Jonathan Garb

THE MODERNIZATION OF KABBALAH:

A CASE STUDY

THE VICISSITUDES OF THE STUDY OF MODERN KABBALAH

There is no time like the present for calling attention to the emer-
gence of a new field of scholarship, that of the modernization of
Kabbalah, which is in turn part of a wider reconsideration of the
modern Jewish world taking place in recent years, especially amongst
younger scholars. These convergent developments open diverse possi-
bilities for profound change in the agenda of Jewish Studies as such.
I wish to offer a textual case study, that of a kabbalist operating within
the Italian Enlightenment, in order to propose a reevaluation of the
place of modern Kabbalah within Jewish Studies, as part of a wider
revision of traditional orientations of the field. These new theoretical
and methodological horizons can best be appreciated through an
introductory overview of the fate of the modern in the history of
Jewish Studies in the twentieth century. This overview joins recent
moves towards writing such a history [such as volume 74 (2009) of
Zion, the organ of the Israel Historical Society, on the history of Jewish
historical studies in Israel].
The classical paradigm of twentieth century Jewish studies,
as exemplified in the work of luminaries such as Isaac Baer, Julius
Guttmann, Saul Lieberman, Shlomo Pines, Gershom Scholem,
Ephraim Urbach and Harry Wolfson, was founded on intensive
study of texts ranging from later antiquity to the medieval period.
The only one of the above to dedicate a significant degree of inquiry
to the modern period was of course Gershom Scholem. Yet, the latter
deeply believed in the primacy of origins in scholarly investigation and
devoted only one book-length study to the modern period: Sabbatai
Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676.1 Precisely through this exquisitely
researched exception, which was limited to half a century (as its title
demonstrates), we can see how central sabbateanism and especially
one figure, Sabbetai Tsevi, were for Scholem’s understanding of
modernity.2
As a result, from Scholem’s time onwards, numerous giants
of Jewish modernity, such as R. Yonathan Eybeschutz, R. Moshe

doi:10.1093/mj/kjp022 Advance Access publication February 3, 2010

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2 Jonathan Garb

Eayyim Luzzatto and even R. Elijah (the Gaon) of Vilna, have been
researched mostly with respect to one question: If and how sabbatean
they were. Of course, one might argue that an influential figure in
twentieth century Jewish Studies, Martin Buber, foregrounded
a modern movement: Hasidism. As this is not the place to address
this issue, I shall merely confess to sharing Scholem’s own opinion
(which profoundly affected Buber’s reception in Jewish Studies in
Israel), namely that the latter’s writing on this topic was that of a
public intellectual rather than research in the classic sense.
As a result, entire mystical worlds, such as the circle of Luzzatto,
the center in Prague, the Oriental school of R. Shalom Shar6abi and
Lithuanian Kabbalah—not to mention many schools of nineteenth
century Hasidism and twentieth century Kabbalah, are absent in
Scholem’s Sabbato-centric scheme, which was largely upheld by his
students.3 One can note similar choices with regards to Mussar litera-
ture, surely one of the most widely disseminated forms of Jewish
writing in the modern period: The focus of Scholem’s followers, espe-
cially Joseph Dan, was mostly on medieval works in this genre, and
again modern classics, such as R. Eliyahu Itamari’s Shevet Mussar or the
anonymous Hemdat Ha-Yamim were examined only with regard to their
possible connection to Sabbateanism.
As opposed to dramatic developments in other areas, this picture
was not changed by the new directions that emerged in Kabbalah
scholarship in the late twentieth century. Moshe Idel did write of
the modern move from esotericism to exotericism in his earlier
opus Kabbalah—New Perspectives, however his focus there was more on
the connection between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages as well as
on the influence of thirteenth century ecstatic Kabbalah.4 As a result,
relatively speaking, Idel did not especially address the above men-
tioned schools and works in his other writings. This state of affairs
changed somewhat in the course of the 1990s. Yehuda Liebes devoted
important studies to central modern figures such as R. Naftali
Bakhrakh, R. Shimson of Ostropolye, R. Naftali Katz and R. Elijah
of Vilna. Charles Mopsik introduced modern texts throughout his
extensive overview of kabbalistic theurgy, suitably entitled Les grands
textes de la cabbale. Besides his detailed studies of Sabbateanism, Elliot
Wolfson devoted an article to gender and messianism in Luzzatto,
discussed R. Isaiah Horowitz of Prague and also analyzed the hermen-
eutics of R. Elijah of Vilna, drawing on contemporary theories of
writing.
As a result, at the turn of the century an increasing number of
studies were devoted to some of the neglected modern schools, includ-
ing book-length treatments of R. Sabbetai Sheftel Horowitz of Prague,
Luzzatto, Lithuanian Kabbalah, the school of Shar6abi, and twentieth
Modernization of Kabbalah 3

century Kabbalah (by Bracha Sack, Joëlle Hansel, Raphael Shuchat,

Pinchas Giller and Jonathan Garb). Shaul Magid has recently analyzed
the beginnings of modern Kabbalah utilizing the tools of the school
of New Historicism. Finally, Haviva Pedaya has included important
theoretical comments on the modernization of Kabbalah in several
thematic articles.5
At the same time, we are far from a comprehensive picture of
modern Kabbalah, even on the basic textual level. One need but con-
sult Scholem’s encyclopedic survey of this period, which is itself far
from exhaustive, in order to observe how many key texts and figures,
including such luminaries as R. Emanuel Eai Ricci, have hardly been
discussed.6 It is of interest to compare the state of academic textual
scholarship with the recent awakening of interest in early modern
Kabbalah in the kabbalistic circles in Jerusalem, which has led, to
cite but two instances, to the publication of numerous earlier and
contemporary commentaries on Ricci’s Mishnat Hasidim and editions
of several works from the Kloiz fellowship in Brody.
More significantly, we do not yet have a full integrative account
of the unique nature of modern Kabbalah, its response to broader
cultural and historical developments and the various stages of its
development in various cultural contexts, European and Oriental.
Such an account would in turn require a far more advanced state of
research into other areas of modern Jewish religiosity, such as custom,
liturgy, Halacha, Talmudic methodology, and Mussar, which like
Kabbalah, have suffered from the pre-modern focus of classical
Jewish studies. At the same time, we should be encouraged from
recent and forthcoming work by mostly younger scholars such as
Ze’ev Gries, Maoz Kahana, Haviva Pedaya, David Sorotzkin, and
Roni Weinstein, who provide useful tools and insights for a new
understanding of modern Jewish religiosity.7

