Search results for ""Author David Biale""

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.

Read more less

Blood contains extraordinary symbolic power in both Judaism and Christianity - as the blood of sacrifice, of Jesus, of the Jewish martyrs, of menstruation, and more. Yet, though they share the same literary, cultural, and religious origins, on the question of blood the two religions have followed quite different trajectories. For instance, while Judaism rejects the eating or drinking of blood, Christianity mandates its symbolic consumption as a central sacrament. How did these two traditions, both originating in the Hebrew Bible's cult of blood sacrifices, veer off in such different directions? With his characteristic wit and erudition, David Biale traces the continuing, changing, and often clashing roles of blood as both symbol and substance through the entire sweep of Jewish and Christian history from Biblical times to the present.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

Not in the Heavens traces the rise of Jewish secularism through the visionary writers and thinkers who led its development. Spanning the rich history of Judaism from the Bible to today, David Biale shows how the secular tradition these visionaries created is a uniquely Jewish one, and how the emergence of Jewish secularism was not merely a response to modernity but arose from forces long at play within Judaism itself. Biale explores how ancient Hebrew books like Job, Song of Songs, and Esther downplay or even exclude God altogether, and how Spinoza, inspired by medieval Jewish philosophy, recast the biblical God in the role of nature and stripped the Torah of its revelatory status to instead read scripture as a historical and cultural text. Biale examines the influential Jewish thinkers who followed in Spinoza's secularizing footsteps, such as Salomon Maimon, Heinrich Heine, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. He tells the stories of those who also took their cues from medieval Jewish mysticism in their revolts against tradition, including Hayim Nahman Bialik, Gershom Scholem, and Franz Kafka. And he looks at Zionists like David Ben-Gurion and other secular political thinkers who recast Israel and the Bible in modern terms of race, nationalism, and the state. Not in the Heavens demonstrates how these many Jewish paths to secularism were dependent, in complex and paradoxical ways, on the very religious traditions they were rejecting, and examines the legacy and meaning of Jewish secularism today.

Read more less

Not in the Heavens traces the rise of Jewish secularism through the visionary writers and thinkers who led its development. Spanning the rich history of Judaism from the Bible to today, David Biale shows how the secular tradition these visionaries created is a uniquely Jewish one, and how the emergence of Jewish secularism was not merely a response to modernity but arose from forces long at play within Judaism itself. Biale explores how ancient Hebrew books like Job, Song of Songs, and Esther downplay or even exclude God altogether, and how Spinoza, inspired by medieval Jewish philosophy, recast the biblical God in the role of nature and stripped the Torah of its revelatory status to instead read scripture as a historical and cultural text. Biale examines the influential Jewish thinkers who followed in Spinoza's secularizing footsteps, such as Salomon Maimon, Heinrich Heine, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. He tells the stories of those who also took their cues from medieval Jewish mysticism in their revolts against tradition, including Hayim Nahman Bialik, Gershom Scholem, and Franz Kafka. And he looks at Zionists like David Ben-Gurion and other secular political thinkers who recast Israel and the Bible in modern terms of race, nationalism, and the state. Not in the Heavens demonstrates how these many Jewish paths to secularism were dependent, in complex and paradoxical ways, on the very religious traditions they were rejecting, and examines the legacy and meaning of Jewish secularism today.

Read more less

From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series, a new biography of the seminal twentieth-century historian and thinker who pioneered the study of Jewish mysticism and profoundly influenced the Zionist movement"Biale . . . not only captures Scholem’s scholarship, but also his personal involvement in the major issues, conflicts, tragedies, and triumphs of Jewish life during the last century. . . . [An] excellent new book."—Reform Judaism Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) was perhaps the foremost Jewish intellectual of the twentieth century. Pioneering the study of Jewish mysticism as a legitimate academic discipline, he overturned the rationalist bias of his predecessors and revealed an extraordinary world of myth and messianism. In his youth, he rebelled against the assimilationist culture of his parents and embraced Zionism as the vehicle for the renewal of Judaism in a secular age. He moved to Palestine in 1923 and participated in the creation of the Hebrew University, where he was a towering figure for nearly seventy years. David Biale traces Scholem’s tumultuous life of political activism and cultural criticism, including his falling-out with Hannah Arendt over the Eichmann trial. Mining a rich trove of diaries, letters, and other writings, Biale shows that his subject’s inner life illuminates his most important writings. Scholem emerges as a passionately engaged man of his times—a period that encompassed two world wars, the rise of Nazism, and the Holocaust. About Jewish Lives: Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity. Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences. Subjects are paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present. In 2014, the Jewish Book Council named Jewish Lives the winner of its Jewish Book of the Year Award, the first series ever to receive this award. More praise for Jewish Lives: "Excellent" –New York Times "Exemplary" –Wall Street Journal "Distinguished" –New Yorker "Superb" –The Guardian

