This thesis deals with the person of rabbi Avraham Abulafia with intention express his unique mystical system with respect to events of his life and his personal experiences which he had during his journeys. The first chapter follows the various mystical and philosophical systems and strives for introducing some major Jewish movements and personalities which may have been sources of Abulafia's conceptions and methods. Also it provides the information about the eschatological and millennial conceptions of that time, that may have been known to this scholar and affect him as well. The second chapter follows the life journey of Abulafia and tries to show the most important events of his life. It intends to provide the information about works which he had written as well as about his social contacts (his teachers and his pupils). The third chapter provides the information about his successors and tries to describe the various form of perception of his works, as well as it provides some interesting remarks about their censorship. There is also an intention to state the transformation of reception of his authority in last decades whether it is by contemporary kabbalists or artists. The last chapter is the apex of this work. It is focused on the description and interpretation of major conceptions of...

Master thesis "The Elements of New Age in Contemporary Judaism (so called Jewish Renewal)" deals with mutual relationship between Judaism and New Age movement. In the first part it describes their main mutual elements such as holism, monism, environmentalism, tender issues and esotericism. The second part is focused on Jewish Renewal movement, which aroused in 60's of 20th century in the United states of America. This movement is transdenominational neoschasidic movement, which tries to renew Judaism through Chasidic and kabalistic thoughts adapted to present days, it emphasizes personal spirituality. The third part talks about the Jewish elements within new Age, which are mainly kabbalah and Jewish mysticism. The fourth part describes the phenomenon of dual religious identity, whose the best known groups are Messianic Jews, Jews for Allah, Jewbus and Hinjews.

Thesis with title The Vision of Merkabah and its Reflexion in Rabbinical Judaism deals with jewish's mysticism. The work has point evidence, that jewish's mysticism starts yet in early medieval times. During centuries extends further and its line achieves until today's time. It compares most old mysticism texts with their occurrence at a later literature. It focus on mystical groups and theirs incidence. The work attends to difference mystic of jewish in different geographical regions in course of time. Keywords Ezekiel, prophets, mysticism, kabbalah, merkabah, sefirot, God

The objective of my dissertation is an analysis of selected passages from the Book of Zohar. The selected texts are analyzed from the synchronic and diachronic point of view. The synchronic approach consists of detailed grammatical study of all contained lexical units and its result is a Czech translation that reflects the interpretative variations as well. The diachronic approach incorporates Czech translation of important rabbinical commentaries and scientific discourse on analyzed themes. My dissertation gives a discussion of the nature of zoharic Aramaic and its literary sources. The scientific question is an evaluation of Moses de-Le'on's success rate in his endeavor to imitate the Aramaic of Targum Onkelos.

This phenomenological study was conducted in order to understand the everyday experiences of contemporary mystics in the Jewish traditions of Kabbalah. This author could find no available information about psychological research of this topic in psychological, educational or psychiatric databases. She used the applied phenomenological methodology of Howard Pollio and the Research Groups at the University of Tennessee. Interviews were conducted by this author with eight volunteer, living, adult participants who lived throughout the United States and ranged in age from 37 to 60+ years. These mystics were found through various means after they had described themselves, by their own definitions, as mystics in the Jewish traditions(s) of Kabbalah. There were six men and two women who participated; four were Jewish and four were not. The interviews ranged from one to three hours in length, were recorded, and later transcribed for confidential analyses. After analyzing the results, the Ground of the participants’ experience was determined to be Being Aware. The Thematic Structure of the participants’ everyday experiences of living with their mystical events and processes contained six themes: 1) Divine/Sacred, 2) Receiving/Calling/Gift, 3) Knowing/Realizing, 4) Practices/Body, 5)Developing/Stages, and 6) Struggling: Self/Others/World. Implications for this study suggest that the everyday experiences of these mystical participants are different in many ways from everyday experiences of non-mystics. There is some support for the ideas of spiritual intelligence, spiritual giftedness, consciousness advancement. Appreciating intuition, higher emotional states, and the deeper, yet usually hidden parts of human experience, along with learning to identify and support young people who are having mystical experiences is a worthwhile goal for psychologists.

