Pinchas Giller offers a wide-ranging overview of the most influential school of kabbalah in modernity, the Jerusalem kabbalists of the Beit El Yeshivah. The school is associated with the writings and personality of a charismatic Yemenite Rabbi, Shalom Shar'abi. Shar'abi's activity overwhelmed the Jerusalem Kabbalah of the eighteenth-century, and his acolytes are the most active mystics in contemporary Middle Eastern Jewry to this day. Today, this meditative tradition
is rising in popularity in Jerusalem, New York, and Los Angeles, both among traditional Beit El kabbalists and memebers of the notorious Kabbalah Learning Centers. After providing the historical setting, Giller examines the characteristic mystical practices of the Beit El School. The dominant
practice is that of ritual prayer with mystical "intentions", or kavvanot. The kavvanot themselves are the product of thousands of years of development, and incorporate many traditions and bodies of lore. Giller examines the archaeology of the kavvanot literature, the principle of the sacred names that make up the majority of kavvanot, the development of particular rituals, and the innovative mystical and devotional practices of the Beit El kabbalists to this day. The first book in the English
language to address the character and spread of jewish mysticism through the Middle East in early modernity, it will be a guide post for further study of this vast topic.
- ISBN10 6611162240
- ISBN13 9786611162245
- Publish Date 19 January 2008 (first published 1 January 2008)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 4 January 2012
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Oxford University Press
- Format eBook
- Pages 216
- Language English