"In the gorgeous and rugged terrain of Jewish thought, there is no higher mountain to climb than Maimonides, and no more slippery or exhilarating ascent. Halbertal has made it all the way to the top, and his survey of the whole of the Maimonidean landscape is trustworthy and masterful. This is the richest and most intellectually sophisticated book on Maimonides I have ever read."--Leon Wieseltier "In this learned and penetrating work, Halbertal offers us a Maimonides who draws on (...) the dominant Greco-Islamic thought of his time while creating a system of thought that is fully Jewish. He shows us how the early "Commentary on the Mishnah" links up with the "Mishneh Torah" and with the "Guide of the Perplexed," written at the end of his life, to form an unexpected and radical intellectual unity. Beautifully written, "Maimonides" brings out both Maimonides's intellectual success and the paradoxical critical approaches to him after his death."--David J. Wasserstein, Vanderbilt University "Insightful and learned. Halbertal is perhaps the leading philosopher of Jewish law today. His book on Maimonides, like his other writings, reflects wide erudition and is written clearly and sharply."--Warren Zev Harvey, professor emeritus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem "Displaying the marvelous depth and clarity that mark all his work, Halbertal explains in abundant detail the transformations that Maimonides sought to effect in the Jewish world. He provides incisive interpretations of both legal and philosophical writings, yet he is also a biographer, binding together Maimonides's life, self-perception, and intellectual agenda. This is an exceptionally rich book, one that offers fresh perspectives for experts and a highly accessible introduction for general readers."--David Shatz, Yeshiva University "An outstanding and thrilling portrait of Maimonides. Halbertal's analytic lucidity and psychological depth are singular, and his talents are abundantly apparent on every page. This is an extraordinary book."--Menachem Lorberbaum, Tel Aviv University. (shrink)

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, great new trends of Jewish thought emerged whose widely varied representatives--Kabbalists, philosophers, and astrologers--each claimed that their particular understanding revealed the actual secret of the Torah. They presented their own readings in a coded fashion that has come to be regarded by many as the very essence of esotericism. Concealment and Revelation takes us on a fascinating journey to the depths of the esoteric imagination. Carefully tracing the rise of esotericism and its function in (...) medieval Jewish thought, Moshe Halbertal's richly detailed historical and cultural analysis gradually builds conceptual-philosophical force to culminate in a masterful phenomenological taxonomy of esotericism and its paradoxes. Among the questions addressed: What are the internal justifications that esoteric traditions provide for their own existence, especially in the Jewish world, in which the spread of knowledge was of great importance? How do esoteric teachings coexist with the revealed tradition, and what is the relationship between the various esoteric teachings that compete with that revealed tradition? Halbertal concludes that, through the medium of the concealed, Jewish thinkers integrated into the heart of the Jewish tradition diverse cultural influences such as Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, and Hermeticisims. And the creation of an added concealed layer, unregulated and open-ended, became the source of the most daring and radical interpretations of the tradition. (shrink)

The book is at its most profound in sorting out the relation between violence and sacrifice. Altogether, this is a very moving and deep book--philosophically, anthropologically, and religiously.

Moshe Halbertal, Ezoterism si exoterism. Restrictiile misterului in traditia iudaica Ed. Limes, Cluj-Napoca, 2004, traducere din limba engleza de Roxana Havrici.

In contemporary debates about religion, both proponents and opponents seem to share a parental view on God without ever questioning it. This text seeks to trace back that view and compare it with a Biblical alternative. First it is argued that it was Spinoza who needed to depict the Biblical God as a mere father in order to justify his exegesis of him. By connecting all religious imagery to the faculty of imagination and by consequently denying the imagination any direct (...) claims on truth and reason, Spinoza could develop the modern consciousness of progress, as the ‘outgrowing,’ the leaving behind of an age of irrationality and untruth. With a God reduced to a father, the human identity is reduced to a child and the dramatics between the two to growing up and making space. This idea seems to further underpin the whole modern and even postmodern image of God. But if we read the Biblical God from a different perspective we end up with a very different view. Moshe Halbertal claims that the basic image of Biblical anthropomorphism is not the parental but the marital relation between God and man. This new reading is analysed and compared with Spinoza’s exegesis. It turns out that the marital metaphor allows for a whole new and better understanding of God, and connected with that, of religious life, of the value of the Bible, and of the ideas of reason, truth and freedom. (shrink)

Meet the Sorbs. They are a Slavic people in Germany who number around sixty thousand. They are not mistreated or oppressed by the German government. They live in two German states, but they are interspersed with other Germans. Do the Sorbs deserve special, group rights to help maintain their culture? The recent arguments of many theorists suggest that they do. Iris Marion Young has recently argued that all marginalized groups should have group rights. Avishai Margalit and Moshe Halbertal (...) maintain that all cultural groups have certain rights. Will Kymlicka suggests that all ‘societal cultures’ have group rights, which might include the Sorbs. (shrink)

