Book by Samuel J Kessler
Jewish Publication Society, 2023
o Modern Jewish Theology is the first comprehensive collection of Jewish theological ideas from t... more o Modern Jewish Theology is the first comprehensive collection of Jewish theological ideas from the pathbreaking nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, featuring selections from more than thirty of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the era, explorations of Judaism’s identity, uniqueness, and relevance, the origin of ethical monotheism, and the possibility of Jewish existentialism. These works—most translated for the first time into English by top scholars in modern Jewish history and philosophy—reveal how modern Jewish theology developed in concert with broader trends in Jewish intellectual and social modernization, especially scholarship (Wissenschaft des Judentums), politics (liberalism and Zionism), and religious practice (movement Judaism and the struggles to transcend denominational boundaries).
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Brown Judaic Studies, 2022
Adolf Jellinek (1821–1893), the Czech-born, German-educated, liberal chief rabbi of Vienna, was t... more Adolf Jellinek (1821–1893), the Czech-born, German-educated, liberal chief rabbi of Vienna, was the most famous Jewish preacher in Central Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. As an innovative rhetorician, Jellinek helped mold and define the modern synagogue sermon into an instrument for expressing Jewish religious and ethical values for a new era. As a historian, he made groundbreaking contributions to the study of the Zohar and medieval Jewish mysticism. Jellinek was emblematic of rabbi-as-scholar-preacher during the earliest, formative years of communal synagogues as urban religious space. In a world that was rapidly losing the felt and remembered past of premodern Jewish society, the rabbi, with Jellinek as prime exemplar, took hold of the Sabbath sermon as an instrument to define and mold Judaism and Jewish values for a new world.
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Papers by Samuel J Kessler
New German Critique, 2023
o This study makes available for the first time five previously unknown letters from Gershom Scho... more o This study makes available for the first time five previously unknown letters from Gershom Scholem to Abraham Joshua Heschel, sent between 1940 and 1953. A contextualizing introduction precedes a transcription and annotated English translation of the original Hebrew letters. The letters printed here, along with two more from Heschel to Scholem that remain unpublished, trace an arc of scholarly interaction that begins with gestures toward overlapping historical interest and ends with the silent acknowledgment of a methodological and more broadly intellectual distance.
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Studies in American Jewish Literature, 2022
This article is about the occurrence and centrality of distinctly Jewish ideas and ritual practic... more This article is about the occurrence and centrality of distinctly Jewish ideas and ritual practices in Nemesis (2010), Indignation (2008), and Everyman (2006). I argue that in these three novels Roth constructs characters whose existential crises most often arise during or when meditating upon moments of Jewish ritual or Jewish theological expression. As we deconstruct these novelistic episodes what emerges is that the when, where, and how moments in which Roth’s protagonists interact with Judaism are particularly Judaic. In other words, when Roth’s characters are practicing Jewish rituals, or speaking in Jewish terms, they end up creating meaning through what Stephen Kepnes calls the “great theatrical performance” of Judaism, or what Mircea Eliade identifies as “the repetition of paradigmatic gestures.” Many works of Roth criticism place Roth in the social realm of American Jewish experience, defining Judaism as a cultural inheritance devoid of theological content, which can lead to an understanding of Roth’s relationship to religion strictly through humor or irony. This article, while noting Roth’s use of irony as a way of distancing himself from religion, seeks also to show how that irony, but also more importantly the rhetorical modes of lament, sorrow, rage against God, and meditation on history, can be a means of accentuating the nearness of ritual and religion. When juxtaposed to communal loss and suffering these ritual actions become a force in Roth’s novels for what the classical rabbis called karov, a cleaving or closeness toward something—even if that something is a God of seeming cruelty, indignity, or even permanent absence.
