Department of Jewish Thought
Subject: From Medieval Catalonia to Christian Kabbalah: Creative Reception as Cultural Encounter in Ma’arekhet ha-Elohut
Supervisor: Dr. Avishai Bar-Asher
Abstract: A staple of historic kabbalistic curricula, the foundational Ma’arekhet ha-elohut (lit. Order of the Divine; hereafter MhE, c.1300) is an essential work of medieval Kabbalah. Yet, it has largely been neglected by modern scholars. My dissertation will serve as the first comprehensive examination of this seminal work, engaging core questions relating to reception history, history of the book, philology, codicology, history of knowledge organization, compositional structure, and cultural history. My MA thesis, which is currently being reviewed for publication, addressed the question of the MhE’s discursive unity and discourse of unity. My Ph.D. dissertation seeks to identify the long- elusive anonymous author of the MhE as well as its manuscript families, and will trace its reception history as a prism that refracts an unprecedented cultural encounter. Examining this history will provide a better understanding of the historical dimensions of post-expulsion Kabbalah, and serve as a critical vantage point from which to explore the introduction of Spanish Kabbalah to late Renaissance Italy. The confrontation between Spanish Kabbalah and Italian “philosophical” Kabbalah is demonstrated in Judah Hayyat’s contentious commentary on the MhE, composed by this Spanish kabbalist at the behest of the Italian Jews among whom he settled. The commentary— indeed the juxtaposition of the commentary and the MhE in all print editions—reveals the philosophical and systematic propensities of Italian kabbalists while simultaneously demonstrating the tendency of the Spanish kabbalists to systematize the disparate kabbalistic ideas exposed by this new encounter. Examination of this unique print history, which includes two printings in one year, reveals the trends of Jewish scholarship and the book market in the early modern period. The reception history of the MhE is not merely the story of Spanish Kabbalah meeting Italian Kabbalah. The early history of Christian Kabbalah is captured in the MhE’s numerous translations into Latin and Italian. These translations are an essential witness to the early diffusion of kabbalistic texts in Latin among Christians and exemplify their creative appropriation. Through the MhE’s Christian reception we are able to observe the creative absorption of an essential Jewish text by humanistic circles in Renaissance Italy, and its impact on early modern Western esotericism. My research will thus engage questions pertaining to the “history of the book” and its attendant concern with what the material texts of manuscripts and printed books can teach us. The MhE’s transmission, creative reception, and ultimate transformation can thereby tell the fascinating story of the encounter between different forms of thought: Spanish Kabbalah and Italian Kabbalah; Jewish and Christian. The MhE is thereby adapted and modified within a new context simultaneously shaping post-expulsion Jewish Kabbalah, and informing the birth of a new Christian Kabbalah.
Publication:
On the Discourse of Unity and the Discursive Unity of Ma‘arekhet ha-elohut (book under review) “Primordial Partnership as Ontological Structure and Discursive Strategy in the Ma‘arekhet ha-elohut” (article accepted by JQR).
President Scholarship 2023/24
MA Honors 2018/19