Subject: From Sepharad to Safed: Organization of Knowledge in Sixteenth-Century Kabbalah
Supervisor: Prof. Jonathan Garb
Abtract: My study presents a critical outlook on the role of organizational methods in theological texts. In the sixteenth century, following the Iberian expulsion, kabbalists began collating, sorting, and organizing kabbalistic knowledge on a grand scale with the aim of settling contradictions—previously considered non-perturbing—and making resolutions regarding crucial topics through recourse to the wealth of preceding kabbalistic literature. A defining characteristic of this corpus is the writers’ awareness that they are at the threshold of a new era—a shift that reverberated across generations. The study undertakes an in-depth analysis of primary sources with the extensive utilization of relevant research literature. Thus, it offers a new and comprehensive picture of an understudied intellectual phenomenon that has decisively influenced Jewish culture in modern times.
Bio: I live in Jerusalem, married to Adi, and father of two girls: Ayala and Zohar. I am a Ph.D candidate (ABD) in the Dept. of Jewish Thought, and I teach in the Interdisciplinary Program in the faculty of humanities. In my studies I concentrate on organization of knowledge, specifically in early modern Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism). In my M.A studies I dealt with the reception, transmission, and dissemination of Safedian kabbalah to the European continent. My master’s thesis explored the initial reception of Moses Cordovero’s (1522–1570) Kabbalah, an area that had yet to be systematically analyzed, and the organization and clarification of this Kabbalistic knowledge by him and his successors.
In my dissertation, I discuss the ways in which sixteenth-century kabbalistic knowledge was organized in the Mediterranean by focusing on scholarly (lamdanut) and encyclopedic writings. The study will concentrate on the scholarly methods and practices of the central kabbalists of this period, who, within their compositions, tackled a variety of diverse kabbalistic opinions and methods and generally arbitrated between them. This mapping and discussion will provide an in-depth look at Jewish learning culture in a formative period and the textual practices used by these erudite scholars.
Publications:
• "על מהדורות ספר פלח הרימון לר' מנחם עזריה מפאנו", קבלה: כתב עת לחקר כתבי המיסטיקה היהודית, מב (תשע"ח), עמ' 209–236.
• “The Epistle of Nathan of Gaza to Raphael Joseph and the Issue of the Lurianic Prayer Intentions”, El Prezente: Journal of Sephardic Studies, 12–13 (2018–2019), pp. 73–89.
• “Kabbalah for Beginners?: Moses Cordovero's Early Oeuvre”, Journal of Jewish Studies, Accepted.
• '"שאלות לחכמי ארץ ישראל": איגרת שאלות בקבלה ממחצית המאה השש עשרה – מבוא ומהדורה', קבץ על יד, התקבל לפרסום.
President Scholarship 2020/2021
MA Honors 2016/2017