""The Scandal of Kabbalah" is excellent. It is one
of the first studies to take cutting-edge scholarship on the
history of the book and apply it to a Hebrew text. Yaacob Dweck
makes a serious contribution to scholarship on Leon Modena, to
Jewish intellectual history of the early modern period, and to the
history of the Hebrew book."--Elisheva Carlebach, Columbia
University "An extremely learned and valuable piece of
scholarship."--Matt Goldish, Ohio State University
The Scandal of Kabbalah is the first book about the origins of a
culture war that began in early modern Europe and continues to this
day: the debate between kabbalists and their critics on the nature
of Judaism and the meaning of religious tradition. From its
medieval beginnings as an esoteric form of Jewish mysticism,
Kabbalah spread throughout the early modern world and became a
central feature of Jewish life. Scholars have long studied the
revolutionary impact of Kabbalah, but, as Yaacob Dweck argues, they
have misunderstood the character and timing of opposition to it.
Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World .
Englisch
Abmessung: 241mm x 167mm x 27mm
Gewicht: 567g
ISBN-13: 9780691145082
ISBN-10: 0691145083
Best.Nr.: 33615325
The Scandal of Kabbalah is excellent. It is one of the first studies to take cutting-edge scholarship on the history of the book and apply it to a Hebrew text. Yaacob Dweck makes a serious contribution to scholarship on Leon Modena, to Jewish intellectual history of the early modern period, and to the history of the Hebrew book.
In this excellent monograph, Dweck situates Modena's literary activity in the polarity between print and manuscript, paying critical attention to the reading and writing practices informing these polemics... This is a meticulous work of scholarship, from its careful examination of ligatures in handwritten manuscripts to the nuanced ways in which Dweck outlines broader intellectual currents, such as early modern skepticism and the emergence of historical criticism. Choice Dweck's meticulous and illuminating study has itself breathed new life into the Ari Nohem. It gives one reason to hope that it will finally become available in an English translation and that Yaacob Dweck will make the publication of such a volume one of his future projects. -- Howard Tzvi Adelman Jewish Review of Books
Yaacob Dweck is assistant professor of history and Judaic studies at Princeton University.
Inhaltsangabe
List of Illustrations xi Abbreviations xiii Introduction 1 Chapter One: Hebrew Manuscripts in an Age of Print 29 Chapter Two: Early Modern Criticism of the Zohar 59 Chapter Three: Guiding the Perplexed 101 Chapter Four: Safed in Venice 127 Chapter Five: A Jewish Response to Christian Kabbalah 149 Chapter Six: The Afterlife of Ari Nohem 171 Chapter Seven: Kabbalah and Scholarship in the Nineteenth Century 201 Epilogue: History of a Failure 231 Acknowledgments 237 Works Cited 239 Index 273