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This article examines the works of Adolf Jellinek (1821-1893) on the history of mysticism and the... more This article examines the works of Adolf Jellinek (1821-1893) on the history of mysticism and the Kabbalah, which were written during his fourteen-year residence in Leipzig. It argues that studying the Spanish Kabbalists allowed Jellinek to work through ideas concerning the development of Jewish theology and the interplay of Jewish and non-Jewish philosophical perspectives. The article briefly describes Jellinek’s early education and attraction to Leipzig; his first writings on Kabbalah; and concludes with an analysis of his larger philological and genealogical projects on the authorship and literary background of the Zohar. Though Jellinek’s later prominence as a rabbi and preacher in Vienna has had the tendency to obscure his years in Leipzig, it was Jellinek’s work in Saxony that laid the groundwork for most subsequent scholarship on Jewish mysticism. This article is a brief introduction to this research and one more step toward revealing the still too often forgotten Wissenschaft interest in the history of Jewish mysticism.
Dieser Artikel untersucht Adolf Jellineks (1821-1893) Werke über die Geschichte der Mystik und der Kabbala, die während seines vierzehnjährigen Aufenthalts in Leipzig geschrieben wurden. Er argumentiert, dass das Studium der spanischen Kabbalisten Jellinek erlaubte, Ideen über die Entwicklung der jüdischen Theologie und das Zusammenspiel jüdischer und nichtjüdischer philosophischer Perspektiven durchzuarbeiten. Der Artikel beschreibt kurz Jellineks Ausbildung, die Anziehungskraft, die Leipzig auf ihn ausübte, sowie seine ersten Schriften über die Kabbala und schließt mit einer Analyse seiner größeren philologischen und genealogischen Projekte über die Urheberschaft und den literarischen Hintergrund des Zohar ab. Obwohl Jellineks spätere Prominenz als Rabbiner und Prediger in Wien tendenziell seine Jahre in Leipzig überdeckt, war es seine Arbeit in Sachsen, die den Grundstein für die meisten nachfolgenden Studien über die jüdische Mystik legte. Dieser Artikel ist eine kurze Einführung in diese Forschung und ein Schritt, um das noch zu oft vergessene wissenschaftliche Interesse an der Geschichte der jüdischen Mystik aufzudecken.
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Leo Baeck Institute Year Book
This article analyzes Volume 11 of the History of the Jews, entitled Geschichte der Juden vom Beg... more This article analyzes Volume 11 of the History of the Jews, entitled Geschichte der Juden vom Beginn der Mendelsohn’schen Zeit (1750) bis in die neuste Zeit (1848) (‘History of the Jews from the beginning the Mendelssohnian age (1750) until the present times (1848)’), which appeared in 1870. Specifically, it examines Graetz’s discussions of the generation of Jewish scholars and communal leaders that immediately preceded his own, comparing Graetz’s youthful diary entries concerning his early meetings or thoughts about these men with his descriptions of their lives and works in Volume 11. Making such a comparison, I argue, can reveal important shifts in Graetz’s values and compassions, as well provide some new insights into the opinions toward reform and modernism held by lesser-known figures in nineteenth-century German Jewry. The Graetz who wrote about the leading German Jews of the 1830s and 1840s from the vantage of the 1860s was not always the same man as the one who had met those figures twenty or thirty years earlier. My aim in this article is, therefore, to use Graetz’s diary, letters, and Volume 11 as the basis for an analysis of Graetz’s developing intellectual personae within the broader context of his interactions with other leading German Jews, and to reveal thereby not only the growth of his personal identity as an historian but also to uncover the evolving set of values that he and his contemporaries were instantiating in their modernization of Jewish religious practice and scholarship.
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Counseling and Values, 2018
This article explores the ideas of Mircea Eliade, the works of other classic religious studies sc... more This article explores the ideas of Mircea Eliade, the works of other classic religious studies scholarship, and traditional religious practices for insights and strategies that can be used in contemporary counseling settings. The ideas are not intended to be proscriptive or comprehensive, but rather are offered as a way to more explicitly and intentionally access the potential of the sacred (as it is understood in classic religious studies texts) in counseling work. The authors focus on 4 specific areas: sacred space, sacred time, rebirth/return, and initiation/rites of passage.
