Language:
Hebrew
Year of publication:
2018
Titel der Quelle:
תרביץ
Angaben zur Quelle:
פו, א (תשעט) 63-106
Keywords:
Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi,
;
Sin Judaism
;
Repentance Judaism
;
Providence and government of God
Abstract:
Shaarei Teshuva (lit. ‘Gates of Repentance’) by Rabenu Yonah Gerondi (1200-1263) has been one of the most popular musar compositions throughout the ages. Yet despite its wide circulation and broad reception, scholarship on the book’s textual and literary characteristics remains limited. This article endeavors to help fill this scholarly gap by providing a thematic, structural and textual analysis of Shaʿarei Teshuva. Its first part surveys the composition’s formal qualities, focusing primarily on Shaʿarei Teshuva’s accessible style, along with its peculiar structure. The center of the book is an elaborate discussion on transgressions and their respective punishments, while issues directly related to repentance are relegated to the opening and concluding sections. The second part of the article analyzes Shaʿarei Teshuva’s treatment of its two central themes as they emerge from the aforementioned formal analysis: Teshuva and its status, and transgressions with their respective punishments. This analysis shows how Rabenu Yonah’s creative treatment rendered Teshuva an urgent and ongoing process (in contrast to earlier ethical works), and developed the notion of transgression (ʿavera) as an omnipresent threat, above and beyond the weight attributed to each transgression in traditional halachic hierarchy. The article concludes that the combination of both thematic moves with the book’s exceptionally wide readership constituted a real innovation to Jewish thought. The article further suggests that this novel combination of constant repentance with hyperbolic fear of transgression, which reached a wide popular audience, contributed greatly to a profound change in fundamental religious dispositions within mainstream Judaism.
Note:
With an English abstract.
URL:
אתר את הפרסום בקטלוג המאוחד של ספריות ישראל
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