Bøger af Moshe Idel

The first wide-scale presentation of a major Jewish mystic, the founder of the ecstatic Kabbalah.

Approaches Hasidism as an important stage in Jewish mysticism, rather than as a mere reaction to or result of historical and social forces.

This book focuses on Abraham Abulafiäs esoteric thought in relation to Maimonides, Maimonideans, and Islamic thought in the line of Leo Strauss¿ theory of the history of philosophy. A survey of Abulafiäs sources leads into an examination of the esoteric meaning on the famous parable of the three rings, as well as Abulafiäs universalistic understanding of the nature of the Bible, the Hebrew language, and the people of Israel.

This volume addresses the complex topic of the preeminent status of the divine feminine power, to be referred also as Female, within the theosophical structures of many important Kabbalists, Sabbatean believers, and Hasidic masters.This privileged status is part of a much broader vision of the Female as stemming from a very high root within the divine world.

This book presents important topics regarding the more mystical trend of Kabbalah--the ecstatic Kabbalah. It includes the mystical union, the world of imagination, and concentration as a spiritual technique.

This volume addresses the complex topic of the preeminent status of the divine feminine power, to be referred also as Female, within the theosophical structures of many important Kabbalists, Sabbatean believers, and Hasidic masters. This privileged status is part of a much broader vision of the Female as stemming from a very high root within the divine world, then She was emanated and constitutes the tenth, lower divine power, and even in this lower state She is sometime conceived of governing this world and as equal to the divine Male. Finally, She is conceived of as returning to Her original place in special moments, the days of Sabbath, the Jewish Holidays or in the eschatological era. Her special dignity is sometime related to Her being the telos of creation, and as the first entity that emerged in the divine thought, which has been later on generated. In some cases, an uroboric theosophy links the Female Malkhut, directly to the first divine power, Keter. The author points to the possible impact of some of the Kabbalistic discussions on conceptualizations of the feminine in the Renaissance period.

Provides impressive dossier on the phenomenon of Saturnism, offering an interpretation of aspects of Judaism, including the emergence of Sabbateanism. This title demonstrates that they were instrumental in the conviction that Sabbatei Tzevei, the mid-17th-century messianic figure in Rabbinic Judaism, was indeed the Messiah.

While many aspects of Sonship have been analyzed in books on Judaism, this book attempts to address the category of Sonship in Jewish mystical literature as a whole. It aims to point out the many instances where Jewish thinkers resorted to concepts of Sonship and their conceptual backgrounds.

Addresses a series of topics that have been neglected in scholarship. This book looks at the early Romanian background of some of Eliade's ideas, especially his magical universe, which took on a more mythical nature with his arrival in the West.

In this original study, Moshe Idel, an eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism and thought, and the cognitive neuroscientist and neurologist Shahar Arzy combine their considerable expertise to explore the mysteries of the Kabbalah from an entirely new perspective: that of the human brain. In lieu of the theological, sociological, and psychoanalytic approaches that have generally dominated the study of ecstatic mystical experiences, the authors endeavor to decode the brain mechanisms underlying these phenomena. Arzy and Idel analyze first-person descriptions to explore the Kabbalistic techniques employed by most prominent Jewish mystics to effect bodily reduplications, dissociations, and other phenomena, and compare them with recent neurological observations and modern-day laboratory experiments. The resultant study offers readers a scientific, more brain-based understanding of how ecstatic Kabbalists achieved their most precious mystical experiences. The study further demonstrates how these Kabbalists have long functioned as pioneering investigators of the human self.

An examination of the tradition of Jewish messianism and mystical knowledge. The author attempts to prove that far from being incompatible religious tendencies, messianism and mysticism are in fact closely related phenomena, messianism regularly emerging from mystical experiences.

In Old Worlds, New Mirrors Moshe Idel turns his gaze on figures as diverse as Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, Franz Kafka and Franz Rosenzweig, Arnaldo Momigliano and Paul Celan, Abraham Heschel and George Steiner to reflect on their relationships to Judaism in a cosmopolitan, mostly European, context.

The world's foremost scholar of Kabbalah explores the understanding of erotic love in Jewish mystical thought. Encompassing Jewish mystical literatures from those of late antiquity to works of Polish Hasidism, Moshe Idel highlights the diversity of Kabbalistic views on eros and distinguishes between the major forms of eroticism.