Kabbalah in America : ancient lore in the new world / edited by Brian Ogren.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Ogren, Brian, editor.

Series:

Studies in Jewish history and culture ; Volume 64.

Studies in Jewish history and culture ; Volume 64

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cabala--History.

Cabala.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2020]

Summary:

Kabbalah in America includes chapters from leading experts in a variety of fields and is the first-ever comprehensive treatment of the title subject from colonial times until the present. Until recently, Kabbalah studies have not extensively covered America, despite America’s centrality in modern and contemporary formations. There exist scattered treatments, but no inclusive expositions. This volume most certainly fills the gap. It is comprised of 21 articles in eight sections, including Kabbalah in Colonial America; Nineteenth-Century Western Esotericism; The Nineteenth-Century Jewish Interface; Early Twentieth-Century Rational Scholars; The Post-War Counterculture; Liberal American Denominationalism; Ultra-Orthodoxy, American Hasidism and the ‘Other’; and Contemporary American Ritual and Thought. This volume will be sure to set the tone for all future scholarship on American Kabbalah.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

List of Contributors

1 Introduction: On the Formation of Research on Kabbalah in America

Brian Ogren

Part 1: Kabbalah in Colonial America

2 “They Have with Faithfulnesse and Care Transmitted the Oracles of God unto us Gentiles”: Jewish Kabbalah and Text Study in the Puritan Imagination

Michael Hoberman

3 The Zohar in Early Protestant American Kabbalah: on Ezra Stiles and the Case for Jewish-Christianity

Part 2: Nineteenth-Century Western Esoteric Trends

4 The Abyss, the Oversoul, and the Kabbalistic Overtones in Emerson’s Work: Tracing the Pre-Freudian Unconscious in America

Clémence Boulouque

5 The Qabbalah of the Hebrews and the Ancient Wisdom Religion of Asia: Isaac Myer and the Kabbalah in America

Boaz Huss

6 Kabbalah in the Ozarks: Thomas Moore Johnson, The Platonist , and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor

Vadim Putzu

Part 3: The Nineteenth-Century Jewish Interface

7 A Kabbalistic Lithograph as a Populariser of Judaism in America—Max Wolff, The Origin of the Rites and Worship of the Hebrews (New York, 1859)

Peter Lanchidi

8 Isidor Kalisch’s Pioneering Translation of Sepher Yetsirah (1877) and Its Rosicrucian Legacy

Jonathan D. Sarna

Part 4: Early Twentieth-Century Rational Scholars

9 Pragmatic Kabbalah: J.L. Sossnitz, Mordecai Kaplan and the Reconstruction of Mysticism and Peoplehood in Early Twentieth-Century America

Eliyahu Stern

10 Solomon Schechter, Abraham J. Heschel, and Alexander Altmann: Scholars on Jewish Mysticism

Moshe Idel

Part 5: The Post-War Counterculture

11 Jewish Mysticism as a Universal Teaching: Allen Ginsberg’s Relation to Kabbalah

Yaakov Ariel

12 Shlomo Carlebach on the West Coast

Pinchas Giller

13 Aryeh Kaplan’s Quest for the Lost Jewish Traditions of Science, Psychology and Prophecy

Alan Brill

Part 6: Liberal American Denominationalism

14 American Reform Judaism’s Increasing Acceptance of Kabbalah: the Contribution of Rabbi Herbert Weiner’s Spiritual Search in 9½ Mystics

Dana Evan Kaplan

15 American Conservative Judaism and Kabbalah

Daniel Horwitz

Part 7: Ultra-Orthodoxy, American Hasidism, and the ‘Other’

16 The Calf Awakens: Language, Zionism and Heresy in Twentieth-Century American Hasidism

Ariel Evan Mayse

17 “The Lower Half of the Globe”: Kabbalah and Social Analysis in the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Vision for Judaism’s American Era

Philip Wexler and Eli Rubin

18 To Distinguish Israel and the Nations: E Pluribus Unum and Isaac Hutner’s Appropriation of Kabbalistic Anthropology

Elliot R. Wolfson

Part 8: Contemporary American Ritual and Thought

19 Kabbalah as a Tool of Orthodox Outreach

Jody Myers

20 Everything is Sex: Sacred Sexuality and Core Values in the Contemporary American Kabbalistic Cosmos

Marla Segol

21 Identity or Spirituality: the Resurgence of Habad, Neo Hasidism and Ashlagian Kabbalah in America

Ron Margolin.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

90-04-42814-3

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004428140 DOI