Heavenly Torah: as refracted through the generations

Abstract

Abraham Joshua Heschel made major scholarly contributions to the fields of biblical studies, rabbinics, medieval Jewish philosophy, Hasidism and mysticism. His most ambitious scholarly achievement, his three volume study of rabbinic Judaism, is now appearing in English. Heschel's general insight is that the world of rabbinic thought can be divided into two schools, those of Rabbi Akiba, and Rabbi Ishmael, and that the historic disputes between them are based on a fundamental disagreement over the nature of religion and revelation. Furthermore, this disagreement constitutes a basic ongoing polarity between immanence and transcendence, mysticism and rationalism, neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism. Heschel then shows how these two fundamental theologies may be used to interpret many topics central to Judaism.

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