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Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal, 2017
The five books that comprise Lawrence Durrell’s Avignon Quintet follow the lives and relationship... more The five books that comprise Lawrence Durrell’s Avignon Quintet follow the lives and relationships of nearly a dozen interlocking characters, set against the backdrop of the Second World War, the Occupation of France, and the war in North Africa. What is presented at the conclusion of the first novel as a story-arc akin to Russian dolls—narratives stacked one inside another—is, repeatedly and in various reversals and sleights-of-hand, revealed over the following four volumes to be something far more subtle and complex. What is important about this narrative non-linearity is that it lies at the heart of what makes the Quintet an interesting and provocative creation in the first place, leading to questions about time, the writing and recording of memory, and the quest to convey meaning and experience in literary fiction. Further, the non-linear storytelling that warps and wefts through these novels is part of the strategy by which Durrell devolves upon himself the right to make claims about philosophy, poetry, and psychology in the postmodern era, when the totems and holy cows of pre-War belief were being swept away.
The article is divided into four sections, all ultimately in argument for a new theoretical conception of the narrative theory and philosophical purpose that structures Durrell’s Quintet. Part one, “Peculiarities in the Narrative of the Quintet,” introduces the reader to examples of the more unusual non-linear movements that Durrell executes over the course of the novels. Part two, “Understanding the Quintet I: Past Theories,” engages with extant critical scholarship on Durrell and the Avignon novels, explaining and analyzing prior metaphorical and theoretical models that have sought to characterize the narrative complexity of the Quintet. Part three, “Building Blocks of a New Theory,” returns to the five novels, but instead of analyzing moments of non-linear narrative, I focus on Durrell’s descriptions (or on Durrell’s characters’ self-descriptions) of the project of the Quintet that occur within its own pages. And in part four, “Understanding the Quintet II: A New Theory,” I build on ideas from Paul Ricoeur to discuss ways in which engendering meaning and truth in fiction need neither be constrained by linear storytelling nor require the sacrifice of narrative intelligibility.
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Examined as a whole, Bernard Malamud’s short story collection The Magic Barrel is more cosmopolit... more Examined as a whole, Bernard Malamud’s short story collection The Magic Barrel is more cosmopolitan moralism than ghetto tale, where Jews remain central protagonists but the particularities of Jewish life and suffering lose much of their cultural identification as Malamud reaches toward a universal ethical truth. I argue here that through the close reading of one those short stories, “The Lady of the Lake,” we can complement the general scholarly assessment of Malamud’s vision (of “Jews” as universals) with another, this one of Jews and Jewishness as in themselves the pathway to morality. “The Lady of the Lake” reveals Malamud at his most attuned to the complexities of Jewish self-recognition, where he thought that the ethical lay in the act of affirming one’s Jewish self-being.
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When Adolf Jellinek (1821–1893) relocated his family from Leipzig to Vienna in the early months o... more When Adolf Jellinek (1821–1893) relocated his family from Leipzig to Vienna in the early months of 1857 to assume the post of Community preacher in Leopoldstadt, the young rabbi and scholar also entered a new phase in his intellectual life. Whereas in Leipzig he had attended mostly to scholarship, in Vienna he focused on his sermons, and specifically on formulating and developing a language that would link texts from the Jewish canon with the broader (and more amorphous) values of mid-nineteenth-century Enlightenment liberalism. In that first decade in the Habsburg capital Jellinek used his responsibilities as the leader of a rapidly transforming Jewish Community to formulate an interpretation of Jewish modernity, and to develop a language to explain the way traditional rabbinic life and texts could find meaningful and logical symbiosis with the broader tenets of German liberalism and Enlightenment rationalism. The social milieu of immigrant Vienna, I argue, is interwoven with the epistemological foundations of Jellinek’s vision of Jewish religious modernity.
