Are mysticism and morality compatible or at odds with one another? If mystical experience embraces a form of non-dual consciousness, then in such a state of mind, the regulative dichotomy so basic to ethical discretion would seemingly be transcended and the very foundation for ethical decisions undermined. Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism is an investigation of the relationship of the mystical and moral as it is expressed in the particular tradition of Jewish mysticism known as the Kabbalah. The particular themes discussed include the denigration of the non-Jew as...
Are mysticism and morality compatible or at odds with one another? If mystical experience embraces a form of non-dual consciousness, then in such a st...
In a diverse and innovative selection of new essays by theologians and philosophers, this text examines one of the most primitive yet challenging questions to define human experience - that of why we suffer. As a theme uniting very different religious and cultural traditions, the problem of suffering presents us with conflicts of agency versus passivity, of degradation versus enrichment and of deprivation versus excess. Can the notion of goodness retain meaning in the face of real affliction, or is pain itself in conflict with meaning? And who decides that we must suffer, anyway?
In a diverse and innovative selection of new essays by theologians and philosophers, this text examines one of the most primitive yet challenging ques...
This highly original, provocative, and poetic work explores the nexus of time, truth, and death in the symbolic world of medieval kabbalah. Demonstrating that the historical and theoretical relationship between kabbalah and western philosophy is far more intimate and extensive than any previous scholar has ever suggested, Elliot R. Wolfson draws an extraordinary range of thinkers such as Frederic Jameson, Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig, William Blake, Julia Kristeva, Friedrich Schelling, and a host of kabbalistic figures into deep conversation with one another. Alef, Mem, Tau also...
This highly original, provocative, and poetic work explores the nexus of time, truth, and death in the symbolic world of medieval kabbalah. Demonstrat...
A comprehensive treatment of visionary experience in some of the main texts of Jewish mysticism, this book reveals the overwhelmingly visual nature of religious experience in Jewish spirituality from antiquity through the late Middle Ages. Using phenomenological and critical historical tools, Wolfson examines Jewish mystical texts from late antiquity, pre-kabbalistic sources from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, and twelfth- and thirteenth-century kabbalistic literature. His work demonstrates that the sense of sight assumes an epistemic priority in these writings, reflecting and...
A comprehensive treatment of visionary experience in some of the main texts of Jewish mysticism, this book reveals the overwhelmingly visual nature...
This book deals with aspects of the gender imaging of God in a variety of medieval kabbalistic sources. It provides the key to understanding the phenomenological structures of mystical experience as well as the thematic correlation of esotericism and eroticism that is central to the kabbalah. The author examines the role of gender utilizing current feminist studies and cultural anthropology. He explores the themes of the feminization of the Torah, the correlation of circumcision and vision of God, the phallocentric understanding of divine creation as a process of inscription mythologized as...
This book deals with aspects of the gender imaging of God in a variety of medieval kabbalistic sources. It provides the key to understanding the pheno...
This long-awaited, magisterial study-an unparalleled blend of philosophy, poetry, and philology-draws on theories of sexuality, phenomenology, comparative religion, philological writings on Kabbalah, Russian formalism, Wittgenstein, Rosenzweig, William Blake, and the very physics of the time-space continuum to establish what will surely be a highwater mark in work on Kabbalah. Not only a study of texts, Language, Eros, Being is perhaps the fullest confrontation of the body in Jewish studies, if not in religious studies as a whole. Elliot R. Wolfson explores the complex gender symbolism that...
This long-awaited, magisterial study-an unparalleled blend of philosophy, poetry, and philology-draws on theories of sexuality, phenomenology, compara...
This long-awaited, magisterial study-an unparalleled blend of philosophy, poetry, and philology-draws on theories of sexuality, phenomenology, comparative religion, philological writings on Kabbalah, Russian formalism, Wittgenstein, Rosenzweig, William Blake, and the very physics of the time-space continuum to establish what will surely be a highwater mark in work on Kabbalah. Not only a study of texts, Language, Eros, Being is perhaps the fullest confrontation of the body in Jewish studies, if not in religious studies as a whole.Elliot R. Wolfson explores the complex gender symbolism that...
This long-awaited, magisterial study-an unparalleled blend of philosophy, poetry, and philology-draws on theories of sexuality, phenomenology, compara...
Footdreams and Treetales is a collection of ninety-two poems spanning several decades. Like paintings that attempt to render visible the invisible, the poems reflect Wolfson's interests in philosophy, the history of religions, and, in particular, the mystical dimensions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Although explicit references to the divine are rarely found in the poems, they issue from an encounter with the mystery of transcendence, performatively embodying the dialectic of concealment and disclosure.Seeking to articulate the unsaying that makes possible...
Footdreams and Treetales is a collection of ninety-two poems spanning several decades. Like paintings that attempt to render visible the invisible, th...
Breaking with strictly historical or textual perspectives, this book explores Jewish philosophy as philosophy. Often regarded as too technical for Judaic studies and too religious for philosophy departments, Jewish philosophy has had an ambiguous position in the academy. These provocative essays propose new models for the study of Jewish philosophy that embrace wider intellectual arenas including linguistics, poetics, aesthetics, and visual culture as a path toward understanding the particular philosophic concerns of Judaism. As they reread classic Jewish texts, the essays articulate a new...
Breaking with strictly historical or textual perspectives, this book explores Jewish philosophy as philosophy. Often regarded as too technical for ...
