The Hebrew word zimzum originally means “contraction,”
“withdrawal,” “retreat,” “limitation,” and
“concentration.” In Kabbalah, zimzum is a term for God’s
self-limitation, done before creating the world to create the
world. Jewish mystic Isaac Luria coined this term in Galilee in the
sixteenth century, positing that the God who was “Ein-Sof,”
unlimited and omnipresent before creation, must concentrate himself
in the zimzum and withdraw in order to make room for the creation
of the world in God’s own center. At the same time, God also
limits his infinite omnipotence to allow the finite world to arise.
Without the zimzum there is no creation, making zimzum one of the
basic concepts of Judaism. The Lurianic doctrine of the zimzum has
been considered an intellectual showpiece of the Kabbalah and of
Jewish philosophy. The teaching of the zimzum has appeared in the
Kabbalistic literature across Central and Eastern Europe, perhaps
most famously in Hasidic literature up to the present day and in
philosopher and historian Gershom Scholem’s epoch-making research
on Jewish mysticism. The Zimzum has fascinated Jewish and Christian
theologians, philosophers, and writers like no other Kabbalistic
teaching. This can be seen across the philosophy and cultural
history of the twentieth century as it gained prominence among such
diverse authors and artists as Franz Rosenzweig, Hans Jonas, Isaac
Bashevis Singer, Harold Bloom, Barnett Newman, and Anselm Kiefer.
This book follows the traces of the zimzum across the Jewish and
Christian intellectual history of Europe and North America over
more than four centuries, where Judaism and Christianity, theosophy
and philosophy, divine and human, mysticism and literature,
Kabbalah and the arts encounter, mix, and cross-fertilize the
interpretations and appropriations of this doctrine of God’s
self-entanglement and limitation.
General
| Imprint: |
University of PennsylvaniaPress
|
| Country of origin: |
United States |
| Series: |
Jewish Culture and Contexts |
| Release date: |
September 2023 |
| Firstpublished: |
2023 |
| Authors: |
Christoph Schulte
|
| Translators: |
Assistant Professor of German Twitchell
|
| Dimensions: |
229 x 152mm (L x W) |
| Pages: |
424 |
| ISBN-13: |
978-1-5128-2435-3 |
| Categories: |
Books
|
| LSN: |
1-5128-2435-6 |
| Barcode: |
9781512824353 |
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