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Michel Foucault, in his historical and theoretical works, often analyzed the Holocaust by applyin... more Michel Foucault, in his historical and theoretical works, often analyzed the Holocaust by applying his theories of carceral technology and biopower to the German system of concentration camps. This is similarly the case with scholars who write about Foucault as well as those who use his theories in critical application. However, consideration of or allusion to the German-operated death camps of occupied Eastern Europe is surprisingly rare in Foucault's writings. Attempting to explain this silence about the death camps specifically (as opposed to Foucault's more numerous references to the German system of concentration camps generally) in both Foucault's own thought and writings and those of Foucauldian scholars, this article suggest that the death camps occur as something liminal within Foucauldian theory. It argues that, though many of the techniques employed by the Germans in their carceral systems during the 1930s and 1940s were traced by Foucault and his exegetes back to the eighteenth century, looked at differently, the German death camps of Eastern Europe in the 1940s represent (within the framework of Foucault's existing theory) a dramatic and unique departure from earlier instantiations of state violence and biological control. Outlining and examining Foucault's philosophy of history, this article links Foucault's silence on the Holocaust death camps to other silences in his historical writings, arguing that the death camps represent a physical instantiation of a transition point in Foucault's idea of historical epistemes. Such an argument seeks to re-frame Foucault's silence on the death camps as one that reveals an overlooked (but structurally essential) component within his philosophical theorization of history.
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Heythrop Journal, 2013
This article enters religion-science scholarship through two case studies on order in nature: Wun... more This article enters religion-science scholarship through two case studies on order in nature: Wunderkammern and binomial nomenclature. In Baroque Europe, natural historians organized and displayed their collections in Wunderkammern. But ordering schemas changed dramatically with the publication of Carl Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae in 1735. I argue here that a society’s broader theological relationship to nature is encapsulated in the ordering structures devised for natural historical study. I conclude by asking if we can use ‘systems’ and ‘seeing’, not Divinity (God), as a way of writing religion-science history.
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Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly (Kessler pp. 19-27), 2013
This article is about religious life and its relationship to public higher education in America. ... more This article is about religious life and its relationship to public higher education in America. As a way of addressing the fraught relations among religion, the state, moral values, and the university, the article takes a reading of Immanuel Kant’s The Conflict of the Faculties and the writings of contemporary social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. It uses the synthesis of Kant’s and Haidt’s ideas as the foundation for a partial historical reassessment, the ultimate goal of which is the re-enfranchisement of religious Americans into the nation’s public higher education system.
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Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, 2012
It is my observation that a great deal of Jewish cultural memory and tradition speak to the relat... more It is my observation that a great deal of Jewish cultural memory and tradition speak to the relationship between people and divine words in material form. Yet it is also my observation that we live at a moment in time when, for a vast number of Jews, this metaphysical relationship between the Jewish people and its physical texts seem to have no (overtly sacred) material outlet in their daily or even yearly lives. Thus, I here set out to begin to propose a way of answering the following question: What becomes of the relationship associated with sacred texts (in religious settings) for Jews who no longer live (overtly religious) lives that bring them into contact with sacred texts? This essay is organized as a case study, in which I begin to answer the larger question posed above through an analysis of Walter Benjamin’s writings on books and physical literary production, alongside historical Jewish textual theology and practice. I argue here that Benjamin’s writings offer the contemporary scholar a highly refined and thoughtful example of the way this metaphysical relationship—expressed through cultural memory in response to sacred texts—becomes transformed into a “secularized” (i.e. passively non-religious) sacredness toward literature in the form of books and the written word.
