Editorial Yale University Press
Fecha de edición junio 2002
Idioma inglés
EAN 9780300083798
688 páginas
Libro
encuadernado en tapa dura
Winner of the 2003 Koret Jewish Book Award in Philosophy and Thought
Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2003
In this wide-ranging discussion of Kabbalah from the mystical trends of medieval Judaism to modern Hasidism one of the world's foremost scholars considers different visions of the nature of the sacred text and of the methods to interpret it. Moshe Idel takes as a starting point the fact that the postbiblical Jewish world lost its geographical center with the destruction of the temple and so was left with a textual center, the Holy Book. Idel argues that a text-oriented religion produced language-centered forms of mysticism.
Against this background, the author demonstrates how various Jewish mystics amplified the content of the Scriptures so as to include everything: the world, or God, for example. Thus the text becomes a major realm for contemplation, and the interpretation of the text frequently becomes an encounter with the deepest realms of reality. Idel delineates the particular hermeneutics belonging to Jewish mysticism, investigates the progressive filling of the text with secrets and hidden levels of meaning, and considers in detail the various interpretive strategies needed to decodify the arcane dimensions of the text.
Moshe Idel is Max Cooper Professor of Jewish Thought, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and senior researcher at the Shalom Hartman Institute.
Moshe Idel (Tirgu Neamt, Rumania, 1947) emigró en 1963 a Israel y en la universidad Hebrea de Jerusalén se doctoró en filosofía de la cábala. Es catedrático de Pensamiento Judaico en la Universidad Hebrea de Jerusalén. Se ha dedicado al estudio de las relaciones entre mística, hasidismo y mesianismo, ha recibido prestigiosos premios, como el Haim Nahman Bialik for Jewish Studies, el Gershom Scholem o el Israel in Jewish Thought, y publicado también Hassidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, entre otros.
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