This thesis contrasts the Plotinean attitude towards transcendence at the cosmological level with that of certain Kabbalistic authors of the 13th-17th century. Special emphasis is placed on the different approaches taken by each of the two sides to addressing the origin of otherness. Following a brief introduction to the notion of the question of transcendence, the first major part (chapter II) is dedicated to an exploration of the Plotinean conception of metaphysical "descent" from the One to subsequent hypostases. The second major part (chapter III) focuses on Kabbalistic conceptions of the descent from the indefinite infinite to the finite (limited) realm. Finally, I attempt to illustrate the questions and concerns common to each of the two cosmologies. In so doing, I make use of semiotic concepts to clarify the contrast between the two models.

Gothicism in general, and the Swedish Gothicism in particular, had a close connection to the esoteric currents that were flourishing all over Europe in the Early Modern Period. Apocalyptic predictions and prophecies useful to Gothic propaganda were derived from contemporary esoteric streams, but alongside these came Hermetic and Neo-Platonic speculations of a more individual character that emphasized man’s gradual ascension toward a higher state. The foremost representative for this union of Gothicism and Esotericism was Johannes Bureus (1568-1652). Although a pioneer of runology and Swedish grammatical studies, Bureus felt he made his greatest contributions in the sphere of mysticism. Influenced by the concept of a Philosophia Perennis, Bureus believed this eternal philosophy was not only expressed by the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Hebrews, but also by the ancient Norse. Bureus represents what could be termed an Esoteric Gothicism. In his work, the ideal of Gothicism melds with Esotericism in the form of Alchemy, Kabbalah, Hermeticism, Astrology, and Magic. Bureus himself called his esoteric system a Nordic Kabbalah, a “Notaricon Suethica,” or a “Kabala Upsalica.” Bureus’s Esotericism is explicated primarily in his manuscripts such as the Cabbalistica, Antiquitates Scanziana, and especially Adulruna Rediviva (the latter produced in seven versions over a forty-year period), but also in his major opus, dedicated to his pupil Queen Christina, the printed apocalyptic book Nordlanda Lejonsens Rytande. In examining Esoteric Gothicism we can discern a further tendency within Gothicism beyond the national chauvinism typically seen as exemplifying the movement. In Bureus’s work, Gothic motifs are combined with runes and Old Norse themes in an imaginative manner, but most characteristic of Bureus is how he uses the results to describe a highly individual path of initiation which leads to unity with God. Bureus’s ideas may seem eccentric to a modern reader, but properly situating them in their historical context reveals the role he played in an influential current in European intellectual and spiritual history, a current often referred to by scholars as Western Esotericism.

assise sur le toit, une femme médite sur la mort de son père // De tout là-haut, le monde lui apparaît tout petit, la mort toute large. Ce tyran-communiste de père pétri d’idéalisme pour le monde et pétri de colère pour elle, où est-il maintenant? Et ce ciel où son regard se perd, que lui annonce-t-il? Publié en 1999 chez ECW Press, Kaddish For My Father est le dernier recueil de poésie de Liba (Libby) Scheier, une écrivaine canadienne-anglaise aujourd’hui décédée. La traduction de cette œuvre est le projet qui anime cette étude. Généralement récité à l’enterrement d’une personne, le Kaddish est une prière de la liturgie juive glorifiant le nom de Dieu. Sur la deuxième de couverture du recueil de Scheier, on peut lire que l’auteure s’est inspirée de la Kabbale, une tradition mystique juive dont les concepts, les notions et les symboles peuvent s’avérer complexes à saisir, difficiles à déceler dans un texte donné et, c’est l’hypothèse ici, malaisés à traduire. Cette étude comporte deux volets. Dans un premier temps, un volet théorique vise à offrir une mise en contexte de l’œuvre et de la démarche littéraire de Libby Scheier. Partant de l’expérience de cette traduction, l’étude examine ensuite quelques voix théoriques (dont celles de Merleau-Ponty, Meschonnic, Berman et Folkart) m’ayant permis de déterminer ma position traductive, pour se conclure sur une description des défis de traduction spécifiquement liés à la Kabbale. La traduction que je soumets en annexe constitue le deuxième volet de ce projet.-----sitting on a roof, a woman meditates on the death of her father From above, the world appears small to her, and death large. This bully-Communist father so full of idealism for the world, so full of anger at her, where is he now? And this sky filling her eyes, what does it portend? Published in 1999 by ECW Press, Kaddish For My Father is the last poetry collection written by the late Anglo-Canadian writer Liba (Libby) Scheier. The translation of this work is the project at the heart of this study. Generally recited at the burial of a person, the Kaddish is a prayer from the Jewish liturgy glorifying the name of God. On the inside front cover of Kaddish for my father, one learns that the author was inspired by the Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition presenting a complex array of notions, concepts and symbols that can be hard to grasp, difficult to identify within a text and, as the hypothesis stands here, challenging to translate. There are two components to this study. Firstly, a theoretical component aims at presenting the context in which this work came to be and offers a perspective on Scheier’s literary approach. Springing from the experience of this translation, this study then examines the different theoretical voices (among them Merleau-Ponty, Meschonnic, Berman and Folkart) that helped me determine my position traductive (translation approach). I conclude with a description of the challenges, specific to the Kabbalah, that arose at the translation stage. The translation that I offer in the appendix constitutes the second component of this project.

