The Many Faces of Kabbalah

Abstract

Along with such scholars as Yehuda Liebes and Elliot Wolfson, Professor Moshe Idel of the Hebrew University has helped reconfigure the field of Jewish mysticism. Indeed, a person who returned to the scholarly study of kabbalah after a twenty year hiatus would barely recognize the field. Where once Gershom Scholem loomed magisterially over the terrain, the reader now confronts a profusion of skilled authors and a growing corpus of published primary and secondary sources. Enriching (some would say, complicating) matters further, is the fluid nature of the field. Over recent years a debate has been taking shape over the nature of Jewish mysticism, the sources worthy of careful study, the respective merits of historical versus phenomenological inquiry and, digging even deeper, the very nature of Judaism. No single work has been more central to that debate?has been richer, more provocative, or more hotly contested?than Idel's KabbalahA