How did Judaism’s mystical tradition of kabbalah transcend its medieval provenience and affirm its religious legitimacy in the modern era? How did it transition from being the preserve of a select but significant few to becoming accessible to nonelites? New monographs by Andrea Gondos (Freie Universität Berlin) and Ira Robinson (Concordia University), both associated with the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies in Montreal, pledge to shed light on kabbalah’s stamina.

In Kabbalah in Print, Gondos dilates on the professional middlemen – grammarians, preachers, scribes, and teachers – who mediated between the mystics and the masses and “continued to fill an educational function within society but in contrast to the elites… turned to imparting more the practical and less the theoretical dimensions of knowledge.” 

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