Rabbi Yigal Sklarin’s Defense of Gershom Scholem

Prof. Gershom Scholem famously devoted a large portion of his nearly thousand-page biography of Sabbatai Sevi to arguing that Lurianic Kabbalah in the sixteenth century led to Sabbatianism in the seventeenth. In Scholem's narrative, Isaac Luria revolutionized Jewish thought by fashioning a kabbalistic narrative focused on a process of metaphysical exile and redemption. The very act of creation caused the breaking of the divine vessels, causing the power of the divine light to fall into the hands of the forces of darkness, the klipot (shells). The practice of Jewish ritual, armed with the specific Kabbalistic interpretations of Luria and specific penitential practices would lead to the redemption of the divine light and heal the cosmos. Scholem assumed that by the mid-seventeenth century, Lurianic Kabbalah had spread to all Jewish communities in Europe and the Near East. Hence by the time that Nathan of Gaza declared Sabbatai to be the Messiah in the spring of 1665, Jews everywhere were prepared to accept this radical Sabbatian messianism with its explicit antinomianism. When Sabbatai converted to Islam, Nathan was ready to explain away the action as the Messiah descending into the forces of darkness to achieve the redemption of the divine light.

Prof. Moshe Idel, in his essay "'One from a Town, Two from a Clan': The Diffusion of Lurianic Kabbala and Sabbateanism," challenges this narrative. His main objection is this assumption of Lurianic Kabbalah becoming the dominant force within Judaism by the mid-seventeenth century. Idel argues that few people, even rabbis were in a position to understand Kabbalah and the Kabbalah that came through Europe was by and large not Lurianic, but that of Rabbi Moshe Codovero. Idel goes so far as to suggest that Scholem had his cause and effect backward. Lurianism did not spread Sabbatianism; Sabbatians spread Luria. Finally, Idel argues that Scholem overplayed the messianic elements within Lurianism. Those reading Luria in the seventeenth century would not have been jumping to some new radical form of messianism.

In a recent essay in the Bernard Revel journal, "In Defense of Scholem: A Re-evaluation of Idel's Historical Critiques," Rabbi Yigal Sklarin attempts to defend Scholem. Sklarin offers the case of R. Abraham Gombiner's Magan Avraham as an example of a popular work written before the outbreak of Sabbatianism that included distinctively Lurianic practices and concepts. Of particular interest to me is the fact that Sklarin attempts to use Gershon Cohen's theory of messianism to explain the popular spread of Sabbatianism. In "Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim (Prior to Sabbathai Zevi)," Cohen argued that Jews in Sephardic countries, unlike their Ashkenazi counterparts, were far more likely to start messianic movements due to the influence of philosophy. If the philosophical ideas current in rabbinic circles could gain popular currency and create a mass movement then why could not Luria have gone from rabbinic circles down to the masses to create Sabbatianism?


I am certainly intrigued by the prospect of rehabilitating the Luria-Sabbatianism connection. That being said, I find Sklarin's arguments against Idel to be very problematic. Yes, Cohen argued that Spanish culture was more open to messianism and less open to martyrdom due to the influence of philosophy. If I understand Cohen correctly, this was not simply something within the rabbinic elites, but on a mass cultural level. Regular people (or at least the literate ones) had some awareness of philosophy, particularly of astrology, and were willing to therefore willing to engage in messianic calculations. With Lurianic Kabbalah, we agree that this was something reserved for the rabbinic elites, not something that the masses would have been directly aware of. I fail to, therefore, to see how the analogy holds up. Furthermore, Sklarin seems to accept the premise that the Lurianic Kabbalah that reached our rabbinic elite was not the messianic Luria so how are the masses getting Lurianic messianism from the rabbis if even the rabbis are not getting that message? This leaves us with having to find some other solution besides for Lurianic Kabbalah to explain how Sabbatianism became a mass movement in the summer of 1665.

Fifteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies: Enlightenment and Mysticism in Early Modernity

Matt Goldish – Hakham David Nieto’s Failed Skepticism in his Argument from Acoustic Delusion

David Nieto 1654-1728 was born to a Sephardic family in Venice and trained both as a rabbi and as a physician. He went to London in 1701 to assume a rabbinic post there. Upon arriving, he found a lot of religious skepticism. This was a community of former conversos skeptical of the Talmudic tradition and of the Oral Law. Nieto wrote a book titled the Kuzari HaSheni to defend the Talmud. Nieto often referred to science. As David Ruderman discusses, in this he was a parallel to the Newtonian physico-theologians.

