The present volume honours Rabbi Professor Nehemia Polen, one of those rare scholars whose religious teachings, spiritual writings, and academic scholarship have come together into a sustained project of interpretive imagination and engagement. Without compromising his intellectual integrity, his work brings forth the sacred from the mundane and expands the reach of Torah. He has shown us a path in which narrow scholarship is directly linked to a quest for ever-broadening depth and connectivity. The essays in this collection, from his students, colleagues, and friends, are a testament to his enduring impact on the scholarly community. The contributions explore a range of historical periods and themes, centering upon the fields dear to Polen's heart, but a common thread unites them. Each essay is grounded in deeply engaged textual scholarship casting a glance upon the sources that is at once critical and beneficent. As a whole, they seek to give readers a richer sense of the fabric of Jewish interpretation and theology, from the history of Jewish mysticism, the promise and perils of exegesis, and the contemporary relevance of premodern and early modern texts.

'The pen would smoothly write the things it knew But when it came to love it split in two, A donkey stuck in mud is logic's fate - Love's nature only love can demonstrate.' Rumi's Masnavi is widely recognized as the greatest Sufi poem ever written, and has been called 'the Koran in Persian'. The thirteenth-century Muslim mystic Rumi composed his work for the benefit of his disciples in the Sufi order named after him, better known as the whirling dervishes. In order to convey his message of divine love and unity he threaded together entertaining stories and penetrating homilies. Drawing from folk tales as well as sacred history, Rumi's poem is often funny as well as spiritually profound. Jawid Mojaddedi's sparkling new verse translation of Book One is consistent with the aims of the original work in presenting Rumi's most mature mystical teachings in simple and attractive rhyming couplets. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Jalaloddin Rumi's Masnavi-ye Ma'navi, or 'Spiritual Couplets', composed in the 13th Century, is a monumental work of poetry in the Sufi tradition of Islamic mysticism. For centuries before his love poetry became a literary phenomenon in the West, Rumi's Masnavi had been revered in the Islamic world as its greatest mystical text. Drawing upon a vast array of characters, stories and fables, and deeply versed in spiritual teaching, it takes us on a profound and playful journey of discovery along the path of divine love, toward its ultimate goal of union with the source of all Truth. In Book 1 of the Masnavi, the first of six volumes, Rumi opens the spiritual path towards higher spiritual understanding. Alan Williams's authoritative new translation is rendered in highly readable blank verse and includes the original Persian text for reference, and with explanatory notes along the way. True to the spirit of Rumi's poem, this new translation establishes the Masnavi as one of the world's great literary achievements for a global readership. Translated with an introduction, notes and analysis by Alan Williams and including the Persian text edited by Mohammad Este'lami.

Piety and Rebellion examines the span of the Hasidic textual tradition from its earliest phases to the 20th century. The essays collected in this volume focus on the tension between Hasidic fidelity to tradition and its rebellious attempt to push the devotional life beyond the borders of conventional religious practice. Many of the essays exhibit a comparative perspective deployed to better articulate the innovative spirit, and traditional challenges, Hasidism presents to the traditional Jewish world. Piety and Rebellion is an attempt to present Hasidism as one case whereby maximalist religion can yield a rebellious challenge to conventional conceptions of religious thought and practice.

This book is a compilation of nine short books written between 2007 and 2021, in the ninth and tenth decades of the author's life. It contains his spiritual philosophy expressed in simple language accessible to all. The book tells of what the author has come to believe after a lifetime of seeking for the meaning of life, and how one should live that life at its optimum level. He explains that this cannot be proved: it is ultimately not susceptible to the usual scientific methods, for it lies in a different realm of reality which has to be experienced inwardly. However, its main tenets lie behind world religions and go back to mankind`s earliest thinkings and feelings. Believe it or not as you will, suggests the author. All he can say is that it has sustained him throughout his life and has made that life harmonious and joyous. The teachings of which he speaks are often referred to as the Ancient Wisdom. He first came across them at the age of twenty-five when he met a man who was well versed in that ancient wisdom which is to be found woven throughout major religions, philosophies and mystical teachings. This man was Eugene Halliday, who, the author says, was said to be one of the great spirits of the modern age. The phrase he used to describe the ultimate result of these teachings was 'Reflexive Self-Consciousness'. This, the author explains, was the same message taught by those of old, although expressed by his mentor Halliday in more modern terms. A wise but modest man, the author says that he is no academic or scholar or learned man - adding, with gentle humour, that it is written that an academic is an ass with a load of books on his back. He writes for the average person - of any age - who has no time left to think on these things but who may like to know more. He writes for this person - for he is such a one himself, he says. It is this which makes his story and his accumulated wisdom both inspiring and accessible.

