This volume addresses the complex topic of the preeminent status of the divine feminine power, to be referred also as Female, within the theosophical structures of many important Kabbalists, Sabbatean believers, and Hasidic masters.This privileged status is part of a much broader vision of the Female as stemming from a very high root within the divine world.
Author(s): Moshe Idel
Series: Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts
Publisher: De Gruyter
Year: 2018
Language: Hebrew, English
Pages: 251
Preface......Page 8
Contents......Page 10
1. Introduction – Theosophical Kabbalah: Complexity and Dynamism......Page 12
2. Reification and the Ontological Status of Thought and Action in Early Kabbalah......Page 39
3. The Gender Addition to “Action”......Page 46
4. On the Elevated Status of the Divine Feminine in Theosophical Kabbalah......Page 52
5. The Father, the Head, and the Daughter......Page 58
6. Sefer Ma‘arekhet ha-’Elohut and its Reverberations......Page 78
7. R. Moshe Cordovero and R. Shlomo ha-Levi Alqabetz......Page 88
8. R. Isaac Luria Ashkenazi, His Kabbalist and Sabbatean Followers......Page 114
9. R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto: 1707–1746......Page 146
10. The Privileged Female in Some Later Kabbalists in Ashkenaz......Page 159
11. Some Hasidic Examples of the Three-Phases Gender Theory......Page 170
12. Some Wider Terminological Considerations......Page 183
13. Concluding Remarks......Page 196
Primary Sources......Page 232
Bibliography......Page 236
Name Index......Page 256
Subject Index......Page 259
