kabbalists

Amongst the Zionists, the kabbalists are the ones to watch, especially the masters of the lore.

Archive 2008-12-01 2008

Amongst the Zionists, the kabbalists are the ones to watch, especially the masters of the lore.

[nice people] what's in a name 2008

We also find this attitude, which attributes evil and impurity to women, in the writings of R. Hayyim Vital (1542 – 1620) and other kabbalists.

Levant: Women in the Jewish Communities after the Ottoman Conquest of 1517. 2009

This point of view found extreme expression among the sixteenth-century kabbalists, especially in the writings and behavior of the hasidic-kabbalistic groups in Safed.

Levant: Women in the Jewish Communities after the Ottoman Conquest of 1517. 2009

Around 1987, in an introduction to a facsimile edition to a work by Rabbi Yehoshua ibn Shuaib (first half of the fourteenth century), Shraga Abramson (b. 1915) claimed that the work was written by Ezra ben Solomon of Gerona (d. 1238 or 1245), one of the significant kabbalists of the thirteenth century.

Iggeret Ha-Kodesh. 2009

In accordance with this attitude, we find among the edicts of the sixteenth-century kabbalists of Safed the following regulation: “As much as possible, avoid looking even upon a woman clothed.”

Levant: Women in the Jewish Communities after the Ottoman Conquest of 1517. 2009

Many of these new publications (including Hebrew tehinnot, supplemental prayers for men) developed out of and popularized a mystical pietism originating among the kabbalists of Safed; others originated among secret followers of Sabbetai Zevi (1626 – 1676), the failed mystical messiah.

Tkhines. 2009

The second doctrinal development that might have facilitated the empowerment of women was the transformation in some Sabbatean circles of the nature of tikkun — “reparation” or “restoration to perfection,” which is how the kabbalists had conceived of eschatologically charged religious action.

Sabbateanism. 2009

The domain of the body — the effective Sabbatean arena for “restorative” action — had long been associated with women, in line with the dualistic scheme, adopted by medieval philosophers and kabbalists alike, that juxtaposed the female domain of “body” with the male domain of “spirit” or “soul.”

Sabbateanism. 2009

On to this syncretistic notion of the holy messianic “Maiden” Frank grafted the kabbalistic conception of the female emanation of the godhead, the sefira Malkhut (Kingdom), which was traditionally associated with the messianic soul and was envisaged by the kabbalists as rising, at the time of the Redemption, from her lowest position in the hierarchy of the sefirot to its highest and most sublime point.

Sabbateanism. 2009