The set of Jewish mystical teachings known as Kabbalah are often imagined as timeless texts, teachings that have been passed down through the millennia. Yet, as this groundbreaking new study shows, Kabbalah flourished in a specific time and place, emerging in response to the social prejudices that Jews faced. Hartley Lachter, a scholar of religion studies, transports us to medieval Spain, a place where anti-Semitic propaganda was on the rise and Jewish political power was on the wane. Kabbalistic Revolution proposes that, given this context, Kabbalah must be understood as a radically empowering political discourse. While the era’s Christian preachers claimed that Jews were blind to the true meaning of scripture and had been abandoned by God, the Kabbalists countered with a doctrine that granted Jews a uniquely privileged relationship with God. Lachter demonstrates how Kabbalah envisioned this increasingly marginalized group at the center of the universe, their mystical practices serving to maintain the harmony of the divine world. For students of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalistic Revolution provides a new approach to the development of medieval Kabbalah. Yet the book’s central questions should appeal to anyone with an interest in the relationships between religious discourses, political struggles, and ethnic pride.

The set of Jewish mystical teachings known as Kabbalah are often imagined as timeless texts, teachings that have been passed down through the millennia. Yet, as this groundbreaking new study shows, Kabbalah flourished in a specific time and place, emerging in response to the social prejudices that Jews faced. Hartley Lachter, a scholar of religion studies, transports us to medieval Spain, a place where anti-Semitic propaganda was on the rise and Jewish political power was on the wane. Kabbalistic Revolution proposes that, given this context, Kabbalah must be understood as a radically empowering political discourse. While the era’s Christian preachers claimed that Jews were blind to the true meaning of scripture and had been abandoned by God, the Kabbalists countered with a doctrine that granted Jews a uniquely privileged relationship with God. Lachter demonstrates how Kabbalah envisioned this increasingly marginalized group at the center of the universe, their mystical practices serving to maintain the harmony of the divine world. For students of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalistic Revolution provides a new approach to the development of medieval Kabbalah. Yet the book’s central questions should appeal to anyone with an interest in the relationships between religious discourses, political struggles, and ethnic pride.

Through an unusual investigation of kabbalistic commentaries on prayer and ritual from the viewpoint of cultural semiotics, this book attempts to illuminate the features of a lasting Jewish tradition, showing in particular the relevance of ordering structures in Sephardi Kabbalah.

Secrecy and Esoteric Writing in Kabbalistic Literature examines the strategies of esoteric writing that Kabbalists have used to conceal secrets in their writings, such that casual readers will only understand the surface meaning of their texts while those with greater insight will grasp the internal meaning. In addition to a broad description of esoteric writing throughout the long literary history of Kabbalah, this work analyzes kabbalistic secrecy in light of contemporary theories of secrecy. It also presents case studies of esoteric writing in the work of four of the first kabbalistic authors—Abraham ben David, Isaac the Blind, Ezra ben Solomon, and Asher ben David—and thereby helps recast our understanding of the earliest stages of kabbalistic literary history. The book will interest scholars in Jewish mysticism and Jewish philosophy, as well as those working in medieval Jewish history. Throughout, Jonathan V. Dauber has endeavored to write an accessible work that does not require extensive prior knowledge of kabbalistic thought. Accordingly, it finds points of contact between scholars of various religious traditions.

Kabbalah has gained notoriety in recent years, thanks in large part to a publicity boost from celebrity adherents like Madonna. Yet the uninitiated may be surprised to learn that Jewish mysticism has been practiced for thousands of years. First published in 1929, The Holy Kabbalah is Arthur E. Waite's guide to these esoteric teachings. Divided into twelve books, with five appendices and a detailed index, this heavily researched volume traces the origins of Kabbalah and examines its influence (if any) on astrology, alchemy, and freemasonry. Including a close look at Kabbalistic literature, and sections on the Zohar and the Ten Sephiroth, this volume will serve as an excellent introduction to the secret tradition for those wanting to learn more about Kabbalah out of scholarship or curiosity. American-born British author ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE (1857-1942) was cocreator of the famous 1910 Rider-Waite Tarot deck. Among his numerous books are Book of Ceremonial Magic, Devil Worship in France, and New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry.