Read more less

Intellectuals rarely make a significant impact on one field of scholarship let alone several, yet Amos Funkenstein (1937-1995) displayed an intellectual range that encompassed several disciplines and broke new ground across seemingly impenetrable scholarly boundaries. The philosophy of history from antiquity to modernity, medieval and early modern history of science, medieval scholasticism, Jewish history in all of its periods - these are all areas in which he made lasting contributions. Thinking Impossibilities brings together Funkenstein's colleagues, friends, and former students to engage with important aspects of his intellectual legacy. Funkenstein's diverse interests were bound together by common figures of thought, especially the search for pre-modern intellectual groundings of modern ideas and how the seeming 'impossibilities' of one historical moment might become positive resources of conceptual construction and development in another. The essays in this volume take up major themes in European intellectual history, and examine them through the unique lens that Funkenstein himself employed during his career. Of particular interest are ways in which topics of Jewish history are engaged with the larger field of the history of ideas in the West. Richly interdisciplinary and full of fresh insights, Thinking Impossibilities is a fitting tribute to an important twentieth-century scholar.

Read more less

This magisterial Norton Anthology, edited by world-renowned scholars, offers a portable library of more than 1,000 primary texts from the world’s major religions. To help readers encounter strikingly unfamiliar texts with pleasure; accessible introductions, headnotes, annotations, pronouncing glossaries, maps, illustrations and chronologies are provided. For readers of any religion or none, The Norton Anthology of World Religions opens new worlds that, as Miles writes, invite us "to see others with a measure of openness, empathy, and good will..." Unprecedented in scope and approach, The Norton Anthology of World Religions: Judaism brings together over 300 texts from pre-Israelite Mesopotamia to post-Holocaust Israel and America. The volume features Jack Miles’s illuminating General Introduction—“How the West Learned to Compare Religions”—as well as David Biale’s “Israel among the Nations,” a lively primer on Jewish history and the core teachings of Judaism.

Read more less

A must-read book for understanding this vibrant and influential modern Jewish movementHasidism originated in southeastern Poland, in mystical circles centered on the figure of Israel Ba’al Shem Tov, but it was only after his death in 1760 that a movement began to spread. Today, Hasidism is witnessing a remarkable renaissance around the world. This book provides the first comprehensive history of the pietistic movement that shaped modern Judaism. Written by an international team of scholars, its unique blend of intellectual, religious, and social history demonstrates that, far from being a throwback to the Middle Ages, Hasidism is a product of modernity that forged its identity as a radical alternative to the secular world.

Read more less

Hasidism, a controversial, mystical-religious movement of Eastern European origin, has posed a serious challenge to mainstream Judaism from its earliest beginnings in the middle of the eighteenth century. Decimated by the Holocaust, it has risen like a phoenix from the ashes and has reconstituted itself as a major force in the world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Philosopher Martin Buber found inspiration in its original tenets and devoted much of his career to making its insights known to a wide readership. First published in 1958, Hasidism and Modern Man examines the life and religious experiences of Hasidic Jews, as well as Buber's personal response to them. From the autobiographical "My Way to Hasidism," to "Hasidism and Modern Man," and "Love of God and Love of Neighbor," the essays span nearly half a century and reflect the evolution of Buber's religious philosophy in relation to the Hasidic movement. Hasidism and Modern Man remains prescient in its portrayal of a spiritual movement that brings God down to earth and makes possible a modern philosophy in which the human being becomes sacred.

Read more less

With the publication of The Origins of the Kabbalah in 1950, one of the most important scholars of our century brought the obscure world of Jewish mysticism to a wider audience for the first time. A crucial work in the oeuvre of Gershom Scholem, this book details the beginnings of the Kabbalah in twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern France and Spain, showing its rich tradition of repeated attempts to achieve and portray direct experiences of God. The Origins of the Kabbalah is a contribution not only to the history of Jewish medieval mysticism, but also to the study of medieval mysticism in general. Now with a new foreword by David Biale, this book remains essential reading for students of the history of religion.

Read more less