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This study explores the Hasidic psychologization of Jewish mysticism by focusing on the problem of distracting thoughts that arise during prayer, and the attitudes and responses to them that can be found in Hasidic literature. Two different theories of the origins of such thoughts, both attributed to Israel Ba'al Shem Tov, along with various techniques for engaging with them, are described. It is argued that these theories reflect two distinct paradigms, both of which exhibit significant similarities to the dynamic unconscious of psychoanalysis. In addition to tracing the reception of Israel's ideas on distracting thoughts within the Hasidic movement and without, the study connects them to his activities as a folk healer with a particular concern with treating mental illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay critically engages various contemporary readings of Hasidism. It examines what I call a "domesticating" orientation in Hasidic research, a quasi-apologetic move to read the academic study of Hasidism back into a normative Orthodox framework. I argue this is, in part, a resistance to what I call a "neo-Hasidic" orientation of a previous generation, scholars who sought to use Hasidism as the basis for their modern, existentialist, and renewal projects. This essay argues that while the domesticating critique has some merit, it overestimates its own objectivity and misses crucial aspects of the neo-Hasidic interpretation it seeks to undermine. I then use the work of Rav Shagar and what I am calling his "postmodern" reading of Hasidism as a critique of the domesticating trend that adopts, while also criticizing, the neo-Hasidic interpretation. In sum I argue that Rav Shagar presents a template that cuts through and moves beyond the modernizing and normative trajectories to open vistas for new understandings of Hasidism for our time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional Jewish interpretations of the story of the tower of Babel, as preserved in various midrashic collections, concentrated on sins committed by the builders on account of which they deserved divine punishment. The main purpose of such an approach was to draw from the scriptural account a moral lesson, regardless of the historicity of the narrated events, their dating, chronology, etc. In contrast, medieval Karaites living in the lands of medieval Islam shifted the main focus of their exegetical interest in this text to history, including the history of the text. Exploring historicizing tendencies in medieval Karaite commentaries on this biblical narrative, this essay ponders the seemingly simple question of what made the Karaite exegetes of the time discover history and read biblical stories as true histories. It demonstrates how the exegetes' novel approach to Scripture may have resulted from their engagement with the surrounding Muslim culture, which was concerned with establishing the historical context of the qur'anic revelation and investigating the reasons and circumstances of revelation (asbāb al-nuzūl). Tracing specific Islamic influences on the Karaites' reading of the story of the tower of Babel, the essay argues that they can be detected not in direct borrowings of specific interpretations, but on a meta level, owing to differences between Muslim and Jewish conceptualizations of revelation, which engendered diverging exegetical responses to Scripture in the two religions. Finally, the essay addresses the question of the Karaites' contribution to the history of Jewish exegesis of this chapter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]