In the fourth dialogue of his Kuzari, Nieto discusses the issue of acoustic delusions. People can be tricked into thinking they hear heavenly voices. This is Neito’s explanation of the story in the Talmud of the ovens where a heavenly voice comes out to defend Rabbi Eliezer and the rabbis still go against him. This is why Rabbi Joshua was right to reject the heavenly voice. To accept it would open one up to tricks by those with greater knowledge of technology. Nieto brings down various stories of tubes use to amplify the voice; there is one for example about a lord who watches his servant with a telescope and calls out with a voice tube, scaring the servant nearly to death. Where did these tales come from? Nieto was almost certainly familiar with the German theologian Athanasius Kircher. This line of work is part of a larger body of works, which attempted to use the new science of sound to explain ancient texts. These texts are often viewed as an embarrassment by modernists. They are in many respects closer to the magic of Robert Fludd and John Dee than to the science of Newton.

Despite Neito’s university education his sources were thirty to sixty years out of date. Nieto was interested in science but he was dealing with issues of a generation ago. He was still going up against the likes of Uriel de Costa, who challenged the Talmud. His congregants were dealing with Spinozism and radical skepticism, which point blank denied scripture. He kept to the role of a learned cleric devoted to dealing with the breaches that he could deal with.

Why was the Haskalah a German phenomenon? Nieto with his congregation of former conversos had the opportunity to do what many of his contemporary Christian clerics were doing to create a conservative Enlightenment. Why did Nieto not have followers like Mendelssohn? Nieto was just not a big enough guy. He stops sort of the big argument. Maybe he was acting as a provocateur? If the head of the Beit Din of Venice (Leone Modena) could be suspected of writing Kol Shakol maybe Nieto as well. Neito, though, seems to have been a very conservative person. That being said, we do have him early in his career saying that God is nature and that nature was God.


Sharon Flatto – Ecstatic Encounters on the Danube: Enlightenment and Mysticism

The maskil Moshe Kunits (1774-1837) writes of a mystical encounter on the river Danube where God tells him to write the biography of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. This becomes the book Ben Yochi. This work was supposed to offer the reader a mystical experience. This is not as strange as it might seem as many maskilim espoused Kabbalistic ideas. Moshe Maimon and Moshe Landeau followed a similar line.

It has generally been claimed that the haskalah and Kabbalah had nothing to do with each other. Isaiah Tishby and Gershom Scholem argue for this. Shaul Magid, today, also claims this. As Boaz Hoss, though, argues, the early maskilim did not always reject Kabbalah. This is in keeping with the work of David Sorkin and Shmuel Feiner who argue that the haskalah was actually not that radical. We have a poem by maskil Moses Mendel eulogizing Rabbi Ezekiel Landau that is built around the names of the sephirot. Contrary to Alexander Altmann, who argued that Mendelssohn banished mysticism from Judaism. Mendelssohn goes with the Kabbalists over Maimonides in regards to the principles of faith. Solomon Maimon talks about preferring Cordovarian Kabbalah over Lurianic Kabblah.

Scholem believed that Kabbalah served as a means to argue for Halachic reform. Jacob Katz disagreed. This talk plays to both views. Many of these maskilim were still committed to normative Jewish practice, but they were also committed to challenging the status quo. Kabbalah served both sides of this agenda.

Just Say No to Polytheism: Why it is Important to Believe in a Singular Non-Physical Deity (Part III)

Part I, II

My intention is far from picking on Christianity, even pagan Christianity. My real interest and the reason why I am writing this are those Jews who have the hypocrisy to attack Christianity while holding on to doctrines that are equally as problematic as the Trinity or the Incarnation. There is no way easier to have yourself thrown out of the Jewish community, whether it is the Haredi community or the most liberal Reform community than to imply an openness to the Trinity. If this was more than just politics, we would expect equal thoroughness in going after certain other doctrines. These problematic doctrines are closely related to the Jewish mystical tradition, particularly that of Kabbalah. This is not to say that all mysticism or all Kabbalah is bad; statements have to be taken one by one and judged before the bar of monotheism and those that fail must be cast aside.

