Hasidism
(January 1995)
Between Ecstasy and Magic Moshe Idel - Author
"Idel's book has broken new ground in the study of the mystical Judaism of Eastern Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By applying what he calls the panoramic approach, in contrast to the existentialist approach of Buber and the historicist approach of Scholem, Idel has been able to illuminate the phenomenon of Hasidism in all its complexity and diversity. Rather than focusing on any one immediate aspect of Jewish mysticism, Idel prop...(Read More)
Golem
(June 1990)
Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid Moshe Idel - Author
Idel's thesis is that the role of the golem concept in Judaism was to confer an exceptional status to the Jewish elite by bestowing it with the capability of supernatural powers deriving from a profound knowledge of the Hebrew language and its magical and mystical values.
This book is the first comprehensive treatment of the whole range of material dealing with creation of the golem beginning with late antiquity and ending with the modern tim...(Read More)
Abraham Abulafia, the founder of the ecstatic Kabbalah, exposed a mysticism that includes a deep interest in language as a universe in itself, to be studied as the philosophers study nature, in order to attain higher knowledge than natural science and speculative philosophy. The status of Hebrew as the natural, intellectual, and primordial language is discussed against the background of the medieval speculations regarding this topic.
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. The emphasis in the text is on the interaction between the "original" Spanish stage of Kabbalah and Muslim mysticism in the East, mainly in the Galilee. The influence of the Kabbalistic-Sufic synthesis on the later developments of Jewish myst...(Read More)
This book represents the first wide-scale presentation of a major Jewish mystic, the founder of the ecstatic Kabbalah. It includes a description of the techniques employed by his master, including the role of music. There is a discussion of the characteristics of his mystical experience and the erotic imagery by which it was expressed. Based on all the extant manuscript material of Abulafia, this book opens the way to a new understanding of Jewish m...(Read More)
