Kabbalah in America: Ancient Lore in the New World

Description

Kabbalah in America includes chapters from leading experts in a variety of fields and is the first-ever comprehensive treatment of the title subject from colonial times until the present. As the first of its kind, it will set the tone for all future scholarship on the subject. Contents Acknowledgments Contributors Chapter 1 Introduction: on the Formation of Research on Kabbalah in America Part 1 Kabbalah in Colonial America Chapter 2 “They Have with Faithfulnesse and Care Transmitted the Oracles of God unto us Gentiles”: Jewish Kabbalah and Text Study in the Puritan Imagination Chapter 3 The Zohar in Early Protestant American Kabbalah: on Ezra Stiles and the Case for Jewish-Christianity Part 2 Nineteenth-Century Western Esoteric Trends Chapter 4 The Abyss, the Oversoul, and the Kabbalistic Overtones in Emerson’s Work: Tracing the Pre-Freudian Unconscious in America Chapter 5 The Qabbalah of the Hebrews and the Ancient Wisdom Religion of Asia: Isaac Myer and the Kabbalah in America Chapter 6 Kabbalah in the Ozarks: Thomas Moore Johnson, The Platonist, and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor Part 3 The Nineteenth-Century Jewish Interface Chapter 7 A Kabbalistic Lithograph as a Populariser of Judaism in America—Max Wolff, Origin of the Rites and Worship of the Hebrews (New York, 1859) Chapter 8 Isidor Kalisch’s Pioneering Translation of Sepher Yetsirah (1877) and Its Rosicrucian Legacy Part 4 Early Twentieth-Century Rational Scholars Chapter 9 Pragmatic Kabbalah: J.L. Sossnitz, Mordecai Kaplan and the Reconstruction of Mysticism and Peoplehood in Early Twentieth-Century America Chapter 10 Solomon Schechter, Abraham J. Heschel, and Alexander Altmann: Scholars on Jewish Mysticism Part 5 The Post-War Counterculture Chapter 11 Jewish Mysticism as a Universal Teaching: Allen Ginsberg’s Relation to Kabbalah Chapter 12 Shlomo Carlebach on the West Coast Chapter 13 Aryeh Kaplan’s Quest for the Lost Jewish Traditions of Science, Psychology and Prophecy Part 6 Liberal American Denominationalism Chapter 14 American Reform Judaism’s Increasing Acceptance of Kabbalah: the Contribution of Rabbi Herbert Weiner’s Spiritual Search in 9½ Mystics Chapter 15 American Conservative Judaism and Kabbalah Part 7 Ultra-Orthodoxy, American Hasidism, and the ‘Other’ Chapter 16 The Calf Awakens: Language, Zionism and Heresy in Twentieth-Century American Hasidism Chapter 17 “The Lower Half of the Globe”: Kabbalah and Social Analysis in the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Vision for Judaism’s American Era Chapter 18 To Distinguish Israel and the Nations: E Pluribus Unum and Isaac Hutner’s Appropriation of Kabbalistic Anthropology Part 8 Contemporary American Ritual and Thought Chapter 19 Kabbalah as a Tool of Orthodox Outreach Chapter 20 Everything Is Sex: Sacred Sexuality and Core Values in the Contemporary American Kabbalistic Cosmos Chapter 21 Identity or Spirituality: the Resurgence of Habad, Neo Hasidism and Ashlagian Kabbalah in America Index