Birth in Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis / / Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2022 Part 1
• VerfasserIn: Kara-Ivanov Kaniel, Ruth,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts , 18
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (XI, 251 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 The Existentialism of Birth -- Chapter 2 The Theology and Ethics of Birth -- Chapter 3 The Caesura of Birth -- Chapter 4 “The Womb Is a Tomb”: The Imagery of the Uterus and Female Guilt and Death -- Chapter 5 The Double Beginning of the Zohar -- Chapter 6 Longing for the Source -- Chapter 7 Birth in Lurianic Kabbalah -- Chapter 8 Redemption as Birth, Birth as Redemption -- Epilogue -- Bibliography -- Index