The early mystical text Shiur Koma (Song of Ascent) was listed by Maimonides as an idolatrous book because it offers measurements of God’s body. For our purpose, it is not enough to reinterpret Shiur Koma as a mystical allegory that is not meant to be taken literally. Our apologist would still have to explain how Shiur Koma serves to spread monotheist ideas more than it does to give people the idea that God has some sort of body, even an elevated preternatural one. If this person really believed that Shiur Koma was just an allegory he would have the good grace to recognize that, as with any explanation that requires more explaining than the thing it is trying to explain, it should be dropped. Thus we can assume that any Jew who actively supports Shiur Koma is either an open or closeted corporalist, thus a pagan, or is demonstrably lacking in proper monotheistic zeal. One way or another, such a person should not be allowed to hold any position of respect and authority within the Jewish community. Just as we would not allow someone who believed that God, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, possessed a human body.

There is a whole body of early medieval Jewish mystical literature known as Merkavah texts. These texts deal with ascents into the heavenly realms by the use of various mystical names. They are premised on the notion of the heavens as a realm that can be traversed and that one can even reach the inner sanctum where God “dwells.” While one can reinterpret this as something innocuous, there is no doubting the inescapable premise that the divine realms are a place that can be conquered through the right secret knowledge. The moment you allow this you turn Judaism from a rational ethical religion to a magical and hence a pagan religion.

Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed is often blamed for the mass apostasy in Spain. The Guide was quite popular in Spain, but so was the Zohar, a body of mystical texts attributed to Rabbi Shimon b. Yochai and is the main source for the concept of Sephirot. Now I ask you what is more likely to get people to sincerely convert to Christianity, a book like the Guide that takes one of the most hard-line stances imaginable against God being in any way physical or a book like the Zohar that suggests that God might have different parts to him? This is ultimately the same sort of territory opened up by the Trinity. Abraham Abulafia made the argument that the belief in Sephirot was worse than the Trinity as the Christians only had three persons in their godhead and not ten. It is not for nothing that early modern Christian Hebraists were so interested in the Zohar and the concept of Sephirot. If you accept Sephirot than you have no intellectual reason to reject the Trinity. In fact, the Trinity can easily be worked into the Sephirot. God the Father could be the three highest Sephirot, Keter, Chochma, and Binah. The Holy Spirit could be six of the lower Sephirot. Jesus would then be the Sephira of Malchut. Malchut is special because it is the one Sephira that directly interacts with the physical world, a Kabbalistic version of the Incarnation. So what sort of person would support a book like the Zohar? Someone whose primary concern is not defending strict monotheism.

Zoheric concepts are developed into some of their worst features in the thought of Isaac Luria. Luria postulated an elaborate creation story in which the divine vessels were damaged in the very act of creation, leaving human beings with the task of tikkun olam, healing the world. At the heart of this theology are the notions that God is in some sense “imperfect” and in “need” of human aid to make himself perfect once again and that human beings have the power to affect the divine.

While books like Shiur Koma, Merkavah texts, Zohar and the Lurianic corpus are held in high esteem by most in the Haredi world, the group that has done the most to popularize such texts has been Chabad. This makes Chabad a logical target for someone like me who believes that such books, for all intents and purposes, advocate paganism. In addition, Chabad has its own sacred text, Tanya, which features many of the same problems as these other texts. So what do we assume about our Rabbi Eli Brackman, the Chabad rabbi at Oxford mentioned previously? If his interests are really in the realm of ethical monotheism than he would be spending his time trying to pass along the philosophy of Saadiah Gaon, Judah Ha-Levi and Maimonides. He would not be spending his time with Tanya. For that matter why, considering that Chabad has more and more become not just a side issue for Chabad Jews but the central issue of their Judaism, is Rabbi Brackman identifying himself with Chabad? Now Rabbi Brackman has denied having any polytheist intent; this leaves the conclusion that either Rabbi Brackman is just a closeted pagan or that he fails to appreciate the gravity of the situation, a common failing of so-called monotheists.

In conclusion, I admit that I have not offered a thorough discussion of Jewish mysticism nor do I claim to be an expert in the field. This is a more formal version of the challenge that I touched upon earlier and I hope that this could the start of future dialogue. My challenge to Rabbi Brackman or anyone else who wishes to defend Kabbalah in general and Chabad specifically is not whether they can offer acceptable interpretations of the texts in question but whether these texts offer something to ethical monotheism that can justify tolerating them in light of the very obvious heterodox lines of thought inherent to them.

