Major Turning Points in Jewish Intellectual History

This book analyzes major transformations in Jewish life and thought: from idolatry to exclusive monotheism in the biblical age, from state-based identity to cultural nationalism in the Roman empire; and, in the European Diaspora, from theology to secularism and revived political nationalism in the modern period. Fundamental questions are asked about Jewish survival in a variety of topics including prophecy, Jewish law, Midrash, the Roman-Jewish wars, Stoicism, secular poetry in Muslim Spain, Marx and Freud, and Hebrew literature through the ages.

Autorentext
DAVID ABERBACH is Associate Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, McGill University, Montreal, Canada and Visiting Academic at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has published books on three modern Hebrew writers, Mendele, Bialik and Agnon, as well as Surviving Trauma: Loss, Literature and Psychoanalysis , Imperial and Biblical Prophecy 750-500BCE , Charisma in Politics, Religion and the Media: Private Trauma, Public Ideals , and (with Moshe Aberbach) Revolutionary Hebrew: Empire and Crisis .

Inhalt
Introduction Acknowledgements PART I: FROM IDOLATRY TO EXCLUSIVE MONOTHEISM The Iron Age, Imperialism and the Prophets Trauma and Abstract Monotheism: Jewish Exile and Recovery in the 6th Century BCE PART II: FROM STATE TO SCRIPTURE/UNIVERSALISM The Roman-Jewish Wars and Hebrew Cultural Nationalism The Tannaim, Marcus Aurelius, and the Politics of Stoicized Judaism PART III: TOWARDS A SECULAR CULTURE Secular Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain 1031-1140 PART IV: FROM THEOLOGY TO SOCIOLOGY Mystical Union and Grief: The Baal Shem Tov and Krishnamurti Emancipation and the End of Rabbinic Dominance: Marx and Freud Conflicting Sociological Identities of Hebrew in Western Civilization FROM ASSIMILATION TO NATIONALISM The Renascence of Hebrew and Jewish Nationalism in the Tsarist Empire 1881-1917