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, great new trends of Jewish thought emerged whose widely varied representatives--Kabbalists, philosophers, and astrologers--each claimed that their particular understanding revealed the actual secret of the Torah. They presented their own readings in a coded fashion that has come to be regarded by many as the very essence of esotericism. Concealment and Revelation takes us on a fascinating journey to the depths of the esoteric imagination. Carefully tracing the rise of esotericism and its function in (...) medieval Jewish thought, Moshe Halbertal's richly detailed historical and cultural analysis gradually builds conceptual-philosophical force to culminate in a masterful phenomenological taxonomy of esotericism and its paradoxes. Among the questions addressed: What are the internal justifications that esoteric traditions provide for their own existence, especially in the Jewish world, in which the spread of knowledge was of great importance? How do esoteric teachings coexist with the revealed tradition, and what is the relationship between the various esoteric teachings that compete with that revealed tradition? Halbertal concludes that, through the medium of the concealed, Jewish thinkers integrated into the heart of the Jewish tradition diverse cultural influences such as Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, and Hermeticisims. And the creation of an added concealed layer, unregulated and open-ended, became the source of the most daring and radical interpretations of the tradition. (shrink)

If we are to understand the concept of toleration in terms of everyday life, we must address a key philosophical and political tension: the call for restraint when encountering apparently wrong beliefs and actions versus the good reasons for interfering with the lives of the subjects of these beliefs and actions. This collection contains original contributions to the ongoing debate on the nature of toleration, including its definition, historical development, justification, and limits. In exploring the issues surrounding toleration, the essays (...) address a variety of provocative questions. Is toleration a moral virtue of individuals or rather a pragmatic political compromise? Is it an intrinsically good principle or only a "second best-solution" to the dangers of fanaticism to be superseded one day by the full acceptance of others? Does the value of toleration lie in respect to individuals and their autonomy, or rather in the recognition of the right of minority groups to maintain their communal identity? Throughout, the contributors point to the inherent indeterminacy of the concept and to the difficulty in locating it between intolerant absolutism and skeptical pluralism. Religion, sex, speech, and education are major areas requiring toleration in liberal societies. By applying theoretical analysis, these essays show the differences in the argument for toleration and its scope in each of these realms. The contributors include Joshua Cohen, George Fletcher, Gordon Graham, Alon Harel, Moshe Halbertal, Barbara Herman, John Horton, Will Kymlicka, Avishai Margalit, David Richards, Thomas Scanlon, and Bernard Williams. (shrink)

The Mesillas Yesharim / Path of the Just was the masterpiece of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, the great mystic, philosopher, sage, and saint. For centuries, this classic text for better living has been every man's primer for ideal life. Wherever there were Jews there was a well-thumbed Mesillas Yesharim. In this book, Rabbi Twerski applies the text and themes of Mesillas Yesharim to the everyday challenges of the 90s. He shows us how we can succeed in the quest for (...) a better life and in bettering ourselves. (shrink)

This book describes Carmeli's cosmological general and special relativity theory, along with Einstein's general and special relativity. These theories are discussed in the context of Moshe Carmeli's original research, in which velocity is introduced as an additional independent dimension. Four- and five-dimensional spaces are considered, and the five-dimensional braneworld theory is presented. The Tully-Fisher law is obtained directly from the theory, and thus it is found that there is no necessity to assume the existence of dark matter in the (...) halo of galaxies, nor in galaxy clusters.The book gives the derivation of the Lorentz transformation, which is used in both Einstein's special relativity and Carmeli's cosmological special relativity theory. The text also provides the mathematical theory of curved space?time geometry, which is necessary to describe both Einstein's general relativity and Carmeli's cosmological general relativity. A comparison between the dynamical and kinematic aspects of the expansion of the universe is made. Comparison is also made between the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker theory and the Carmeli theory. And neither is it necessary to assume the existence of dark matter to correctly describe the expansion of the cosmos. (shrink)

In this volume, the third in his classic series of texts surveying the history of art theory, Moshe Barasch traces the hidden patterns and interlocking themes in the study of art, from Impressionism to Abstract Art. Barasch details the immense social changes in the creation, presentation, and reception of art which have set the history of art theory on a vertiginous new course: the decreased relevance of workshops and art schools; the replacement of the treatise by the critical review; (...) and the interrelation of new modes of scientific inquiry with artistic theory and praxis. The consequent changes in the ways in which critics as well as artists conceptualized paintings and sculptures were radical, marked by an obsession with intense, immediate sensory experiences, psychological reflection on the effects of art, and a magnetic pull to the exotic and alien, making for the most exciting and fertile period in the history of art criticism. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)