"Kabbalah, Isaac Luria and the Connection to Israel"

14/02/2011
Religion and Politics Conference, Canberra, 14 Feb

Dr. Orna Triguboff, Kabbalah scholar, will be giving a presentation on:

"Kabbalah, Isaac Luria and the Connection to Israel"

The second half of the Sixteenth Century saw a flourishing of Kabbalistic teaching and creativity in the Galilee city of Tsfat. The main Kabbalist of this period was Rabbi Isaac Luria, also known as ‘The Ari’. This was a unique period, not only in terms of the proliferation of written material on the Kabbalah, but also innovation of Kabbalistic practice including ritual and social networking. This period was also special because it was occuring in the Land of Israel, in one of the four holy cities.

Various factors converged to allow this to take place. The Jews who had lived in the Land of Israel for centuries – the Mustarabim - were joined in Tsfat by a movement of Jews from different parts of the world. A sizeable proportion of immigrants were descendants from those expelled from Spain or were from families of Conversos; others came from Germany and France. This added to the unique character of the community in Tsfat.

For the first time, the Kabbalah was being taught openly and with utopian ambitions. There was a proliferation of kabbalistic fellowships – each group focused around a different teacher and different practices. The political and social milieu afforded this openness of mystical practice and encouraged a high level of creativity. Jews from different parts of the world united to express a new form of community. Many of their new rituals, such as Kabbalat Shabbat, are still practiced by Jews today. And the ideas developed in Tsfat, such as Tikun olam – ‘repairing the world’, are key concepts in the Jewish psyche of the 21st Century, albeit in a modified fashion.

Information from censuses taken by the Turkish Empire, reveal fascinating facts about the composition of the population in the area.

Isaac Luria and his circle of students exemplify this period in Tsfat, where mysticism, creativity and hope coloured the landscape of the Galilee.