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.

Featuring the work of leading scholar-practitioners, Visual Arts with Young Children raises critical questions about the situated nature of the visual arts and its education in early childhood. Innovative chapters explore the relationship of place to art practice and pedagogy, culturally-responsive and justice-oriented perspectives, as well as critical and reconceptualist approaches to materials, technology and media. Ideal for researchers and students of both early childhood education and arts integration programs, this volume is an essential step towards a deeper understanding of how visual arts are understood, valued and practiced in the early years.

In German Romantic literature, Jewish mysticism was also a source of inspiration for Christian authors such as Novalis, F. Schlegel, Brentano, Arnim, and E.T.A. Hoffmann. Whereas for Romantic theologians and philosophers the Kabbala represented the primal religious doctrine of humanity and a bridge between Rabbinic tradition and Christianity, the literary fraternity saw in it both an esoteric Jewish doctrine of the arcane and the magical and a trope for the mysterious power of language and writing to transcend rationalism and conscious authorial intention.

The religious interest in natural philosophy, magic, pantheism, mystic language theories and symbolism, theogony and cosmogony displayed by many German Romantic authors was a response to what Hegel called the 'aridity of the Enlightenment'. This interest led to a rediscovery of cabbala. Among Jewish Romantics, and to an even greater extent among Christian Romantics, Jewish mysticism became not only a source of religious, philosophical, and artistic inspiration, but also a subject of scholarly and philosophical debate. In 1991 the hitherto largely neglected interconnections between cabbala and the history of scholarship, literature, and ideas in the Romantic period were the subject of two interdisciplinary symposia at the University of Kassel and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Conventional methods for designing water systems in industrialized countries are not appropriate in developing countries. Despite this, the use of sophisticated technologies worldwide is widespread, although in many cases it is inappropriate. There is a lack of information for those wishing to learn and apply many of the practices which are suitable for the developing world, and which can be easily operated and maintained; this book is designed to fill that gap.;Now available again in print, this book is addressed to planners and engineers responsible for the design of water treatment plants to be built in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In particular, it is intended for small or isolated communities which may need to employ technologies which do not depend on capital-intensive mechanization and instrumentation. Many of the technologies identified in this text minimize the need for support technologies and highly skilled technicians, and some are experimental.

This is a new release of the original 1942 edition.

Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text.

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text.