 2014 - 2015 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 0690-4944-01 | Between Magic and Mysticism in Ancient Jewish Culture | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 4.0
Course description
Between Magic and Mysticism in Ancient Jewish Culture
The aim of this seminar is to examine the relations between mysticism and magic in ancient Jewish culture (c. 2nd to 7th centuries CE). To do so, we shall focus on several different types of Jewish texts, in Hebrew and Aramaic, and especially the Hekhalot literature, the amulets and incantation bowls written by Jews in Palestine and Babylonia, and those Cairo Genizah fragments that preserve ancient mystical and magical texts. We shall read the texts both from printed editions and from the origical manuscripts and Genizah fragments, some of which have never been published. During the seminar we shall also touch upon additional texts, such as Sefer Yetzirah, Shiur Qomah, the mystical and magical texts from Qumran and some piyyutim in which mystical and magical elements may be found. Our main goal will be to examine, by reading the primary texts and the scholarship written about them, whether there is any connection between the ancient Jewish magical and mystical texts (which are far earlier than the rise of Kabbalah), and how we might characterize this connection. This question will also lead to questions about the place of magic and mysticism in ancient Jewish society, and the relations between the magical and mystical texts and the Jewish literature of the Second Temple period, Rabbinic liteature, and the magical and mystical literatures of the non-Jewish world in Late Antiquity. The final assignment will consist either of a writtern referat or of a longer avodah seminarionit on one of the topics that will be discussed during the seminar.
The aim of this seminar is to examine the relations between mysticism and magic in ancient Jewish culture (c. 2nd to 7th centuries CE). To do so, we shall focus on several different types of Jewish texts, in Hebrew and Aramaic, and especially the Hekhalot literature, the amulets and incantation bowls written by Jews in Palestine and Babylonia, and those Cairo Genizah fragments that preserve ancient mystical and magical texts. We shall read the texts both from printed editions and from the origical manuscripts and Genizah fragments, some of which have never been published. During the seminar we shall also touch upon additional texts, such as Sefer Yetzirah, Shiur Qomah, the mystical and magical texts from Qumran and some piyyutim in which mystical and magical elements may be found. Our main goal will be to examine, by reading the primary texts and the scholarship written about them, whether there is any connection between the ancient Jewish magical and mystical texts (which are far earlier than the rise of Kabbalah), and how we might characterize this connection. This question will also lead to questions about the place of magic and mysticism in ancient Jewish society, and the relations between the magical and mystical texts and the Jewish literature of the Second Temple period, Rabbinic liteature, and the magical and mystical literatures of the non-Jewish world in Late Antiquity. The final assignment will consist either of a writtern referat or of a longer avodah seminarionit on one of the topics that will be discussed during the seminar.