With Us More Than Ever

Making the Absent Rebbe Present in Messianic Chabad

Yoram Bilu (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

344 Seiten

2020 | New edition
Stanford University Press (Verlag)
9781503612419 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was the charismatic leader of the Chabad Hasidic movement and its designated Messiah. Yet when he died in 1994, the messianic fervor he inspired did not subside. Through traditional means and digital technologies, a group of radical Hasidim, the Meshichistim, still keep the Rebbe palpably close—engaging in ongoing dialogue, participating in specific rituals, and developing an ever-expanding visual culture of portraits and videos. With Us More Than Ever focuses on this group to explore how religious practice can sustain the belief that a messianic figure is both present and accessible.

Yoram Bilu documents a unique religious experience that is distinctly modern. The rallying point of the Meshichistim—that the Rebbe is "with us more than ever"—is sustained through an elaborate system that creates the sense of his constant and pervasive presence in the lives of his followers. The virtual Rebbe that emerges is multiple, visible, accessible, and highly decentralized, the epicenter of a truly messianic movement in the twenty-first century. Combining ethnographic fieldwork and cognitive science with nuanced analysis, Bilu documents the birth and development of a new religious faith, describing the emergence of new spiritual horizons, a process common to various religious movements old and new.

Yoram Bilu is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of The Saints' Impresarios: Dreamers, Healers, and Holy Men in Israel's Urban Periphery (2009) and Without Bounds: The Life and Death of Rabbi Ya'aqov Wazana (2000).

Introduction
1. Chabad and the Messianic Idea
2. Meshichist Sociology
3. Writing to the Rebbe: The Holy Letters Oracle
4. Sensing the Rebbe: Traces and Practices of Embodiment
5. Seeing the Rebbe I: Chabad's Visual Culture
6. Seeing the Rebbe II: Dream and Waking Apparitions
7. Schneersoncentrism: The Rebbe Steers the World
8. The Apotheosis of the Rebbe
9. "To Make Many More Menachem Mendels": Creation and Procreation in Messianic Chabad
10. Holy Place and Holy Time in Meshichist Chabad
11. The Omnipresence of Absence: Messianism in the Technological Age
12. Meshichists, Christians, Sabbateans, and Popular Culture Heroes
13. From Tzadik to Messiah: Comparing Chabad and Bratslav
Conclusion

Erscheinungsdatum	09.06.2020
Reihe/Serie	Spiritual Phenomena
Zusatzinfo	30 photographs
Verlagsort	Palo Alto
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Judentum
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-13	9781503612419 / 9781503612419
Zustand	Neuware