Jewish Literary Eros

Author : Isabelle Levy
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2022-06-07
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780253060167

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Jewish Literary Eros by Isabelle Levy Pdf

In Jewish Literary Eros, Isabelle Levy explores the originality and complexity of medieval Jewish writings. Examining medieval prosimetra (texts composed of alternating prose and verse), Levy demonstrates that secular love is the common theme across Arabic, Hebrew, French, and Italian texts. At the crossroads of these spheres of intellectual activity, Jews of the medieval Mediterranean composed texts that combined dominant cultures' literary stylings with biblical Hebrew and other elements from Jewish cultures. Levy explores Jewish authors' treatments of love in prosimetra and finds them creative, complex, and innovative. Jewish Literary Eros compares the mixed-form compositions by Jewish authors of the medieval Mediterranean with their Arabic and European counterparts to find the particular moments of innovation among textual practices by Jewish authors. When viewed in the comparative context of the medieval Mediterranean, the evolving relationship between the mixed form and the theme of love in secular Jewish compositions refines our understanding of the ways in which the Jewish literature of the period negotiates the hermeneutic and theological underpinnings of Islamicate and Christian literary traditions.

Author : David Biale
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 334 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2023-09-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780520920064

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Eros and the Jews by David Biale Pdf

Contradictory stereotypes about Jewish sexuality pervade modern culture, from Lenny Bruce's hip eroticism to Woody Allen's little man with the big libido (and even bigger sexual neurosis). Does Judaism in fact liberate or repress sexual desire? David Biale does much more than answer that question as he traces Judaism's evolving position on sexuality, from the Bible and Talmud to Zionism up through American attitudes today. What he finds is a persistent conflict between asceticism and gratification, between procreation and pleasure. From the period of the Talmud onward, Biale says, Jewish culture continually struggled with sexual abstinence, attempting to incorporate the virtues of celibacy, as it absorbed them from Greco-Roman and Christian cultures, within a theology of procreation. He explores both the canonical writings of male authorities and the alternative voices of women, drawing from a fascinating range of sources that includes the Book of Ruth, Yiddish literature, the memoirs of the founders of Zionism, and the films of Woody Allen. Biale's historical reconstruction of Jewish sexuality sees the present through the past and the past through the present. He discovers an erotic tradition that is not dogmatic, but a record of real people struggling with questions that have challenged every human culture, and that have relevance for the dilemmas of both Jews and non-Jews today.

Author : Moshe Idel
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 381 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2005-01-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780300108323

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Kabbalah and Eros by Moshe Idel Pdf

In this book, the world's foremost scholar of Kabbalah explores the understanding of erotic love in Jewish mystical thought. Encompassing Jewish mystical literatures from those of late antiquity to works of Polish Hasidism, Moshe Idel highlights the diversity of Kabbalistic views on eros and distinguishes between the major forms of eroticism. The author traces the main developments of a religious formula that reflects the union between a masculine divine attribute and a feminine divine attribute, and he asks why such an "erotic formula" was incorporated into the Jewish prayer book. Idel shows how Kabbalistic literature was influenced not only by rabbinic literature but also by Greek thought that helped introduce a wider understanding of eros. Addressing topics ranging from cosmic eros and androgyneity to the affinity between C. J. Jung and Kabbalah to feminist thought, Idel's deeply learned study will be of consuming interest to scholars of religion, Judaism, and feminism.

Author : Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
Page : 792 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2009-08-25
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780823224203

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Language, Eros, Being by Elliot R. Wolfson Pdf

This long-awaited, magisterial study-an unparalleled blend of philosophy, poetry, and philology-draws on theories of sexuality, phenomenology, comparative religion, philological writings on Kabbalah, Russian formalism, Wittgenstein, Rosenzweig, William Blake, and the very physics of the time-space continuum to establish what will surely be a highwater mark in work on Kabbalah. Not only a study of texts, Language, Eros, Being is perhaps the fullest confrontation of the body in Jewish studies, if not in religious studies as a whole. Elliot R. Wolfson explores the complex gender symbolism that permeates Kabbalistic literature. Focusing on the nexus of asceticism and eroticism, he seeks to define the role of symbolic and poetically charged language in the erotically configured visionary imagination of the medieval Kabbalists. He demonstrates that the traditional Kabbalistic view of gender was a monolithic and androcentric one, in which the feminine was conceived as being derived from the masculine. He does not shrink from the negative implications of this doctrine, but seeks to make an honest acknowledgment of it as the first step toward the redemption of an ancient wisdom. Comparisons with other mystical traditions-including those in Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam-are a remarkable feature throughout the book. They will make it important well beyond Jewish studies, indeed, a must for historians of comparative religion, in particular of comparative mysticism. Praise for Elliot R. Wolfson: "Through a Speculum That Shines is an important and provocative contribution to the study of Jewish mysticism by one of the major scholars now working in this field."-Speculum

