Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos ─ Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship

Isaac Luria (1534-1572) is one of the most extraordinary and influential mystical figures in the history of Judaism, a visionary teacher who helped shape the course of nearly all subsequent Jewish mysticism. Though he lived only briefly in the Galilean city of Safed, his name became synonymous with the great renaissance of mystical community that took place there in the sixteenth century. Luria's powerful religious imagination and personal charisma aroused the most fervent enthusiasm, and he became the dynamic center of a mystical fellowship of followers. Given his importance, it is remarkable that this is the first scholarly work on him in English.
Most studies of Lurianic Kabbalah focus on Luria's mythic and speculative ideas. The central premise of this book is that Lurianic Kabbalah was first and foremost a lived and living phenomenon, the actual social world of a historically observable community of kabbalists. Thus, it focuses on Luria the person and his relationship to his disciples.
In addition to the social dimensions of the Lurianic community, the author also explores in detail the fascinating and complex ritual culture that Luria fashioned. Luria provided his disciples with individualized penitential instructions to enable them to purify their souls and prepare themselves for various types of contemplative activity. He also assigned meditative intentions to accompany prayer and the performance of religious precepts, and devised special prostrations at the graves of deceased teachers as a means of communing with the departed. Luria believed that the mystical devotions of his small circle of disciples could bring about an end to exiled existence at every level of being and effect the redemption of the whole cosmos.

Lawrence Fine is Irene Kaplan Leiwant Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religion at Mount Holyoke College.