A History of Kabbalah: From the Early Modern Period to the Present Day

Jonathan Garb

Jul 2020 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

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.

About the author

Jonathan Garb is the Gershom Scholem Professor of Kabbalah at the Hebrew University. In 2014, he received the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities' Gershom Scholem Prize for Kabbalah Research. His latest books include: Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah (2011), Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah (2015).