The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism

The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism

Author: Geoffrey W. Dennis

Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0738709050

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How are alchemy, astrology, magic, and numerology related to Jewish mysticism? The fabulous, miraculous, and mysterious are all explored in this comprehensive reference to Jewish esotericism-the first of its kind! From amulets and angels to the zodiac and zombies, the "Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism" features over one thousand alphabetical entries. Rabbi Geoffrey W. Dennis offers a much-needed culmination of Jewish occult teachings that includes significant stories, mythical figures, practices, and ritual objects. Spanning the Bible, the Midrash, Kabbalah, and other mystical branches of Judaism, this well-researched text is meant to trigger insight, spark inspiration, and illuminate one of the oldest esoteric traditions still alive today.


Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Traditions

Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Traditions

Author: Raphael Patai

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780765620255

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This multicultural reference work on Jewish folklore, legends, customs, and other elements of folklife is the first of its kind. It includes over 250 A-Z original, signed articles that cover major themes, beliefs, traditions, and folkways of Jewish groups around the world, both contemporary and historical. The diverse range of articles covers specific artifacts, rituals, ceremonies, biblical figures, and legends—in addition to broad topics such as humor, folk dance, costumes, and folk narratives. Also included are biographies of significant personalities in the study of Jewish folklore and literature. The encyclopedia provides various country articles that highlight evolving traditions and histories of specific Jewish groups. Extensive bibliographies further enhance the value of each entry.


Jewish Magic and Superstition

Jewish Magic and Superstition

Author: Joshua Trachtenberg

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2012-10-08

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0812208331

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Alongside the formal development of Judaism from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries, a robust Jewish folk religion flourished—ideas and practices that never met with wholehearted approval by religious leaders yet enjoyed such wide popularity that they could not be altogether excluded from the religion. According to Joshua Trachtenberg, it is not possible truly to understand the experience and history of the Jewish people without attempting to recover their folklife and beliefs from centuries past. Jewish Magic and Superstition is a masterful and utterly fascinating exploration of religious forms that have all but disappeared yet persist in the imagination. The volume begins with legends of Jewish sorcery and proceeds to discuss beliefs about the evil eye, spirits of the dead, powers of good, the famous legend of the golem, procedures for casting spells, the use of gems and amulets, how to battle spirits, the ritual of circumcision, herbal folk remedies, fortune telling, astrology, and the interpretation of dreams. First published more than sixty years ago, Trachtenberg's study remains the foundational scholarship on magical practices in the Jewish world and offers an understanding of folk beliefs that expressed most eloquently the everyday religion of the Jewish people.


The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic & Mysticism

The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic & Mysticism

Author: Geoffrey W. Dennis

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780738745916

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Spanning the Bible, Jewish scripture, the Midrash, Kabbalah, and other mystical branches of Judaism, this text is meant to inspire and illuminate one of the oldest esoteric traditions still alive today.


How the Wise Men Got to Chelm

How the Wise Men Got to Chelm

Author: Ruth von Bernuth

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2016-09-13

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 1479886653

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How the Wise Men Got to Chelm is the first in-depth study of Chelm literature and its relationship to its literary precursors. When God created the world, so it is said, he sent out an angel with a bag of foolish souls with instructions to distribute them equally all over the world—one fool per town. But the angel’s bag broke and all the souls spilled out onto the same spot. They built a settlement where they landed: the town is known as Chelm. The collected tales of these fools, or “wise men,” of Chelm constitute the best-known folktale tradition of the Jews of eastern Europe. This tradition includes a sprawling repertoire of stories about the alleged intellectual limitations of the members of this old and important Jewish community. Chelm did not make its debut in the role of the foolish shtetl par excellence until late in the nineteenth century. Since then, however, the town has led a double life—as a real city in eastern Poland and as an imaginary place onto which questions of Jewish identity, community, and history have been projected. By placing literary Chelm and its “foolish” antecedents in a broader historical context, it shows how they have functioned for over three hundred years as models of society, somewhere between utopia and dystopia. These imaginary foolish towns have enabled writers both to entertain and highlight a variety of societal problems, a function that literary Chelm continues to fulfill in Jewish literature to this day.


Ritual Medical Lore of Sephardic Women

Ritual Medical Lore of Sephardic Women

Author: Isaac Jack Lévy

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780252026973

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Winner of the Ellii Kongas-Maranda Prize from the Women's Section of the American Folklore Society, 2003. Ritual Medical Lore of Sephardic Women preserves the precious remnants of a rich culture on the verge of extinction while affirming women's pivotal role in the health of their communities. Centered around extensive interviews with elders of the Sephardic communities of the former Ottoman Empire, this volume illuminates a fascinating complex of preventive and curative rituals conducted by women at home--rituals that ensured the physical and spiritual well-being of the community and functioned as a vital counterpart to the public rites conducted by men in the synagogues. Isaac Jack Lévy and Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt take us into the homes and families of Sephardim in Turkey, Israel, Greece, the former Yugoslavia, and the United States to unravel the ancient practices of domestic healing: the network of blessings and curses tailored to every occasion of daily life; the beliefs and customs surrounding mal ojo (evil eye), espanto (fright), and echizo (witchcraft); and cures involving everything from herbs, oil, and sugar to the powerful mumia (mummy) made from dried bones of corpses. For the Sephardim, curing an illness required discovering its spiritual cause, which might be unintentional thought or speech, accident, or magical incantation. The healing rituals of domesticated medicine provided a way of making sense of illness and a way of shaping behavior to fit the narrow constraints of a tightly structured community. Tapping a rich and irreplaceable vein of oral testimony, Ritual Medical Lore of Sephardic Women offers fascinating insight into a culture where profound spirituality permeated every aspect of daily life.