Kabbalah and the rupture of modernity

an existential history of Chabad Hasidism

K10plus union-catalog record

24 cm; Includes bibliographical references (pages 363-391) and index; Preamble : conflagration and cosmic rupture -- Introduction : what does ṣimṣum mean? -- The Ari as a herald of modernity -- Love and rupture in early Hasidism -- "Due to this, the known book was burned" -- Ṣimṣum, soul-knowledge, and the function of parable -- Epilogue : ṣimṣum and the institutionalization of Chabad -- Introduction : does the world exist? -- Cosmic construction as cosmic effacement -- The Chabad sermon : articulating singularity -- Being, nothing, and Chabad's first succession controversy -- Rereading Rashaz, rereading reality -- Epilogue : opening and closing the door on acosmism -- Introduction : a tale of two brothers -- Dynastic rupture and cosmological recalibration -- The hemshekh : a new literary collage -- The finite trace of unruptured infinity -- Chabad's internal ṣimṣum split -- Epilogue : history and the metaphysics of materialism -- Introduction : the ruin and renaissance of Lubavitch -- Rediscovering malkhut, the cosmic womb -- Why? : innovation and the purpose of ṣimṣum -- Desire, pleasure, and the transcendence of sense -- Three paths to essential originality -- Epilogue : Rashab, Freud, and the meanings of modernity -- Introduction : undergoing and overcoming dislocation and catastrophe -- Letter writing and the Soviet ṣimṣum -- Bati legani and the triumph of humanity -- Wissenschaft, ṣimṣum and midcentury succession -- Messianic faith in the shadow of the Holocaust -- "Many-worlds" and "uncertainty" in ṣimṣum and science -- Epilogue : living for the sake of ṣimṣum -- Postscript : the art of being; Stanford studies in Jewish mysticism; xxviii, 415 pages