Overview

Ascensions on high took many forms in Jewish mysticism and they permeated most of its history from its inception until Hasidism. The book surveys the various categories, with an emphasis on the architectural images of the ascent, like the resort to images of pillars, lines, and ladders. After surveying the variety of scholarly approaches to religion, the author also offers what he proposes as an eclectic approach, and a perspectivist one. The latter recommends to examine religious phenomena from a variety of perspectives. The author investigates the specific issue of the pillar in Jewish mysticism by comparing it to the archaic resort to pillars recurring in rural societies. Given the fact that the ascent of the soul and pillars constituted the concerns of two main Romanian scholars of religion, Ioan P. Culianu and Mircea Eliade, Idel resorts to their views, and in the Concluding Remarks analyzes the emergence of Eliade's vision of Judaism on the basis of neglected sources.

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9789637326028

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Reviews

His control of literature is impressive, and his proposal is suggestive. Throughout, Idel shows mastery of a very wide range of primary and secondary sources. Summing up: recommended. * Choice *

Author Information

Moshe Idel was born in 1947 in Rumania. Since 1963 living in Israel. Teaching at the Hebrew University, and senior researcher at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem. Taught as a visiting professor at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, UCLA, Penn, College de France, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, etc. Recipient of Israel Prize in Jewish Thought, and Emmet Prize under the aegis of the Prime Minister of Israel. Recent publication : Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation (Yale University Press, New Haven 2002). The book received the Koret prize on Jewish thought, 2003.

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