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The Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth-Century Prague - Ezekiel Landau (the 'Noda Biyehudah') and his Contemporaries (Paperback)
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The Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth-Century Prague - Ezekiel Landau (the 'Noda Biyehudah') and his Contemporaries (Paperback)
Series: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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Kabbalah, an esoteric lore whose study was traditionally
restricted, played a surprisingly prominent and far-reaching role
in eighteenth-century Prague. In this book Sharon Flatto uncovers
the centrality of this mystical tradition for Prague's influential
Jewish community and its pre-eminent rabbinic authority, Ezekiel
Landau, chief rabbi from 1754 to 1793. A towering
eighteenth-century rabbinic leader who is best known for his
halakhic responsa collection the Noda biyehudah, Landau is
generally considered a staunch opponent of esoteric practices and
public kabbalistic discourse. Flatto challenges this portrayal,
exposing the importance of kabbalah in his work and thought and
demonstrating his novel use of teachings from diverse kabbalistic
schools. She also identifies the historical events and cultural
forces underlying his reluctance to discuss kabbalah publicly,
including the rise of the hasidic movement and the acculturation
spurred by the 1781 Habsburg Toleranzpatent. In telling this story,
the study offers the first systematic overview of the
eighteenth-century Jewish community of Prague, and the first
critical account of Landau's life and writings, which continue to
shape Jewish law and rabbinic thought to this day. Extensively
examining Landau's rabbinic corpus, as well as a variety of
archival and published German, Yiddish, and Hebrew sources, it
provides a unique glimpse into the spiritual and psychological
world of eighteenth-century Prague Jewry. Reconstructing the
intellectual world and traditional society in which Landau lived,
this study reveals the dominance of rabbinic culture in Prague
during this transitional period, the ongoing significance of
kabbalistic ideas and practices, and the city's numerous
distinguished figures and institutions. Its analysis of the
spiritual trends that animated this culture demonstrates that
Prague's late eighteenth-century rabbinate was more influential,
more conservative, and less open to modernization than has been
recognized. Debunking the widespread scholarly portrayal of Prague
as primarily under the influence of the modernizing West, Flatto
shows that this key central European city was shaped more by
traditional east European Jewish culture than by Western
Enlightenment thought. By unravelling and exploring the many
diverse threads that were woven into the fabric of Prague's
eighteenth-century Jewish life, the book offers a comprehensive
portrayal of rabbinic culture at its height in one of the largest
and most important centres of European Jewry.
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