Shi'ur Komah
Shi’ur Qomah ( he, שיעור קומה, lit. Dimensions of the Body) is a midrashic text that is part of the Hekhalot literature. It purports to record, in anthropomorphic terms, the secret names and precise measurements of God's corporeal limbs and parts. The majority of the text is recorded in the form of sayings or teachings that the angel Metatron revealed to the tanna Rabbi Ishmael, who transmitted it to his students and his contemporary Rabbi Akiva. It is also an exegetical analysis of Song of Songs 5:11-16 and proclaims that anyone who studies it is guaranteed a portion in the World to Come. Provenance and interpretation Currently the text exists only in fragmentary form, and scholars have debated how to appropriately date it. Modern academic scholars of Jewish mysticism, such as Gershom Scholem are of the opinion that it is from “either the Tannaitic or the early Amoraic period.” However, in the 12th Century, the rationalist Jewish philosopher Maimonides declared t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Midrash
''Midrash'' (;"midrash" ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. he, מִדְרָשׁ; or מִדְרָשׁוֹת ''midrashot'') is expansive using a rabbinic mode of interpretation prominent in the . The word itself means "textual interpretation", "study", or " [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Yosef Qafih
Yosef Qafiḥ ( he, יוסף קאפח , ), widely known as Rabbi Yosef Kapach (27 November 1917 – 21 July 2000), was a Yemenite-Israeli authority on Jewish religious law (''halakha''), a dayan of the Supreme Rabbinical Court in Israel, and one of the foremost leaders of the Yemenite Jewish community in Israel, where he was sought after by non-Yemenites as well. He is widely known for his editions and translations of the works of Maimonides, Saadia Gaon, and other early rabbinic authorities (''Rishonim''), particularly his restoration of the Mishneh Torah from old Yemenite manuscripts and his accompanying commentary culled from close to 300 additional commentators and with original insights. He was the grandson of Rabbi Yiḥyah Qafiḥ, a prominent Yemenite leader and founder of the Dor Deah movement in Yemen. Qafih was the recipient of many awards, as well as an Honorary Doctorate from Bar-Ilan University. Biography Yosef Qafiḥ was born 27 November 1917 in Sana’a in Y ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Moses Taku
Moshe ben Chasdai Taku (Hebrew: ר' משה בן חסדאי תאקו) ( fl. 1250–1290 CE) was a 13th-century Tosafist from Tachov, Bohemia. Despite his own seemingly mystical orientation, Rabbi Taku is controversially known to have been an opponent of both the esoteric theology of the Chassidei Ashkenaz (particularly the Kalonymides, i.e. followers of Rabbi Yehudah HaChasid) and the philosophical orientation of rabbinic rationalists such as Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, Abraham ibn Ezra et al. He believed that both trends were a deviant departure from traditional Judaism, which he understood to espouse a literal perspective of both the biblical narrative, and the Aggadata of the Sages. His opposition to all theological speculation earned him, in the opinion of Gershon Scholem, the title of one of the two truly reactionary Jewish writers of the Middle Ages (the other being Joseph Ashkenazi). Controversial views Taku is often cited as contradicting Maimonides’ Third Principle of F ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jewish Philosophy
Jewish philosophy () includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or in relation to the religion of Judaism. Until modern ''Haskalah'' (Jewish Enlightenment) and Jewish emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism, thus organizing emergent ideas that are not necessarily Jewish into a uniquely Jewish scholastic framework and world-view. With their acceptance into modern society, Jews with secular educations embraced or developed entirely new philosophies to meet the demands of the world in which they now found themselves. Medieval re-discovery of ancient Greek philosophy among the Geonim of 10th century Babylonian academies brought rationalist philosophy into Biblical-Talmudic Judaism. The philosophy was generally in competition with Kabbalah. Both schools would become part of classic rabbinic literature, though the decline of scholastic rationalism coincided with historical events which drew ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Heresy In Orthodox Judaism
Jewish heresy refers to those beliefs which contradict the traditional doctrines of Rabbinic Judaism, including theological beliefs and opinions about the practice of ''halakha'' (Jewish religious law). Jewish tradition contains a range of statements about heretics, including laws for how to deal with them in a communal context, and statements about the divine punishment they are expected to receive. Rabbinic definition of heresy Talmudic era The Greek term for heresy, αἵρεσις, originally denoted "division," "sect," "religious" or "philosophical party," is applied by Josephus to the three Jewish sects—Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes. In the sense of a schism to be deprecated, the word occurs in , , and particularly in ; hence αἱρετικὸς ("heretic") in the sense of "factious" (). The specific rabbinical term for heresies, or religious divisions due to an unlawful spirit, is ''minim'' (lit. "kinds f belief; the singular ''min'', for "heretic" or "Gnostic," ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jewish Mysticism