This book is a compilation of nine short books written between 2007 and 2021, in the ninth and tenth decades of the author's life. It contains his spiritual philosophy expressed in simple language accessible to all. The book tells of what the author has come to believe after a lifetime of seeking for the meaning of life, and how one should live that life at its optimum level. He explains that this cannot be proved: it is ultimately not susceptible to the usual scientific methods, for it lies in a different realm of reality which has to be experienced inwardly. However, its main tenets lie behind world religions and go back to mankind`s earliest thinkings and feelings. Believe it or not as you will, suggests the author. All he can say is that it has sustained him throughout his life and has made that life harmonious and joyous. The teachings of which he speaks are often referred to as the Ancient Wisdom. He first came across them at the age of twenty-five when he met a man who was well versed in that ancient wisdom which is to be found woven throughout major religions, philosophies and mystical teachings. This man was Eugene Halliday, who, the author says, was said to be one of the great spirits of the modern age. The phrase he used to describe the ultimate result of these teachings was 'Reflexive Self-Consciousness'. This, the author explains, was the same message taught by those of old, although expressed by his mentor Halliday in more modern terms. A wise but modest man, the author says that he is no academic or scholar or learned man - adding, with gentle humour, that it is written that an academic is an ass with a load of books on his back. He writes for the average person - of any age - who has no time left to think on these things but who may like to know more. He writes for this person - for he is such a one himself, he says. It is this which makes his story and his accumulated wisdom both inspiring and accessible.

"The Book of Zohar" (The Book of Radiance) is an ageless source of wisdom and the basis for all Kabbalistic literature. Since its appearance nearly 2,000 years ago, it has been the primary, and often only, source used by Kabbalists. For centuries, Kabbalah was hidden from the public, which was considered not yet ready to receive it. However, our generation has been designated by Kabbalists as the first generation that is ready to grasp the concepts in The Zohar. Now, we can put these principles into practice in our lives. Written in a unique and metaphorical language, "The Zohar" enriches our understanding of reality and expands our worldview. However, this text should not be read in an ordinary fashion. We should patiently and repeatedly read and think about each sentence as we try to penetrate the authors feelings. We should read it slowly and try to extract the nuances of the text. Although the text deals with one subject only --how to relate to the Creator --it approaches it from different angles. This allows each of us to find the particular phrase or word that will carry us into the depths of this profound and timeless wisdom.

Communicates the depth and power of the Christian 'wisdom tradition', and the promise of its dramatic rebirth in our time

Every year, in the heart of the Nile Delta, a festival takes place that was for centuries the biggest in the Muslim world: the mulid of al-Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi of Tanta. Since the thirteenth century millions of believers from neighboring regions and countries have flooded into Tanta, Egypt's fourth-largest city, to pay devotional homage to al-Badawi, a much-loved saint who cures the impotent and renders barren women fertile. This book tells for the first time the history of a mulid that for long overshadowed even the pilgrimage to Mecca. Organized by Sufi brotherhoods, it had, by the nineteenth century, grown to become the scene of a boisterous and rowdy festival that excited the curiosity of European travelers. Their accounts of the indecorous dancing and sacred prostitution that enlivened the mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi fed straight into Orientalist visions of a sensual and atavistic East. Islamic modernists as well as Western observers were quick to criticize the cult of al-Badawi, reducing it to a muddle of superstitions and even a resurgence of anti-Islamic pagan practices. For many pilgrims, however, al-Badawi came to embody the Egyptian saint par excellence, the true link to the Prophet, his hagiographies and mulid standing for the genuine expression of a shared popular culture. Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen shows that the mulid does not in fact stand in opposition to religious orthodoxy, but rather acts as a mirror to Egyptian Islam, uniting ordinary believers, peasants, ulama, and heads of Sufi brotherhoods in a shared spiritual fervor. The Mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi of Tanta leads us on a discovery of this remarkably colorful and festive manifestation of Islam.