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Gender Of God In Judaism
Although the gender of God in Judaism is referred to in the Tanakh with masculine imagery and grammatical forms, traditional Jewish philosophy does not attribute the concept of sex to God. At times, Jewish aggadic literature and Jewish mysticism do treat God as having a gender. Biblical perspectives The first words of the Tanakh are ''B'reshit bara Elohim''—"In the beginning God created." The verb ''bara'' (he created) suggests a masculine subject. ''Elohim'' is also masculine in form. The most common phrases in the Tanakh are ''vayomer Elohim'' and ''vayomer YHWH''—"and God said" (hundreds of occurrences). Genesis 1:26–27 says that the ''elohim'' were male and female, and humans were made in their image. Again, the verb ''vayomer'' (he said) is masculine; it is never ''vatomer'', the feminine of the same verb form. The personal name of God, ''YHWH'', is presented in Exodus 3 as if the ''Y'' (Hebrew ''yod'') is the masculine subjective prefix to the verb ''to be''. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tanakh
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach" . ''''. ; ; or ), also known in Hebrew as (; ), is the canonical collection of scriptures, comprising the (the five Books of Moses), the |
Shekhinah
Shekhinah () is the English transliteration of a Hebrew word meaning "dwelling" or "settling" and denotes the presence of God in a place. This concept is found in Judaism from Talmudic literature. The word "Shekhinah" is found in the Bible only as a "Shechaniah", a masculine proper name. The Hebrew root “shakan” appears in numerous conjugations, it can be found 128 times. (See Strong’s Hebrew dictionary 7931.) It also appears in the Mishnah, the Talmud, and Midrash. Etymology The word ''shekhinah'' is first encountered in the rabbinic literature. S. G. F. Brandon, ed., ''Dictionary of Comparative Religion'' (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1970), p. 573: "Shekhinah". The Semitic root from which ''shekhinah'' is derived, ''š-k-n'', means "to settle, inhabit, or dwell". In the verb form, it is often used to refer to the dwelling of a person or animal in a place, or to the dwelling of God. Nouns derived from the root included ''shachen'' ("neighbor") and ''mishkan'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gender And Judaism
Gender and Jewish Studies is an emerging subfield at the intersection of gender studies, queer studies, and Jewish studies. Gender studies centers on interdisciplinary research on the phenomenon of gender. It focuses on cultural representations of gender and people's lived experience. Similarly, queer studies focuses on the cultural representations and lived experiences of queer identities to critique hetero-normative values of sex and sexuality. Jewish studies is a field that looks at Jews and Judaism, through such disciplines as history, anthropology, literary studies, linguistics, and sociology. As such, scholars of gender and Jewish studies are considering gender as the basis for understanding historical and contemporary Jewish societies. This field recognizes that much of recorded Jewish history and academic writing is told from the perspective of “the male Jew” and fails to accurately represent the diverse experiences of Jews with non-dominant gender identities. History Je ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Androgynos
In Jewish tradition, the term ''androgynos'' ( in Hebrew, transliterated: "ʾandərôg̲înôs",literally: man-woman, translation: "intersex") refers to someone who possesses both male and female sexual characteristics. Due to the ambiguous nature of the individual's sex, Rabbinic literature discusses the sex of the individual and the legal ramifications that result based on potential sex classifications. In traditionally observant Judaism, sex plays a central role in legal obligations. Biological basis During the development of the embryo into a fetus, a specific process occurs that determines the physiological properties of the fetus. In other words, there is a point in time where the fetus exists without male or female genitalia. Eventually, due to the release of hormones in one part of the fetus and the recognition of these hormones in another, the fetus either develops male genitalia or female genitalia. This process occurs roughly a month and a half after conception, and o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
Meshullam Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (August 28, 1924 – July 3, 2014), commonly called "Reb Zalman" (full Hebrew name: ), was an American Rabbi, writer, and activist, and one of the founders of the Jewish Renewal movement and an innovator in ecumenical dialogue. Born in Poland, Shachter-Shalomi was raised an Orthodox Jew in a variety of countries as his family repeatedly moved to evade increasing antisemitism in 1930s Europe. While awaiting a visa to the United States in an internment camp in Vichy France, Shachter-Shalomi met Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the later seventh Chabad rebbe. Becoming a Chabad rabbi in 1947, Shacheter-Shalomi took a deep interest in the spiritual practices of other faiths and immersed himself in the counter-culture of the 1960s. Eventually expelled from Chabad, he founded his own organisation, B'Nai Or (later P'Nai Or) and his attempts to innovate in Jewish prayer pioneered what became the chavurah and Jewish Renewal movements. Employed as an acade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mordecai Kaplan
Mordecai Menahem Kaplan (June 11, 1881 – November 8, 1983) was an American Conservative rabbi, writer, Jewish educator, professor, theologian, philosopher, activist, and religious leader who founded the Reconstructionist movement of Judaism along with his son-in-law Ira Eisenstein. He has been described as a "towering figure" in the recent history of Judaism for his influential work in adapting it to modern society, contending that Judaism should be a unifying and creative force by stressing the cultural and historical character of the religion as well as theological doctrine. Life and work Mordecai Menahem Kaplan was born Mottel Kaplan in Sventiany in the Russian Empire (present-day Švenčionys in Lithuania) on June 11, 1881, the son of Haya (née Anna) and Rabbi Israel Kaplan. His father, ordained by the leading Lithuanian Jewish luminaries, went to serve as a dayan in the court of Chief Rabbi Jacob Joseph in New York City in 1888. Mordecai was brought over to New York i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Buber
