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Book Information | About the book | Reviews | |||||||||||||
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Spirit
Possession in Judaism Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to the Present Edited by Matt Goldish |
This extraordinary collection of essays is the first to approach the phenomenon of spirit possession among Jews from a multidisciplinary perspective. The essays in this collection expand the variety of approaches to the subject, addressing Jewish possession phenomena from the points of view of religion, mysticism, literature, anthropology, psychology, history, and folklore. Scholarly views and popular traditions, benevolent spirits and malevolent shades, exorcism, social control, messianic implications, madness, literary structure, and a host of other topics are brought into the discussion of spirit possession in Jewish culture. This juxtaposition of approaches among the essays in this volume, some of which analyze the same texts in different ways, creates a broad foundation on which to contemplate the meaning of spirit possession. | "Spirit
Possession in Judaism offers a new and
fascinating portrait of a subject usually neglected or marginalized in the
study of Judaism. The work is a wonderful reflection of the new explosion
of Judaic studies within the academy in its focus on a subject of great
interest to students of other cultures and in the interdisciplianry way
in which the subject is treated. The addition of translated primary sources
on possession makes this volume especially attractive for teaching as well
as for cross-cultural comparison." —David Ruderman, University
of Pennsylvania Matt Goldish is Samuel M. and Esther Melton Associate Professor of Jewish History at the Ohio State University. |
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| Raphael
Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology $42.95s cloth / ISBN 0-8143-3003-7 480 pages / 6 x 9 2003 contents > preface [partial] > extract > index > |
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