Dr. Assaf Tamari
27 teaching hours, equivalent to 3 ECTS

Assaf Tamari is a research fellow at the Polonsky Academy for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. He is an historian of the Kabbalah, focusing on the early Modern eastern Mediterranean. Currently his studies are devoted to the relations between religious and scientific discourses, especially Kabbalah and Medicine, and their implications on notions of subjectivity, action and sovereignty. In addition, He works on issues concerning the critique of secularism and Jewish political thought.

Dr. Assaf Tamari

The course will investigate the major concepts and the historical development of Kabbalah. We will examine principal Kabbalistic themes, such as theosophy, theurgy, the problem of evil and the structure of the human psyche, and discuss the question of the origin of Kabbalah, as well as the major movements and central texts of late medieval and early modern Kabbalah, including the Bahir, Abraham Abulafia, the Zohar and Lurianic Kabbalah. The course will include a joint “hevruta” reading of primary Kabbalistic texts, from Zohar Parashat Noah.