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Syllabi by Samuel J Kessler
This course is divided into three units. Unit One, “Though I Walk in the Valley of the Shadow of ... more This course is divided into three units. Unit One, “Though I Walk in the Valley of the Shadow of Death,” will examine writings from the early centuries of Judaism and Christianity, beginning with the Hebrew Bible and New Testament and progressing through the early rabbis and Church Fathers. In Unit Two, “Behold, the Man has Become Like One of Us, to Know Good and Evil,” we will read medieval and modern theological meditations on the struggled between the Will and the urge to sinfulness. Finally, in Unit Three, “These I Recall and Pour My Heart Out,” we will study post- Holocaust theology, and in what ways the murder of European Jewry has impacted contemporary Jewish and Christian theological perspectives on evil, sin, and suffering.
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In the beginning there were stories. Stories of heroes and monsters. Stories of men and women who... more In the beginning there were stories. Stories of heroes and monsters. Stories of men and women who spoke with God. Later, there were stories about prophets and kings, who went to see God in heaven, or who spoke with the dead to foretell the future. And even later, there were stories of great teachers, masters of wisdom, whose very force of being could change the course of nature.
Jews tell stories as a way of making sense of God and the world. In this course, we will examine three thousand years of Jewish storytelling, gaining insights into the historical and social context of the Jewish people and the political and theological elements of the Jewish religion.
In Judaism, the legend is not just a myth or fairytale. Instead, ancient and modern folklore is full of meaning and insight, told and retold so that each new generation can become part of the chain of memory that holds the Jewish people together. In this class, students will be introduced to texts from the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple periods, and from the classical rabbinic corpus through to the twentieth century. We will encounter great prophets and wise kings, as well as poor peasants and lonely brides, and even enchanted creatures summoned from the depths of mystical lore. We will have occasion to visit far-away places, mighty fortresses, and the Holy Land of Zion. Across the semester, students will gain a knowledge of and appreciation for the vast narrative folkloric literature of the Jewish people and the many profound and funny stories found within it.
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This course explores the history and core tenets of the major (normative) streams of the classic ... more This course explores the history and core tenets of the major (normative) streams of the classic World Religious traditions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Daoism—as well as less discreet spiritual phenomena, such as those practices by the indigenous peoples of sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. Each of these traditions will be studied in their cultural and political context, with frequent reference to their interactions and conflicts with other monotheistic and non- monotheistic cultures, using the most recent scholarly theories and methodologies. We will learn many concepts in the study of religion, such as myth, ritual, cosmology, theodicy, legalism, and the effects of geography and modernity. We will discuss the various ways each of these religious traditions have been in continual dialogue over the past millennia, and how this interaction has both reified and diversified traditional beliefs and practices. Finally, the multitude of sources we encounter will help us to develop a more complex vocabulary when discussing the various branches, sects, societies, ethics, and communities associated with all these traditions.
Students will leave this course with a thorough sense of the historical trajectory of the interacting cultures of the world from ancient times to the present. Students will be expected to learn many of the key figures, texts, beliefs, and geographies associated with each of these traditions, as well as to have a visual sense of the migrations and political instantiations of their adherents across the centuries.
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What is it like to stand before the Throne of God? To hang on the cross alongside Christ? To expl... more What is it like to stand before the Throne of God? To hang on the cross alongside Christ? To explore the Heavenly Garden of Hidden Mysteries? This course will explore these and other questions from the writings of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mystics from the Biblical period to modern times. Beginning with the Israelite prophets, we will study the lives of individual mystics, engage analytically with mystical writings, and discuss the context and reception of mystical ideas in both the past and present. This course will ask students to ponder the nature of how religious knowledge is found and who can find it. We will also see the many ways women have played a unique role in defining the mystical heritage of the West.
