Language:
English
Year of publication:
2020
Titel der Quelle:
Kabbalah in America; Ancient Lore in the New World
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2020) 292-315
Keywords:
Schneerson, Menachem Mendel,
;
Habad
;
Hasidism
;
Cabala
Abstract:
Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), the seventh leader of the Habad-Lubavitch Hasidic dynasty, came to the United States as a refugee, having fled Paris as the Nazis took control of France. Yet the American future of Hasidism had already been considered in a letter addressed to him in 1933 by his father-in-law and predecessor as “Lubavitcher Rebbe,” Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson. Therein we find the beginnings of a kabbalistic theorization of the pivotal role that America was to play in the realization of the very telos of creation. Transposed from the realm of kabbalistic theory into the realm of socio-historical analysis, this became the basis for the seventh rebbe’s development and enactment of a counter-cultural strategy for a post-holocaust Jewish renaissance, centered not in Israel, but in America.
DOI:
10.1163/9789004428140_018
URL:
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