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This book presents a new approach to the study of Religious Zionism. In counter-distinction to the prevalent fundamentalist approach, it argues that mainstream of Religious Zionism is a romantic religious nationalist movement in which the modern idea of self-expression and related notions, such as the free and authentic self and the overcoming of alienation, forms its philosophical core. By showing how such notions are combined with conservative and un-modern cultural and political goals (such as the restoration of a messianic kingdom), it provides a profoundly complex and nuanced account both of pervasiveness of modern notions in contemporary culture and of the modern aspects of conservativ...
Recognizing the seemingly universal notion of a grammatical cosmos, this volume addresses the question of how grammar and culturally encoded sounds and signs provide cognitive maps of reality in a variety of great civilizations.
This volume offers a narrative history of modern Kabbalah, from the sixteenth century to the present. Covering all sub-periods, schools, and figures, Jonathan Garb demonstrates how Kabbalah expanded over the last few centuries, and how it became an important player, first in the European, subsequently in global cultural and intellectual domains. Indeed, study of the Kabbalah can be found on virtually every continent and in many languages, despite of the destruction of many centres in the mid-twentieth century. Garb explores the sociological, psychological, scholastic and ritual dimensions of kabbalistic ways of life in their geographical and cultural contexts. Focusing on several important mystical and literary figures, he shows how modern Kabbalah is both deeply embedded in modern Jewish life, yet has become an independent, professionalized sub-world. He also traces how Kabbalah was influenced by, and contributed to the process of modernization.
What is good character? What are the traits of a good person? How should virtues be cultivated? How should vices be avoided? The history of Jewish literature is filled with reflection on questions of character and virtue such as these, reflecting a wide range of contexts and influences. Beginning with the Bible and culminating with twenty-first-century feminism and environmentalism, Jewish Virtue Ethics explores thirty-five influential Jewish approaches to character and virtue. Virtue ethics has been a burgeoning field of moral inquiry among academic philosophers in the postwar period. Although Jewish ethics has also flourished as an academic (and practical) field, attention to the role of virtue in Jewish thought has been underdeveloped. This volume seeks to illuminate its centrality not only for readers primarily interested in Jewish ethics but also for readers who take other approaches to virtue ethics, including within the Western virtue ethics tradition. The original essays written for this volume provide valuable sources for philosophical reflection.
Why do people seek a connection to something beyond the social dimensions of the world? Ecstatic experiences are often labelled religious, spiritual, mystical or even sacred. However, ecstasy is not just extraordinary; for many people throughout the world it is an ordinary part of daily life. The Handbook highlights the diverse individuals who have experienced ecstasy in the past and present from ordinary people to mystics, pastors, healers, spirit mediums and urban/neo/therapeutic shamans. Chapters show that ecstasy may be experienced during trance, possession, prayer, and even through the use of drugs, such as soma, peyote, ayahuasca, ibogaine, mushrooms, LSD, and other substances. While institutional expressions of religion may be on the decline, experiences of religious ecstasy and interactions among living people and gods, saints, angels, and demons individually and collectively, are happening everywhere - occurring at home, online, in the community, and through prayer, dance, song, possession, and the ingestion of drugs. Ecstatic religious experience, as this handbook shows, provides meaning, belonging, and, for some, profit in the late capitalist marketplace.
In Yearnings of the Soul, Jonathan Garb uncovers a crucial thread in the story of modern Kabbalah and modern mysticism more generally: psychology. Returning psychology to its roots as an attempt to understand the soul, he traces the manifold interactions between psychology and spirituality that have arisen over five centuries of Kabbalistic writing, from sixteenth-century Galilee to twenty-first-century New York. In doing so, he shows just how rich Kabbalah's psychological tradition is and how much it can offer to the corpus of modern psychological knowledge. Garb follows the gradual disappearance of the soul from modern philosophy while drawing attention to its continued persistence as a to...
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.
A noted expert on Kabbalah, Jonathan Garb places the 'kabbalistic Renaissance' within the global context of the rise of other forms of spirituality, including Sufism and Tibetan Buddhism.
Der Begriff »Aufklärung« steht für eine Wertekonfiguration, die - universelle Gültigkeit beanspruchend - Freiheit und Gleichheit zum Allgemeingut erklärt. Eine Analyse historischer »aufklärerischer« Prozesse verdeutlicht jedoch, dass diese keineswegs das Versprechen von individueller und kollektiver Emanzipation für alle gesellschaftlichen Subjekte gleichermaßen einlösen. Anhand zahlreicher Beispiele lässt sich zeigen, wie die als allgemeingültig postulierten aufklärerischen Werte mit partikularen Interessen religiöser, ethnischer und geschlechtlicher Minderheiten in Konflikt geraten können. Neben theoretischen Fragestellungen zu diesem Themenkomplex erörtern die im Band versammelten Beiträge Fallbeispiele aus dem Zeitraum vom 18. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart.