The Privileged Divine Feminine in Kabbalah

Description

This volume addresses the complex topic of the preeminent status of the divine feminine power, to be referred also as Female, within the theosophical structures of many important Kabbalists, Sabbatean believers, and Hasidic masters.This privileged status is part of a much broader vision of the Female as stemming from a very high root within the divine world. Preface Contents 1. Introduction – Theosophical Kabbalah: Complexity and Dynamism 2. Reification and the Ontological Status of Thought and Action in Early Kabbalah 3. The Gender Addition to “Action” 4. On the Elevated Status of the Divine Feminine in Theosophical Kabbalah 5. The Father, the Head, and the Daughter 6. Sefer Ma‘arekhet ha-’Elohut and its Reverberations 7. R. Moshe Cordovero and R. Shlomo ha-Levi Alqabetz 8. R. Isaac Luria Ashkenazi, His Kabbalist and Sabbatean Followers 9. R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto: 1707–1746 10. The Privileged Female in Some Later Kabbalists in Ashkenaz 11. Some Hasidic Examples of the Three-Phases Gender Theory 12. Some Wider Terminological Considerations 13. Concluding Remarks Primary Sources Bibliography Name Index Subject Index