The biblical episode of the encounter between Moses and the Pharaoh turned out to be a matrix of speculations in Judaism about the messianic drama. Nahmanides contributed to it in his dispute with Paulus Christianus by assuming that the Messiah will go to the Pope as part of the messianic scenario. Some few decades later, the Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia (1240—c.1292) reports about his intention to meet the Pope in 1280. Scholars differed as to what was the purpose of this intention. The present study considers a series of passages written by the Kabbalist, which include inclusive language insofar as he was addressing not only the Jews but also other religions, in order to elucidate the succinct sentence found in one of his writings. In my opinion, those passages are related to his inclusive vision of the meaning of Yahadut, referring to religious persons who acknowledge the centrality of the divine name, and consequentially, Abulafia was concerned with some form of religious dialogue with the Pope. This more open tone is found in the claim that as a Messiah, Abulafia preached to the Gentiles and discussed esoteric topics with a Christian.

Abstract This essay examines Sefer Razi’el ha-Mal’akh, a complex work reflecting diverse textual sources and literary layers, as a crucial channel for transmitting early esoteric traditions in Ashkenazi religious culture. It emphasizes the »nominal register« related to the exegesis and uses of divine names as a key part of the Ashkenazi esoteric tradition. The popularity of Sefer Razi’el ha-Mal’akh in Ashkenaz, especially during the Hasidic renaissance, highlights the essential role of practical and magical mentality developed in Ashkenazi culture and traditions. Additionally, a Romanian translation of Sefer Razi’el ha-Mal’akh by Menachem Mendel Stein, who engaged in occult practices during the World War II, showcases the book’s varied reception and long durée.

In kabbalistic writings equality between the male and female divine entities recurs in dozens of instances and this is also the case in Safedian forms of Kabbalah. However, there is an additional theme to equality, that is shared by the two main and extensive literary corpora, that of Moses Cordovero and the much later texts of his former disciple, that of R. Hayyim Vital: the irreducibility of the female principle to the male one during the sexual encounter. The present study explores the passages reflecting the details of this similarity, as well as the theurgical impact of the feminine soul, in the wider context of the relationship between some important ideas shared by those distinct kabbalistic writings.

This essay examines Sefer Razi'el ha-Mal'akh, a complex work reflecting diverse textual sources and literary layers, as a crucial channel for transmitting early esoteric traditions in Ashkenazi religious culture. It emphasizes the >> nominal register << related to the exegesis and uses of divine names as a key part of the Ashkenazi esoteric tradition. The popularity of Sefer Razi'el ha-Mal'akh in Ashkenaz, especially during the Hasidic renaissance, highlights the essential role of practical and magical mentality developed in Ashkenazi culture and traditions. Additionally, a Romanian translation of Sefer Razi'el ha-Mal'akh by Menachem Mendel Stein, who engaged in occult practices during the World War II, showcases the book's varied reception and long dur & eacute;e.

The present study presents and discusses two Hebrew versions of the myth of fallen angels previously unknown to modern scholarship. Their protagonists are Shemhaza’el and ‘Azza, and the mythical drama whose actors they are takes place at the beginning of the process of creation. Those versions are preserved in two late thirteenth-century books, one written in Northern France and the other in Catalunia. Those versions are quoted as ’Aggadah and, respectively, as Midrash; they do not depend on each other but reflect an earlier Rabbinic myth that developed in two different directions. The working hypothesis of this article assumes that these versions preserved material that entered the Ashkenazi (Germano-French) center of Jewish culture as part of a stream of traditions which also preserved other, known and unknown, versions of the myth of the fallen angels. The above results, together with other historical reconsiderations mentioned in this study, call into question and invite a profound revision of recent theories of “back borrowing” from Muslim and Christian sources of material concerning this myth among most Jewish authors.

Abstract This chapter addresses the various ideas that the Kabbalists of Safed held about the Mishnah as revealed in the vast Kabbalistic literature generated by Joseph Karo, Moses Cordovero, and Hayyim Vital. These consist of six main features. The first three are mystical and spiritual, involving the use of the Mishnah as a short trigger for achieving mystical experiences, the personified appearance of the Mishnah in the revelations of Joseph Karo’s Maggid meisharim, the search for the tombs of ancient Mishnaic teachers, the Tannaim in the surroundings of Safed, and the attempts to communicate with their souls. The other three are historical and analytical, covering the status of Simeon bar Yohai as a Mishnaic figure and the alleged author of the Zohar; Joseph Ashkenazi’scritical analysis of the text of the Mishnah; and lastly the image of the Mishnaic period as an ideal stage among the Safedian Kabbalists.

At the heart of the analyzes proposed by Moshe Idel is the change of perspective that we find in the work of Ioan P. Coulianu in the last stage of his creation. Coulianu leaves the field of historical-philological approach of religious phenomena to explain the development of religions from a fractal perspective, as an actualization of potentials found from the very beginning, which, combined in different ways, produce different results. Idel finds that the sharp methodological shift that Coulianu has been carrying out since 1986, a stage that also coincides with the one after the death of Mircea Eliade, has been interpreted by two of the most important Romanian intellectuals. Moshe Idel considers that their explanations do not address the specificity of the new approach as formulated by Couliano himself. They appear, on the one hand, as an overly simplistic explanation of a vision of great complexity reduced to a form of psychological complex, and on the other hand, the reduction to a theological perspective that appeals to the intervention of a transcendental power. Idel gives a nuanced explanation of this methodological turn, while suggesting that in order to better understand what is happening in the last stage work, it would be better to talk about the "American Couliano" instead of the "last Couliano".

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The present study surveys a series of kabbalistic antecedents of a simile for the presence of the roots of evil in the pre-emanationalist stage, as formulated in Lurianic Kabbalah. What has been conceived by scholars as a cathartic explanation characteristic of Lurianism, and even an esoteric aspect of this Kabbalah, turns to be quite an exoteric teaching shared by several kabbalists since the 13th century.

The study surveys the variety of concepts of time in Judaism, and especially in Kabbalah, and addresses in more detail the concept of a super-temporal experience. While traditional forms of Judaism operated with a variety of concepts of time, the theosophical Kabbalists reified time by identifying terms of time with a various sefirotic powers. On the other hand, the ecstatic Kabbalah has been informed by Greek concepts that conceived time as related to movement and characteristic of the corporeal world, and pursued intellectually understood experiences that transcend time. This approach is similar to and in my opinion also informed the better known Hasidic concept of "higher than time."