Grounded Spirituality : Aspects of Rabbinic Culture in its Late Antique Context

Grounded Spirituality provides insight into the unique world of rabbinic religiosity in late antiquity, from around 1-500 C.E. Treating a variety of central subjects that shaped the religious outlook of the Jewish sages of the Midrash and Talmud, this book serves as a guide and introduction to reading rabbinic sources. Each chapter chooses an intriguing rabbinic text on an important aspect of religion, reads it closely and compares it to other texts of the Rabbis and other religious and philosophic cultures of late antiquity. Marc Hirshman explores the implications of these themes for contemporary religion, asking what lessons are to be learned from rabbinic thought, and what place should they have on the development of religion and humanities in the twenty-first century.

Grounded Spirituality: Aspects of Rabbinic Culture in its Late Antique Context examines a series of themes engaged by rabbinic literature, including the primacy of learning, the fading of universalism, the place of love, a unique rhetoric of charity and good deeds, and rabbinic attitudes to philosophy and mysticism. Particularly, it focuses on the formative period of rabbinic religion, from 1-500 C.E., which roughly parallels what classical historians call late antiquity.Each chapter focuses on a central text from the rabbinic corpus drawn from Mishna, Tosefta, Midrash and Talmud. After carefully explicating the text, Marc Hirshman explores the themes emerging from the central text and other --often differing and opposing-- views in rabbinic literature. An exploration of possible influences or polemics with the regnant cultures and religions of the region will be included in most chapters. The book is both a primer for a critical reading of rabbinic texts, as well as an exploration of the development of rabbinic thought and religiosity.In the final chapter, Hirshman explores the implications of the study of classical rabbinic literature of antiquity for contemporary humanities and religion. What lessons are to be learned from rabbinic discourse, and what place should their unique cultural approaches have on the development of religion and the humanities in the twenty-first century?