Mystifying Kabbalah Academic Scholarship National Theology and New Age Spirituality
study of Jewish mysticism and its impact on modern Kabbalistic movements in the contexts of Jewish nationalism and New Age spirituality. Boaz Huss argues that Jewish mysticism is a modern discursive construct and that the identification of Kabbalah and Hasidism as forms of mysticism, which appeared for the first time in the nineteenth century and has become prevalent since the early twentieth, shaped the way in which Kabbalah and
Hasidism are perceived and studied today. The notion of Jewish mysticism was established when western scholars accepted the modern idea that mysticism is a universal religious phenomenon of a direct experience of a divine or transcendent reality and applied it to Kabbalah and Hasidism. "Jewish
mysticism" gradually became the defining category in the modern academic research of these topics. This book clarifies the historical, cultural, and political contexts that led to the identification of Kabbalah and Hasidism as Jewish mysticism, exposing the underlying ideological and theological
presuppositions and revealing the impact of this "mystification" on contemporary forms of Kabbalah and Hasidism.
Publisher Name | Oxford University Press USA |
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Author Name | Hagendorf, Col |
Format | Audio |
Bisac Subject Major | REL |
Language | NG |
Isbn 10 | 0190086963 |
Isbn 13 | 9780190086961 |
Target Age Group | min:NA, max:NA |
Dimensions | 00.93" H x 00.06" L x 10.00" W |
Page Count | 200 |
Boaz Huss is the Aron Bernstein Professor of Jewish History in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is the vice president of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. His research interests include the history of Kabbalah,
Western esotericism, New Age culture and new religious movements in Israel.