Tag Archives: Kabbalah-Hasidut

High Holidays (Sefas Emes)

Posted on October 6, 2022 by zjb

[sukka in very bright light, generated at DALL-E] The commentaries in the Sefas Emes to the High Holidays comprise different component parts in a single composition. They are the last major word of the fifth and final volume of the … Continue reading →

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Sefat Emet (Leviticus + Shavuot)

Posted on June 9, 2022 by zjb

[Am updating my long Sefat Emet digest with a digest of Leviticus + Shavuot] [You can see the whole digest here, still in progress, from Genesis and Hanukah]] After Exodus, the Sefas Emes on Leviticus dives more deeply into the … Continue reading →

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The Hasidic Seder Plate is an Objet de Fantasie

Posted on April 19, 2022 by zjb

I’ll post more later from Batsheva Goldman-Ida’s Hasidic Art and Kabbalah, but I want to share these three pictures in particular for the Passover holiday. In part, I’m choosing these three photographs because they are themselves rather remarkable. The photographs by … Continue reading →

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Habad in the Metaverse

Posted on February 4, 2022 by zjb

Habad scales up and out, creating the first Jewish outpost in the Metaverse, about which here. “The MANA Jewish Center will sit on a modest, grassy patch of land, circled by trees and pink flowers that pop up from underneath … Continue reading →

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Sefat Emet (A Rough Digest)

Posted on December 17, 2021 by zjb

This blogpost tracking Hasidic thought in the commentary to the Torah, the Sefas Emes (Sefat Emet) (english: Language of Truth) is going to be a running project that I will update and complete, volume by volume, more or less in … Continue reading →

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(Animism) Primitive Jewish Culture (E.B. Tylor)

Posted on October 7, 2021 by zjb

Jewish culture and Judaism spot E.B. Tylor’s monumental Primitive Culture. There is no special theory of Jewish culture or Judaism in Primitive Culture. Judaism is nothing special, just one more dataset in the ethnographic record. Primitive Judaism is folklore Primitive … Continue reading →

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(Force of Separation) Trump & Orthodox Judaism (Religion, Death, Chaos)

Posted on October 26, 2020 by zjb

  The conventional wisdom is that what draws religious voters to conservative politics is the appeal of order and structure. The more observant, the more devout the stronger this appeal. We know that 83% of orthodox Jews are supporting Trump, … Continue reading →

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(HAZMAT) Haredi Jewish Studies (Coronavirus)

Posted on October 18, 2020 by zjb

  In the opening months of the viral pandemic, there were posts at sites like the blog run by the Katz Center for Jewish History relating to setting the pandemic in historical and philosophical context. There has been lively back … Continue reading →

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Neo Hasidism (A Review of the New Anthology)

Posted on September 17, 2020 by zjb

            Excellent critical review here at Jewish Currents by Daniel Craft of the 2-vol anthology edited by Arthur Green & Ariel Evan Mayse: A New Hasidism: Roots A New Hasidism: Branches Craft argues that Neo-Hasidism … Continue reading →

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Thinking About Chabad (Joshua Shanes)

Posted on September 16, 2020 by zjb

Joshua Shanes pours out here at FB about his 10 years at Chabad, what drew him into and then away from the community. And the FB post opened a torrential flood of responses, especially modern orthodox and Jewish Studies academics. … Continue reading →

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