RT Book
T1 Birth in Kabbalah and psychoanalysis
T2 Perspectives on Jewish texts and contexts
JF Perspectives on Jewish texts and contexts
A1 Ḳara-Iṿanov Ḳaniʾel, Rut 1979-
LA English
PP Berlin Boston
PB De Gruyter
YR 2022
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1810160367
AB 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
SN 9783110688023
SN 9783110688108
K1 SOCIAL SCIENCE / Jewish Studies
DO 10.1515/9783110688023