MODERN KABBALAH AS A SELF-CONTAINED DOMAIN OF INQUIRY

The neglect of the modern in Jewish studies is one case of many in

which one can see how the modernistic attempt to differentiate aca-
demic scholarship from traditional learning created a gap between the
agenda of the universities (as well as those institutions influenced by
the university, such as the contemporary Batei Midrash in Israel and
rabbinical schools in the United States) and that of the Yeshiva world,
whose very development was greatly accelerated by modernity. For
contemporary kabbalists in Yeshiva circles, the classics are not Sefer
Ha-Bahir, nor the writings of the Gerona circle, nor somewhat later
4 Jonathan Garb

classics such as Sefer Ha-Temuna and Ma6arekhet Elohut. Even the zoha-
ric literature, in and of itself, is not the classic that contemporary
Kabbalah links to or, at times breaks with.
One major reason for this choice is that all of the above works
were anonymous or pseudo epigraphic. Contemporary Kabbalah, and
indeed modern Kabbalah in general, is first and foremost a cult of the
exceptional individual and his mystical biography, so that non-personal
writings cannot serve as a model.8 Rather, the classics for contempor-
ary Kabbalah are the works composed by the great figures of modern
Kabbalah, namely R. Isaac Luria, R. Moshe Cordovero, R. Moshe
Hayyim Luzzatto, R. Elijah of Vilna, the Ba6al Shem Tov, R. Shalom
Shar6abi, and R. Shneur Zalman of Lyady. It is no coincidence that
amongst the most widely circulated texts in contemporary circles one
must count the hagiographies depicting some of these figures. For this
reason, the one medieval figure that is central for almost all
branches of contemporary Kabbalah is the most autobiographical
and self-conscious of medieval kabbalists, R. Abraham Abulafia.9
Actually, this general observation largely holds for other realms in
Jewish discourse. For halachists and advocates of Mussar, the classics
are also modern works. Thus, just as the Zohar is mediated for con-
temporary kabbalists through the commentaries of Luria, Cordovero
and Luzzatto, the medieval halachic classics, such as the ‘Arbáh Turim
and the Yad Ha-Hazaka are mediated through later works, and espe-
cially the triad of Karo’s works: Sulhan ‘Arukh, its main source, Beit
Yosef on the ‘Arbáh Turim, and Kesef Mishne on the Yad Ha-Eazaka.
Even in pure Talmudic study, the focus (despite constant critiques of
this tendency), is on the Ahronim, or later authorities, especially the
products of the renaissance of Talmudics in early twentieth century
Lithuania. Likewise, although the modern Mussar movement values
the medieval works of R. BaAya ibn Paquda and especially those of
R. Yonah Gerundi, its major sourcebook is of course Luzzatto’s Mesilat
Yesharim. Above all, due to the effect of the Gutenberg revolution,
coupled with the staggering demographic explosion in the modern
Jewish world, most Jewish texts (at least those available to us) were
composed after the sixteenth century, so that the traditional choice of
study material makes perfect bibliographical sense.
For this reason, a scholarly orientation which is more in synch
with the subject matter studied and its ‘‘emic’’ view can afford to
break with the classic orientation of Jewish studies and build
modern Jewish discourse as a self-contained area of study. However,
there is a far more compelling motivation for such a strong move:
Weinstein’s recently completed manuscript on Kabbalah and Jewish
modernity demonstrates that the transition to modernity, especially
in the Golden Age of Safed, affected a vast sea change in kabbalistic
Modernization of Kabbalah 5

discourse and indeed in Jewish religiosity as a whole. Just as I have also

suggested above, the cult of the exceptional individual is suggested by
Weinstein as a central aspect of this change. However, one needs
to take Weinstein’s analysis still further, in both period and scope,
as I shall proceed to do in the following section.

THE RISE OF MODERN KABBALAH

There is a prevalent belief that the Middle Ages represent the era of
faith and the modern is the Age of Reason. However, in many ways,
it is equally plausible to argue that rationalistic philosophy, as well as
rational forms of mysticism, was the common language of religious
intellectuals, as evidenced by the phenomenon of Averroism. The
recent work of two young scholars, Adam Afterman and Sandra
Valabregue-Perry, demonstrates the deep connections between
Kabbalah and philosophy in the middle ages. This move is reinforced
from the other direction by David Blumenthal’s study of the philo-
sophical mysticism of figures such as Maimonides.10
In fact, one possible way of understanding the dramatic rise of
Kabbalah from the sixteenth century onwards is place it against the
background of the decline of philosophy, which had reached an
advanced stage by this time. R. Isaac Luria’s famous rejection of kab-
balistic knowledge derived from the intellect, as opposed to revelation,
or in other words of much of medieval Kabbalah, exemplifies this
shift, as this stance was then adopted by numerous modern kabbalists
faithful to Luria.
Another striking example is that of R. Yehuda Loewe, or Maharal,
of Prague, whose influence in the contemporary Jewish world cannot
be overstated.11 Although Loewe took part in broad intellectual center
in central Europe, he sharply critiqued philosophical approaches and
created a new form of writing which then became emblematic for
modern Kabbalah. This new genre in turns demonstrates a second
major departure from medieval Jewish mysticism—the merger of
Kabbalah with other forms of Jewish discourse and religious life.
It is this strategy which largely accounts for the prominence of
Kabbalah in the modern period, described somewhat misleadingly by
Scholem as the transformation of Kabbalah into ‘‘authoritative Jewish
theology’’, but actually a process that was most evident in areas such
as custom, Halachah, liturgy and poetry.12 It must be added that the
plain fact that is was only in the modern period when Kabbalah truly
came into its own renders the relative neglect of this period in existing
overviews of its history all the more striking.
6 Jonathan Garb

It was Loewe who in effect translated Kabbalah from technical

language into a broader discourse, a move which intriguingly com-
bines esotericism, in the concealment of the kabbalistic language
and exotericism, in the proliferation of the kabbalistic concepts,
which were rendered accessible precisely by the removal of technical
terms. The transition to exotericism, itself intrinsically dialectical
(as argued eloquently in Wolfson’s Open Secret), triumphed in the
twentieth century but began in the late sixteenth century at the very
latest.13
The new discursive form inaugurated by Loewe partakes of
Mussar, as in his Netivot Olam and Derekh Hayyim, commentary on
canonical texts, as in his sets on the Bible and Aggadah, Gur Aryeh
and Hiddushei Aggadot, semi-halachic argumentation—as in large
sections of his Ner Mitzvah—and homiletics. Loewe marks a transition
from the figure of the kabbalistic specialist, which characterized
the Lurianic world and its Sephardic reception, towards that of the
global intellectual, to borrow Michel Foucault’s felicitous phrase.
He exemplified the merger of Kabbalah within a wider discourse
which included not only other branches of Jewish learning, but also
responses to broader cultural and political developments, as evidenced
in the scientific interests of his student David Gans.
The origins of this discursive transition may be found in the main
alternatives to Luria in sixteenth century Safed, most prominently in
the writings of R. Joseph Karo. His diary Magid Mesharim bridged
Kabbalah, Mussar, exegesis and Halachah. All this as part of a broader
project which explicitly placed Kabbalah within a successful drive, a la
Maimonides, to become the major Jewish authority of his time, thus
relating to the Jewish world as a whole rather than to a closed frater-
nity such as Luria’s group. Karo’s understudied book of responsa,
Avkat Rokhel, which merges Halachah and Kabbalah, is a key text for
understanding this project. Secondly, in the school of Cordovero,
which indeed enjoyed much influence in Loewe’s Prague, we find a
merger of Kabbalah and Mussar, as in the influential Tomer Devorah
by Cordovero himself and other works, whose nature and ongoing
influence were described by Mordechai Pachter and Sack.
It might be argued that the medieval classic, the Zohar, already
integrated Mussar, Halachah, and Kabbalah to some degree. My
response is that the Zohar itself, as a canonical book, is largely a
making of the sixteenth century, fueled by the veneration of its sup-
posed author, R. Shimeon Bar YoAai, in the new cult of the excep-
tional individual.14 Furthermore, the place of Mussar in the Zohar is
unclear, eliciting comments ranging from Isaiah Tishby’s surprising
denial of its presence to Ronit Meroz’s interesting suggestion that
the proponents of Mussar in the Zohar constituted a separate circle.
Modernization of Kabbalah 7