AJS Conference Day Two Session Three (Sixteenth-Century Kabbalah and its Aftermath)

Mor Altshuler
"Tikkun Leil Shavuot of R. Joseph Karo and the Epistle of Solomon ha-Levi Elkabetz"

The tradition of tikkun leil Shavuot, of studying all night on Shavuot, comes from the Zohar where the practice is associated with the Rashbi circle. In essence playing out the revelation of Moses at Sinai. The first historic tikkun that we have evidence of was practiced by R. Joseph Karo, R. Solomon Elkabetz and their circle in Salonika. According to Elkabetz, the voice of the Torah came out of Karo. The voice identified itself as the Shechina in exile; God had left her and her children had abandoned her for idols. The revelation of the Shechina takes them from Moses at Sinai to Joshua conquering the land of Israel. Soon afterwards there was a plague in Salonika. Karo lost his wife. This eventually led Karo and Elkabetz to moving to Safed and establishing the golden age of Safed Kabbalah.


Zohar Raviv (University of Michigan)
"Rabbi Moses Cordovero's Sefer Gerushin: Contemplation, Devotion, and the Negotiation of Landscapes"

R. Moses Cordovero's Sefer Gerushin has not been heavily studied. Lawrence Fine has done the most extensive study of it to date and he only gives it a page and a half. The main theme of the book is the exilic existence of the Shechina and how one relates to it. The book advocates the practice voluntary exile in order to enact the exile of the Shechina. By doing it specifically in the Galilee one is literally following in the footsteps of the Rashbi. One should do what was done in the Zohar in the specfic place done there. Codovero advocated a practice in which a living mystic would lie on the grave of an ancient sage whereby the person would become the Shechina and the ancient sage would take on the persona of Yesod. Underlying all this was the premise that if one understands the divine structure once can force God to do certain things.


Eitan P. Fishbane (Jewish Theological Seminary)
"Identity, Reincarnation, and Rebirth in the Writings of R. Hayyim Vital"

Belief in the afterlife and ressurection is a basic part of many religions. R. Hayyim Vital's Shar ha-Gilgulim is about the search for ones place and function in the redemptive restoration of the primal cosmic order. The identity of the person is the soul that travels from body to body. Isaac Luria's great ability was that he could identify the identity of his students' souls and understand their purpose. (See Lawrence Fine's Physician of the Soul) The actions of a person can have a cosmic affect. The intentions of a person, while having sex can affect the children born. A father's energy can make a child wild or lazy.


Lawrence B. Fine (Mount Holyoke College)
"Spiritual Friendship in Jewish Mystical Tradition: The Bet El Contracts"

There is a difficulty in studying the history of friendship. Friendship is something so universal that it is easy to ignore. One has to recognize that the concept of friendship differs from place to place. Friendship also has to be distinguished from other social realities. There is the prescriptive (what friendship should be) and the descriptive (what friendship is).

The Bet El circle is an example of community friendship. Bet El did not go the way of Hasidism; it remained an elitist and not a popular movement. They signed a pact as a group to love one another and to share in each other's merits. Members of the group were not to praise another too highly and everyone was to treat each other as equals. This pact has its precedent in the circle of David ibn Zimra. Among the people included in this pact was Isaac Luria. To go further back one can point to this model as being rooted in early Christian and early rabbinic thought.

General Exam III: Jewish History (Part I)

The general exam for my major, Jewish history, was longer than my two minors. I had forty eight hours and five thousand words as opposed to twenty four hours and twenty five hundred words. The exam was written by Dr. Matt Goldish and Dr. Daniel Frank. I was given four questions from which I had to choose two. I also was given two documents to analyze. I must say they were awfully nice to me. Here are the questions I did not do.

Explain Gershom Scholem’s thesis concerning messianism from the Spanish Expulsion through the Frankist movement. Who has criticized his thesis, and with what arguments?

[This question is essentially about one part of the major Gershom Scholem versus Moshe Idel debate on Jewish mysticism, which I have made occasional reference to in this blog. Part of Scholem’s narrative is that the expulsion of 1492 brought about a major shift in Jewish thought in that the magnitude of the tragedy forced the Jews who left to account for what happened on a theological plane. The result was the creation of a new form of Kabbalah which emphasized the themes of exile and redemption. The ultimate product of this school of Kabbalah was Isaac Luria. Lurianic Kabbalah was based on a cosmic narrative of a divine exile and redemption. The act of creating the world brought the “breaking of the vessels” which caused this great damage to the sephirot. Furthermore part of the divine light became ensnared by the dark powers, the klipot. It is up to man to bring about the cosmic redemption by bringing about the repair of the sephirot and the redemption of the divine light from the power of the klipot.

