Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eating and Embodiment in Medieval Kabbalah

by Joel Hecker

Overview

Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals is the first book-length study of mystical eating practices and experiences in the kabbalah. Focusing on the Jewish mystical literature of late-thirteenth-century Spain, author Joel Hecker analyzes the ways in which the Zohar and other contemporaneous literature represent mystical attainment in their homilies about eating. What emerges is not only consideration of eating practices but, more broadly, the effects such practices and experiences have on the bodies of its practitioners.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814340035
Publisher:	Wayne State University Press
Publication date:	04/20/2005
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	296
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Joel Hecker is associate professor of Jewish mysticism at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

What People are Saying About This

Irene Kaplan Leiwant Chair of Jewish Studies, Mount Holyoke College - Lawrence Fine

This book is a superb and distinctive contribution to the study of ritual in Judaism in general, and Kabbalah in particular. By focusing on the meaning of food and the act of eating in medieval Kabbalah, Hecker broadens and deepens our understanding of the role of ritual performance in Jewish mysticism. A work of considerable methodological sophistication, it is also an important contribution to the history of religion."

Editorial Reviews

This extraordinary text has proven to be an unending wellspring of insights into kabbalistic theology, devotional experience, and exegetical technique. Hecker has advanced the field in important new ways, offering an example to other scholars of the ways in which Kabbalah may be studied productively through the lens of lived religion and historical anthropology.

AJS Review - Eitan P. Fishbane

Hecker's book is notable for the fact that it does not strive to solve the interpretive difficulties presented by the Zohar but that it is able to capitalize on them to sketch a kabbalistic God that is simultaneously incarnate and carnal and a kabbalistic form of mystical experience that is simultaneously disembodies and embodied."

History of Religions

Hecker is to be highly commended for presenting a systematic study of the variegated aspects of eating within the non-systematic material found in the Zohar and related literature, such as Sefer Rimmonim ('The Book of the Pomegranates'). This work is accessible to non-specialists who subscribe to the popularity of present-day Kabbalah, as taught and practiced in popular culture; it was a pleasure to read."

Journal of Religion and Popular Culture

Hecker's book offers an insightful and disciplined exploration of important themes in medieval religiosity."

Speculum Journal of Medieval Studies

This book is a superb and distinctive contribution to the study of ritual in Judaism in general, and Kabbalah in particular. By focusing on the meaning of food and the act of eating in medieval Kabbalah, Hecker broadens and deepens our understanding of the role of ritual performance in Jewish mysticism. A work of considerable methodological sophistication, it is also an important contribution to the history of religion."

Irene Kaplan Leiwant Chair of Jewish Studies, Mount Holyoke College - Lawrence Fine