- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration and Conventions Used in the Text
-
Part I Sefer Ḥasidim -
Chapter One Three Themes in Sefer Ḥasidim -
Chapter Two On Dating Sefer Ḥasidim -
Chapter Three Piety, Pietism, and German Pietism: Sefer Ḥasidim I and the Influence of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz -
Chapter Four Pietists and Kibbitzers -
Chapter Five The Midrash, Sefer Ḥasidim, and the Changing Face of God -
Chapter Six Two Notes on the Commentary on the Torah of R. Yehudah he-Ḥasid -
Chapter Seven Topics in the Ḥokhmat ha-Nefesh - Methodological Issues
-
Chapter Eight On Reading Sefer Ḥasidim -
Chapter Nine Sefer Ḥasidim and the Social Sciences -
Chapter Ten Ravad of Posquières: A Programmatic Essay -
Chapter Eleven The Literary Remains of the Gedol ha-Mefarshim -
Chapter Twelve A Response to R. Buckwold’s Critique of ‘Rabad of Posquières: A Programmatic Essay’, Part I -
Chapter Thirteen A Response to R. Buckwold’s Critique of ‘Rabad of Posquières: A Programmatic Essay’, Part II -
Chapter Fourteen Jewish and Roman Law: A Study in Interaction -
Chapter Fifteen The Riddle of Me’iri’s Recent Popularity -
Chapter Sixteen Printing and the History of Halakhah -
Chapter Seventeen Angle of Deflection - Bibliography of Manuscripts
- Source Acknowledgments
- Index of Names
- Index of Places
- Index of Subjects
The Midrash, Sefer Ḥasidim, and the Changing Face of God
The Midrash, Sefer Ḥasidim, and the Changing Face of God
- Chapter:
- (p.135) Chapter Five The Midrash, Sefer Ḥasidim, and the Changing Face of God
- Source:
- Collected Essays
- Author(s):
Haym Soloveitchik
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
This chapter evaluates how the Pietists detached themselves from the religious mood and imaginative world of the Midrash and the significance of this change. To be sure, there is a wholly different facet to Sefer Ḥasidim, one described by Yitzhak Baer sixty-five years ago in his famous essay on German Pietism — one of 'gentility and personal sensitivity', of introspection and religious inwardness. Baer also pointed to its source. It sprung from the religious atmosphere of the twelfth-century, that is to say, from the spirituality implicit in the changed face of God, in the new sense of His humanity and of His intimacy with man. Thus, much of the ethics and spirituality of the German Pietists arose and drew sustenance from the conceptions of God that obtained in their own times, while their theosophy and notions of His workings in history were rooted in the outlook of an earlier era and rested on a wholly different view of God.
Keywords: German Pietists, Midrash, Sefer Ḥasidim, Yitzhak Baer, German Pietism, God
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration and Conventions Used in the Text
-
Part I Sefer Ḥasidim -
Chapter One Three Themes in Sefer Ḥasidim -
Chapter Two On Dating Sefer Ḥasidim -
Chapter Three Piety, Pietism, and German Pietism: Sefer Ḥasidim I and the Influence of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz -
Chapter Four Pietists and Kibbitzers -
Chapter Five The Midrash, Sefer Ḥasidim, and the Changing Face of God -
Chapter Six Two Notes on the Commentary on the Torah of R. Yehudah he-Ḥasid -
Chapter Seven Topics in the Ḥokhmat ha-Nefesh - Methodological Issues
-
Chapter Eight On Reading Sefer Ḥasidim -
Chapter Nine Sefer Ḥasidim and the Social Sciences -
Chapter Ten Ravad of Posquières: A Programmatic Essay -
Chapter Eleven The Literary Remains of the Gedol ha-Mefarshim -
Chapter Twelve A Response to R. Buckwold’s Critique of ‘Rabad of Posquières: A Programmatic Essay’, Part I -
Chapter Thirteen A Response to R. Buckwold’s Critique of ‘Rabad of Posquières: A Programmatic Essay’, Part II -
Chapter Fourteen Jewish and Roman Law: A Study in Interaction -
Chapter Fifteen The Riddle of Me’iri’s Recent Popularity -
Chapter Sixteen Printing and the History of Halakhah -
Chapter Seventeen Angle of Deflection - Bibliography of Manuscripts
- Source Acknowledgments
- Index of Names
- Index of Places
- Index of Subjects