As for Halachah, following up the most important study of its place in

the Zohar, Israel Ta-Shma’s Ha-Nigle She-Banistar may reveal that we
are speaking mostly of the integration of customs rather than the
profound talmudics characteristic of thirteenth century Spanish
Jewry, or the professional Halachic argumentation characteristic of
the responsa literature. Finally, the major Spanish alternative to
zoharic Kabbalah, the school of Nahmanides, maintained a rather
strict separation of Kabbalah and Halachah, as shown in Moshe
Halbertal’s (Hebrew) book By Way of Truth: Nachmanides and the
Creation of Tradition. Our rebuttal to this counter-argument returns
us to the thesis that the true integration of Kabbalah with Jewish
discourse as a whole was part of the encyclopedic drive of the modern.
This integrative effort became rather common amongst modern
Central European Jewish intellectuals: R. Isaiah Horowitz of Prague
wrote a massive and hugely influential book, Shnei Luh q ot Ha-Brit, in
which it is hard to differentiate halakahah, exegesis, kabbalah, mussar
and homiletics. R. Jonathan Eybeschutz’s kabbalistic world was rather
esoteric, yet the numerous works of mussar and homiletics penned by
this greatly influential halachist are clearly infused with Kabbalah.
Kahana has made a valuable contribution by showing that the halachic
verdicts of the hugely influential halachist Moshe Sofer, author of the
Hatam Sofer series, were evoked by mystical experiences, and similar
moves can be made with regard to his commentary on the Bible.
Likewise, Kahana has lately begun to bridge the gap between the cur-
rent interest in the intense and venerated Talmudic and mystical
world of the Kloiz of Brody within the Yeshiva world, and its neglect
by scholars, with the important exception of Elhanan Reiner.15
A center much influenced by Prague and traditionally inclined to
view Kabbalah in broader horizons was that of Italy. Perhaps the single
most influential modern kabbalist, R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, or
RamAal, emulated Loewe in presenting kabbalistic concepts in
non-specialized language, as in his later works: Derekh Hashem, Da6at
Tevunot, and Mesilat Yesharim. Indeed, Luzzatto wrote in a markedly
wide range of genres, including rhetoric, Talmudic methodology,
theatre, logic, and grammar. Both Loewe and Luzzzato were emulated
in turn by the most striking kabbalist of the twentieth century,
R. Abraham Isaac Kook, partly in the wake of late nineteenth
century Hasidic schools, such as Ger, but far more as a result of his
adherence to the school of R. Elijah of Vilna, to which he essentially
belonged.
The latter circle, though not truly translating Kabbalah into other
terms, due to its strongly elitist inclination, nonetheless substantially
contributed to reflections on the relationship between mysticism,
history, and even science. These may be found especially in the
8 Jonathan Garb

voluminous works of the disciple of R. Elijah’s disciples, R. ItzAaq

Haver (yet to be addressed at any length in academic writing) as
well as in the encyclopedic Sefer Ha-Berit, by R. Pinchas Elijah, also
of Vilna. R. Kook, who rendered Kabbalah into political, poetic and
psychological terms, was joined by some of his contemporaries from
the modern Mussar movement, for whom Luzzatto was a towering
presence. The influence of Luzzatto, not only on these figures but
also on another hugely influential twentieth century kabbalist, R.
Yehuda Leib Ashlag, who mixed more technical works with political
essays, is far from universally recognized.
Indeed, it is from the perspective of the twentieth and current
centuries that Luzzatto can be most easily described as the most influ-
ential of modern kabbalists. Waves of publication of his works began
already in the early twentieth century, propelled, amongst others, by
the prominent Lithuanian kabbalist and R. Kook’s erstwhile teacher,
R. Shlomo Elyashiv, known as Ba6al Ha-Leshem. In recent decades, this
project was continued by the influential Israeli Mussar teacher,
R. Eayyim Freidlander and currently by an institute devoted to pro-
pagating his works and ideas, the Francophonic Institut Ramhal
in Jerusalem. One should also note the activity of a figure on the
border-lands of research and kabbalism, Joseph Avivi, as well as
more popular commentaries on Luzzatto’s works (by Itamar
Schwartz, in his Bi-Lvavi Miskhan Evne series, and Alexander
Mandelbaum’s Be-Mesila N6ale).
Luzzatto’s wide contemporary appeal is facilitated by his elo-
quent synthesis between the two major theoretical moves of
European modern Kabbalah: The psychological and the political.16
This re-interpretation of classical kabbalistic concepts in this-worldly
terms of psychic and political powers and processes began already
in the sixteenth century and has peaked in recent decades.
Here I shall not go into the psychological move, which is famously
associated with Hasidism, but in my view should be seen against the
wider Western background of the rise of the ‘‘religion of the heart’’ in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I am currently preparing a
book on the psychological theory of modern Kabbalah, where I hope
to show that the importance of the heart and soul within the overall
economy of kabbalistic discourse profoundly increased with the tran-
sition to modernity, as part of the wider process of development of
new forms of modern selfhood. Here, I shall stress the political move,
glimmerings of which are found already in Luria’s writings and truly
developed in the seventeenth century by Loewe, R. Isaiah Horowitz
and R. Naftali Bakhrah, peaking later with Luzzatto and the circle of
R. Elijah of Vilna and triumphing in twentieth century circles, espe-
cially that of R. Kook.
Modernization of Kabbalah 9

