Elliot R Wolfson
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 459776 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Elliot R Wolfson |
| PRENOMES | Elliot R |
| SOBRENOME | Wolfson |
| ASSINATURA | WOLFSON E R |
| AFILIAÇÕES | New York University |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 68 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 53 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 67 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1986 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 3 |
Susan Taubes and the Universal Particularity of Judaism
In exile
Brokenness of Being and Errancy of Ontological Untruth
In this study, I examine Susan Taubes’s criticism of Heidegger’s Seinsdenken that pivots around her contention that he absolutized the nothingness of being in a manner that is analogous to but yet significantly different than the role assigned to the Godhead on the part of many mystical visionaries. The common denominator is in Heidegger’s insistence on being to the neglect of fully engaging with the rhythms of life. As a consequence, there is no…
Nocturnal Seeing
In this erudite new work, Elliot R. Wolfson explores philosophical gnosis in the writings of Susan Taubes, Gillian Rose, and Edith Wyschogrod. The juxtaposition of these three extraordinary, albeit relatively neglected, philosophers provides a prism through which Wolfson scrutinizes the interplay of ethics, politics, and theology. The speculation of each of these philosophers on melancholia and the tragicomedy of being is unquestionably intricate…
The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes
The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes
The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes offers a detailed analysis of an extraordinary figure in the twentieth-century history of Jewish thought, Western philosophy, and the study of religion. Drawing on close readings of Susan Taubes's writings, including her correspondence with Jacob Taubes, scholarly essays, literary compositions, and poems, Elliot R. Wolfson plumbs the depths of the tragic sensibility that shaped her worldview, hovering betw…
Melancholic Redemption and the Hopelessness of Hope
Since late antiquity, a connection was made between Jews and the psychological state of despondency based, in part, on the link between melancholy and Saturn, and the further association of the Hebrew name of that planet, Shabbetai, and the Sabbath. The melancholic predisposition has had important anthropological, cosmological, and theological repercussions. In this essay, I focus on various perspectives on melancholia in thinkers as diverse as K…
Rosenzweig on Human Redemption
Despite Franz Rosenzweig’s unequivocal condemnation of Gershom Scholem, his own view of the world and the possibility of human redemption therein is in some respect very close to the nihilistic sensibility and its gnostic underpinning. Although Rosenzweig obviously did not consider himself either a nihilist or a gnostic, the latter term can well be applied even to Rosenzweig’s mature speculation in The Star of Redemption and other writings from t…
Heeding the Law beyond the Law
This essay will examine the viability of a kabbalistic ethics from the vantage point of what I have identified in previously published studies as the hypernomian foundation of the nomos, the grounding of the law in the ground that exceeds the law of the ground. Contrary to Scholem, who put the emphasis on an antinomian impulse that is in conflict with the tenets of the tradition, I argue that the hallmark of religious nihilism is the promulgation…
Heidegger and Kabbalah
Alef, Mem, Tau
This highly original, provocative, and poetic work explores the nexus of time, truth, and death in the symbolic world of medieval kabbalah. Demonstrating that the historical and theoretical relationship between kabbalah and western philosophy is far more intimate and extensive than any previous scholar has ever suggested, Elliot R. Wolfson draws an extraordinary range of thinkers such as Frederic Jameson, Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig, Willi…
The Holy Cabala of Changes
This study examines affinities between kabbalah and Böhme’s theosophy. There are hints in Böhme’s writings of an awareness of the esoteric dimension of Judaism, regarding the mystical-magical power of the name. For Böhme, the Tetragrammaton signifies the efflux of the Word, which through Wisdom, facilitates the transition from infinite unity to finite multiplicity. The aspect of Böhme’s incarnational theosophy most indebted to the kabbalah concer…
The Duplicity of Philosophy's Shadow
Elliot R. Wolfson intervenes in the debate over Martin Heidegger and Nazism from a unique perspective, as a scholar of Jewish mysticism and philosophy who has been profoundly influenced by Heidegger's work. He reveals crucial aspects of Heidegger's thinking that betray an affinity with dimensions of Jewish thought
Theolatry and the Making-Present of the Nonrepresentable
In this essay, I place Buber’s thought in dialogue with Eckhart. Each understood that the theopoetic propensity to imagine the transcendent in images is no more than a projection of our will to impute form to the formless. The presence of God is made present through imaging the real, but imaging the real implies that the nonrepresentable presence can only be made present through the absence of representation. The goal of the journey is to venture…
Duplicity of Philosophy's Shadow
Asceticism, Mysticism, and Messianism
