A Drama in Heaven: “Emanation on the Left” in Kabbalah and a Parallel Cosmogonic Myth in Ismāʿīlī Literature

Ebstein, Michael; Weiss, Tzahi

doi:10.1086/683063

Cited by 20 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…When one considers the fact that the kabbalists were mainly interpreting their own canonical literature (Scripture, Talmud, and Midrash) and Ibn al-'Arabī his (the Quran, its early interpretation, and hadith literature), the affinity between what resulted from each is remarkable. Several scholars have formulated the theory, which has yet to be fully worked out, that Iberian Jewish thinkers, kabbalists included, were familiar with Neoplatonic writings, especially of the Ismaili variety, in Arabic (Pines 1980;Goldreich 1987;Ebstein and Weiss 2015;Krinis 2016). Although no study has investigated kabbalistic use of specific Arabic texts in the areas of divine retribution and eschatology, such a study is expected to yield rich results, given the high concentration of similarities found in our phenomenological and terminological comparison of a relatively limited sample.…”

Section: Possible Literary Contacts Between Castilian Kabbalah and Ibn Al-'arabī's Writingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ontology, Arrangement, and Appearance of Paradise in Castilian Kabbalah in Light of Contemporary Islamic Traditions from al-Andalus

Bar-Asher

2020

Religions

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This study is a comparative analysis of the appearances of the lower and upper Paradise, their divisions, and the journeys to and within them, which appear in mystical Jewish and Islamic sources in medieval Iberia. Ibn al-‘Arabī’s vast output on the Gardens of divine reward and their divisions generated a number of instructive comparisons to the eschatological and theosophical writing about the same subject in early Spanish Kabbalah. Although there is no direct historical evidence that kabbalists knew of such Arabic works from the region Catalonia or Andalusia, there are commonalities in fundamental imagery and in ontological and exegetical assumptions that resulted from an internalization of similar patterns of thought. It is quite reasonable to assume that these literary corpora, both products of the thirteenth century, were shaped by common sources from earlier visionary literature. The prevalence of translations of religious writing about ascents on high, produced in Castile in the later thirteenth century, can help explain the sudden appearance of visionary literature on Paradise and its divisions in the writings of Jewish esotericists of the same region. These findings therefore enrich our knowledge of the literary, intellectual, and creative background against which these kabbalists were working when they chose to depict Paradise in the way that they did, at the time that they did.

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Section: Possible Literary Contacts Between Castilian Kabbalah and Ibn Al-'arabī's Writingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ontology, Arrangement, and Appearance of Paradise in Castilian Kabbalah in Light of Contemporary Islamic Traditions from al-Andalus

Bar-Asher

2020

Religions

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“…The stories reflect European courtlya nd folklore storytelling traditions, with kings, princesses, and viceroys,a sw ella sm agical forests,m ountains, and creatures. Yett hey also incorporate Zoharic traditions of Kabbalistic thought and symbolism, includingt heirP ersian and Arabic influences.² The languageo ft heir composition is Yiddish, which did not,when Rabbi Nahman'st ales werep ublished,yet have valenceasamodernlanguagewith literaryproperties.Eventhe collection'stitle,  Fora ne xample of Arabic influences on earlyK abbalah, see Ebstein and Weiss 2015. Sipurei Mayses,c ombines Hebrew proper with Yiddishized Hebrew language: sipur means "story" in Hebrew,yet mayse has bothHebrew and Yiddish usages, both of them meaning "tale," but used slightlydifferently. AYiddish mayse is a tale or story,but a ma'aseh in Hebrew is an action or occurrence -awordused by rabbinical sagesw hen describingaserieso fe vents centered on certain actions.…”

Section: David Strombergmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disseminating Jewish Literatures

Zepp¹,

Shahar²,

Fine³

et al. 2020

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This brief paper focuses on af ew methodological and practical challenges one faces when trying to introduce -or integrate -Jewishl iterature(s) into courses dedicated to modern, and especiallyearlym odern, Spanish literature.A saHispanist,r ather thanascholaro fJ ewish studies,m yphilological and pedagogic interests in Sephardic Jewry and its literary production are motivated first and foremost by the fact that they are yetanother manifestation of Hispanic culture, which, alongside morisco culture and colonial culture, reflect on our concept of "Spanishness",and, consequently, on what we consider to be part of the Spanish literaryc anon.Id eem introductory courses to be the most appropriate context to expose studentst othe existenceo fJ ewishworks and their complex relation to Spanish literature. These coursesare often students' first encounter with aliterary canon both as an abstract -debatable -concept and as ac orpus of texts, which they are expected to be familiar with by the end of the course. Thus, such courses are an opportunity to think with the studentsa bout the major questions and problems thatwould -hopefully -accompanythem through their studies, and sometimes even beyond. At the samet ime, however,the time constraint imposed by the need to cover ar elatively large amounto ft exts,a pproaches, and historical contexts, obliges us to modify our syllabi with caution.My argument is that in order to integrate Jewishliteratures into the narrative of courses introducing studentsw ith earlym odern Spanish literature, one does not need to radicallychangecourse syllabi nor dismantle the very canon of Golden Agel iterature. Rather,one needs to introduce minimal changes in the list of works studied -i. e., add one Jewish work, or selections thereof -and gesture, as one teaches other canonical works,t owards the story of Hebrew,J ewish, and converso literatures -threed ifferent concepts with which studentsm ust be acquainted. The same holds, of course,for the Muslim culturaland literaryheritage of the Iberian Peninsula and for the underrepresented morisco literatureo ft he sixteenth century.G iven, however,t he focus of the present volume on Jewish and modernl iteratures,Iwill limit myself to Jewish and converso literature.OpenAccess.

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Between Mythical Thought and Philosophy: Prolegomena to a Comparative Study of Jewish and Islamic Mysticism in Medieval Spain

Ebstein

2019

Jewish-Muslim Relations

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A Drama in Heaven: “Emanation on the Left” in Kabbalah and a Parallel Cosmogonic Myth in Ismāʿīlī Literature

Cited by 20 publications

References 2 publications

The Ontology, Arrangement, and Appearance of Paradise in Castilian Kabbalah in Light of Contemporary Islamic Traditions from al-Andalus

The Ontology, Arrangement, and Appearance of Paradise in Castilian Kabbalah in Light of Contemporary Islamic Traditions from al-Andalus

Disseminating Jewish Literatures

Between Mythical Thought and Philosophy: Prolegomena to a Comparative Study of Jewish and Islamic Mysticism in Medieval Spain

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