A CASE STUDY: R. MOSHE DAVID VALLE

As a case study for the development of kabalistic thought on the pol-

itical, as epitomizing the modernization of Kabbalah, I have selected
the first Jewish mystic to employ the very category of the political,
Luzzatto’s close associate R. Moshe David Valle (1696–1777), whose
works are crucial for understanding the formers Italian period.
The virtual neglect of this figure by academic writing, with the excep-
tion of the preliminary mapping curtailed by Isaiah Tishby’s death,
exemplifies the chasm between academic and traditional scholar-
ship with regard to modern kabbalistic writing. One of the most
striking literary developments of recent years is the publication
and dating of more than twenty volumes (averaging four hundred
pages each) of Valle’s works by R. Joseph Spiner of Sha6ar
Ha-Shamayim, the most central Ashkenazi kabbalistic Yeshiva of the
twentieth century.
A study of this treasury of complex and innovatory texts reveals
a constant response to a vast range of modern phenomena, including
travel and discovery, anatomy and contemporary medicine, new mili-
tary technology, Baroque aesthetics, harmonics and poetics, pollution,
youth culture (especially smoking and gambling), work, secularization,
and again the political. This broad range of concern exemplifies both
the openness of early modern Italian kabbalists, as described at length
in various studies by David Ruderman, as well as the general nature of
intellectual life in the age of the encyclopédie. As we shall see, Valle’s
texts reveal a particular concern with various Italian phenomena, such
as carnivals, but here I shall focus mainly on his theory of the
political.17
The key text for understanding R. Moshe David Valle’s political
thought is a passage in his commentary on Psalms, where he opposes
the counsel of the Torah, taken by the ‘‘Hasid-King’’ David (his own
personal model), to the false counsels of ‘‘human politica,’’ which are
based on flattery.18 As we shall see, the reference to flattery may have
a specific context rather than just being a general observation. In this
political realm, rife with strife, those originating in a blemished soul
root rule over those of an ‘‘important’’ root, so that public position is
shunned by all.19 Elsewhere, Valle exclaims that ‘‘there is nothing as
hateful before God as wars and quarrels.’’20 It may well be that Valle’s
experience of public life was colored by the persecution of Luzzatto’s
circle by the Jewish authorities, as well as by his negative view of the
citizens of his city of Padua, as described below.
For Valle, as for his associate Luzzatto as well as Italian thinkers
ranging from Machiavelli to Valle’s contemporary Giambattisa Vico,
the political is deeply intertwined with the concept of power,
10 Jonathan Garb

understood in turn in vitalistic terms, as seen clearly in the following

text from Valle’s early period:
God gave power and spirit of life to man according to his place and
time and government. To the individual he gave little spirit, enough
to govern himself. To the head of the household somewhat more,
so as to govern his house. To the head of the city or the state more,
enough for all men of the state. And to the king most of all, so that
he may be worthy of governing all matters of the kingdom with good
taste and reason. And this is what Samuel told Saul when he became
king: ‘‘and you shall be turned into a new man’’ [1 Sam, 10:6] for he
literally received a new spirit when he transformed from a commoner
to a king . . . and all the more so for the king, the Messiah, who will
rule the entire world, who needs a great spirit which encompasses all
matters of governance.21

Here, the figure of the Messiah, which Tishby almost exclusively

focused on, is subsumed within a wider reflection on the ratio
between power, as vitality, and government (hanhaga), perhaps the
most central term in Luzzatto’s thought. Indeed, in his commentary
on the proof text from Samuel (and on the chapter in which it is
embedded), Valle describes the added pneumatic power and adher-
ence (dvekut) of the king’s soul to the upper world which accompany
his necessary transformation upon assuming the royal role. It appears
that this description echoes Valle’s own self-perception as a mystical
Messiah.22 However, one should not only read this text merely in
terms of individual self-perception, but also in the broader cultural
frame offered here: The paternalistic move from the head of the
household to the king echoes other religious–political Italian thinkers
of his time, such as Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750) of
Modena.23
In further reflecting on this text, one should especially note
the place of the city at the center of this set of concentric circles of
empowerment and transformation. Indeed, Valle’s reflections on
public life are closely related to his thought on the urban, as well as
to political economy, the centerpiece of political thought in eighteenth
century Italy. In another early text, Valle describes the public in
organic terms as a facial configuration (partzuf)—in Lurianic terms—
and a body comprised of limbs: ‘‘The wise and the leaders are the
aspect of the head, those who carry the burden are the aspect of the
shoulders, all artisans are the aspect of the hands and all those who
travel in service of the public (tsorkhei tsibur) are the aspect of the feet.’’
Valle then moves from the concept of the public as corporate
body, a commonplace of political thought of his time, to the
makeup of urban life: ‘‘Observe again and note His general and indi-
vidual Providence: That he directed the hearts of all men to take up
Modernization of Kabbalah 11

different trades, so that each city will be comprised of all that is of

general need, and thus with goods and food. For you see that the
peasants who work the land enter the city, one bringing with him
one item and one another . . . and their intention is undoubtedly
only for their own benefit, and God has calculated this for the general
good.’’24 The Lurianic model of interconnected structures is translated
here into a theory of the general good emerging through the hidden
hand of providence from the free operations of the market and from
division of labor.
Several decades before Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations,
a Jewish contemporary of prominent pro-regulation thinkers such as
Antonio Genovesi and Ferdinando Galiani enlisted a metaphysical
theory against the prevalent Mercantilist critique of the free market
and its assumption of a zero sum game of conflicting interests. One
should situate Valle, as marking the beginnings of the Golden Age
of economic theory in eighteenth century Italy, in which public hap-
piness (pubblica felicità), and the reciprocal nature of the market were
key concepts. His specific mention of agriculture could hint at a con-
nection (somewhat rare in the Italian context) to the Physiocrats, who
joined a lascerà-fare approach with an insistence on agriculture as the
sole source of wealth (as opposed to the mercantilist privileging of
trade over agriculture).25 Indeed, elsewhere Valle identifies agricultur-
al labor with the rectification of the Sekhinah, the main theurgical
project of Luzzatto’s circle, as shown by Elliot Wolfson.26
At this point, a methodological clarification is called for: My
approach, though far from narrow positivism, differs somewhat from
that of New Historicism, despite my sympathy for the later approach
(and especially its application to Kabbalah research on the part of
Magid). I assume the influence of surrounding cultural, social and
economic trends only where the text itself makes an explicit or virtu-
ally explicit allusion to them. Furthermore, as we shall see towards the
end of our case study, I do not assume that Jewish discourse operates
in the precise time frame of general trends, and thus seek to distance
myself from the ‘‘proximist’’ approach, as Idel has termed it. In my
concluding remarks, I shall further address the complex question of
the relationship between extra-Jewish influence and internal Jewish
developments.
This method of adhering to the text can be further exemplified
through a slightly later discussion devoted specifically to the city,
where Valle extends and embellishes the midrashic–kabbalistic model
of the two cities of Jerusalem, supernal and temporal (which has
famous parallels in early Christian thought). In including all cities in
this model, he posits that the supernal is literally the soul of the tem-
poral, so that ‘‘all towns in the world have a supernal counterpart.’’27
12 Jonathan Garb