Asceticism, Mysticism, and Messianism: A Reappraisal of Schechter’s Portrait of Sixteenth-Century Safed Elliot R. Wolfson on “safed in the sixteenth century: a city of legists and mystics” (1908) It goes with out saying that the fields of Jewish mysticism and intellectual history have greatly evolved since the time that Solomon Schechter wrote “Safed in the Sixteenth Century: A City of Legists and Mystics,” first published in 1908.1 We now have a…
Elliot R. Wolfson
Elliot R. Wolfson is Professor of Religious Studies and the Marsha and Jay Glazer Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A scholar of Jewish mysticism and philosophy, he uses the textual sources of Judaism to examine universal philosophical topics such as the function and processes of the imagination, the paradoxes of temporality, and the mystery of poetic language. Working at the intersection of disciplines and r…
Iconicity of the Text
Among the precepts of Mosaic religion is one that has more significance than is first obvious. It is the prohibition against making an image of God, which means the compulsion to worship an invisible God. ... If this prohibition was accepted, however, it was bound to exercise a profound influence. For it signified subordinating sense perception to an abstract idea; it was a triumph of spirituality over senses; more precisely, an instinctual renun…
Elliot R. Wolfson
In the Mirror of the Dream
In the Mirror of the Dream:Borges and the Poetics of Kabbalah Elliot R. Wolfson Keywords Jorge Luis Borges, Judaism, kabbalah Dios (he dado en pensar) pone un empeñoEn toda esa inasible arquitecturaQue edifica la luz con la tersuraDel cristal y la sombra con el sueño. Dios ha creado las noches que se armanDe sueños y las formas del espejoPara que el hombre sienta que es reflejoY vanidad. Por eso nos alarman. Borges, “Los espejos”1 The crucial rol…
Nihilating Nonground and the Temporal Sway of Becoming
more than nothing is nothing more than nothing that nothing is Elliot R. Wolfson Let me begin by posing the obvious question: can anything be said about nothing other than nothing? Would it not be
Open Secret in the Rearview Mirror
Much scholarly and popular attention has been centered on whether or not Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh rebbe of the Ḥabad-Lubavitch dynasty, identified himself as the Messiah. While this interest is surely understandable, both doctrinally and anthropologically, in my judgment, it obscures the central question concerning the nature of the messianism he propagated. This line of inquiry might seem gratuitous for two reasons. First, his writ…
Concealment and Revelation
Open Secret
Menahem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) was the seventh and seemingly last Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. Marked by conflicting tendencies, Schneerson was a radical messianic visionary who promoted a conservative political agenda, a reclusive contemplative who built a hasidic sect into an international movement, and a man dedicated to the exposition of mysteries who nevertheless harbored many secrets. Schneerson astutely masked views that mi…
Oneiric Imagination and Mystical Annihilation in Habad Hasidism
Dream Vision and the Coincidentia Oppositorum Scholarly depictions of mysticism, as varied as they have been, frequently include visions and dreams on the list of common characteristics.Literary and other material artifacts attest that communion with what is considered in a particular milieu to be the fount of inspiration can provoke revelatory experiences, and the history of Judaism is no exception to this rule.Dreams, in particular, have been p…
Through a Speculum That Shines
The Body in the Text
O NE O F T HE M ANY C ONTRIBUTIONS that feminist scholarship has made to the academic study of culture and society is a heightened emphasis on the body for a proper understanding of the construction of human subjectivities. To be sure, speculation on the body is as ancient as recorded human history, but the approaches sponsored by contemporary feminist theories are distinctive insofar as they insist on the need to consider embodiment from the van…
By Way of Truth
Perhaps no one figure is more responsible for the legitimization of kabbalah as an authentic esoteric tradition of Judaism than Moses ben Nahman (1194–1270). Although from the beginnings of its literary history kabbalah was associated with men of rabbinic standing, such as R. Abraham ben David of Posquieres, no one before Nahmanides had attained a reputation for excellence in halakhic and mystical matters and had written extensively in both domai…
Circumcision, Vision of God, and Textual Interpretation
Alef, Mem, Tau
This highly original, provocative, and poetic work explores the nexus of time, truth, and death in the symbolic world of medieval kabbalah. Demonstrating that the historical and theoretical relationship between kabbalah and western philosophy is far more intimate and extensive than any previous scholar has ever suggested, Elliot R. Wolfson draws an extraordinary range of thinkers such as Frederic Jameson, Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig, Willi…
Nihilating Nonground and the Temporal Sway of Becoming
more than nothing is nothing more than nothing that nothing is Elliot R. Wolfson Let me begin by posing the obvious question: can anything be said about nothing other than nothing? Would it not be
The Fee in Social Work
Journal Article The Fee in Social Work: Ethical Dilemmas for Practitioners Get access Elizabeth R. Wolfson, PhD, ACSW Elizabeth R. Wolfson, PhD, ACSW adjunct assistant professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work, director of Clinical Services at Jewish Family Service of Metro West, Florham Park, NJ, and private practitioner in Ridgewood, NJ Please address all correspondence regarding this article to Elizabeth R. Wolfson, PhD, ACSW,…
