Mehr zum Titel: | Frontmatter Acknowledgements Contents Introduction Chapter 1 The Existentialism of Birth Chapter 2 The Theology and Ethics of Birth Chapter 3 The Caesura of Birth Chapter 4 “The Womb Is a Tomb”: The Imagery of the Uterus and Female Guilt and Death Chapter 5 The Double Beginning of the Zohar Chapter 6 Longing for the Source Chapter 7 Birth in Lurianic Kabbalah Chapter 8 Redemption as Birth, Birth as Redemption Epilogue Bibliography Index |
Inhalt: | Birth in Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis examines the centrality of "birth" in Jewish literature, gender theory, and psychoanalysis, thus challenging the centrality of death in Western culture and existential philosophy. In this groundbreaking study, Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel discuss similarities between Biblical, Midrashic, Kabbalistic, and Hasidic perceptions of birth, as well as its place in contemporary cultural and psychoanalytic discourse. In addition, this study shows how birth functions as a vital metaphor that has been foundational to art, philosophy, religion, and literature. Medieval Kabbalistic literature compared human birth to divine emanation, and presented human sexuality and procreation as a reflection of the sefirotic structure of the Godhead – an attempt, Kaniel claims, to marginalize the fear of death by linking the humane and divine acts of birth. This book sheds new light on the image of God as the "Great Mother" and the crucial role of the Shekhinah as a cosmic womb. Birth in Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis won the Gorgias Prize and garnered significant appreciation from psychoanalytic therapists in clinical practice dealing with birth trauma, postpartum depression, and in early infancy distress |
