Kabbalah in America

Brian Ogren, Ph.D. (2008), Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is the Anna Smith Fine Associate Professor of Judaic Studies in the Department of Religion at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He has published two previous monographs and one prior edited volume.

• AcknowledgmentsList of Contributors1 Introduction: On the Formation of Research on Kabbalah in AmericaBrian OgrenPart 1: Kabbalah in Colonial America2 “They Have with Faithfulnesse and Care Transmitted the Oracles of God unto us Gentiles”: Jewish Kabbalah and Text Study in the Puritan ImaginationMichael Hoberman3 The Zohar in Early Protestant American Kabbalah: on Ezra Stiles and the Case for Jewish-ChristianityBrian OgrenPart 2: Nineteenth-Century Western Esoteric Trends4 The Abyss, the Oversoul, and the Kabbalistic Overtones in Emerson’s Work: Tracing the Pre-Freudian Unconscious in AmericaClémence Boulouque5 The Qabbalah of the Hebrews and the Ancient Wisdom Religion of Asia: Isaac Myer and the Kabbalah in AmericaBoaz Huss6 Kabbalah in the Ozarks: Thomas Moore Johnson, The Platonist, and the Hermetic Brotherhood of LuxorVadim PutzuPart 3: The Nineteenth-Century Jewish Interface7 A Kabbalistic Lithograph as a Populariser of Judaism in America—Max Wolff, The Origin of the Rites and Worship of the Hebrews (New York, 1859)Peter Lanchidi8 Isidor Kalisch’s Pioneering Translation of Sepher Yetsirah (1877) and Its Rosicrucian LegacyJonathan D. SarnaPart 4: Early Twentieth-Century Rational Scholars9 Pragmatic Kabbalah: J.L. Sossnitz, Mordecai Kaplan and the Reconstruction of Mysticism and Peoplehood in Early Twentieth-Century AmericaEliyahu Stern10 Solomon Schechter, Abraham J. Heschel, and Alexander Altmann: Scholars on Jewish MysticismMoshe IdelPart 5: The Post-War Counterculture11 Jewish Mysticism as a Universal Teaching: Allen Ginsberg’s Relation to KabbalahYaakov Ariel12 Shlomo Carlebach on the West CoastPinchas Giller13 Aryeh Kaplan’s Quest for the Lost Jewish Traditions of Science, Psychology and ProphecyAlan BrillPart 6: Liberal American Denominationalism14 American Reform Judaism’s Increasing Acceptance of Kabbalah: the Contribution of Rabbi Herbert Weiner’s Spiritual Search in 9½ MysticsDana Evan Kaplan15 American Conservative Judaism and KabbalahDaniel HorwitzPart 7: Ultra-Orthodoxy, American Hasidism, and the ‘Other’16 The Calf Awakens: Language, Zionism and Heresy in Twentieth-Century American HasidismAriel Evan Mayse17 “The Lower Half of the Globe”: Kabbalah and Social Analysis in the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Vision for Judaism’s American EraPhilip Wexler and Eli Rubin18 To Distinguish Israel and the Nations: E Pluribus Unum and Isaac Hutner’s Appropriation of Kabbalistic AnthropologyElliot R. WolfsonPart 8: Contemporary American Ritual and Thought19 Kabbalah as a Tool of Orthodox OutreachJody Myers20 Everything is Sex: Sacred Sexuality and Core Values in the Contemporary American Kabbalistic CosmosMarla Segol21 Identity or Spirituality: the Resurgence of Habad, Neo Hasidism and Ashlagian Kabbalah in AmericaRon Margolin