Lurianic Kabbalah brought about, what in Scholem’s opinion was the key turning point of early modern Jewish history, the messianic movement of Sabbatai Sevi. Sabbatai Sevi’s theology was a direct product of Lurianic Kabbalah and a logical consequence of it. The Sabbateans justified Sabbatai Sevi’s erratic behavior, violation of Jewish law and even his apostasy by arguing that Sabbatai was simply fulfilling his role as the messiah and redeeming the spiritual world by descending into the power of darkness. Scholem assumed that, by the mid seventeenth century, Lurianic Kabbalah had taken over the Jewish world. Scholem uses this to explain the success of the Sabbatian movement, which was unique amongst Jewish messianic movements in that it was able to gain followers not just in one area but amongst Jews across the world.

Scholem saw the Sabbatian movement as spawning many later movements that would affect Judaism and the world. Scholem pointed to the Frankist movement, a Sabbatian offshoot in Poland, as having a direct affect on the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and other liberation movements of the nineteenth century. Scholem saw Sabbatianism as laying the groundwork for the Reform movement, by undermining rabbinic authority and creating a non halachic Judaism. Finally, and probably most controversially, Scholem saw Hasidism as a Sabbatean movement.

Idel rejects this narrative. He argues that redemptive Kabbalah had its roots before 1492 and that the expulsion had no real affect on Jewish thought. Idel challenges Scholem to find people who were Kabbalists, exiles from Spain and were involved in Messianism. According to Idel the only person who fits into this category was R. Abraham b. Eliezer ha-Levi. Idel distances Luria from the expulsion. He was not Sephardic and he was born decades after the expulsion. Idel also minimizes the importance of Lurianic Kabbalah, arguing that it only became a major factor after Sabbatai. Finally Idel rejects the major prominence that Scholem gave to Sabbatianism and does not make it the progenitor of modern Judaism.]

Discuss the evolution of Karaite attitudes toward Rabbinic literature and thought during the medieval period. Please illustrate your answer with specific examples.

[This question clearly came from Dr. Frank. In essence he wanted me to throw back at him what we have been studying together in the private reading course I had with him this past quarter.]

(To be continued …)

Shivhei ha-Ari and the Decline of the Generations

One of foundations of Haredi ideology is the concept of yeridat ha-dorot, the decline of the generations. Every generation is inferior to the one that came before it. It is not just that the preceding generations were closer to biblical times, and therefore possessed a stronger tradition, or that we are bound by their precedent; Haredim believe that the people, particularly the rabbis, who lived in earlier generations were, in fact, superior to us. They were bigger, stronger, faster and, most importantly, they were smarter than us. This has many different ramifications, one of them being the authority of science when it comes into conflict with the rabbinic tradition. For Haredim, the view of Maimonides and his son, Avraham Maimuni, that the rabbis spoke based on their knowledge of the science of their day and that therefore, since science has advanced, we should reject the claims, found in rabbinic literature, that go against science as we understand it today, is unacceptable and downright heresy. As they see it, one most believe that the rabbis were smarter and knew more than any scientist alive today. If you are willing to accept the view of scientists over that of the rabbis then you have rejected Jewish tradition. The rejection of scientific claims, like the theory of evolution, becomes, therefore, an act of faith; one is willing to stand up for the tradition and for rabbinic authority even when faced with the full power of the modern scientific establishment. While there are many sources for this notion of a decline, I would like to point to a work that operates outside of this point of view, Shivhei ha-Ari.

Shivhei ha-Ari (Praises of the Ari) is a collection of legends, dealing with Isaac Luria, written by Solomon Shlomiel of Dresnitz in the early seventeenth century and is one of the main traditional sources on the life of Luria. The basic premise underlying Shivhei ha-Ari is that Luria was not merely a link in a chain, going back all the way to Mount Sinai, passing on the work of his teachers. For Dresnitz, Luria was a messianic type figure, outside of this world and outside of the chain of tradition. Luria was placed here on earth in order to bring about the spiritual salvation of the world by repairing the damage down to the saphirot by creation and man’s subsequent sins. As befitting his savior status (one could almost view him as a Kabbalistic Jesus Christ) Luria was privileged to receive information straight from heaven:

He merited that every night his soul went up to the celestial realms. The ministering angels would come and escort him to the heavenly academy and ask him which school he desired to attend. Sometimes he said to the school of R’ Shimeon bar Yochai , or to the school of R’ Akiva, or to the school of R’ Eliezer the Great, or to the rest of the Tanaitic or Amoraic sages or to the prophets. (Chapter 2. All translations are mine.)

