It’s not very often you get to use the word "charming" for a piece of literary scholarship. That's precisely the word, though, that fits Marjorie Hope Nicolson’s Voyages to the Moon, published in 1948 by the Macmillan Company. The book is 66 years old, which the same age I am until my birthday … [Read more...]
A Girl Named Jessica – Shakespeare, the Talmud, and the “Merchant of Venice”
Are you a "Jessica"? If you are, your name says that you're a woman so beautiful people can't stop looking at you. You won't find this in any dictionary or website, or even Wikipedia (which offers a different explanation for the name). I learn it from Shakespeare and from the Talmud, two … [Read more...]
Bertrand Russell, Plotinus, and the Kabbalah
(This post is a follow-up to my two-part series on "Kabbalah, the Zohar, and the Rose.") When you're looking for enlightenment about Kabbalah, Bertrand Russell isn't the first person you'd think of turning to. The British philosopher and activist, whose long life spanned Queen Victoria's … [Read more...]
Kabbalah, the Zohar, and the Rose (Part 2)
(This is a continuation of last week's post.) How many petals has a rose? Thirteen, according to the Zohar, the great Kabbalistic classic of the Middle Ages. The number isn't fortuitous, either. It's part of a vast symbolic web that ties together the human body, the world of nature, the … [Read more...]
Kabbalah, the Zohar, and the Rose (Part 1)
"Rabbi Hizkiah opened with the verse, 'Like a rose among thorns' [Song of Songs 2:2]. What is this 'rose'? The Community of Israel ..." That's the way the Zohar starts off. The Zohar, which first began to trickle into Jewish communal awareness around the year 1300, became over the next few … [Read more...]
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