This class is for anyone who has ever wondered what it is like to have a life devoted solely to searching for the nearness of God. The study of mystics and their insights have long captured the imagination. From the appeal of the desert monk St. Francis to the novel The Name of the Rose to the spiritual quest of Cheryl Strayed in Wild, mystics, ecstatic’s, and prophets abound not just in literature, philosophy, and poetry but in contemporary cinema and dance as well. Hidegaard von Bingen, St. John of the Cross, Abraham Abulafia, Ibn Al-‘Arabi—these are household names in many religious communities across the world. All four were mystics, yet each has also had a profound influence on the imaginations of religious and secular people alike.
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Judaism is often called a " world religion. " But of that group—which can include traditions as d... more Judaism is often called a " world religion. " But of that group—which can include traditions as diverse as Christianity, Islam, Confucianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism—it has the fewest adherents (approximately fifteen million) and only a single country where it comprises a majority of the population (Israel). Jews are about two percent of the total population of the United States. Why, then, is Judaism so commonly discussed? Why are its texts so widely known? Why have its people so often been targeted for both plaudit and discrimination?
This course explores the religious and cultural life of the Jewish people. Interweaving three thousand years of history, theology, folklore, philosophy, and literature, it seeks to give students a basic working knowledge of the many foundational texts and ideas that have made Judaism so important in contemporary intellectual and cultural life.
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The “Holocaust” (Hebrew: Shoah; Yiddish: Horban) as word and idea has a potent force in contempor... more The “Holocaust” (Hebrew: Shoah; Yiddish: Horban) as word and idea has a potent force in contemporary society. International leaders who oversee acts of human atrocity are often called “fascist,” “Nazi,” or “like Hitler.” Anti-Semitism, an integral but complex antecedent to the events of the Holocaust, continues to be a focus of international condemnation and opprobrium, though likewise of recurring frequency. This course is designed to be both historical and contemporary, meant to give students a thorough knowledge of the Second World War and the destruction of the Jewish communities of Europe so that they can better understand Holocaust references and their political power in our present time. In the final part of the course, we will examine the many ways the Holocaust appears in contemporary discourse, and discuss whether it can be successfully decoupled from broader issues of anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist rhetoric.
But first, the course will focus on primary questions. What was the Holocaust itself? Why did it happen mainly in Eastern and Central Europe? What were its antecedents? Is Germany the only culpable belligerent? In the wider context of the Second World War, what does culpability even mean? Do numbers matter? Why is mass death in a camp or factory different from mass death on the field of battle?
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Book by Samuel J Kessler
Papers by Samuel J Kessler
Dieser Artikel untersucht Adolf Jellineks (1821-1893) Werke über die Geschichte der Mystik und der Kabbala, die während seines vierzehnjährigen Aufenthalts in Leipzig geschrieben wurden. Er argumentiert, dass das Studium der spanischen Kabbalisten Jellinek erlaubte, Ideen über die Entwicklung der jüdischen Theologie und das Zusammenspiel jüdischer und nichtjüdischer philosophischer Perspektiven durchzuarbeiten. Der Artikel beschreibt kurz Jellineks Ausbildung, die Anziehungskraft, die Leipzig auf ihn ausübte, sowie seine ersten Schriften über die Kabbala und schließt mit einer Analyse seiner größeren philologischen und genealogischen Projekte über die Urheberschaft und den literarischen Hintergrund des Zohar ab. Obwohl Jellineks spätere Prominenz als Rabbiner und Prediger in Wien tendenziell seine Jahre in Leipzig überdeckt, war es seine Arbeit in Sachsen, die den Grundstein für die meisten nachfolgenden Studien über die jüdische Mystik legte. Dieser Artikel ist eine kurze Einführung in diese Forschung und ein Schritt, um das noch zu oft vergessene wissenschaftliche Interesse an der Geschichte der jüdischen Mystik aufzudecken.
