This book represents the first wide-scale presentation and interpretation of pre-kabbalistic, Jewish mysticism. This is the Hekhalot or Merkavah mysticism. The emphasis is on the conceptions of God, the ...

The earliest medieval Jewish mystical writings, or kabbalah, date from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. This is the first book to focus on the most prodigious group active at that time—the ...

This book examines Torah and its interpretation both as a recurring theme in the early rabbinic commentary and as the very practice of the commentary. It studies the phenomenon of ancient rabbinic scriptural ...

It is a work of sound scholarship dealing with an interesting historical figure and his unique cultural world. The author focuses correctly on the transition from Italian to Ottoman Jewish culture in ...

Uriel Simon describes the fascinating controversy that raged from the tenth to the twelfth centuries regarding the theological status and literary genre of the Psalms. Saadiah Gaon, who initiated the ...

This is the first full-length, systematic study in English of Isaac Breuer, a founder of Agudat Israel, whose intellectual achievements reflected the world of Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber in an Orthodox ...

The author provides an interpretation of the words of Jews living during the intertestamental period and through the third century, including several hassidim. A hermeneutics grounded in the perception ...

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 book represents the first English translation of Maaseh Merkabah, which is part of a body of early Jewish mystical texts known as palace (hekhalot) or chariot (merkabah) texts. Through a complex ...

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