Academic study of Jewish mysticism, especially since Gershom Scholem's ''Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism'' (1941), distinguishes between different forms of mysticism across different eras of Jewish history. Of these, Kabbalah, which emerged in 12th-century Europe, is the most well known, but not the only typologic form, or the earliest to emerge. Among previous forms were Merkabah mysticism (c. 100 BCE – 1000 CE), and Ashkenazi Hasidim (early 13th century) around the time of Kabbalistic emergence. Kabbalah means "received tradition", a term previously used in other Judaic contexts, but which the Medieval Kabbalists adopted for their own doctrine to express the belief that they were not innovating, but merely revealing the ancient hidden esoteric tradition of the Torah. This issue is crystallised until today by alternative views on the origin of the Zohar, the main text of Kabbalah which was written by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai who opened up the study of Jewish Mysticism. T ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Book Of Exodus
The Book of Exodus (from grc, Ἔξοδος, translit=Éxodos; he, שְׁמוֹת ''Šəmōṯ'', "Names") is the second book of the Bible. It narrates the story of the Exodus, in which the Israelites leave slavery in Biblical Egypt through the strength of Yahweh, who has chosen them as his people. The Israelites then journey with the prophet Moses to Mount Sinai, where Yahweh gives the 10 commandments and they enter into a covenant with Yahweh, who promises to make them a "holy nation, and a kingdom of priests" on condition of their faithfulness. He gives them their laws and instructions to build the Tabernacle, the means by which he will come from heaven and dwell with them and lead them in a holy war to possess the land of Canaan (the "Promised Land"), which had earlier, according to the story of Genesis, been promised to the seed of Abraham. Traditionally ascribed to Moses himself, modern scholars see its initial composition as a product of the Babylonian exile (6th ce ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Moses Narboni
Moses Narbonne, also known as Moses of Narbonne, mestre Vidal Bellshom, maestro Vidal Blasom, and Moses Narboni, was a medieval Catalan philosopher and physician. He was born at Perpignan, in the Kingdom of Majorca, at the end of the thirteenth century and died sometime after 1362. He began studying philosophy with his father when he was thirteen and then studied with Moses and Abraham Caslari. He studied medicine and eventually became a successful physician, and was well versed in Biblical and rabbinical literature. Eventually he traveled to the Crown of Aragon, where he is known to have lived and studied in Cervera (1348-1349), Barcelona and Valencia, and later in Toledo, Burgos and Soria (1358-1362), in the Kingdom of Castile. In 1362 he returned to Perpignan and died there. During the outbreak of the Black Death when persecution of Jews was widespread, ben Joshua was forced to flee Cervera when an angry mob attacked the Jewish community there. During his stay in Barcelona, he ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Theophanies
Theophany (from Ancient Greek , meaning "appearance of a deity") is a personal encounter with a deity, that is an event where the manifestation of a deity occurs in an observable way. Specifically, it "refers to the temporal and spatial manifestation of God in some tangible form." Where the deity does not take tangible form (outward manifestation), the broader term used for inward manifestation is divine revelation or divine inspiration. Where the spirit of god is manifest in a person the term used is divine incarnation, avatar or personification of the deity. Traditionally the term "theophany" was used to refer to appearances of the gods in ancient Greek and in Near Eastern religions. While the ''Iliad'' is the earliest source for descriptions of theophanies in classical antiquity (which occur throughout Greek mythology), probably the earliest description appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the specific usage for Christians and Jews, with respect to the Bible, ''theophany'' r ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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K-B-D
K-B-D (Hebrew: ; East Semitic ''K-B-T''; ar, ك-ب-د) is a triliteral Semitic root with the common meaning of to "be heavy", and thence "be important; honour, majesty, glory".Botterweck et al., 1974, pp. 13–15. The basic noun formed from the root means "liver", "interior", "soul" in most Semitic languages. The Akkadian word for liver is spelled with the sumerogram , transliterated ''kabtu''; the Ugaritic cognate is spelled ''kbd''. There is a wide range of uses for ''kbd'' as a noun among the Semitic languages. It can be used literally to denote the organ of the "liver", or more figuratively to refer to the "interior of the body", seen as being "the seat of human will and emotions." Akkadian ''kbt'' In Akkadian, an East Semitic language which has the ''kbt'' form of the root, ''kabattu'' is used to denote the realm of "violent emotions" and "blind passions". According to Wolfgang Heimpel in ''Letters to the King of Mari'', the Babylonian root ''kbt'' was vocalized as ''kbd' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Talmud
The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewish cultural life and was foundational to "all Jewish thought and aspirations", serving also as "the guide for the daily life" of Jews. The term ''Talmud'' normally refers to the collection of writings named specifically the Babylonian Talmud (), although there is also an earlier collection known as the Jerusalem Talmud (). It may also traditionally be called (), a Hebrew abbreviation of , or the "six orders" of the Mishnah. The Talmud has two components: the Mishnah (, 200 CE), a written compendium of the Oral Torah; and the Gemara (, 500 CE), an elucidation of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Hebrew Bible. The term "Talmud" may refer to eith ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |