Kabbalah and the Founding of America
Title | Kabbalah and the Founding of America PDF eBook |
Author | Brian Ogren |
Publisher | NYU Press |
Pages | 328 |
Release | 2024-11-05 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1479835226 |
Explores the influence of Kabbalah in shaping America’s religious identity In 1688, a leading Quaker thinker and activist in what is now New Jersey penned a letter to one of his closest disciples concerning Kabbalah, or what he called the mystical theology of the Jews. Around that same time, one of the leading Puritan ministers developed a messianic theology based in part on the mystical conversion of the Jews. This led to the actual conversion of a Jew in Boston a few decades later, an event that directly produced the first kabbalistic book conceived of and published in America. That book was read by an eventual president of Yale College, who went on to engage in a deep study of Kabbalah that would prod him to involve the likes of Benjamin Franklin, and to give a public oration at Yale in 1781 calling for an infusion of Kabbalah and Jewish thought into the Protestant colleges of America. Kabbalah and the Founding of America traces the influence of Kabbalah on early Christian Americans. It offers a new picture of Jewish-Christian intellectual exchange in pre-Revolutionary America, and illuminates how Kabbalah helped to shape early American religious sensibilities. The volume demonstrates that key figures, including the well-known Puritan ministers Cotton Mather and Increase Mather and Yale University President Ezra Stiles, developed theological ideas that were deeply influenced by Kabbalah. Some of them set out to create a more universal Kabbalah, developing their ideas during a crucial time of national myth building, laying down precedents for developing notions of American exceptionalism. This book illustrates how, through fascinating and often surprising events, this unlikely inter-religious influence helped shape the United States and American identity.
Kabbalah in America
Title | Kabbalah in America PDF eBook |
Author | Brian Ogren |
Publisher | BRILL |
Pages | 421 |
Release | 2020-05-06 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 9004428143 |
Kabbalah in America includes chapters from leading experts in a variety of fields and is the first-ever comprehensive treatment of the title subject from colonial times until the present. As the first of its kind, it will set the tone for all future scholarship on the subject.
Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest
Title | Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest PDF eBook |
Author | Jody Myers |
Publisher | Praeger |
Pages | 278 |
Release | 2007-08-30 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN |
Dressing entirely in white is normal practice on a five-block stretch of Robertson Boulevard in West Los Angeles. Western men and women, garbed in white from their turbans to their Keds, traverse the busy streets surrounding the Sikh Temple. Further north, you have to wait until Friday afternoon to see white-clad young men in yarmulkes gathering outside the Kabbalah Learning Centre greeting each other with hugs, the spaces around them filled with women and children wearing multi-colored garments. Beyond this city street, one hears of the popularity of Kabbalah in the tabloids, as celebrities such as Madonna claim Kabbalah as their new religion. How have the obscure and offensive ideas of medieval Jewish mysticism, expressed in doctrines like the demonic power of women's menstrual blood or the soulless bodies of Gentiles, been made palatable for so many from all stripes of life? With KLCs in cities such as Boca Raton, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, Philadelphia, San Diego, Houston, and Las Vegas, the reach of this mystical tradition can be said to be nationwide. But how did its beliefs and practices become as fashionable as they are now? What do the KLCs teach so that adherents stay on? Is it a cult, a religion, or simply a system of universal wisdom as its leaders purport? Determined to uncover the secrets of this esoteric faith, the author embarked upon three 10-week Kabbalah classes among other learning opportunities, examined Kabbalah publications from the 1970s to the present, listened to KLC audio tapes, and interacted with adherents. This book presents her experiences and findings, and offers an overview of the history of the Kabbalah in this country, its beliefs and practices, its positions on health and healing of both the self and the world, its structure and outreach, and its views of men and women. She traces the origins of Kabbalah, offers a glimpse into its world, its relationships to Judaism, its place in American society, and its future.
Kabbalah of Creation
Title | Kabbalah of Creation PDF eBook |
Author | Eliahu Klein |
Publisher | North Atlantic Books |
Pages | 353 |
Release | 2005-07-13 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 1556435428 |
Kabbalah of Creation is a new translation of the early Kabbalah of Rabbi Isaac Luria, founder of the most influential Jewish mystical school of the last 400 years. Living in relative obscurity in Northern Galilee, Luria experienced a powerful epiphany that influenced his lyrical, influential text. Poetically and meditatively described, the range of subjects includes the revelation of the Godhead's light in the world and its relationship to every aspect of the human life cycle, including lovemaking, conception, gestation, birth, and maturation.
Kabbalah and Modernity
Title | Kabbalah and Modernity PDF eBook |
Author | Boʿaz Hus |
Publisher | BRILL |
Pages | 442 |
Release | 2010 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 9004182845 |
This volume brings together leading representatives of the recent debate about the persistence of kabbalah in the modern world. It breaks new ground for a better understanding of the role of kabbalah in modern religious, intellectual, and political discourse.
The Scandal of Kabbalah
Title | The Scandal of Kabbalah PDF eBook |
Author | Yaacob Dweck |
Publisher | Princeton University Press |
Pages | 297 |
Release | 2013-12-26 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0691162158 |
How the Jewish culture war over Kabbalah began The Scandal of Kabbalah is the first book about the origins of a culture war that began in early modern Europe and continues to this day: the debate between kabbalists and their critics on the nature of Judaism and the meaning of religious tradition. From its medieval beginnings as an esoteric form of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah spread throughout the early modern world and became a central feature of Jewish life. Scholars have long studied the revolutionary impact of Kabbalah, but, as Yaacob Dweck argues, they have misunderstood the character and timing of opposition to it. Drawing on a range of previously unexamined sources, this book tells the story of the first criticism of Kabbalah, Ari Nohem, written by Leon Modena in Venice in 1639. In this scathing indictment of Venetian Jews who had embraced Kabbalah as an authentic form of ancient esotericism, Modena proved the recent origins of Kabbalah and sought to convince his readers to return to the spiritualized rationalism of Maimonides. The Scandal of Kabbalah examines the hallmarks of Jewish modernity displayed by Modena's attack—a critical analysis of sacred texts, skepticism about religious truths, and self-consciousness about the past—and shows how these qualities and the later history of his polemic challenge conventional understandings of the relationship between Kabbalah and modernity. Dweck argues that Kabbalah was the subject of critical inquiry in the very period it came to dominate Jewish life rather than centuries later as most scholars have thought.
Connecting to God
Title | Connecting to God PDF eBook |
Author | Abner Weiss |
Publisher | Harmony |
Pages | 338 |
Release | 2007-12-18 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0307420493 |
Distinguished rabbi, marriage and family therapist, kabbalist, and popular lecturer, Abner Weiss is extraordinarily qualified to write this book. In Connecting to God, he elucidates the teachings of Kabbalah, showing how the Ten Sefirot of the Tree of Life are the transformers of divine energy in our bodies and the building blocks of creation—Weiss calls them “our spiritual genome.” He has created a psychological system and diagnostic method from kabbalistic texts, and he uses these clinically tested interventions in his therapeutic practice. Here he tells twenty-eight stories of people he has helped liberate from their dysfunctional behavior, empowering them to achieve spiritual growth. With Rabbi Weiss as our guide, we can use this kabbalistic approach to psychology to inform our lives with its insights, rebalance what is out of kilter, and heal the emotional wounds we have suffered. Connecting to God is a wise, wonderful, and transformational book.