Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism

Moshe Idel is Professor of Jewish thought at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an expert in kabbalah and recipient of the prestigious Israel Prize for excellence in the field of Jewish philosophy.

• Introduction; Chapter 1: Righteousness, Sonship, and Names in Rabbinic and Heikhalot Literature; Chapter 2: The Son [of God] in Ashkenazi Forms of Esotericism; Chapter 3: Son as an Intellectual/Eschatological Entity in Ecstatic Kabbalah; Chapter 4: The Sexualized Son of God in the Theosophical-Theurgical Kabbalah; Chapter 5: Christological and Non-Christological Sons of God in the Italian Renaissance; Chapter 6: Son of God as a Righteous in Hasidism; Concluding Remarks; Appendix: Enoch the Righteous and Was There a Cult of Enoch/Metatron in the Middle Ages?; Abbreviations.

"Moshe Idel increasingly is seen as having achieved the eminence of Gershom Scholem in the study of Jewish mysticism. Ben, his book on the concept of Sonship in Kabbalah, is an extraordinary work of scholarship and imaginative surmise. If an intellectual Judaism is to survive, then Idel becomes essential reading, whatever your own spiritual allegiances." Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities, Yale University, USA