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Rating: 
Summary: entertaining and edifying historical anthropology
Review: A wonderfully suggestive work. Clothed in sometimes rigorous scholarly prose, this book is a fit remedy to the spiritual pabulum of our day. Not everyone who dies is escorted by loving family members to the spirit Harvard in the sky.There are "homeless" spirits, who can't even find their way to hell and others so purposeful, they refuse to wait for their next incarnation to have their say. They both might choose to occupy the bodies of people--or dogs. If they're the homeless type and Jewish, you might consider bringing a Muslim or Christian exorcist. The spells and spirits they bring will crowd out and disgust the Jew into leaving. If they're the other kind, and they misquote a classic Jewish text, but you don't quite catch their drift, they could decide you're too dull for dwelling in.
An entertaining and edifying historical anthropology of a key phenomenon, spirit possession, at the dawn of modern Jewish mysticism.
Rating:
Summary: entertaining and edifying historical anthropology
Review: A wonderfully suggestive work. Clothed in sometimes rigorous scholarly prose, this book is a fit remedy to the spiritual pabulum of our day. Not everyone who dies is escorted by loving family members to the spirit Harvard in the sky. There are "homeless" spirits, who can't even find their way to hell and others so purposeful, they refuse to wait for their next incarnation to have their say. They both might choose to occupy the bodies of people--or dogs. If they're the homeless type and Jewish, you might consider bringing a Muslim or Christian exorcist. The spells and spirits they bring will crowd out and disgust the Jew into leaving. If they're the other kind, and they misquote a classic Jewish text, but you don't quite catch their drift, they could decide you're too dull for dwelling in.
An entertaining and edifying historical anthropology of a key phenomenon, spirit possession, at the dawn of modern Jewish mysticism.
Rating:
Summary: religion of books alone?
Review: Although many people will focus in on the "ecstatic women on the margins" possibilities of Chajnes's book, I find the study important primarily for opening eyes to what was mainstream Judaism, and European at that, in the early modern period. Not just an isolated incident or two, and covering many phenomena of Jewish life, spirit communication and mystical insights are typical of a major stream in Judaism. Where did we get the hyper-rational and book-dominated religion of Reform Judaism today? That should be the question. The religion is rich with the same kind of intermingling of heavenly and earthly worlds that Christian and Muslim peoples saw. Think again about what is normal, orthodox in any of them. Thinking in the long historical perspective, Judaism as ethics, reason, and law and those elements only - that is the anomaly.
Rating:
Summary: religion of books alone?
Review: This well researched investigation of the passage of souls and the potential delays and solutions that could be encountered is surely the best book available on the subject. It can be read and understood by the common man of any religion and scholars will also find much newly translated and well interpreted depth study of this most important subject. Buy it, read it and give gifts of it. It will change how you look at life and death.
Rating:
Summary: understanding transmigration
Review: This well researched investigation of the passage of souls and the potential delays and solutions that could be encountered is surely the best book available on the subject. It can be read and understood by the common man of any religion and scholars will also find much newly translated and well interpreted depth study of this most important subject. Buy it, read it and give gifts of it. It will change how you look at life and death.
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