Martin Buber (; , ; ; 8 February 1878 – 13 June 1965) was an Austrian-Israeli philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I and Thou, I–Thou relationship and the I–It relationship. Born in Vienna, Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. He produced writings about Zionism and worked with various bodies within the Zionist movement extensively over a nearly 50-year period spanning his time in Europe and the Near East. In 1923, Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, ''I and Thou, Ich und Du'' (later translated into English as ''I and Thou''), and in 1925 he began translating the Hebrew Bible into the German language. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature ten times, and the Nobel Peace Prize seven times. Biography Martin (Hebrew language, Hebrew name: ''מָרְדֳּכַי,'' ''Mordechai'') Buber was born in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermann Cohen
Hermann Cohen (; ; 4 July 1842 – 4 April 1918) was a German philosopher, one of the founders of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism, and he is often held to be "probably the most important Jewish philosopher of the nineteenth century". Biography Cohen was born in Coswig, in the Principality of Anhalt-Bernburg. He began to study philosophy early on, and soon became known as a profound Kant scholar. He was educated at the Gymnasium at Dessau, at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, and at the universities of Breslau, Berlin, and Halle. In 1873, he became ''Privatdozent'' in the philosophical faculty of the University of Marburg; the thesis with which he obtained the ''venia legendi'' being ''Die systematischen Begriffe in Kant's vorkritischen Schriften nach ihrem Verhältniss zum kritischen Idealismus''. Cohen was elected Professor extraordinarius at Marburg in 1875 and Professor ordinarius the following year. He was one of the founders of the "Gesellschaft zur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Panentheism
Panentheism (; "all in God", from the Greek , and ) is the belief that the divine intersects every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time. The term was coined by the German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828 (after reviewing Hindu scripture) to distinguish the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) about the relation of God and the universe from the supposed pantheism of Baruch Spinoza.John Culp (2013)"Panentheism" in the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''. Retrieved 18 March 2014. Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are identical, panentheism maintains an ontological distinction between the divine and the non-divine and the significance of both. In panentheism, the universal spirit is present everywhere, which at the same time " transcends" all things created. Whilst pantheism asserts that "all is God", panentheism claims that God is greater than the unive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (24 November 163221 February 1677), also known under his Latinized pen name Benedictus de Spinoza, was a philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, who was born in the Dutch Republic. A forerunner of the Age of Enlightenment, Spinoza significantly influenced modern biblical criticism, 17th-century rationalism, and Dutch intellectual culture, establishing himself as one of the most important and radical philosophers of the early modern period. Influenced by Stoicism, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Ibn Tufayl, and heterodox Christians, Spinoza was a leading philosopher of the Dutch Golden Age. Spinoza was born in Amsterdam to a Marrano family that fled Portugal for the more tolerant Dutch Republic. He received a traditional Jewish education, learning Hebrew and studying sacred texts within the Portuguese Jewish community, where his father was a prominent merchant. As a young man, Spinoza challenged rabbinic authority and questioned Jewish doctrines, leadi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meforshim
Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, is the entire corpus of works authored by Rabbi, rabbis throughout History of Judaism, Jewish history. The term typically refers to literature from the Talmud, Talmudic era (70–640 CE), as opposed to Jewish literature, medieval and modern rabbinic writings. It aligns with the Hebrew term ''Sifrut Chazal'' (), which translates to “literature [of our] sages” and generally pertains only to the Chazal, sages (''Chazal'') from the Talmudic period. This more specific sense of "Rabbinic literature"—referring to the Talmud, Midrashim (), and related writings, but hardly ever to later texts—is how the term is generally intended when used in contemporary academic writing. The terms ''mefareshim'' and ''parshanim'' (commentaries and commentators) almost always refer to later, post-Talmudic writers of Biblical gloss, rabbinic glosses on Hebrew Bible, Biblical and Talmudic texts. Mishnaic literature The Midrash halakha, Midr'she ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Midrash
''Midrash'' (;"midrash" . ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; or ''midrashot'') is an expansive Judaism, Jewish Bible, Biblical exegesis using a rabbinic mode of interpretation prominent in the Talmud. The word itself means "textual interpretation", "study", or "exegesis", derived from the root verb (), which means "resort to, seek, seek with care, enquire, require". Midrash and rabbinic readings "discern value in texts, words, and letters, as potential revelatory spaces", writes the Hebrew scholar Wilda Gafney. "They reimagine dominant narratival readings while crafting new ones to stand alongside—not replace—former readings. Midrash also asks questions of the text; sometimes it provides answers, sometimes it leaves the reader to answer the questions". Vanessa Lovelace defines midrash as "a Jewish mode of int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