The Mystical Significance of Torah Study in German Pietism
Nocturnal Seeing
In this erudite new work, Elliot R. Wolfson explores philosophical gnosis in the writings of Susan Taubes, Gillian Rose, and Edith Wyschogrod. The juxtaposition of these three extraordinary, albeit relatively neglected, philosophers provides a prism through which Wolfson scrutinizes the interplay of ethics, politics, and theology. The speculation of each of these philosophers on melancholia and the tragicomedy of being is unquestionably intricate…
The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes
The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes offers a detailed analysis of an extraordinary figure in the twentieth-century history of Jewish thought, Western philosophy, and the study of religion. Drawing on close readings of Susan Taubes's writings, including her correspondence with Jacob Taubes, scholarly essays, literary compositions, and poems, Elliot R. Wolfson plumbs the depths of the tragic sensibility that shaped her worldview, hovering betw…
Hebraic and Hellenic Conceptions of Wisdom in Sefer ha-Bahir
Elliot R. Wolfson, Hebraic and Hellenic Conceptions of Wisdom in Sefer ha-Bahir, Poetics Today, Vol. 19, No. 1, Hellenism and Hebraism Reconsidered: The Poetics of Cultural Influence and Exchange I (Spring, 1998), pp. 147-176
Left Contained in the Right
Although there has been much in modern scholarship written about the historical and theosophical background of the Zohar, scholars have paid little attention to the literary structure of the work and its relationship to the thematic content contained therein. There is, as far as I know, not one in-depth study of such a nature
Left Contained in the Right
Although there has been much in modern scholarship written about the historical and theosophical background of the Zohar, scholars have paid little attention to the literary structure of the work and its relationship to the thematic content contained therein. There is, as far as I know, not one in-depth study of such a nature
Circumcision and the Divine Name
Circumcision, Vision of God, and Textual Interpretation
Light Through Darkness
One of the perennial, and more vexing, problems in religious thought and philosophy has been the question unde malum . In ancient, medieval, and modern thought, the issue has been viewed mostly in its theological context. From the perspective of traditional monotheistic theology, the problem thus presents itself: If God is truly all good and all powerful, then why would God cause or even allow evil, whether natural (e.g., earthquakes, floods, hum…
The hermeneutics of visionary experience
This paper analyses the processes of revelation and interpretation as they function in the classic work of medeival Jewish mysticism, the Zohar. The author points out that visionary experience ofthe divine is not only central to Zoharic theosophy, but that the act of textual study itself must be understood in the light of this phenomenon insofar as the text is nothing but the configuration of divine light. The author demonstrates that the phenome…
The Problem of Unity in the Thought of Martin Buber
The Problem of Unity in the Thought of Martin Buber ELLIOT WOLFSON MAURICEFRIEDMANHAS SUGGESTEDTHAT Martin Buber's thought "can best be understood as a gradual movement from an early period of mysticism through a middle period of existentialism to a final period of developing dialogical philosophy."' The common denominator of these stages seems to me to be Buber's unyielding concern with the problem of unity in multiplicity. In Daniel: Dialogues …
Origins of the Kabbalah . Gershom Scholem , R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, Allan Arkush
By Way of Truth
Perhaps no one figure is more responsible for the legitimization of kabbalah as an authentic esoteric tradition of Judaism than Moses ben Nahman (1194–1270). Although from the beginnings of its literary history kabbalah was associated with men of rabbinic standing, such as R. Abraham ben David of Posquieres, no one before Nahmanides had attained a reputation for excellence in halakhic and mystical matters and had written extensively in both domai…
Merkavah Traditions in Philosophical Garb
La mystique juive du chariot a eu une influence decisive sur la pensee philosophique de Juda Halevi; c'est ce que montre l'etude de sa comprehension de la prophetie et de la revelation
God, the Demiurge and the Intellect
"Neusner's "The Incarnation of God
"Hai Gaon's Letter and Commentary on "'Aleynu
"Halperin's "The Faces of the Chariot
Kabbalah
"Idel, "Language, Torah and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia
The Books of Contemplation
The Mystical Significance of Torah Study in German Pietism
On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead
The Tree That Is All
Mysticism and the Poetic-Liturgical Compositions from Qumran
Elliot R. Wolfson, Mysticism and the Poetic-Liturgical Compositions from Qumran: A Response to Bilhah Nitzan, The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 85, No. 1/2, Papers on the Dead Sea Scrolls (Jul. - Oct., 1994), pp. 185-202
Through a Speculum That Shines
Circle in the Square
Along the Path
Mystical Prayer in Ancient Judaism
Iconic Visualization and the Imaginal Body of God
Philosophy (55 obras) · Theology (40 obras) · Art (30 obras) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (29 obras) · Judaism (27 obras) · Mysticism (23 obras) · Literature (22 obras) · Epistemology (21 obras) · Biblical Studies and Interpretation (19 obras) · History (17 obras)