With unprecedented current coverage of the profound changes in the nature and practice of science in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, this comprehensive reference work addresses the individuals, ideas, and institutions that defined culture in the age when the modern perception of nature, of the universe, and of our place in it is said to have emerged. Covering the historiography of the period, discussions of the Scientific Revolution's impact on its contemporaneous disciplines, and in-depth analyses of the importance of historical context to major developments in the sciences, The Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution is an indispensible resource for students and researchers in the history and philosophy of science.

Explores the influence of Kabbalah in shaping America’s religious identity In 1688, a leading Quaker thinker and activist in what is now New Jersey penned a letter to one of his closest disciples concerning Kabbalah, or what he called the mystical theology of the Jews. Around that same time, one of the leading Puritan ministers developed a messianic theology based in part on the mystical conversion of the Jews. This led to the actual conversion of a Jew in Boston a few decades later, an event that directly produced the first kabbalistic book conceived of and published in America. That book was read by an eventual president of Yale College, who went on to engage in a deep study of Kabbalah that would prod him to involve the likes of Benjamin Franklin, and to give a public oration at Yale in 1781 calling for an infusion of Kabbalah and Jewish thought into the Protestant colleges of America. Kabbalah and the Founding of America traces the influence of Kabbalah on early Christian Americans. It offers a new picture of Jewish-Christian intellectual exchange in pre-Revolutionary America, and illuminates how Kabbalah helped to shape early American religious sensibilities. The volume demonstrates that key figures, including the well-known Puritan ministers Cotton Mather and Increase Mather and Yale University President Ezra Stiles, developed theological ideas that were deeply influenced by Kabbalah. Some of them set out to create a more universal Kabbalah, developing their ideas during a crucial time of national myth building, laying down precedents for developing notions of American exceptionalism. This book illustrates how, through fascinating and often surprising events, this unlikely inter-religious influence helped shape the United States and American identity.

Jonathan Garb's A History of Kabbalah: From the Early Modern Period to the Present Day is a lucid and sophisticated account of the multifaceted nature of Jewish mysticism, focusing on its development from the spiritual revolution that took place in Safed in the sixteenth century until the present. Opening the secrets of the kabbalah to a wider audience, Garb judiciously argued that how important the mystical and esoteric tradition has been in Jewish history and in the cultural and intellectual life of Europe more generally. One of the more methodologically innovative aspects of Garb's book is his contention that kabbalah became a major factor in the religious life of Jews in the modern age due to print and others forms of rapid communication, a process that has magnified significantly in recent years due to the digital revolution. Informative and provocative, A History of Kabbalah will surely be of interest to a wide readership.

Coherent Judaism begins by excavating the theologies within the Torah and tracing their careers through the Jewish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Any compelling, contemporary Judaism must cohere as much as possible with traditional Judaism and everything else we believe to be true about our world. The challenge is that over the past two centuries, our understandings of both the Torah and nature have radically changed. Nevertheless, much Jewish wisdom can be translated into a contemporary idiom that both coheres with all that we believe and enriches our lives as individuals and within our communities. Coherent Judaism explains why pre-modern Judaism opted to privilege consensus around Jewish behavior (halakhah) over belief. The stresses of modernity have conspired to reveal the incoherence of that traditional approach. In our post-Darwinian and post-Holocaust world, theology must be able to withstand the challenges of science and history. Traditional Jewish theologies have the resources to meet those challenges. Coherent Judaism concludes by presenting a philosophy of halakhah that is faithful to the covenantal aspiration to live long on the land that the Lord, our God, has given us.

The Life of the Soul surveys the wide-ranging theories Jewish mystics have offered to the vexing question – what precisely transpires after we die? A common element in their theories is that human life is a part of a larger ecosystem of being which also includes plants, animals, and inanimate things, like rocks. They further maintained that the soul does not perish with the demise of the body, but is rather renewed and recycled into new forms of embodied existence in the lower world. Each essay highlights how reincarnation, also known as metempsychosis or the transmigration of souls, is not a marginalized concept but is instead central to understanding a variety of perplexing issues in Judaism, including catastrophic events in Jewish history, theodicy, the rationale for biblical commandments, the complex identity of biblical figures, and the issues of sin, punishment, and redemption. Just as the concept of reincarnation is inherently about boundary crossing, its investigation similarly bridges diverse epistemic fields and disciplines—religion, philosophy, psychology, history, ritual, gender, and cultural studies. Weaving together kabbalistic speculations and Jewish philosophical ideas drawn from distinct geographical regions and historical periods, this book is poised to serve as a point of departure for future comparative investigations on the life of the soul in Judaism and Eastern religious traditions.