After Spirituality

Philip Wexler is Professor of Sociology of Education and Unterberg Chair in Social and Educational Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of a number of books on the relation between social theory and education and social theory and religion, among them, Holy Sparks, Mystical Society, Mystical Interactions, and Mystical Sociology. Jonathan Garb (PhD Hebrew University of Jerusalem) was awarded the Hebrew University President’s Prize for Outstanding Researcher in 2010. In 2011–2012, he is a fellow at the Tikvah Center for Law and Jewish Civilization at New York University. His publications include Manifestations of Power in Jewish Mysticism from Rabbinic Literature to Safedian Kabbalah (2004); «The Chosen will Become Herds»: Studies in Twentieth Century Kabbalah (2009); and Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah (2011).

Contents: Jonathan Garb/Philip Wexler: After Spirituality: Introducing the Volume and the Series – Jonathan Garb: Contemporary Kabbalah and Classical Kabbalah: Breaks and Continuities – Yoram Bilu/Zvi Mark: Between Tsaddiq and Messiah: A Comparative Analysis of Chabad and Breslav Hasidic Groups – Moshe Idel: «The Besht Passed His Hand over His Face»: On the Besht’s Influence on His Followers: Some Remarks – Philip Wexler: Society and Mysticism – Louise Child: Initiation and Communities of Secrecy in Papua New Guinea, Tantric Buddhism, and Contemporary Serial Drama – Thomas J. Csordas: Sacrament and Medicine: A Comparison of Roman Catholic and Native American Church Confession – David R. Loy: Beyond Transcendence? A Buddhist Perspective on the Axial Age – William B. Parsons: Freud’s Last Theory of Mysticism: The Return of the (Phylogenetic) Repressed.

«Philip Wexler and Jonathan Garb have assembled an astonishing collection. Mysticism in society, culture, history, tradition: the contributors' formulations of these interrelated realities address not only contingency but eternity. Juxtaposing remembrance and technology, confession and testimony, secrecy and the sacred, informing politics, sexuality and gender, this volume is ‘spreading the wellsprings’ and not only of Hasidism. As Wexler suggests, ‘symbolic interaction’ becomes ‘cosmic interaction’. The book – and the important series it inaugurates – promises to achieve nothing less.» (William F. Pinar, Canada Research Chair, University of British Columbia)