Jews as metaphoric—and sometimes not so ... More

This is not a study of “anti-Semitism” or “anti-Judaism.” Instead, this book argues that to anchor claims of supersession, Catholics have viewed Jews as metaphoric—and sometimes not so metaphoric—dogs. The dog has for millennia been the focus of impurity, and Catholicism fosters doctrines of physical purity that go hand in hand with those of ritual purity. The purity is that of the “one loaf” spoken of by St. Paul in Corinthians, which is, at once, the Eucharist and the collective Christian Corpus, the body of the faithful. Paul views this “loaf” as physically corruptible, and as John Chrysostom said at the close of the fourth century, the greatest threat to the loaf's purity are the Jews. They are the dogs who wish to steal the bread that belongs exclusively to the children. Eventually, Jews were said to attack the “loaf” through ritual murder and attempts to defile the Host itself; the victim of ritual murder is identified with the Host, as is common in Catholic martyrdom. Pope Pius IX still spoke of Jewish dogs barking throughout the streets of Rome in 1871. Other Catholic clergy were dismayed. This book is thus as much a study of Catholic doctrinal history as it is a study of Jews.Less

The Jews of Pinsk, 1506 to 1880

Mordechai Nadav

Mark Mirsky and Moshe Rosman (eds)

This is the first part of a major scholarly project about a small city in Eastern Europe where Jews were the majority of the population from the end of the eighteenth century. Pinsk boasted both ... More

This is the first part of a major scholarly project about a small city in Eastern Europe where Jews were the majority of the population from the end of the eighteenth century. Pinsk boasted both traditional rabbinic scholars and famous Hasidic figures, and over time became an international trade emporium, a center of the Jewish Enlightenment, a cradle of Zionism and the Jewish Labor movement, and a place where Orthodoxy struggled vigorously with modernity. The two volumes of Pinsk history were originally part of a literature created by Jews who survived the Holocaust and who were determined to keep in memory a vital world that flourished for half a millennium.Less

The Radical Enlightenment of Solomon Maimon: Judaism, Heresy, and Philosophy

Abraham P. Socher

With extraordinary chutzpa and deep philosophical seriousness, Solomon ben Joshua of Lithuania renamed himself after his medieval intellectual hero, Moses Maimonides. Solomon Maimon was perhaps the ... More

With extraordinary chutzpa and deep philosophical seriousness, Solomon ben Joshua of Lithuania renamed himself after his medieval intellectual hero, Moses Maimonides. Solomon Maimon was perhaps the most brilliant and certainly the most controversial figure of the late eighteenth-century Jewish Enlightenment. He scandalized rabbinic authorities, embarrassed Moses Mendelssohn, provoked Immanuel Kant, charmed Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and inspired Johann Gottlieb Fichte, among others. This study of Maimon integrates his idiosyncratic philosophical idealism with his popular autobiography, and with his early exegetical, mystical, and Maimonidean work in Hebrew. In doing so, it illuminates the intellectual and spiritual possibilities open to a European Jew at the turn of the nineteenth century.Less