These nocturnal study sessions gave Luria knowledge of “secrets, mysteries and treasures of Torah that had never been heard and were unknown even to the Tanaitic sages.” (Ibid)

Shivhei ha-Ari makes Luria to be a greater figure then even R’ Shimeon bar Yochai, who, according to tradition was the author of the Zohar, the foundational text for Lurianic Kabbalah. Luria understood of the Zohar surpassed even that of its author because, in his youth angels, he was taught the Zohar by angels:

Sometimes they told him in a dream that he understood the book of the Zohar, and it was according to R’ Shimeon bar Yochai, but there was in it a secret beyond him. Sometimes they told him that his understanding was correct, but it was not the intention of R’ Shimeon bar Yochai because of the errors that fell into the book of the Zohar. (Ibid)

Luria is given the authority to overrule a rabbinic sage like R’ Shimeon bar Yochai. To the extent that, even when Luria misread the Zohar, his misreading was really the correct understanding and it was the Zohar that was wrong.

As we shall see , the mystic’s claim to divine illumination, outside of any religious tradition, is not that different from the scientist’s claim to be able to go outside of tradition. The line between mysticism, magic and science is much narrower than you might think; particularly if you know something about the history of science and the origins of the Scientific Revolution.

Sin, Safed and Lurianic Kabbalah.

Lawrence Fine’s Physician of the Soul Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship is a sociological analysis of Isaac Luria (1534-72), the central figure of sixteenth century Kabbalah, and the circle that surrounded him. Fine is not particularly interested in the theology of Luria per se, that ground having already been thoroughly covered by Gershom Scholem. Instead Fine approaches Luria from the perspective of Luria’s distinct practices. Fine is less interested in Luria theology of exile and redemption than the sort of rituals that Luria and his followers engaged in order to bring about redemption. This sort of prax based approach is important when dealing with the Jewish History. Judaism is a highly prax based religion; everything has to make itself relevant in terms of ritual practice, halacha. Any discussion of Judaism that remains solely in the theoretical realm of theology is missing something. Fine is following Moshe Idel’s criticism of Scholem’ treatment of Kabbalah, as primarily a theology and as something separate from rabbinic Judaism. Fine’s treatment of Luria keeps him within the framework of rabbinic Judaism and of halacha.

What I found most interesting about this book was Fine’s discussion of the penances that Luria proscribed for various sins. Figuring prominently within the list of sins, we have from his student, Hayyim Vital, are drinking gentile wine, committing sins which require one of the four types of capital punishment, sexual relations with a menstruant, relations with an animal, sleeping with gentile women, adultery, sodomy and masturbation. According to Vital, he learned of Luria’s proscribed penance for homosexuality from three people who actually carried it out. Luria’s remedy was that a person should fast for 233 days, which is the numerical equivalent of the Hebrew word regel, foot. This denotes the part of the Ze’ir that the sin displaced the saphira of Yesod into

The fact that such emphasis was placed on how to repent from sexual transgressions raises some questions as to nature of the people living in Safed in the sixteenth century. If you read Haredi “history” books, all you will hear about sixteenth century Safed is that it was a holy city, full of holy people. In truth Safed was a much more interesting and dynamic place. Clearly the city contained people who had a lot more weighing on their consciousness then missing morning prayers every once in awhile. For one thing many of the people, who migrated to Safed, were ex-conversos, who had lived as Christians for significant parts of their lives. Many of them had left behind non Jewish wives and children. To say nothing of the sins that people committed while living in Safed. Safed was not Lakewood or the Mir; it was an openly dysfunctional place and that was the point of it.

This sinful side of Safed is important for understanding the community and Luria. More than any other movement within traditional Judaism, Lurianic Kabbalah confronted the reality of sin in this world. The goal of Lurianic Kabbalah was to bring about the redemption of the world by redeeming the divine sparks that trapped by the forces of darkness, which in the terminology of Lurianic Kabbalah is referred to as the qelippot, the shells. It is not enough to simply remove oneself from the world and be holy; one has to confront the forces of sin. In effect one tries to redeem even sin. This is not the theology of people convinced of their utter righteousness; this is the theology of people confronting their own sinfulness.

Preparing For Generals

I am in middle of enjoying a relaxing summer of preparing for my general examinations, which I hopefully will be taking sometime this coming fall. How this works is that I have a committee of four professors, two to represent my major field, Jewish History and two to represent my two minor fields, Medieval and Early Modern European History. The test consists of a serious of written tests followed by an oral examination. For the oral examination I will be put in a room with all four of the professors on the committee and for two hours they get to question me for two hours.

