Menachem Mendel

Rabbi David Golinkin writes here about the origins of the Tikkun Leil Shavuot.

Posted on May 13th, 2013 under Customs, Kabbalah. Comments: None

At Text and Texture Rabbi Shlomo Brody has a very nice post about “Rabbi Joseph Karo’s Shulchan Aruch and Magid Mesharim.” (hat tip)

Posted on December 22nd, 2011 under Jewish Law, Jewish Mysticism, Kabbalah, Rabbinic Authority, Rabbinic Literature. Comments Off

My close friend Sharon Koren’s book, Forsaken: The Menstruant in Medieval Jewish Mysticism, has been released. This book addresses a central question in the study of Jewish mysticism in the medieval and early modern periods: why are there no known female mystics in medieval Judaism, unlike contemporaneous movements in Christianity and Islam? Koren demonstrates that [...]

Posted on November 28th, 2011 under Kabbalah, New Books. Comments: 1

Ynet has an article (Hebrew) about Roni Weinstein’s new book, Shavru et ha-Keilim (“They Broke the Vessels”). Weinstein’s book is subtitled “The Kabbalah and Jewish Modernity.” In this book Weinstein claims that modern religious Judaism cannot be understand without reference to the Kabbalah. He is quoted as saying: The Kabbalah is like a bomb that [...]

Posted on November 27th, 2011 under Jewish History, Jewish Law, Jewish Thought, Kabbalah, New Books, Religion, Religion in Israel. Comments Off

Ynet has an article (Hebrew) about some new books about S.Y. Agnon. The article talks about Agnon’s relationship to Kabbalah, the Zohar, messianism, and also talks about the search for the authentic date of his birth and aliyah to Israel and why Agnon may have told people otherwise.

Posted on February 14th, 2011 under Hebrew Literature, Kabbalah, New Books. Comments Off

Here you can find the audio of a talk that Arthur Green gave recently at the Shalom Hartman Institute about his book Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition. It is worth a listen.

Posted on December 12th, 2010 under Jewish Thought, Kabbalah, Religion. Comments Off

Tomer Persico posts about the kabbalist Abraham Abulafia and Amnon Gross, a person who has devoted decades to publishing Abulafia’s writings from manuscripts. Gross’s blog can be found here, along with links to many of Abulafia’s writings in PDF.

Posted on August 3rd, 2010 under Jewish Thought, Kabbalah. Comments Off

Sharon Flatto’s The Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth-century Prague: Ezekiel Landau And His Contemporaries has just been published. From the promo: Sharon Flatto’s comprehensive study offers the first systematic overview of the eighteenth-century Jewish community of Prague and the first critical account of the life and thought of its pre-eminent rabbinic authority, Ezekiel Landau. Her detailed [...]

Posted on April 29th, 2010 under Kabbalah, New Books, Rabbinic Authority. Comments Off

Tomer Persico reviews (Hebrew) Jay Michaelson’s Everything Is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism. For a recent article by Persico on The Rebbe see here. From his article, As I will show, the Rebbe did believe—and encouraged his followers to believe—that he was the messiah, destined to reveal himself to the people Israel and [...]

Posted on November 19th, 2009 under Book Reviews, Jewish Thought, Kabbalah, New Books. Comments Off