assise sur le toit, une femme médite sur la mort de son père // De tout là-haut, le monde lui apparaît tout petit, la mort toute large. Ce tyran-communiste de père pétri d’idéalisme pour le monde et pétri de colère pour elle, où est-il maintenant? Et ce ciel où son regard se perd, que lui annonce-t-il? Publié en 1999 chez ECW Press, Kaddish For My Father est le dernier recueil de poésie de Liba (Libby) Scheier, une écrivaine canadienne-anglaise aujourd’hui décédée. La traduction de cette œuvre est le projet qui anime cette étude. Généralement récité à l’enterrement d’une personne, le Kaddish est une prière de la liturgie juive glorifiant le nom de Dieu. Sur la deuxième de couverture du recueil de Scheier, on peut lire que l’auteure s’est inspirée de la Kabbale, une tradition mystique juive dont les concepts, les notions et les symboles peuvent s’avérer complexes à saisir, difficiles à déceler dans un texte donné et, c’est l’hypothèse ici, malaisés à traduire. Cette étude comporte deux volets. Dans un premier temps, un volet théorique vise à offrir une mise en contexte de l’œuvre et de la démarche littéraire de Libby Scheier. Partant de l’expérience de cette traduction, l’étude examine ensuite quelques voix théoriques (dont celles de Merleau-Ponty, Meschonnic, Berman et Folkart) m’ayant permis de déterminer ma position traductive, pour se conclure sur une description des défis de traduction spécifiquement liés à la Kabbale. La traduction que je soumets en annexe constitue le deuxième volet de ce projet.-----sitting on a roof, a woman meditates on the death of her father From above, the world appears small to her, and death large. This bully-Communist father so full of idealism for the world, so full of anger at her, where is he now? And this sky filling her eyes, what does it portend? Published in 1999 by ECW Press, Kaddish For My Father is the last poetry collection written by the late Anglo-Canadian writer Liba (Libby) Scheier. The translation of this work is the project at the heart of this study. Generally recited at the burial of a person, the Kaddish is a prayer from the Jewish liturgy glorifying the name of God. On the inside front cover of Kaddish for my father, one learns that the author was inspired by the Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition presenting a complex array of notions, concepts and symbols that can be hard to grasp, difficult to identify within a text and, as the hypothesis stands here, challenging to translate. There are two components to this study. Firstly, a theoretical component aims at presenting the context in which this work came to be and offers a perspective on Scheier’s literary approach. Springing from the experience of this translation, this study then examines the different theoretical voices (among them Merleau-Ponty, Meschonnic, Berman and Folkart) that helped me determine my position traductive (translation approach). I conclude with a description of the challenges, specific to the Kabbalah, that arose at the translation stage. The translation that I offer in the appendix constitutes the second component of this project.

This thesis contrasts the Plotinean attitude towards transcendence at the cosmological level with that of certain Kabbalistic authors of the 13th-17th century. Special emphasis is placed on the different approaches taken by each of the two sides to addressing the origin of otherness. Following a brief introduction to the notion of the question of transcendence, the first major part (chapter II) is dedicated to an exploration of the Plotinean conception of metaphysical "descent" from the One to subsequent hypostases. The second major part (chapter III) focuses on Kabbalistic conceptions of the descent from the indefinite infinite to the finite (limited) realm. Finally, I attempt to illustrate the questions and concerns common to each of the two cosmologies. In so doing, I make use of semiotic concepts to clarify the contrast between the two models.