Authors: Gershom Scholem, Robert Alter
ISBN-13: 9780805210422, ISBN-10: 0805210423
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Date Published: May 1995
Edition: REV
Gershom Scholem was professor of Jewish mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem until his death in 1982. He is also the author of The Messianic Idea in Judaism, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead and Zohar.
A collection of lectures on the features of the movement of mysticism that began in antiquity and continues in Hasidism today.
A new introduction by Robert Alter reiterates the importance of Scholem's contribution to establishing the symbolic language which Jews used to express their "sense of connection to eternal things."
Foreword | ||
Preface to the First Edition | ||
Preface to the Second Edition | ||
Table of Transliteration | ||
General Characteristics of Jewish Mysticism | 1 | |
Merkabah Mysticism and Jewish Gnosticism | 40 | |
Hasidism in Mediaeval Germany | 80 | |
Abraham Abulafia and the Doctrine of Prophetic Kabbalism | 119 | |
The Zohar I. The Book and Its Author | 156 | |
The Zohar II. The Theosophic Doctrine of the Zohar | 205 | |
Isaac Luria and His School | 244 | |
Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy | 287 | |
Hasidism: The Latest Phase | 325 | |
Notes | 351 | |
Bibliography | 425 | |
Index | 445 |