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

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