Kabbalah

Abstract: Gershom Scholem was a precocious teenager when he became Walter Benjamin's close friend. His account of that relationship - crucial for both men until Benjamin's suicide in 1940 - is at once a tribute to his friend's genius and a lament for his personal and, as Scholem sees it, intellectual self-destructiveness. Prickly but also poignant, this book revisits passionate engagements with Marxism and the Kabbalah, Germany and Palestine, as if Scholem sought to summon up his friend's spirit, to have the last word in the argument that might have saved his life.

Abstract: Sommer utilizes a lost ancient Near Eastern perception of divinity according to which a god has more than one body and fluid, unbounded selves. Though the dominant strains of biblical religion rejected it, a monotheistic version of this theological intuition is found in some biblical texts. Later Jewish and Christian thinkers inherited this ancient way of thinking; ideas such as the sefirot in Kabbalah and the trinity in Christianity represent a late version of this theology. This book forces us to rethink the distinction between monotheism and polytheism, as this notion of divine fluidity is found in both polytheistic cultures (Babylonia, Assyria, Canaan) and monotheistic ones (biblical religion, Jewish mysticism, Christianity), whereas it is absent in some polytheistic cultures (classical Greece). The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel has important repercussions not only for biblical scholarship and comparative religion but for Jewish-Christian dialogue.

Abstract: Prologue: That, too, I must have known Kabbalah Kabbalah and Criticism The Necessity of Misreading Epilogue: The Name Spoken Over the Water Introduction 1 Does the Testament of Abraham Belong to a Genre? 2 Humour in the Testament of Abraham 3 Characterization of Abraham 4 Characterization of Michael 5 Death in the Testament of Abraham 6 The Plot of the Testament of Abraham 7 Comparison of the Greek Manuscripts 8 Conclusion Appendix 1: The 54 Narrative Units of the Testament of Abraham Appendix 2: Citations of the Three Manuscript Families Bibliography

Abstract: Isaac Luria (1534-1572) is one of the most extraordinary and influential mystical figures in the history of Judaism, a visionary teacher who helped shape the course of nearly all subsequent Jewish mysticism. Given his importance, it is remarkable that this is the first scholarly work on him in English. Most studies of Lurianic Kabbalah focus on Luria's mythic and speculative ideas or on the ritual and contemplative practices he taught. The central premise of this book is that Lurianic Kabbalah was first and foremost a lived and living phenomenon in an actual social world. Thus the book focuses on Luria the person and on his relationship to his disciples. What attracted Luria's students to him? How did they react to his inspired and charismatic behavior? And what roles did Luria and his students see themselves playing in their collective quest for repair of the cosmos and messianic redemption?