KosherTorah.com - a simpler, more natural way.
Academic Review of Jewish Messianism
The Bible teaches about a messianic future. The Talmud elaborates on Biblical teachings. KosherTorah.com already offers full online lessons in both Biblical and Talmudic messianic teachings.
However, there are numerous other sources for messianic teachings that form the greater body of beliefs of Jewish messianism. This course will endeavor to cover a large sampling of these beliefs from later Rabbinic and Kabbalistic sources.
Today, we will in a world with rampant, out of control messianic speculations. These speculations have led believers of many faiths to act outside of the limited confines of religious ideas, and into the arenas of the political, social activism, and all kinds of religious extremisms.
Most Jewish messianic fervor today is based upon ideas and beliefs that most do not know, and surely do not understand. The ideas underlying Jewish messianism need to be understood, as they were originally meant to be, as moral encouragements, midrashic embellishments, subtle political commentaries, and most importantly, as psychological insights into human personalities.
Ideas and beliefs proliferate, one set being built upon the the ideas that came before it. Just what these ideas are, and how they were meant to be understood in their origins, and then how they were later interpreted by later generations is what this series is here to cover.
To cover this material historically, from first generations to the following ones, in my opinion, would only serve as an overview of ideas, and not fully explore the central dynamic of these ideas, that being to bring upon ourselves a better world.
I will therefore use as our jumping-off point the 18th century text, the Kol HaTur, and work from it, both backwards and forwards in time and beliefs, to provide for us a relevant and realistic understanding of just what it means to prepare for the coming of Mashiah, and practically speaking, how we are to do this.
This course will discuss ideas and beliefs, both ancient and modern, and see how they can be properly understood and integrated, and at the same time, how a misunderstanding of the metaphorical and literal has led to false hopes, and fantastical expectations.
This will be an on-going course, starting in the Kol HaTur, and working out from there to cover many different texts, usually sticking only to those which bear relevance to modern day discussions of the topic.
This series plans to begin Monday evening April 28th in the KosherTorah Monday Night Open Forums. Monthly supporters will receive premier access as well as free copies of the recordings. For everyone else, MP3 recordings of the individual lessons will be made available in our KosherTorah Online Store for $19.99 per each 1 academic hour lecture.
|
KosherTorah.com |
The Written Works of Ariel Bar Tzadok
Copyright (C)
1997 - 2014 by Ariel Bar Tzadok. All rights reserved.