"This is a welcome addition to the scholarly literature on a subject that is finally getting the attention it deserves."—Marion M. Stein, <i>Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter</i>
<p>“Rabbi Green has been the foremost scholar of Hasidism in the world and one of the great leaders of spiritual renewal in Jewish life for more than four decades. In <i>The Heart of the Matter</i> he displays the brilliance and dazzling breadth of his scholarship and lays bare the depths of his heart and soul as they have animated him throughout his lifetime. Both his exceptional knowledge and his fiery passions as revealed in these essays provide great scholarly and personal insights for the reader. This is a book to savor!”—Rabbi David Ellenson, chancellor of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion </p>
<p>“Arthur Green combines a passion for deep and rigorous scholarship with an unflagging commitment to serving the Jewish people. This volume is a fitting tribute to a remarkable man and an extraordinary career.”—Rabbi Shai Held, president, dean, and chair in Jewish Thought at Mechon Hadar</p>
<p>“Arthur Green never loses sight of the essence, the heart that beats within. . . . This work is a river of living waters connecting heart, mind, and spirit, flowing through past, present, and future.”—Melila Hellner-Eshed, professor of Jewish mysticism at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and senior fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute</p>
Judaism, like all the great religions, has a strand within it that sees inward devotion, the opening of the human heart to God’s presence, to be the purpose of its entire edifice of praxis, liturgy, and way of life. This voice is not always easy to hear in a tradition where so much attention is devoted to the how rather than the why of religious living. The devotional claim, certainly a key part of Judaism’s biblical heritage, has reasserted itself in the teachings of individual mystics and in the emergence of religious movements over the long course of Jewish history. This volume represents Arthur Green’s own quest for such a Judaism—as a rabbi, as a scholar, and as a contemporary seeker.
This collection of essays brings together Green’s scholarly writings, centered on the history of early Hasidism, and his highly personal approach to a rebirth of Jewish spirituality in our own day. In choosing to present them in this way he asserts a claim that they are all of a piece. They represent one man’s attempt to wade through history and text, language and symbol, and an array of voices both past and present while always focusing on the essential questions: “What does it mean to be a religious human being, and what does Judaism teach us about how to be one?” This, the author considers to be the heart of the matter.
Part 1. Judaism: The Religious Life1. Introduction to Jewish Spirituality2. Sabbath as Temple: Some Thoughts on Space and Time in Judaism3. Some Aspects of Qabbalat Shabbat4. Judaism and “The Good”
Part 2. Theology and Mysticism in Classical Sources5. Bride, Spouse, Daughter: Images of the Feminine in Classical Jewish Sources6. The Children in Egypt and the Theophany at the Sea7. The Song of Songs in Early Jewish Mysticism
Part 3. Hasidism: Mysticism for the Masses8. Around the Maggid’s Table: Tsaddik, Leadership, and Popularization in the Circle of Dov Baer of Miedzyrzec9. Typologies of Leadership and the Hasidic Zaddiq10. The Zaddiq as Axis Mundi in Later Judaism11. Hasidism: Discovery and Retreat12. Levi Yizhak of Berdichev on Miracles
Part 4. Contemporary Jewish Theology13. A Neo-Hasidic Credo14. Restoring the Aleph: Judaism for the Contemporary Seeker15. A Kabbalah for the Environmental Age16. Abraham Joshua Heschel: Recasting Hasidism for Moderns17. Personal Theology: An Address to Rabbis
Source AcknowledgmentsBibliography of the Published Writings of Arthur Green