This move enables him to merge this reflection with his

apocalyptic-messianic vision of the fall of the power of government
of the forces of evil, which he discussed in an adjacent passage:
‘‘At the time when God desires to subjugate the Other Side, He
then also wishes to destroy their locales both above and below and
all the more so the places which are the metropolii (metropolin) of
impurity, both above and below, such as Rome above and Rome
below, Constantinople above and Constantinople below.’’28
The general notion of the supernal as the soul of the temporal is
also the key to understanding Valle’s views on the soul of countries,
and especially the Holy Land. Generally speaking, Valle devoted far
lengthier discussions to this topic than Luzzatto, despite the influence
of the latter on topocentric schools such as R. Kook’s. This important
issue will be touched on below, yet cannot be discussed in depth in
this study. However, one should note Valle’s innovative claim that the
soul of the Holy Land resides on the Jews in Exile, and it is this
connection which ensures that the body of the land will remain
barren while under foreign rule and will eventually return to the
Jews in the messianic era.29
Valle’s interest in cities was not restricted to metropolii. He
devoted two pages of an early text to the northern Italian cities, and
especially to his own Padua: The latter is demonized as the powerful
aspect of the wisdom of the husks (hokhmat ha-qelipah), associated with
the archetypical arch-enemy of Amalek. This power explains the
far-reaching reputation of the city, which was used to lure many peo-
ples with ‘‘harlotry,’’ as well as the cruelty of its masses, and especially
its leaders. Indeed ‘‘there is no kingdom as cruel and exceedingly
proud.’’30
Delving knowledgably into the earlier history of the town, Valle
writes that ‘‘generations ago the fierce dogs were greatly exalted, and
above all Ezzelino [de Romano, 1194-1259] the cruel, most wicked of
them all’’ (and described in many accounts as a ‘‘rabid dog’’ or ‘‘the
dog Ezzelino’’). However, this situation improved greatly once Padua
came under Venetian rule (1405), as Venice, the ‘‘princes of Edom,’’
corresponds to a more ‘‘sweetened’’ (in kabbalistic terms) and exalted
aspect of Amalek, so that peace was restored.
One should not regard this discussion of the aspect of Amalek
as purely theoretical, as in a later text Valle describes the biblical
command to erase the memory of Amalek as a prophetic promise,
which is fulfilled gradually. According to this text, ‘‘The matter of
the promise of the erasure of Amalek is not performed at once, but
again and again throughout the generations . . . for in one year one of
its aspects is erased and in another year a different aspect, until
the year of the redemption in which the erasure of all levels shall
Modernization of Kabbalah 13

be completed.’’ It is likely that Valle viewed the transition of power

from one Italian city to another in these terms. As he puts it there,
Amalek is the fiercest enemy of God’s kingdom, so that it would only
be logical for a circle of messianic kabbalists to be located in the cities
which represent its highest aspects.31
This reading is also apparent in Valle’s treatment of Venice,
identified with the aspect of Understanding (binah) of impurity. This
positioning, described as closer to the realm of holiness, renders
the leaders of the city wise and its ‘‘judgments’’ or negative aspects,
‘‘sweetened.’’ As a result, it will be the first city to submit itself to the
rule of the Messiah, with whom Valle himself identified, as shown
already by Tishby. The reason for this positioning in his spatial
model of the metaphysical realm is the coastal location and naval
power of the city, as an image and reincarnation of the trading port
of Tyre near the Land of Israel, a city whose pleasures Valle compares
to those of the Elysian Fields (Campi Elisi). Based on this parallel,
one can deduce that Valle did not predict that the ‘‘sweetness’’ of
the negativity of Venice will be long-lasting, for as he writes in a
lengthy text devoted to Tyre, Ezekiel prophesized that in the redemp-
tive process God will remove the sweet aspects of the city, leaving only
the harsh, unsweetened judgments.
In political terms, the details of Valle’s interpretation of this
prophecy entail a transition from wise leaders (similar to the current
rulers of Venice) to proud and foolish ones. As a result of their errors,
rather than being a hub for maritime traders and dignitaries, Tyre will
be despoiled by a coalition of the very same nations who contributed
in the city’s success. The reason for this harsh judgment is that God is
especially rigorous with the powers that are closer to the Jews, just as
Tyre was close to the Holy Land.32
Here we see that as cities have souls, they can also be reincar-
nated, and I know of no parallel to such a concept in Jewish mystical
literature on the soul. Indeed, this text is cross-referenced by Valle in
his previous theoretical exposition on the soul of the city, and in an
adjacent discussion he writes that the individual soul resides in the
Hereafter in the supernal counterpart of the city in which it dwelled.
One should also mention the gendered dimension of Valle’s reading
of both Venice and Tyre, which rests on Valle’s general inclination to
describe nations in feminine terms. Even more than in Padua, prosti-
tution is described as rife in Venice, the ‘‘ruling harlot’’ of cities (just
as Tyre was ‘‘the whoring woman’’).33
In an adjacent discussion of north Italian cities, Valle bemoans
the lure of prostitution for the Jews of the town, who are ‘‘exiled in
this husk.’’ Venice, has ‘‘taken the secret of the evil kisses,’’ so that its
conduct is that of flattery, which forms part of his definition of the
14 Jonathan Garb

false nature of human politics, as we have seen in the beginning of our

case study. On the other hand, the foulmouthed and evil-hearted resi-
dents of Padua cannot speak peacefully to each other, their visage is
that of dogs, and thus they have taken ‘‘the secret of the bite.’’
The description of the Paduans as dogs may echo his description
elsewhere of the demonic nature of rebels with similar canine images,
in turn a possible allusion to the revolt of 1509 against Venice.34
Valle’s interest in history is predictable in the age of Gibbon, Vico,
and Voltaire, yet he retains metaphysical interpretations which were
already of decreasing popularity in his time and which would more
properly belong to the Baroque.35 In other words, despite the clear
signs of influence of extra-Jewish cultural trends in Valle’s writing, one
should not expect Jewish circles to be entirely synchronized with the
time-frame of their surroundings.
The image of the ‘‘Cortezan of Venice,’’ though actually more
relevant for slightly earlier periods, was a commonplace in European
discourse, as was the trope of flattery, prominent famously in a late
sixteenth century portrayal—The Merchant of Venice. However, it is
important to observe how Valle blends it with his attempt to preserve
a demonic image of even this relatively benign Gentile center. Valle’s
extensive discussions of gender and sexuality cannot detain us here,
yet their place in the overall economy of his discourse must be under-
lined. The constant employment of metaphysical models to describe
specific locations and structures in his own world, especially Italy,
is a trademark of Valle’s writing, and exemplifies the conflation of
other-worldly and this-worldly discourse in modern Kabbalah. I am
not familiar with any previous kabbalistic text which reveals such inter-
est in local history. One should also note the fierce demonization of
the Gentile world, described at times as animals.
Valle’s views on the latter can be best appreciated by recalling
that in a text cited above, he wrote of Rome and Constantinople as
the two centers of impurity which will be destroyed in the future. Of
course, at the time of his writing, the latter city had been in Muslim
hands for over 250 years, and re-named variously as Konstantiniye and
Stamboul. However, what was important for Valle was the traditional
dual structure of Esau and Ishmael as the main representatives of the
forces of impurity. In a later discussion devoted to the precise place of
Ishmael in this scheme, Valle opens with the animal imagery that we
have seen in our text: ‘‘the husk (qelipah) is considered only as an
animal, for holiness alone is the secret of Man, and Ishmael on the
mother’s side was of the root of the husk, and on the father’s side of
the root of holiness, so that he had an admixture of Man and beast.’’36
Ishmael’s median status accounts for Ishmael’s limited adherence
to holiness, as exemplified in a gendered manner through his
Modernization of Kabbalah 15