Author : Mark Jay Mirsky
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2003-10-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0815630271

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Dante, Eros, and Kabbalah by Mark Jay Mirsky Pdf

Did Dante Alighieri, author of The Divine Comedy as a young man in Florence sleep with Beatrice Portinari before and after her marriage? Did the poet travel after her death through Hell to find her again? The clues to this academic detective story, writes Mark Jay Mirsky, lie not only in Dante's earlier poetry, The New Life, or in The Divine Comedy, but in the Zohar of Moses de Leon, a Jewish text written some years before and based on Neoplatonic ideas similar to those that inspired Dante. Purgatorio and Paradiso, the second and third volumes of the Commedia, are inaccessible to most readers unfamiliar with the boldness of Dante's use of the philosophical debate in the Middle Ages. Does Dante's Commedia hint at his hope of intimacy with Beatrice in the Highest Heaven? In this book Mirsky distinctively traces the influence on Dante of Provencal poets, medieval theologians, Dante's personal life, and the sources of his classical education to propose a radical reading of Dante. The text compounds the riddles of dream, poetry, philosophy, and Dante's concealed autobiography in his work. It treats the Commedia in the spirit of its title, as a hopeful and comic vision of the other world.

Author : Ofer Nordheimer Nur
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Betanyah (Israel)
ISBN : 1936235854

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Eros and Tragedy by Ofer Nordheimer Nur Pdf

Between 1920 and 1922, hundreds of members of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement left the defunct Habsburg Monarchy and sailed to Palestine, where a small group of members of the movement established Upper Bitania, one of the communities that laid the foundation for Israel's kibbutz movement. Their social experiment lasted only eight months, but it gave birth to a powerful myth among Jewish youth which combined a story about a heroic Zionist deed, based on the trope of tragedy, with a model for a new type of community that promised no less than a total, absolute elimination of all physical and mental barriers between isolated individuals and their fusion into one entity. This entity was named "the erotic community." In its quest for human regeneration, Upper Bitania embarked on a journey into a highly specific variant of modern life that, at its core, tried to combine the most profound Nietzscheanism with the insights of Sigmund Freud, all in an anti-capitalist quest for an organic community of "new men." The quest for a "new man" was to compensate for a crisis of manliness and betrays an obsession with masculinity and male bonding, and their effects on the ideal man and woman.

Author : Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 761 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Cabala
ISBN : 0823235378

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Language, Eros, Being by Elliot R. Wolfson Pdf

Not only a study of texts, 'Language, Eros, Being' explores the complex gender symbolism that permeates Kabbalistic literature.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 1908
Category : Electronic
ISBN : UCAL:B3084761

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The Jewish Literary Annual by Anonim Pdf

Author : David Sobelman
Publisher : Exile Editions
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Art
ISBN : 1550968246

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Facets of Eros by David Sobelman Pdf

In Facets of Eros, David Sobelman, an award-winning writer of documentaries, explores the early drawings of Canadian artist Claire Wilks, their presciently feminist visual vocabulary. He does so by looking at the drawings--so open in their sexuality, so puzzling in their vision of motherhood, so sensually affirming in their engagement with death in the Shoah camps--through the lens of that ancient figure Eros, as first discussed by Plato. This is a startling, original approach to a startling, original artist, the meta-portrait of a singular woman who expressed the world she saw around her with her hands.

Author : Rachel Neis
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 333 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2013-08-29
Category : History
ISBN : 9781107032514

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The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture by Rachel Neis Pdf

This book explores the power of sight for ancient rabbis across the realms of divinity, sexuality, idolatry and rabbinic subjectivity.

