A01=Yaacob Dweck
Apologetics
Author_Yaacob Dweck
Autobiography
Bahir
Category=QRJ
Category=QRVK2
Christian
Christian apologetics
Christian Kabbalah
Christianity
Early modern period
Elijah
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Exegesis
First appearance
Gabbai
Gershom Scholem
God
Haskalah
Hebrew Bible
Heresy
Horowitz
Ibn Yahya
Isaac Luria
Jewish culture
Jewish history
Jewish mysticism
Jews
Joseph Solomon Delmedigo
Judaism
Kabbalah
Lurianic Kabbalah
Luzzatto
Maimonides
Manuscript
Menahem Azariah da Fano
Messianism
Mishnah
Moses Isserles
Moshe Idel
Nahmanides
Narrative
Oral Torah
Pamphlet
Paolo Sarpi
Pericope
Philosopher
Philosophy
Poetry
Polemic
Preface (liturgy)
Printing
Pseudepigrapha
Publication
Rabbi
Rabbinic literature
Reincarnation
Religion
Religious experience
Responsa
Safed
Samuel Aboab
Samuel David Luzzatto
Scholem
Sefer (Hebrew)
Sefer Yetzirah
Sermon
Simeon bar Yochai
Skepticism
Solomon Luria
Theology
Western esotericism
Writing
Zohar
Product details
- ISBN 9780691162157
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 26 Dec 2013
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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. Drawing on a range of previously unexamined sources, this book tells the story of the first criticism of Kabbalah, Ari Nohem, written by Leon Modena in Venice in 1639. In this scathing indictment of Venetian Jews who had embraced Kabbalah as an authentic form of ancient esotericism, Modena proved the recent origins of Kabbalah and sought to convince his readers to return to the spiritualized rationalism of Maimonides.
The Scandal of Kabbalah examines the hallmarks of Jewish modernity displayed by Modena's attack--a critical analysis of sacred texts, skepticism about religious truths, and self-consciousness about the past--and shows how these qualities and the later history of his polemic challenge conventional understandings of the relationship between Kabbalah and modernity. Dweck argues that Kabbalah was the subject of critical inquiry in the very period it came to dominate Jewish life rather than centuries later as most scholars have thought.
Yaacob Dweck is assistant professor of history and Judaic studies at Princeton University.