During these coming months, I will mostly be posting on the material I am studying. To give you all an idea of what goes into general examinations I have posted my reading list. I have already read most of the books listed, but there is still a fair amount that I have not read and there is a lot that I have read that I need to review. Also several of the books listed are in the 700+ page range. No I am not panicking yet. (That comes in September.)

You are all welcome to join me in this merry endeavor.


Jewish History: Dr. Matt Goldish & Dr. Daniel Frank

Anti-Semitism

Andrew Colin Gow
1. Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age 1200-1600.
R.I Moore
2. Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250. Winter 2006
Joshua Trachtenberg
3. Devil and the Jews

Christianity
David Berger
4. Jewish Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages
Robert Chazan
5. Barcelona and Beyond; The Disputation of 1263 and its Aftermath
6. Dagger of Faith: Thirteenth Century Missionizing and Jewish Responses
7. Church, State and the Jew in the Middle Ages.
Jeremy Cohen
8. The Friars and the Jews
9. Living Letters of the Law
Shlomo Eidelberg
10. The Jews and the Crusades: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades
Hyam Maccoby
11. Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages
James Parkes
12. The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue

France and Germany

William Chester Jordan
13. The French Monarchy and the Jews
Guido Kisch
14. The Jews in Medieval Germany

Historiography
Gershon Cohen
15. Sefer Hakabbalah
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi
16. Zakhor, Jewish History, and Jewish Memory.

Islam
Eliyahu Ashtor
17. Jews of Muslim Spain
Goitein
18. Jews and Arabs
Avigdor Levy
19. The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire

Messianism

Harris Lenowitz
20. The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights
Marc Saperstein
21. Essential Papers on Messianic Movements and Personalities in Jewish History.

Mysticism

J.H Chajes
22. Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcist, and Early Modern Judaism.
Lawrence Fine
23. Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship.
Matt Goldish
“Halakhah, Kabbalah, and Heresy: A Controversy in Early Eighteenth Century Amsterdam.” JQR 2-3(1993-94): Pg. 153-76.
“Review Essay New Approaches to Jewish Messianism” AJS Review 25. Looks at Idel’s Messianic Mystics and Lenowitz’s book on Jewish Messiahs.
24. Sabbatean Prophets.
25. Judaism in the Theology of Isaac Newton.
Moshe Idel
26. Kabbalah: New Perspectives.
27. Messianic Mystics
Ephraim Kanarfogel
28. Peering through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period.
Ivan Marcus
29. Rituals of Childhood
Gershom Scholem
30. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
31. On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism
32. Origins of the Kabbalah
33. Sabbtai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah
Joseph Trachtenberg
34. Jewish Magic and Superstition
Elliot Wolfson
35. Through a Speculum that Shines

Philosophy

Isaac Barzilai
36. Between Reason and Faith: Anti-Rationalism in Italian Jewish Thought 1250-1650
Seymour Feldman
“Prophecy and Perception in Isaac Abravanel.” Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism. Ed. Alfred Ivry, Elliot Wolfson, and Allan Arkush.
“The end of the universe in medieval Jewish philosophy.” AJS 11(1986): pg. 53-77
37. Philosophy in a Time of Crisis: Don Isaac Abravanel: Defender of the Faith
Sarah Heller-Wilensky.
38. Isaac Arama in the Framework of Philonic Philosophy. (Hebrew) Jerusalem. 1956.
Menachem Kellner
39. Principles of Faith
40. Must a Jew Believe Anything?
41. Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought: From Maimonides to Abravanel
Isaac Lawee
42. Abarbanel’s Stance toward Tradition
Daniel J. Lasker
43. Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages
Chaim Pearl
44. The Medieval Jewish Mind: the Religious Philosophy of Isaac Arama
Jospeh Sarachek
45. Faith and Reason: The Conflict Over the Rationalism of Maimonides. Hermon Press, New York. 1970.
Daniel Jeremy Silver
46. Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy 1180-1240. Brill. 1965

Politics

Ruth Wisse
47. Jewish Power.