imperfect circumcision, which grants his descendants kingdom and

dominion in this world, or as Valle put it elsewhere, ‘‘all forms of
success’’ in worldly matters.37 One should recall that at the time of
the composition of Valle’s later works, in the mid-eighteenth century,
the Ottoman Empire, though no longer at the height of its power, was
not yet ‘‘the sick man’’ of Europe, being quite strong in economic
terms, recently defeating Russia and gaining Belgrade from Austria.
An alternative formulation offered there, echoing the text on the
soul of cities that we saw above, is that while Esau resides in the most
degraded realm of the external aspect of the world of souls, Ishmael
resides in its higher aspect and thus merits domination of the Land of
Israel, albeit in a state of infertility and ruin, as we have also seen
above. However, Ishmael, contaminated as he is with ‘‘filth,’’ has not
access to the interior aspect, which is reserved for the Jews. Valle
repeatedly wrote that true adherence to the divine is restricted to
the Jews, who are perfectly circumcised, so that the kingdom of the
uncircumcised is a sham.38 While similar locutions, on Esau and
Ishmael, and on the Gentiles in general, are frequent, especially in
the gendered mode, in various periods of kabbalistic writing (as
described at length by Elliot Wolfson), they intensified in the
modern period.39
Our case study demonstrates, to conclude, that kabbalistic dis-
course cannot be disengaged from the extra-Jewish context. One
such context is local—the Italian Illuminismo. Although this intellectual
renaissance took place mainly in the Neapolitan area, nonetheless a
northern thinker like Valle was clearly influenced by it, if only by way
of osmosis. However, some scholars have insisted that the Italian
Enlightenment must be viewed within a broader European context.40
Indeed, the circle of Luzatto can be seen as an international network,
as it included his close student R. Yekutiel Gordon of Vilna, whose
correspondence with Vienna provoked the famous polemic surround-
ing Luzzatto and his works, which in turn involved figures from vari-
ous centers in Europe. In this debate, Luzzatto was supported by
R. Raphael KimAi, the emissary from Safed. Luzatto’s later trajectory,
which included Germany, Holland and Palestine, also expressed the
international nature of his career, as did the eventual reception of his
works in Eastern Europe, which was facilitated by Gordon. It is also
interesting to note that this broader orientation, as expressed in the
connection with Gordon, was criticized by R. Isaiah Bass6an, whom
some, perhaps incorrectly, have described as Luzzatto’s teacher. 41
As Randal Collins has noted in his pioneering study of intellectual
networks, the development of such networks, or ‘‘philosophical
meta-territoriality,’’ was a characteristic of early modernity. However,
Collins, like many others, ignores Italy, as well as missing the specific
16 Jonathan Garb

intensification of trans-regional networks during what Franco Venturi

has termed the cosmopolitan century.42 Valle’s mystical experience,
such as his identification with the soul of King David (which I hope
to discuss at length elsewhere) cannot be divorced from his reflections
on politics and public life in general. Although I cannot describe
Valle’s mystical biography in detail here, it must be noted that it
was precisely in the formative early period (of collaboration with
Luzzatto), in which he intensively developed his mystical-messianic
self-perception, when he composed most of the political reflections
cited above.
Thus, alongside with the specific implications of such contextualiz-
ing moves for the study of modern Kabbalah (which are virtually
absent in existing studies of Luzzatto’s circle), Valle’s example
weighs in favor of the contextualistic approach to the study of mystical
life and experience, as developed mainly by Steven Katz.43 Valle’s
tendency to refer to specific local details is especially valuable when
compared to the anonymous medieval texts mentioned above, which
lend themselves far more easily to decontextualized readings. Indeed,
it is regrettable that despite the far greater historical and cultural
detail available for the modern period, most researchers writing on
modern Kabbalah, especially in Israel, tend to place their studies
within an exclusively Jewish framework.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

By way of conclusion, I wish to return to the state of research on

modern Jewish discourse and especially to the simple bibliographical
fact mentioned above: The majority of Jewish writings and specifically
kabbalistic writings are modern.44 If one peruses the Gershom
Scholem Library catalogue, which quite accurately reflects the state
of research up to 1997, one finds a striking inversion: Most primary
texts are modern, and most secondary texts deal with the pre-modern.
Gries has accurately placed this literary explosion within the broader
context of the history of Jewish writing, as opposed to the approach
of Scholem, who separated Kabbalah from other branches of Jewish
discourse, especially through his intense focus on Sabbateanism and
other antinomian phenomena.
Doing justice to the vast literature of modern Kabbalah thus
requires several convergent moves. Modern Kabbalah should be
studied as an independent area of investigation, which should not
be detached from earlier forms of Jewish mysticism, yet must be
appreciated within the broader contexts of modern Jewish discourse
Modernization of Kabbalah 17

and of modernity in general. One result of this program would be to

end the prevalent enclosure of Hasidism as a semi-autonomous
domain of study, a practice which has no real textual or historical
justification.
Understanding kabbalistic literature within the modern context
brings us to the broader question of the relationship between the
development of mystical expressions and the background of modern-
ization, which is often equated with secularization. This was indeed the
direction initiated by the historian Jacob Katz, who should be credited
with rebelling against the classic approach of Jewish studies by promot-
ing a sociological approach focused, predictably, on modernity.
Another highly significant move on the part of Katz was to conjoin
the study of Kabbalah and Halachah, as in his monograph bearing this
title. However, my sense is that we are entering a post-Katzian epoch
in scholarship, as signaled by a recent critical collection of essays on
his historiography.45
I wish to relate this critique to the topic at hand. Sorotzkin and
myself (especially in my recently submitted manuscript, Shamanic
Trance in Modern Kabbalah), have questioned the Katzian assumption
that Jewish modernity is essentially a process of secularization, insti-
gated by extra-Jewish influences, cultural and social. We have also
questioned the accompanying assumption that so-called Orthodox
discourse, or in other words most of modern Jewish writing, is a
response to secularization. The current Katzian orthodoxy actually
goes so far as to describe parts of modern Kabbalah as conservative,
reactionary and declining.46 In contradistinction, Sorotzkin and I have
followed the model of multiple modernities, developed by a giant of
Israeli social science, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt.47 I believe that this emer-
ging scholarly vision is also supported by Kahana’s work on radical
and mystical elements in the halachic works of R. Moshe Sofer,
supposedly a stalwart of Orthodox reaction.
Based on this model, one can see Jewish modernity as an inde-
pendent variant of modernization, which is not at all bound to follow
the general trajectory of modernity. Although of course there are
responsive elements in this process, these are far from exhausting
the creative aspects of modern Jewish discourse, which have also influ-
enced non-Jewish modern thought at times. The model of multiplicity
should be extended, so as to differentiate between various forms of
Jewish modernization. Thus, secularization is but one vector, while
mystical revitalization, as exemplified in the proliferation of modern
Kabbalah, is another.48 Furthermore, one should distinguish between
various regions and periods, rather than assuming an uniform pattern.
Actually, appreciating mystical modernity does not at all preclude rec-
ognition of extra-Jewish influences, which we have foregrounded here,
18 Jonathan Garb

as there were similar forms of mystical modernization in other cultural

worlds, including the above-mentioned religion of the heart, the varied
texts assembled by Michael De Certeau (whose analysis is essentially
similar to that offered here), various Russian developments and paral-
lel Sufi trends.49 To opt for a far-ranging comparison, the nineteenth
century Rimé movement in Tibet can likewise be understood as a
modern re-organization of mystical life.50 In these terms, the current
mystical revival should be seen not merely as a response to late cap-
italism, though this is of course a factor, nor as somehow skipping
centuries and going back to the Renaissance, nor again as merely
reflecting the Romantic stream in modern culture.51 Rather it can
be viewed, as in the Jewish context, in terms of the ongoing develop-
ment of mystical modernities, or to use a phrase current already in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Devotio moderna.52

