Jewish culture between Canon and Heresy / David Biale.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Biale, David, 1949- author.

Series:

Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture.

Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jews--History.

Jews.

Jews--Intellectual life.

Jewish philosophy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (298 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2023]

Summary:

This career-spanning anthology from prominent Jewish historian David Biale brings over a dozen of his key essays together for the first time. These pieces, written between 1974 and 2016, are all representative of a method Biale calls "counter-history": "the discovery of vital forces precisely in what others considered marginal, disreputable and irrational." The themes that have preoccupied Biale throughout the course of his distinguished career—in particular power, sexuality, blood, and secular Jewish thought—span the periods of the Bible, late antiquity, and the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Exemplary essays in this volume argue for the dialectical relationship between modernity and its precursors in the older tradition, working together to "brush history against the grain" in order to provide a sweeping look at the history of the Jewish people. This volume of work by one of the boldest and most intellectually omnivorous Jewish thinkers of our time will be essential reading for scholars and students of Jewish studies.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION Between Canon and Counterhistory

Part One COUNTERTRADITIONS WITHIN THE TRADITION

CHAPTER 1 The God with Breasts: El Shaddai in the Bible

CHAPTER 2 Korah in the Midrash: The Hairless Heretic as Hero

CHAPTER 3 Counterhistory and Jewish Polemics against Christianity: The Sefer Toldot Yeshu and the Sefer Zerubavel

CHAPTER 4 “The Torah Speaks the Language of Human Beings” Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Radical Interpretation of the Bible

CHAPTER 5 Between Melancholy and a Broken Heart: A Note on Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav’s Depression

Part Two AMBIVALENT MODERNITY

CHAPTER 6 The Kabbalah in Nachman Krochmal’s Philosophy of History

CHAPTER 7 Masochism and Philosemitism: The Strange Case of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

CHAPTER 8 Historical Heresies and Modern Jewish Identity

CHAPTER 9 Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism

Part three WEIMAR ANTINOMIANS

CHAPTER 10 Leo Strauss: The Philosopher as Weimar Jew

CHAPTER 11 Arendt in Jerusalem: Hannah Arendt on the Eichmann Trial

CHAPTER 12 Gershom Scholem’s “Ten Unhistorical Aphorisms on the Kabbalah” Translation and Commentary

Part Four HERETICAL POLITICS

CHAPTER 13 The Threat of Messianism: An Interview with Gershom Scholem (August 14, 1980)

CHAPTER 14 Mysticism and Politics in Modern Israel: The Messianic Ideology of Abraham Isaac Ha-Cohen Kook

CHAPTER 15 The End of Enlightenment?

EPILOGUE By the Waters of San Francisco: A Partial Autobiography

Notes

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Biale, David Jewish Culture Between Canon and Heresy

ISBN:

9781503634350

OCLC:

1330712341