Renaissance

Robert Bonfil
48. Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy
49. Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy
David Ruderman
50. Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe
51. The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham b. Mordecai Farissol
Hava Tirosh-Samuelson
52. Between Worlds – The Life and Thought of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon



Society
Ephraim Kanarfogel
53. Jewish Education and Society in the High Middle Ages
Jacob Katz
54. Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages
55. Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Jewish Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times

Spain
Yitzchak Baer
56. Jews in Christian Spain (2 vol.)
H.H Ben Sasson
57. “Generation of the Spanish Exiles and its Fate.” Zion 26(1961): pg. 23-64.
Seymour Feldman
58. “1492: A House Divided.” Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World (1997): 38-58.
Mark Meyerson
59. A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth Century Spain.
Benzion Netanyahu
60. Don Isaac Abarbanel: Statesman and Philosopher
61. Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain
62. The Marranos of Spain: From the Late 14th to the Early 16th Century, According to Contemporary Hebrew Sources
Norman Roth
63. Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
Yosef Yerushalmi
64. The Lisbon Massacre of 1506
Perez Zagorin
65. Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution and Conformity in Early Modern Europe.

Early Modern: Prof. Robert Davis

Magic

Stuart Clark
66. Thinking With Demons.
Keith Thomas
67. Religion and the Decline of Magic
Carlo Ginzburg
68. Night Battles
Guido Ruggiero
69. Binding Passions
Frances Yates
70. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
71. The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age
72. The Art of Memory
73. Rosicrucian Enlightenment

Religion

Elizabeth Rapley
74. The Devotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth Century France.
Anne Jacobson Schutte
75. Aspiring Saints: Pretense of holiness, inquisition and gender in the republic of Venice 1618-1750.
Marjorie Reeves
“Cadinal Egidio of Viterbo: a Prophetic Interpretation of History.”
76. Influence of prophecy in the later Middle Ages: A Study of Joachimism.

Richard Kagan
77. Lucrecia’s Dreams
Carlo Ginzburg
78. The Cheese and the Worm
Phyllis Mack (Rutgers)
79. Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England
John Headley
80. Tommaso Campanella and the Transformation of the World
B.S Capp
81. The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth-Century English Millenarianism
William Christian
82. Local Religion in Sixteenth Century Spain
Cynthia L. Polecritti
83. Preaching Peace in Renaissance Italy: Bernardino of Siena & His Audience

Violence

Steve Carroll
84. Blood and Violence in Early Modern France.
David Nirenberg
85. Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages.
Pieter Spierenburg
86. The Spectacle of Suffering: Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Preindustrial metropolis to the European Experience.

Renaissance

Peter Burke
87. The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy
Bruce Cole
88. The Renaissance Artist at Work
Elizabeth Eisenstein
89. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe.
Lauro Martines
90. Power and Imagination: City States in Renaissance Italy
Edward Muir
91. Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice
John Najemy
92. Italy in the Age of the Renaissance
Laurie Nussdorfer
93. Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban VIII

Jews

Robert Davis and Benjamin Ravid
94. The Jews of Early Modern Venice

Kenneth Stow (Haifa)
95. Jewish Life in Early Modern Rome: Challenge, Conversion and Private Life

Medieval: Prof. Daniel Hobbins

General

Malcolm Barber: (University of Reading) Expert on the Knights Templar.
96. The Two Cities: Medieval Europe 1050-1320.
Norman Cantor
97. The Civilization of the Middle Ages
R.W Southern (1912-2001) (Oxford)
98. The Making of the Middle Ages

Religion

Rudolph Bell
99. Holy Anorexia.
Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
100. Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378-1417.
Peter Brown
101. Cult of the Saints.
102. Augustine of Hippo
Caroline Walker Bynum
103. Holy Feat and Holy Fast: the Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women.
Nancy Caciola
104. Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages.
John Coakley
105. Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and Their Male Collaborators
Dyan Elliott
106. Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages.
Amos Funkenstein
107. Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century. Princeton University Press. 1986.
Dominique Iogna-Prat
108. Order & Exclusion: Cluny and Christendom Face Heresy, Judaism and Islam (1000-1500)
Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg
109. Forgetful of their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society C.A 500-1100.
Laura Ackerman Smoller
110. History, Prophecy, and the Stars: The Christian Astrology of Pierre D’Aillly
Rosalynn Voaden
111. God’s Word’s, Women’s Voices.

Medicine

Joan Cadden
112. The Meaning of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages.
Joseph Shatzmiller
113. Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society. University of California Press. 1994
Nancy Siraisi
114. Medicine and the Italian Universities 1250-1600.

Literacy

Michael Clanchy
115. From Memory to Written Record.
Joyce Coleman
116. Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France.

Universities

Hilde de Ridder-Symoens
117. A History of the University in Europe.