Author : Gustav Karpeles
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 428 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 1895
Category : Jewish literature
ISBN : UCAL:$B252359

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Jewish Literature and Other Essays by Gustav Karpeles Pdf

Author : Yehoshue Perle
Publisher : Open Road Media
Page : 533 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2013-10-15
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781480440821

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Everyday Jews by Yehoshue Perle Pdf

“Hailed as a modern Yiddish masterpiece . . . Explor[es] the harsh reality of life for a poor family in a provincial Polish town around the year 1900” (The Huffington Post). When Everyday Jews was first published in Poland in 1935, the Jewish Left was scandalized by the sex scenes, and I. B. Singer complained that the novel was too bleak to be psychologically credible. Yet within two years, Perle’s novel was heralded as a modern Yiddish masterpiece. Offering a unique blend of raw sexuality and romantic love, thwarted desire and spiritual longing, Everyday Jews is now considered Perle’s consummate achievement. The voice of Mendl, the novel’s twelve-year-old narrator, is precisely captured by this artfully simple translation. Mendl’s impoverished and dysfunctional family struggles to survive in a nameless Polish provincial town. In this unsettled world, most ordinary people yearn to be somewhere else—or someone else. As Mendl journeys to adulthood, Perle captures the complex interplay of Christians and Jews, weekdays and Sabbaths, town and country, dream and reality, against a relentless and never-ending battle of the sexes.

Author : Jane Gilbert,Thomas O'Donnell,Brian J. Reilly
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 370 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2024-06-04
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781914049149

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Medieval French Interlocutions by Jane Gilbert,Thomas O'Donnell,Brian J. Reilly Pdf

Specialists in other languages offer perspectives on the widespread use of French in a range of contexts, from German courtly narratives to biblical exegesis in Hebrew. French came into contact with many other languages in the Middle Ages: not just English, Italian and Latin, but also Arabic, Dutch, German, Greek, Hebrew, Irish, Occitan, Sicilian, Spanish and Welsh. Its movement was impelled by trade, pilgrimage, crusade, migration, colonisation and conquest, and its contact zones included Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities, among others. Writers in these contact zones often expressed themselves and their worlds in French; but other languages and cultural settings could also challenge, reframe or even ignore French-users' prestige and self-understanding. The essays collected here offer cross-disciplinary perspectives on the use of French in the medieval world, moving away from canonical texts, well-known controversies and conventional framings. Whether considering theories of the vernacular in Outremer, Marco Polo and the global Middle Ages, or the literary patronage of aristocrats and urban patricians, their interlocutions throw new light on connected and contested literary cultures in Europe and beyond.

Author : Adam Kirsch
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2019-03-19
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780300245134

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Who Wants to Be a Jewish Writer? by Adam Kirsch Pdf

From one of today’s keenest critics comes a collection of essays on poetry, religion, and the connection between the two Adam Kirsch is one of today’s finest literary critics. This collection brings together his essays on poetry, religion, and the intersections between them, with a particular focus on Jewish literature. He explores the definition of Jewish literature, the relationship between poetry and politics, and the future of literary reputation in the age of the internet. Several essays look at the way Jewish writers such as Stefan Zweig and Isaac Deutscher, who coined the phrase “the non-Jewish Jew,” have dealt with politics. Kirsch also examines questions of spirituality and morality in the writings of contemporary poets, including Christian Wiman, Kay Ryan, and Seamus Heaney. He closes by asking why so many American Jewish writers have resisted that category, inviting us to consider “Is there such a thing as Jewish literature?”

Author : Michael Fagenblat,Arthur Cools
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2020-12-07
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783110668926

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Levinas and Literature by Michael Fagenblat,Arthur Cools Pdf

The posthumous publication of Emmanuel Levinas’s wartime diaries, postwar lectures, and drafts for two novels afford new approaches to understanding the relationship between literature, philosophy, and religion. This volume gathers an international list of experts to examine new questions raised by Levinas’s deep and creative experiment in thinking at the intersection of literature, philosophy, and religion. Chapters address the role and significance of poetry, narrative, and metaphor in accessing the ethical sense of ordinary life; Levinas's critical engagement with authors such as Leon Bloy, Paul Celan, Vassily Grossman, Marcel Proust, and Maurice Blanchot; analyses of Levinas’s draft novels Eros ou Triple opulence and La Dame de chez Wepler; and the application of Levinas's thought in reading contemporary authors such as Ian McEwen and Cormac McCarthy. Contributors include Danielle Cohen-Levinas, Kevin Hart, Eric Hoppenot, Vivian Liska, Jean-Luc Nancy and François-David Sebbah, among others.