Moshe Idel

“One from a town, two from a clan” — the diffusion of lurianic Kabbala and Sabbateanism: A Re-Examination

It is impossible to overestimate the profound influence which the comprehensive historical schemes first proposed by Gershom Scholem have had on Jewish scholarship in the last two generations. And more than any other of Scholems theses, it was his novel approach to Sabbateanism that fascinated scholars as well as larger audiences. Scholems conception of this phenomenon was presented in his now classic work, Sabbatai Sevi both a detailed chronicle and an elaborate analysis of the affair. In that work, Scholem set out one of his major assumptions concerning the emergence of the Sabbatean messianic movement: a causal relationship between the spread of Lurianic kabbala and the subsequent dissemination of a new type of messianism nurtured by that doctrine. Lurianic messianism served, according to this thesis, as the fertile background of Sabbateanism.1 This comprehensive theory implies the existence of three different facts, each worthwhile of a more detailed explication:

Kabbalah and elites in Thirteenth‐century Spain

In this article my aim is to consider some of the processes involved in the emergence of the Kabbalah in Spain, paying special attention to the dynamics behind the relationships between the different types of elites and their respective mentalities, forms of expression, and creativity. A very elitistic type of lore in general, the medieval Kabbalah as it flourished in Spain, is analysed not only by examining the evolution of its ideas, the nature of its ideals, the mystical experiences which nurtured them, and its literary genres or its reception in wider circles, but also the affinity between its emergence and its subsequent dissemination, and the nature of the elites that contributed to these processes. In the following, the term elite assumes the idea of the superiority of some authors, either organized or not, when compared to the larger audience for which those authors, described as part of an elite, were writing.

Deus Sive Natura — The Metamorphosis of a Dictum from Maimonides to Spinoza

The relationship between the dissemination of Maimonidean thought and the emergence of Jewish mysticism still requires clarification in order to understand more fully some of the major processes in the religious and intellectual history of Judaism. In the period following the death of Maimonides, two main interpretations of Judaism surfaced exactly at the same time and competed with each other in a conspicuous way, each of them claiming to represent the correct interpretation of Judaism.1 Though this competition is a crucial fact in the development of Jewish speculative literature, there is no doubt that the Kabbalists learned a lot not only from the halakhic opus of Maimonides, but also from his other works and indeed profited from a variety of themes treated by “the great eagle.”2 Here we are concerned only with the influence of Maimonides’ view of nature on Kabbalah. We will be primarily concerned with tracing the developments within certain kabbalistic circles of Maimonides’ understanding of the relationship between the natural and the divine.

The Tsadik and His Soul's Sparks: From Kabbalah to Hasidism

The present study shows the continuity between the Safedian Kabbalistic view of the relations between the sparks of a certain soul, and the Hasidic theory, that was conceived of as innovated by and characteristic of 18th century Hasidism, as to the responsibility of the Tsadik for the sparks that belongs to his soul. In the two literatures, the rescue of a spark of ones soul is related to the beautiful captive woman that is conceived of as an externalization of an inner dimension of the righteous person, immersed in a shell.

The Mud and the Water: Towards a History of a Simile in Kabbalah

The present study surveys a series of kabbalistic antecedents of a simile for the presence of the roots of evil in the pre-emanationalist stage, as formulated in Lurianic Kabbalah. What has been conceived by scholars as a cathartic explanation characteristic of Lurianism, and even an esoteric aspect of this Kabbalah, turns to be quite an exoteric teaching shared by several kabbalists since the 13th century.