Jewish Culture between Canon and Heresy PDF
Preview Jewish Culture between Canon and Heresy
JEWISH CULTURE BETWEEN CANON AND HERESY STANFORD STUDIES IN JEWISH HISTORY AND CULTURE Edited by David Biale and Sarah Abrevaya Stein JEWISH CULTURE BETWEEN CANON AND HERESY DAVID BIALE STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Stanford, California Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2023 by David Biale. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid- free, archival- quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Biale, David, 1949- author, editor. Title: Jewish culture between Canon and Heresy / David Biale. Other titles: Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2023] | Series: Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2022015717 (print) | LCCN 2022015718 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503634336 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503634343 (paperback) | ISBN 9781503634350 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Jews—History. | Jews—Intellectual life. | Jewish philosophy. Classification: LCC DS102.5 .B527 2023 (print) | LCC DS102.5 (ebook) | DDC 909/.04924—dc23/ eng/20220616 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022015717 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022015718 Typeset by Elliott Beard in Garamond Premier Pro 11/15 Cover design: Rob Ehle Cover art: “Shindig” screen print. Peretz Wolf-Prusan To the memory of Amos Funkenstein, with whom it all began This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface and Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Between Canon and Counterhistory 1 PART ONE Countertraditions within the Tradition 1 The God with Breasts 13 El Shaddai in the Bible 2 Korah in the Midrash 29 The Hairless Heretic as Hero 3 Counterhistory and Jewish Polemics against Christianity 44 The Sefer Toldot Yeshu and the Sefer Zerubavel 4 “The Torah Speaks the Language of Human Beings” 59 Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Radical Interpretation of the Bible 5 Between Melancholy and a Broken Heart 74 A Note on Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav’s Depression viii Contents PART TWO Ambivalent Modernity 6 The Kabbalah in Nachman Krochmal’s Philosophy of History 85 7 Masochism and Philosemitism 97 The Strange Case of Leopold von Sacher- Masoch 8 Historical Heresies and Modern Jewish Identity 114 9 Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism 129 PART THREE Weimar Antinomians 10 Leo Strauss 153 The Philosopher as Weimar Jew 11 Arendt in Jerusalem 163 Hannah Arendt on the Eichmann Trial 12 Gershom Scholem’s “Ten Unhistorical Aphorisms 178 on the Kabbalah” Translation and Commentary PART FOUR Heretical Politics 13 The Threat of Messianism 207 An Interview with Gershom Scholem (August 14, 1980) 14 Mysticism and Politics in Modern Israel 212 The Messianic Ideology of Abraham Isaac Ha- Cohen Kook 15 The End of Enlightenment? 222 Epilogue: By the Waters of San Francisco 227 A Partial Autobiography Notes 241 Preface and Acknowledgments The essays in this collection were published between 1974 and 2016. I have selected them on two criteria. The first is that they all represent, albeit in different ways, a certain method, which I call “counterhistory” and which I define in the Introduction. The second is that they do not duplicate mate- rial to be found in my published books. There are four partial exceptions to this general principle. The first is that the argument in chapter 1, “The God with Breasts,” appeared in very compressed form in the first chapter of my book Eros and the Jews. The second relates to chapter 12, my translation and commentary on Gershom Scholem’s Zehn unhistorische Sätze über die Kab- bala. I excerpted and commented on the first of these aphorisms in my book Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter- history (1979). Third, chapter 6, on Nachman Krochmal, is greatly abbreviated in my Scholem book. Finally, in my recent biography, Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah (2018), I noted Scholem’s position on the Israeli settlement movement articulated in the interview in the New York Review of Books, reprinted here. These essays reflect the development of my own scholarship over the years. The first was published while I was still a graduate student, in 1974, the last only a few years ago. I have preserved their language and arguments. Although I have added annotations to some works that have appeared sub- ix
The list of books you might like