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

NOTES

1. Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676

(Princeton, 1976).
2. For Scholem’s view on the last centuries of Kabbalah, see also
Boaz Huss, ‘‘Ask No Questions: Gershom Scholem and the Study of
Contemporary Jewish Mysticism,’’ Modern Judaism, Vol. 25, No. 2 (2005),
pp. 141–158.
3. There were a few notable exceptions, such as Isaiah Tishby’s
important but unfinished work on the circle of Luzzatto [Messianic
Mysticism: Moses Hayyim Luzzatto and the Padua School, trans. M. Hoffman
(Oxford, 2008)] and Rachel Elior’s study, ‘‘R. Nathan Adler and the
Controversy Surrounding him,’’ In Mysticism, Magic and Kabbalah in
Ashkenazi Judaism, (eds.), Karl E. Grözinger and Joseph Dan (Berlin,
1995), pp. 223–242.
4. See Moshe Idel, Kabbalah—New Perspectives (New Haven, 1988),
pp. 256–260.
5. Shaul Magid, From Metaphysics to Midrash: Myth, History and the
Interpretation of Scripture in Lurianic Kabbalah (Bloomington, 2008);
Haviva Pedaya, ‘‘Two Types of Ecstatic Experience in Hasidism,’’ Da’at,
No. 55 (2005), pp. 949–5 [Hebrew]; idem, ‘‘Some Notes on ‘The Latest
Phase’ ’’ in The Latest Phase: Essays on Hasidism by Gershom Scholem, (eds.),
David Assaf and Esther Liebes (Jerusalem, 2008) [Hebrew], pp. 25–29
(as well as below).
6. Scholem, Kabbalah (Jerusalem, 1974), pp. 74–86.
7. See Zeev Gries, The Book as an Agent of Culture, 1700–1900 (Tel
Aviv, 2002) [Hebrew]; Maoz Kahana, ‘‘The Chatam Sofer: A Decisor in his
Modernization of Kabbalah 19

Own Eyes,’’ Tarbiz_, No. 76 (2007), pp. 519–556 [Hebrew]; David

Sorotzkin, ‘‘The Super-Temporal Community in an Age of Change: The
Emergence of Conceptions of Time and the Collective as the Basis for the
Development of Jewish Orthodoxy in Early and Late Modern Europe,’’
PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007. [Hebrew]; Roni
Weinstein, Juvenile Sexuality, Kabbalah, and Catholic Religiosity among
Jewish Italian Communities. ‘‘Glory of Youth’’ by Pinhas Baruch b. Pelatya
Monselice (Ferrara, XVII Century (Leiden, 2009).
8. See Moshe Idel, ‘‘On Mobility, Individuals and Groups:
Prolegomenon for a Sociological Approach to Sixteenth-Century
Kabbalah,’’ Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts,
No. 3 (1998), pp. 145–173; Jonathan Garb, ‘‘The Cult of the Saints
in Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ Jewish Quarterly Review, No. 98 (2008),
pp. 203–229; Pedaya, ‘‘Two Types of Ecstatic Experience in Hasidism,"
pp. 95–98.
9. See Boaz Huss, ‘‘The Formation of Jewish Mysticism and Its Impact
on the Reception of Rabbi Abraham Abulafia in Contemporary
Kabbalah,’’ in Religion and its Other, (eds.), Heike Bock and others
(Frankfurt, 2008), pp. 142–162.
10. Adam Afterman, ‘‘Intimate Conjunction with God: The Concept of
‘Dvekut’ in the Early Kabbalah (Provence and Catalonia),’’ PhD diss., The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2008. [Hebrew]; Sandra Valabregue-
Perry, ‘‘Chapters on the Concept of Eyn Sof (Infinity) in Theosophical
Kabbalah: From Isaac the Blind to Isaac of Acre,’’ PhD diss., The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, 2008. [Hebrew]; and David Blumenthal,
Philosophic Mysticism: Studies in Rational Religion (Ramat Gan, 2006).
11. See for now Jonathan Garb, ‘‘On the Kabbalists of Prague,’’
Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts, No. 14 (2006),
pp. 347–383, [Hebrew] as well as below.
12. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York,
1941), p. 38; Moshe Hallamish, Kabbalah in Liturgy, Halakhah and
Customs (Ramat Gan, 2000). [Hebrew]; Meir Qadosh, ‘‘Kabbalistic Jewish
Laws in Responsa from the 13th Century to the Early Years of the 17th
Century,’’ Ph.D diss., Bar Ilan University. Ramat Gan, 2004. [Hebrew];
Komiko Yayama, ‘‘The Singing of the Baqqashot of the Aleppo Jewish
Tradition in Jerusalem,’’ PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
2003. [Hebrew]
13. See Elliot Wolfson, Open Secret: A Postmodern Reading of
Menachem Mendel Schneerson (New York, 2009); Jonathan Garb, The
Chosen will Become Herds: Studies in Twentieth Century Kabbalah
(New Haven, 2009).
14. See Boaz Huss, Like the Radiance of the Sky: Chapters in the Reception
History of the Zohar and the Construction of its Symbolic Value (Jerusalem,
2008). [Hebrew]; Daniel Abrams, ‘‘The Invention of the ‘Zohar’ as a
Book: On the Assumptions and Expectations of the Kabbalists and
Modern Scholars,’’ Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts,
No. 19 (2009), pp. 7–142.
20 Jonathan Garb

