Where?
JCC Bucuresti – Centrul Comunitar Evreiesc
str.Popa Soare nr.18 sect 2
Tel: 021-3202608, 021-3213940 (Romtelecom), 031-4056064 (RDS)
Contact: Iustina Grajdinoiu: 0728 45 7777
when?
8-9 september 18.00-22.00
Who?
Moshe Idel, one of the most eminent and influential scholars of Jewish mysticism in the world, will explore Kabbalistic and Hasidic notions.
Idel is the Max Cooper Professor of Jewish Thought at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and has also served as a visiting professor and research scholar at numerous universities and institutions in the United States and Europe. His numerous publications include Kabbalah: New Perspectives; Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah; Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia; Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic; Messianic Mystics; and Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation.
Why?
Just as the decapolar Creator accounts for the cosmos in terms that resonate with “big bang” and atomic theory, by concentrating on the lower sephirotic sphere and its two “sides”, left and right, the Castilian kabbalists also revealed a bipolar, gendered God, consonant with the love that unites man and woman – and the people with their Lord. This is Moshe Idel’s theme in Kabbalah and Eros, but his findings extend beyond the kabbala and touch on the nature of Judaism. Starting with the prayer book’s striking kabbalistic formula that the liturgy is performed “for the sake of the union of the Holy One, blessed be He, with His Divine presence”, Idel analyses the mystic’s concept of love in a fascinating array of sources, and, more widely, its role in daily life: marriage and union are imagined as having “a tremendous impact on the upper worlds”. Hence Idel locates a widespread theurgical note in Jewish lore, albeit perhaps not the “magical” one he claims, but rather a subtle, life-enhancing variety of erotic mysticism, in some ways akin to and, as has recently been claimed, perhaps indebted to Tantrism.

In romanian