The article is divided into four sections, all ultimately in argument for a new theoretical conception of the narrative theory and philosophical purpose that structures Durrell’s Quintet. Part one, “Peculiarities in the Narrative of the Quintet,” introduces the reader to examples of the more unusual non-linear movements that Durrell executes over the course of the novels. Part two, “Understanding the Quintet I: Past Theories,” engages with extant critical scholarship on Durrell and the Avignon novels, explaining and analyzing prior metaphorical and theoretical models that have sought to characterize the narrative complexity of the Quintet. Part three, “Building Blocks of a New Theory,” returns to the five novels, but instead of analyzing moments of non-linear narrative, I focus on Durrell’s descriptions (or on Durrell’s characters’ self-descriptions) of the project of the Quintet that occur within its own pages. And in part four, “Understanding the Quintet II: A New Theory,” I build on ideas from Paul Ricoeur to discuss ways in which engendering meaning and truth in fiction need neither be constrained by linear storytelling nor require the sacrifice of narrative intelligibility.
Syllabi by Samuel J Kessler
Jews tell stories as a way of making sense of God and the world. In this course, we will examine three thousand years of Jewish storytelling, gaining insights into the historical and social context of the Jewish people and the political and theological elements of the Jewish religion.
In Judaism, the legend is not just a myth or fairytale. Instead, ancient and modern folklore is full of meaning and insight, told and retold so that each new generation can become part of the chain of memory that holds the Jewish people together. In this class, students will be introduced to texts from the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple periods, and from the classical rabbinic corpus through to the twentieth century. We will encounter great prophets and wise kings, as well as poor peasants and lonely brides, and even enchanted creatures summoned from the depths of mystical lore. We will have occasion to visit far-away places, mighty fortresses, and the Holy Land of Zion. Across the semester, students will gain a knowledge of and appreciation for the vast narrative folkloric literature of the Jewish people and the many profound and funny stories found within it.
Students will leave this course with a thorough sense of the historical trajectory of the interacting cultures of the world from ancient times to the present. Students will be expected to learn many of the key figures, texts, beliefs, and geographies associated with each of these traditions, as well as to have a visual sense of the migrations and political instantiations of their adherents across the centuries.
This class is for anyone who has ever wondered what it is like to have a life devoted solely to searching for the nearness of God. The study of mystics and their insights have long captured the imagination. From the appeal of the desert monk St. Francis to the novel The Name of the Rose to the spiritual quest of Cheryl Strayed in Wild, mystics, ecstatic’s, and prophets abound not just in literature, philosophy, and poetry but in contemporary cinema and dance as well. Hidegaard von Bingen, St. John of the Cross, Abraham Abulafia, Ibn Al-‘Arabi—these are household names in many religious communities across the world. All four were mystics, yet each has also had a profound influence on the imaginations of religious and secular people alike.
This course explores the religious and cultural life of the Jewish people. Interweaving three thousand years of history, theology, folklore, philosophy, and literature, it seeks to give students a basic working knowledge of the many foundational texts and ideas that have made Judaism so important in contemporary intellectual and cultural life.
But first, the course will focus on primary questions. What was the Holocaust itself? Why did it happen mainly in Eastern and Central Europe? What were its antecedents? Is Germany the only culpable belligerent? In the wider context of the Second World War, what does culpability even mean? Do numbers matter? Why is mass death in a camp or factory different from mass death on the field of battle?
Dieser Artikel untersucht Adolf Jellineks (1821-1893) Werke über die Geschichte der Mystik und der Kabbala, die während seines vierzehnjährigen Aufenthalts in Leipzig geschrieben wurden. Er argumentiert, dass das Studium der spanischen Kabbalisten Jellinek erlaubte, Ideen über die Entwicklung der jüdischen Theologie und das Zusammenspiel jüdischer und nichtjüdischer philosophischer Perspektiven durchzuarbeiten. Der Artikel beschreibt kurz Jellineks Ausbildung, die Anziehungskraft, die Leipzig auf ihn ausübte, sowie seine ersten Schriften über die Kabbala und schließt mit einer Analyse seiner größeren philologischen und genealogischen Projekte über die Urheberschaft und den literarischen Hintergrund des Zohar ab. Obwohl Jellineks spätere Prominenz als Rabbiner und Prediger in Wien tendenziell seine Jahre in Leipzig überdeckt, war es seine Arbeit in Sachsen, die den Grundstein für die meisten nachfolgenden Studien über die jüdische Mystik legte. Dieser Artikel ist eine kurze Einführung in diese Forschung und ein Schritt, um das noch zu oft vergessene wissenschaftliche Interesse an der Geschichte der jüdischen Mystik aufzudecken.