15. Elhanan Reiner, ‘‘Wealth, Social Position and the Study of Torah:
The Status of the Kloiz in Eastern European Society in the Early Modern
Period,’’ Zion, No. 58 (1993), pp. 287–328.
16. See Jonathan Garb, ‘‘Rabbi Kook and his Sources: From
Kabbalistic Historiosophy to National Mysticism,’’ in Studies in Modern
Religions, Religious Movements and the Babi-Bahai Faiths, (ed.), M. Sharon
(Leiden, 2004), pp. 77–96, as well as Raphael Shuchat, A World Hidden in
the Dimensions of Time: The Theory of Redemption in the Writings of the Vilna
Gaon: Its Sources and Influence on Later Generations (Ramat Gan, 2008).
[Hebrew]. This European modernization of Kabbalah was rejected by
many Sephardi kabbalists, as can be observed in texts ranging from
the attacks on Naftali Bakrakh in the seventeenth century to recent
polemics by the prominent R. Ya6akov Moshe Hillel (in his Shorshei
Ha-Yam series).
17. For the former, see, e.g., Moshe David Valle, Likutim, Vol. 1
(Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 64, 73–74, 85, 93.
18. Idem, Commentary on Psalms, Vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 2008), pp. 267–268.
See also idem, Mosi6a Hosim: Commentary on Samuel (Jerusalem, 1998),
p. 73.
19. Idem, Teshu6at ‘Olamim: Commentary on Isaiah (Jerusalem, 1999),
p. 36.
20. Idem, Or ‘Olam: Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 2001),
p. 199.
21. Idem, Likutim, Vol. 1, p. 113.
22. Idem, Mosi6a Hosim, pp. 70–74.
23. See, e.g., Till Wahnbaeck, Luxury and Public Happiness: Political
Economy in the Italian Enlightenment (Oxford, 2004), p. 57.
24. Valle, Likutim, Vol. 1, p. 442.
25. See Lars Magnusson, Mercantilism: The Shaping of an Economic
Language (London, 1994), pp. 199–200; Wahnbaeck, Luxury and Public
Happiness: Political Economy in the Italian Enlightenment; Ernesto
Screpanti and Stefano Zamagni, An Outline of the History of Economic
Thought, 2nd ed., trans. D. Field and L. Kirby (Oxford, 2005), pp. 58–
63; T. J. Hochstrasser, ‘‘Physiocracy and the Politics of Laissez-faire,’’ in
The Cambridge History of Political Thought, (eds.), Mark Goldie and Robert
Wokler (Cambridge, 2006), p. 439.
26. Valle, Teshu6at ‘Olamim, p. 26.
27. Compare to James Hillman, City and Soul (Dallas, 2006).
28. Valle, Teshu6at ‘Olamim, p. 31, and see also idem, Commentary on the
Five Scrolls (Jerusalem, 1988), p. 150.
29. Idem, Brit ‘Olam: Commentary on Exodus, Vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 2001),
pp. 226–227.
30. Idem, Likutim, Vol. 1, pp. 386–387. For theoretical and political
discussions of cruelty, see idem, Commentary on the Five Scrolls, pp. 89, 167,
181–182, 186–187.
31. Idem, Brit ‘Olam, Vol. 1, p. 265. See also idem, Commentary on the
Five Scrolls, p. 140.
Modernization of Kabbalah 21

32. Idem, Mamlekhet Kohanim: Commentary on Ezekiel (Jerusalem, 2008),

pp. 212–233. Compare to idem, Commentary on the Five Scrolls, p. 130.
33. Idem, Mamlekhet Kohanim, p. 215, and compare to p. 121.
34. Idem, Or ‘Olam, Vol. 1, pp. 200–201.
35. On the question of Luzzatto, the Baroque and the Englightenment,
see Israel Bartal, ‘‘On Periodization, Mysticism and Enlightenment – The
Case of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto,’’ Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, No. 6
(2007), pp. 201–214. On the central role of the supernatural in Baroque
political thought, see Peter Rietbergen, Power and Religion in Baroque
Rome: Barberini Cultural Policies (Leiden, 2006).
36. Moshe David Valle, Or ‘Olam, Vol. 1, pp. 225–226 and compare to
idem, Commentary on the Five Scrolls, pp. 94, 192, as well as the more
general statement in idem, Commentary on the Minor Prophets (Jerusalem,
2009), p. 489.
37. Idem, Or ‘Olam, p. 242.
38. See, e.g., ibid, pp. 233, 236, 240–241, and compare to idem,
Commentary on the Five Scrolls, pp. 192, 194.
39. See Elliot Wolfson, Venturing Beyond—Law and Morality in Kabbalistic
Mysticism (Oxford, 2006), especially pp. 129–165. On Luzzatto and gender,
see idem, ‘‘Tiqqun Ha-Sekhinah: Redemption and the Overcoming of
Gender Diomorphism in the Messianic Kabbalah of Moses Hayyim
Luzatto,’’ History of Religions, No. 36 (1997), pp. 289–332.
40. John Robertson, ‘‘The Enlightenment above National Context:
Political Economy in Eighteenth-Century Scotland and Naples,’’ The
Historical Journal, No. 40 (1997), pp. 667–697. Cf. Roy Porter and
Mikulás Teich, (eds.), The Enlightenment in National Context (Cambridge,
1981).
41. Mordekhai Chriqui, (ed.), Letters of Ramhal and his Generation
(Jerusalem, 2001), p. 39 (Letter No. 13).
42. Randal Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies (Cambridge, MA, 1998),
especially pp. 575–617; Franco Venturi, Italy and the Enlightenment: Studies
in a Cosmopolitan Century, trans. S. Corsi (New York, 1972). See also Paul
Korshin et al., (eds.), The Widening Circle: Essays on the Circulation of
Literature in eighteenth-century Europe (Philadelphia, 1976). Compare to
Haviva Pedaya, ‘‘The Ba6al Shem Tov’s Iggeret Ha-Kodesh: Towards
A Critique of the Textual Version and an Exploration of the Conver-
gence of the World Picture: Messianism, Revelation, Ecstasy and the
Sabbatean Background,’’ Zion, No. 70 (2005), p. 343. [Hebrew]
43. For a comprehensive review and evaluation of the positions on this
question, see Jesse Byron Hollenback, Mysticism: Experience, Response and
Empowerment (Philadelphia, 1996), pp. 2–17, 75–93.
44. One can get a sense of the scope of material in just one textual
domain—the Lurianic corpus and its later commentaries and rescissions—
through the recent massive project of Joseph Avivi, Kabbala Luriana
(Jerusalem, 2008), Vols 1–2. [Hebrew]
45. See Israel Bartal and Shmuel Feiner, (eds.), Historiography
Reappraised: New Views of Jacob Katz’s Oeuvre (Jerusalem, 2008). [Hebrew]
22 Jonathan Garb

46. See, e.g., Mendel Piekraz, Between Ideology and Reality: Humility,
Ayin, Self-Negation and Devekut in Hasidic Thought (Jerusalem, 1994).
[Hebrew], pp. 142, 147.
47. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Comparative Civilizations and Multiple
Modernities (Leiden, 2003).
48. See Philip Wexler, Mystical Interactions: Sociology, Jewish Mysticism
and Education (Los Angeles, 2007), pp. 87–90.
49. Michel de Certeau, The Mystic Fable, Volume 1: The Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries, trans. Michael Smith (Chicago, 1992).
50. See Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetian
Societies (Washington, DC, 1993), especially pp. 536–531.
51. See, e.g., Jeremy Carrette and Richard King, Selling Spirituality: The
Silent Takeover of Religion (London, 2005); Walter Hanegraaff, New Age
Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought
(Albany, 1998); and Paul Heelas, Spiritualities of Life: New Age
Romanticism and Consumptive Capitalism (Oxford, 2008), pp. 25–46.
52. Hein Blommestijn, Charles Caspers and Rijcklof Hofman, (eds.),
Spirituality Renewed: Studies on Significant Representatives of the Modern
Devotion, (Leuven, 2003).