Hanna Rovina in "The Dybbuk," 1920.

Of Devils and Dybbuks

Many an enlightened reader of the New York Times must have indulged in yet another condescending laugh at the Catholic Church upon seeing a November 12 report about a conclave of bishops in Baltimore; the purpose was to discuss the urgent need for priestly experts in the task of expunging the devil from possessed parishioners. Among those chuckling, no doubt, were many Jews.

“The Dybbuk”  Michael C. Steinlauf,  YIVO Encyclopedia.  On the career of an expressionist Yiddish masterpiece and its evocation of a world in which good and evil, living and dead, are intimate, and awesome mystery inheres in the everyday.  SAVE

Exorcism in Jerusalem  Shmarya Rosenberg,  Failed Messiah.  Reports, culled from Yeshiva World News, on the progress and ultimate failure to remove a dybbuk from a young Brazilian.  SAVE

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Bratslaver Hasidim, Uman.

The Mad Mystic of Bratslav

Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (1772-1811) is the strangest and most paradoxical leader in the history of Hasidism, and one of its most original, albeit mad, geniuses.  Nahman has been an object of both literary fascination and considerable scholarly research. He also shares center stage with Franz Kafka (1888-1924) in Rodger Kamenetz's Burnt Books.

Nahman of Bratslav  Arthur Green,  YIVO Encyclopedia.  The life and teachings of the founder of a unique Hasidic sect: an overview.  SAVE

Yippee  Paul Mazursky,  YouTube.  The acclaimed director introduces his 2006 documentary of a field trip to Uman on Rosh Hashanah. (Video)  SAVE

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Rav Ovadia

One of the more outsized personalities in Israel's history is Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the longtime head of the Shas political party, who has just marked his ninetieth birthday.  The foreign public knows of him, vaguely, as a right-wing fanatic. But the truth and perhaps the tragedy of the man are far more complicated and fascinating.

A Breakthrough Move?  Matthew Wagner,  Jerusalem Post.  Entrance into the World Zionist Organization may herald Shas's normalization, or the WZO's weakening.   SAVE

From the Shop to the Top  Benjamin Lau,  Haaretz.  A journey from the family grocery store to the summit of religious and political leadership.   SAVE

Women and the Sephardi Way  Ariel Picard,  Jewish Women's Archive.  On issues from wearing trousers to learning Torah, relative leniency is the rule.    SAVE

Who is Rabbi Ovadia  Marc B. Shapiro,  Meorot.  Assessing the personality, and the perspective, of an ultra-Orthodox revolutionary.  SAVE

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The God of the Kabbalists

Judaism is often thought of, with justice, as a religion in which faith and dogma take a back seat to behavior and action. Yet the library of Jewish theology is rich—or at least it once was. For many religious Jews today, the multiple dislocations of the last few centuries have left a void where God used to be.  Increasingly, though, and not a little surprisingly, that void is being filled by sophisticated theological works informed by the seemingly obscure and fantastic doctrines of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition.

The Path of Arthur Green  Alan Brill,  Book of Doctrines and Opinions.  Where he once identified his thinking with that of Abraham Joshua Heschel, Green now claims affinity to a near-forgotten theologian of the Age of Aquarius.  SAVE

Sacred Attunement  Scot McKnight,  Beliefnet.  A Christian blogger responds enthusiastically to Michael Fishbane's "theology of the unsayable."  SAVE

On the Personal God  Avakesh.  To the philosopher Jacob Joshua Ross, the faces of revealed Being are inexhaustible, but a personal God is primary and foundational: a face that can speak and command and comfort.  SAVE

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Golem, Philippe Semeria.

The Golem: Universal and Particular

The most famous and enduring of all Jewish legends is that of the golem, the artificial man. Indeed, with the possible exception of the demon Lilith, briefly pressed into service as a feminist icon, the golem remains the only post-biblical Jewish myth to be widely adopted by non-Jewish culture. Among its recent incarnations are a computer game that bears its name and the army of humanoids who populate James Cameron's film Avatar. 

The Golem of Prague & the Golem of Rehovoth  Gershom Scholem,  Commentary.  Why it is right and proper for a computer to be named after the Maharal's humanoid.  SAVE

Golem  Moshe Idel,  State University of New York Press.  A book-length scholarly exploration of the sources behind the legend in their historical and intellectual contexts.  SAVE

A Song of Two Golems  Hagai Hitron,  Haaretz.  In June 2009, an opera opened in Prague about two fanciful creatures: the Maharal's, and a high-tech clone designed to protect a futuristic Jerusalem.   SAVE

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