Old Worlds, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought (Jewish Culture and Contexts) [Hardcover]

Moshe Idel (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0812241304 | ISBN-13: 978-0812241303 | Publication Date: December 21, 2009 | Edition: 1st HARDCOVER

There emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a new Jewish elite, notes Moshe Idel, no longer made up of prophets, priests, kings, or rabbis but of intellectuals and academicians working in secular universities or writing for an audience not defined by any one set of religious beliefs. In Old Worlds, New Mirrors Idel turns his gaze on figures as diverse as Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, Franz Kafka and Franz Rosenzweig, Arnaldo Momigliano and Paul Celan, Abraham Heschel and George Steiner to reflect on their relationships to Judaism in a cosmopolitan, mostly European, context.

Idel—himself one of the world's most eminent scholars of Jewish mysticism—focuses in particular on the mystical aspects of his subjects' writings. Avoiding all attempts to discern anything like a single "essence of Judaism" in their works, he nevertheless maintains a sustained effort to illumine especially the Kabbalistic and Hasidic strains of thought these figures would have derived from earlier Jewish sources. Looming large throughout is Gershom Scholem, the thinker who played such a crucial role in establishing the study of Kabbalah as a modern academic discipline and whose influence pervades Idel's own work; indeed, the author observes, much of the book may be seen as a mirror held up to reflect on the broader reception of Scholem's thought.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Questing for my rabbi I have gone from Buber through Scholem to Idel. I abide with Moshe Idel. He is not only a scholar of Scholem's magnitude but a guide for the perplexed like myself. I believe he will yet show us the way to the authentic Jewish culture still available to us in this waning time."—Harold Bloom

About the Author

Moshe Idel is Max Cooper Professor of Jewish Thought Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Senior Researcher at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He is the winner of many awards and prizes, including the EMET Prize, given by the Prime Minister of Israel; the Israel Prize for Jewish Thought; the Gershom Scholem Prize for research in Kabbalah, given by the Israeli Academy for Sciences and Humanities; and the Jewish National Book Award. Among his many books are Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation, and Kabbalah and Eros.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press; 1st HARDCOVER edition (December 21, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812241304
• ISBN-13: 978-0812241303
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #923,207 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #61 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Judaism > Mysticism

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