Judaism I. Группа авторов

was shaped in Spain, the epicenter of Judeo-Arabic grammatical scholarship. He disseminated it throughout Christian Europe.

      The »plain sense« of Peshat did not suffice and became one stage in biblical hermeneutics. During the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, scholars integrated philosophy, narrative analysis, and mysticism within their writings. Through the works of Maimonides, Gersonides, David Kimḥi, and Naḥmanides, Peshat continued to be of value, but was contingent on historical context and individual perspectives. By the fourteenth century, approaches could be categorized by the acronym PaRDeS (paradise): Peshat, Remez, Derash, and Sod, representing plain sense or context, typology or allegory, midrash, and mystical interpretations.

      »Aggadah« delineates Jewish prose related to Scripture, but not necessarily exegetical. Aggadah does not always take the form of story. It may contain admonitions to ethical conduct, theological reflection, historiography, exegesis, and other material. Five developments receive attention: innovation within midrash, narrative, historiography, ethical literature, and anthologies.

      The historical processes of textualization and re-oralization complicate analysis. Much of the literature was composed under anonymous or collective authorship. Material was orally reenacted within the synagogue and study-house. Each performance could reshape the text. Works were assembled from earlier sources, leading some scholars to characterize it as »mere technical arrangement.« However, redactors exerted editorial control that revealed their own creativity, context, and purposes.

      20 Piyyut

      Dr. Elisabeth Hollender of Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main describes piyyut (Jewish liturgical poetry) from its origins to the modern era. Given the considerable passage of time, older liturgical poetry like the Psalms could only serve as conceptual models. A need for an aesthetic form of worship in the area between spontaneous and improvised prayer and the need for fixed texts led to the introduction of texts in verse and liturgical poetry.

      In 1972, Ezra Fleischer presented a division of the history of the genre which remains valid today: pre-classical piyyut (up to the 6th. cent. CE); classical piyyut (late 6th to 7th cent. CE); post-classical piyyut (8th–10th cent. CE); Sephardic piyyut (from 10th cent. CE): divisible into Andalusian piyyut (10th–12th cent. CE), and piyyut from Christian Spain (13th–15th cent. CE), with variants on the margins of the Iberian Peninsula; the Italo-Ashkenazic school of piyyut (9th–14th cent. CE): divisible into south-Italian piyyut (9th cent,), Italian piyyut (10th–14th cent. CE), Ashkenazic piyyut (11th–14th cent. CE). Also worthy of mention are Romaniote piyyut (12th –14th cent. CE), Karaite liturgical poetry (12th–17th cent.), North-African piyyut (15th–19th cent.), as well as the poetic tradition in Yemen, and Hebrew poetry in the Ottoman Empire, used liturgically and para-liturgically. The new interest in the oriental piyyut evident in 21st-century Israel has led to texts being written down once again, so that contemporary piyyut is a new category.

      Types of liturgical poetry are distinguished according to their function and place within worship, and as the genre has developed, formal rules for individual types have been subject to alteration. In morning worship, the »Hear O Israel« prayer is surrounded by three benedictions. The poetic embellishment of this complex is called yotser. For the various forms of ʿAmidah (the standing prayer) there are different forms of poetic embellishment. In the Middle Ages, additional moments in worship were identified that could be embellished with piyyutim. The long history of liturgical poetry may be divided into individual strands, which are often geographically linked. Criticism of piyyutim had an effect on liturgy in the modern era.

      21 Jewish Liturgy

      Dr. Dalia Marx of Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem, first surveys spontaneous personal prayer and Psalms in the Hebrew Bible, noting that the majority of prayers are event specific. Marx describes the Second Temple period (538 BCE through 70 CE) as the incubation period for Jewish liturgy. With the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, the rabbis substituted prayer for sacrifices. The Mishnah considers essential Jewish liturgical practices: the recitation of the Shemaʿ, and the ʿAmidah prayer, as well as prayers for eating.

      The formula, »Blessed are you O Eternal, Our God, king of the world…« opens or closes rabbinic blessings. We do not know when rabbinic prayer was first written down, as the rabbis opposed this practice. Joseph Heinemann contended that from its outset the structure and content of prayer, the number and order of the blessings were all determined, yet there was no single original text fixed by any central body of rabbis. In contrast, Ezra Fleischer held that the liturgy was created in the court of Rabban Gamaliel in Yavneh at the end of the first century CE.

      During the seventh century and the years that followed, the first prayer-books were created. The earliest manuscripts of Jewish liturgy also can be dated to the end of this period. Rav Amram (d. ca. 875) of Babylonia responded to a legal inquiry sent to him with the first complete prayer-book that has come into our hands. The liturgical customs of the Babylonians were more crystallized than those of the Land of Israel.

      From the 11^th century until the advent of printed prayer-books in the 16^th century is an era of local custom. As the grip of Babylonian Jewry weakened, communal customs grew. The rabbis of Sefarad (Spanish-Portuguese) attended to the Babylonian Gaonate regarding the prayer-book. The permeation of Kabbalistic ideas into prayer marked an important trend.

      Jewish demographics changed repeatedly as the result of forced and willing migrations. The printing of prayer-books in Ashkenaz, Sefarad, and Italy in the 16^th century allowed for more plentiful copies of these works. The current era has brought major shifts in every aspect of Jewish liturgy.

      22 Jewish Mysticism

      Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main’s Dr. Elke Morlok writes of the Hebrew Bible as an inspiration for Jewish Mysticism. The transmission of mystical content and exegetic methods was kept within elite circles. »Kabbalah« (Hebrew q-b-l, to receive) designates different forms of Jewish esotericism, emphasizing intense religious experience.

      »Hekhalot-literature« (hekhal, palace) and Merkavah speculations (merkavah, chariot; Ez. 1:8), date 200–800 C.E. and describe ascent through the heavenly realms, culminating in a vision of God’s form upon His throne. Shiʽur Qomah traditions describe the limbs of the enthroned divine figure in unfathomable dimensions. Secrets are revealed by Metatron, the »angel of the divine countenance.« The demiurgic status of Metatron as »lesser YHWH« is fiercely debated in recent scholarship.

      Sefer Yezirah (Book of Creation) discusses the creation of the cosmos using the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The Ḥasidei Ashkenaz emphasized ascetic renunciation and ethical discipline. Sefer haBahir, »The Book of Brightness,« includes an image of God in a male-female polarity and theurgical understanding of halakhic practices. The Bahir focusses on ten sefirot, luminous emanations of God that reveal inner divine life.

      Between 1210 and 1260, Kabbalah developed in Castile. During the 1290’s, a kabbalistic commentary on the Torah, Sefer haZohar (The Book of Splendor) had a transformative impact on Judaism. Abraham Abulafia (born 1240) propounded a Kabbalah to bring one to a state of ecstatic union with God. According to his own testimony, Abulafia wrote 26 books of prophecy based on his mystical experiences.

      The exile of the Spanish Jewish community facilitated the expansion of kabbalistic texts around the Mediterranean. Isaac Luria had an enormous impact on the Safed kabbalists. The charismatic figure Sabbatai Zevi was born in Smyrna (Turkey). Zevi’s purported messianism gained sufficient momentum to break through social groups. In 1666, Sabbatai Zevi converted to Islam. This devastating disappointment brought the movement to a catastrophic end.

      In the 18th century, a new social phenomenon took root in Poland-Lithuania, centered around kabbalistic traditions and the teachings of Israel Baʽal Shem Tov. His Hasidic movement emphasized a democratic religious ideal, wherein