Cultural Writing. REVEALMENT AND CONCEALMENT is ... a series of profound and highly influential essays on Hebrew and Jewish culture ... collected in a new and handsomely produced English edition -- Jonathan Wilson, The Times Literary Supplement. This important collection gathers together five essays by Haim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934), by all accounts the greatest modern Hebrew poet, and a writer who has long defied translation. A key figure in the renaissance of Hebrew Culture at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Translated by Zali Gurevitch who teaches at the Hebrew University and is the author of six books of poetry.
"Mendele Mocher Sforim. Shem and Japheth on the train.--Peretz, Y. L. Scenes from Limbo.--Feierberg, M. Z. In the evening.--Ahad Ha-Am. Imitation and assimilation.--Bialik, H. N. The short Friday. Revealment and concealment in language.--Brenner, Y. H. The way out.--Barash, A. At heaven's gate.--Agnon, S. Y. Agunot. The lady and the peddler. At the outset of the day. Forevermore.--Hazaz, H. Rahamim. The sermon.--Yizhar, S. The prisoner.--Amichai, Y. The times my father died.--Oz, A. Before his time.--Yehoshua, A. B. Facing the forests."
The Father of Jewish Mysticism offers an incisive look at the early life and writings of Gershom Scholem (1897–1982), the father of modern Jewish mysticism and a major 20th-century Jewish intellectual. Daniel Weidner offers the first full-length study, published in English, of Scholem's thought. Scholem, a historian ofthe Kabbalah and sharp critic of Jewish assimilation, played a major role in the study and popularization of Jewish mysticism. Through his work on the Kabbalah, Scholem turned the closed world of mystical texts into a force for Jewish identity. Skillfully drawing on Scholem's early diaries and writings, The Father of Jewish Mysticism introduces a young, soon-to-be legendary intellectual in search of himself and Judaism.
Living in an era of immense and bewildering change in technology, pandemic and war, humanity has had cause to challenge the apparent old fixities and certainties of life. Essentially, are we being played? The premise of this volume is that all of human life is underpinned by powerful dynamic systems, so tightly interwoven into our daily lives that we are barely aware of them, whose true nature only comes to light at times of profound disruption or crisis. These powerful dynamic systems, philosophical or otherwise, often fall under the umbrella of ludic theory. Within these pages, some of the leading thinkers of ludic theory from three continents explore its diversity and relevance through the perspectives of some of the world’s most famous philosophers. In many ways, this volume follows on from Sampson’s 'Being Played: Gadamer and Philosophy’s Hidden Dynamic' (2019). It also draws upon other ludic-centred and ludic-inspired texts that include Mattice’s 'Metaphor and Metaphilosophy' (2014) and Arthos’ 'Gadamer’s Poetics: A Critique of Modern Aesthetics' (2014), together with Frazier’s 'Reality, Religion and Passion' (2009) and Homan’s 'A Hermeneutics of Poetic Education' (2020). Although this is not the first volume offering an integrated approach to ludic theory, see Ryall (ed), 'The Philosophy of Play' (2013), it offers a diverse and detailed approach to the subject, including not only Western philosophers, but also thinkers from Ancient China, 16th-century India and modern South America. This volume will be not only of interest to scholars and students of ludic theory and philosophy in general, but because of its deliberate globalised content, it is hoped it might have a wider appeal globally as humanity continues to grapple with significant challenges created by these current winds of change.
In her penetrating new study, Na’ama Rokem observes that prose writing—more than poetry, drama, or other genres—came to signify a historic rift that resulted in loss and disenchantment. In Prosaic Conditions, Rokem treats prose as a signifying practice—that is, a practice that creates meaning. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, prose emerges in competition with other existing practices, specifically, the practice of performance. Using Zionist literature as a test case, Rokem examines the ways in which Zionist authors put prose to use, both as a concept and as a literary mode. Writing prose enables these authors to grapple with historical, political, and spatial transformations and to understand the interrelatedness of all of these changes.
This book grew from a series of lectures presented in 1983 in the context of the Summer Program in Phenomenology at The Pennsylvania State University. For these lectures I made use of notes and short essays which I had written between 1978 and 1982 during interdisciplinary seminars on Heidegger's later philosophy in general, and on his philosophy of language and art in particular. The participants in these seminars consisted of faculty members and graduate students concerned with the sciences, the arts, literature, literary criticism, art history, art education, and philosophy. On both occasions I made a special effort to introduce those who did not yet have a specialized knowledge of Heidegger's philosophy, to his later way of thinking. In this effort I was guided by the conviction that we, as a group, had to aim for accuracy, precision, clarity, faithfulness, and depth, while at the same time taking distance, comparing Heidegger's views with ideas of other philosophers and thinkers, and cultivat ing a proper sense of criticism. Over the years it has become clear to me that among professional philoso phers, literary critics, scholars concerned with art history and art education, and scientists from various disciplines, there are many who are particularly interested in "Heidegger's philosophy of art". I have also become convinced that many of these dedicated scholars often have difficulty in understanding Heidegger's lectures on art and art works. This is understandable.
The essays included in this volume are illustrative of the depth and breadth of possibilities provided by hermeneutic philosophy and by a hermeneutically oriented phenomenology. Among the topics considered, the questions explored, are: How is hermeneutics situated within the general, twentieth century philosophical climate? What is its genuine essence, its logos? How does hermeneutics relate to traditional philosophy? To Kant? To Hegel? To Husserl? What possibilities does hermeneutics offer for a philosophy of the future? What does it have to say about science, about art, about values, about rationality and its limits, about what it means to be who we are? Such are the questions of this volume, The Question of Hermeneutics. Contributors include such well known philosophers as Otto Pöggeler, Karl-Otto Apel, Calvin Schrag, Walter Biemel, James Edie, Thomas Seebohm, Adriaan Peperzak, and others.
A celebrated Israeli author explores the roots of the divide between religion and secularism in Israel today, and offers a path to bridging the divide Zionism began as a movement full of contradictions, between a pull to the past and a desire to forge a new future. Israel has become a place of fragmentation, between those who sanctify religious tradition and those who wish to escape its grasp. Now, a new middle ground is emerging between religious and secular Jews who want to engage with their heritage—without being restricted by it or losing it completely. In this incisive book, acclaimed author Micah Goodman explores Israeli Judaism and the conflict between religion and secularism, one of the major causes of political polarization throughout the world. Revisiting traditional religious sources and seminal works of secularism, he reveals that each contains an openness to learn from the other’s messages. Goodman challenges both orthodoxies, proposing a new approach to bridge the divide between religion and secularism and pave a path toward healing a society torn asunder by extremism.