The article is divided into four sections, all ultimately in argument for a new theoretical conception of the narrative theory and philosophical purpose that structures Durrell’s Quintet. Part one, “Peculiarities in the Narrative of the Quintet,” introduces the reader to examples of the more unusual non-linear movements that Durrell executes over the course of the novels. Part two, “Understanding the Quintet I: Past Theories,” engages with extant critical scholarship on Durrell and the Avignon novels, explaining and analyzing prior metaphorical and theoretical models that have sought to characterize the narrative complexity of the Quintet. Part three, “Building Blocks of a New Theory,” returns to the five novels, but instead of analyzing moments of non-linear narrative, I focus on Durrell’s descriptions (or on Durrell’s characters’ self-descriptions) of the project of the Quintet that occur within its own pages. And in part four, “Understanding the Quintet II: A New Theory,” I build on ideas from Paul Ricoeur to discuss ways in which engendering meaning and truth in fiction need neither be constrained by linear storytelling nor require the sacrifice of narrative intelligibility.
Jews tell stories as a way of making sense of God and the world. In this course, we will examine three thousand years of Jewish storytelling, gaining insights into the historical and social context of the Jewish people and the political and theological elements of the Jewish religion.
In Judaism, the legend is not just a myth or fairytale. Instead, ancient and modern folklore is full of meaning and insight, told and retold so that each new generation can become part of the chain of memory that holds the Jewish people together. In this class, students will be introduced to texts from the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple periods, and from the classical rabbinic corpus through to the twentieth century. We will encounter great prophets and wise kings, as well as poor peasants and lonely brides, and even enchanted creatures summoned from the depths of mystical lore. We will have occasion to visit far-away places, mighty fortresses, and the Holy Land of Zion. Across the semester, students will gain a knowledge of and appreciation for the vast narrative folkloric literature of the Jewish people and the many profound and funny stories found within it.
Students will leave this course with a thorough sense of the historical trajectory of the interacting cultures of the world from ancient times to the present. Students will be expected to learn many of the key figures, texts, beliefs, and geographies associated with each of these traditions, as well as to have a visual sense of the migrations and political instantiations of their adherents across the centuries.
This class is for anyone who has ever wondered what it is like to have a life devoted solely to searching for the nearness of God. The study of mystics and their insights have long captured the imagination. From the appeal of the desert monk St. Francis to the novel The Name of the Rose to the spiritual quest of Cheryl Strayed in Wild, mystics, ecstatic’s, and prophets abound not just in literature, philosophy, and poetry but in contemporary cinema and dance as well. Hidegaard von Bingen, St. John of the Cross, Abraham Abulafia, Ibn Al-‘Arabi—these are household names in many religious communities across the world. All four were mystics, yet each has also had a profound influence on the imaginations of religious and secular people alike.
This course explores the religious and cultural life of the Jewish people. Interweaving three thousand years of history, theology, folklore, philosophy, and literature, it seeks to give students a basic working knowledge of the many foundational texts and ideas that have made Judaism so important in contemporary intellectual and cultural life.
But first, the course will focus on primary questions. What was the Holocaust itself? Why did it happen mainly in Eastern and Central Europe? What were its antecedents? Is Germany the only culpable belligerent? In the wider context of the Second World War, what does culpability even mean? Do numbers matter? Why is mass death in a camp or factory different from mass death on the field of battle?