Divine and Demonic in the Poetic Mythology of the Zohar

The Other Side of Kabbalah
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-38618-1
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 18, 312 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 522 g

Reihe: IJS Studies in Judaica

Nathaniel Berman’s Divine and Demonic in the Poetic Mythology of the Zohar: The “Other Side” of Kabbalah offers a new approach to the central work of Jewish mysticism, the Sefer Ha-Zohar (“Book of Radiance”). Berman explicates the literary techniques through which the Zohar constructs a mythology of intricately related divine and demonic personae. Drawing on classical and modern rhetorical paradigms, as well as psychoanalytical theories of the formation of subjectivity, Berman reinterprets the meaning of the Zohar’s divine and demonic personae, exploring their shared origins and their ongoing antagonisms and intimacies. Finally, he shows how the Zoharic portrayal of the demonic, the “Other Side,” contributes to reflecting on alterity of all kinds.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Berman, Nathaniel

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien Heilige & Traditionstexte: Torah, Talmud, Mischna, Halacha
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien Jüdische Spiritualität & Mystik (Kabbala, Chassidismus)
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien: Kult, Riten, Zeremonien

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Prefatory Note

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Poetic Mythology for a Broken World

I Otherness and Brokenness

II A (Very Short) Kabbalistic Primer

III Overview of the Book

IV A Final Introductory Note

1 Demonic Writing: The Rhetoric and Ontology of Ambivalence

I Demonic Fascination, Zoharic Writing and Zohar Scholarship

II Texual Proliferation and Stylistic Audacity

III The Rhetoric and Ontology of Ambivalence

2 A Divided Cosmos

I Introduction: Ontological Splitting, Rhetorical Parallelism and Tropic Doubling

II Modeling the Other Side: Geography, Essence, Structure

III Reading the Other Side: Paradoxical Textuality

IV The Rhetorical Construction of Splitting I: the Seductions of Schemes

V The Rhetorical Construction of Splitting II: The Ambivalence of Tropes

3 The Formation of Self and Other through Abjection and Crystallization

I Introduction

II The Origin of the Demonic: Theological Concern and Mythic Narrative

III “Dualism,” “Duality,” and the Proto-Divine

IV From Catharsis to Abjection

V Ambivalences of Origins

VI Divine and Demonic: A Family Affair

VII Ambivalences of Intimacy

VIII Ambivalences of Sustenance: “Suckling”

IX Epilogue: A Theurgical Parallel

4 Impersonating the Self, Collapsing into the Abyss: The Convergence of Horror and Redemption

I Impersonation: Aggressive Enclothing and Ethopoeia

II The Abyss

Conclusion: The Divine/Dunghill, or, the Self is the Other

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Nathaniel Berman (JD, PhD) holds the Rahel Varnhagen Chair at Brown University, where he teaches in the Religious Studies Department. He has published extensively on law’s relationship to nationalism, colonialism and religion, as well as on Jewish mysticism.