Inhalt: | The Disclosure of Sense and Order : Rhetoric and Hermeneutic Modes of Kabbalistic Semiotics : Rhetorical Patterns. The Quest for an Organization of Knowledge : Hermeneutic Perspectives. Proliferation and Articulation of Meanings -- The Imagery of Cosmic and Human Orders : Semantic Dimensions of Kabbalistic Semiotics : Cosmological Assumptions. Establishment and Maintenance of Orders : Lexical and Narrative Semantics. Reviving Cosmic Orders through Ritual Orders -- The Focus on Ritual Sequences : Syntactic Aspects of Kabbalistic Semiotics : Dwelling on the Formal Structures of Cultic Life : Re-Organizing the Ritual Syntax : Generating Mythical and Mystical Accounts from Ritual Syntax --The Construction of a Liturgical-Mystical Discipline : Pragmatic Effects of Kabbalistic Semiotics : Remolding, Extending and Intensifying Institutional Halakhic Orders : Shaping Kabbalistically-Oriented Community Conduct and Experience -- Final Remarks : Kabbalistic Orders from the Perspective of Cultural Semiotics -- Bibliography -- Index. "This book starts from the assumption that semiotics of culture and social-anthropological studies can offer useful tools to understand large segments and lasting aspects of the kabbalistic tradition. It attempts to study from this perspective the late Sephardi Kabbalah, by examining 16th-century emblematic commentaries that collect and carry on the earlier kabbalistic interpretation of the rabbinic ritual system. In this unusual light, much kabbalistic culture appears as an ongoing semiotic intensification of deep structures governing the discourse and practice of the Jews - so that, for instance, institutional cultic orders are integrated by other forms of order in imagination, thought, and experience"-- |
