Description
Book SynopsisThe 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.
Trade Review"This book is an exceptionally fresh and significant contribution. It is an important corrective to the tendency to sublimate social history to the history of ideas." -- Marc Michael Epstein * Vassar College *
"Lachter's work is a compelling and important study of the manner in which Kabbalah responded to political and cultural pressures in Castile at a time of striking proliferation of kabbalistic literature." -- Jonathan Dauber * professor of Jewish mysticism, Yeshiva University *
"A worthwhile and edifying contribution to contemporary scholarship on medieval Jewish mysticism." * H-Judaic *
"Lachter succeeds admirably in moving scholarship forward." * AJS Review *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Kabbalistic Writing in Late Thirteenth-Century Castile
1 Masters of Secrets: Claiming Power with Concealed Knowledge
2 Secrets of the Cosmos: Creating a Kabbalistic Universe
3 Secrets of the Self: Kabbalistic Anthropology and Divine Mystery
4 Jewish Bodies and Divine Power: Theurgy and Jewish Law
5 Prayer Above and Below: Kabbalistic Constructions of the Power of Jewish Worship
Conclusion
Postscript—Cultural Logics: Kabbalah, Then and Now
Notes
Bilbiography
Index
