Kabbalistic Revolution

HARTLEY LACHTER is the Phillip and Muriel Berman Professor of Jewish Studies and director of the Berman Center for Jewish Studies at Lehigh University.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Kabbalistic Writing in Late Thirteenth-Century Castile1 Masters of Secrets: Claiming Power with Concealed Knowledge2 Secrets of the Cosmos: Creating a Kabbalistic Universe3 Secrets of the Self: Kabbalistic Anthropology and Divine Mystery4 Jewish Bodies and Divine Power: Theurgy and Jewish Law5 Prayer Above and Below: Kabbalistic Constructions of the Power of Jewish WorshipConclusionPostscript-Cultural Logics: Kabbalah, Then and NowNotesBilbiographyIndex

"This book is an exceptionally fresh and significant contribution. It is an important corrective to the tendency to sublimate social history to the history of ideas." - Marc Michael Epstein (Vassar College) "This book is an exceptionally fresh and significant contribution. It is an important corrective to the tendency to sublimate social history to the history of ideas." - Marc Michael Epstein (Vassar College) "Lachter's work is a compelling and important study of the manner in which Kabbalah responded to political and cultural pressures in Castile at a time of striking proliferation of kabbalistic literature." - Jonathan Dauber (professor of Jewish mysticism, Yeshiva University) "Lachter's work is a compelling and important study of the manner in which Kabbalah responded to political and cultural pressures in Castile at a time of striking proliferation of kabbalistic literature." - Jonathan Dauber (professor of Jewish mysticism, Yeshiva University) "A worthwhile and edifying contribution to contemporary scholarship on medieval Jewish mysticism." (H-Judaic) "A worthwhile and edifying contribution to contemporary scholarship on medieval Jewish mysticism." (H-Judaic) "Lachter succeeds admirably in moving scholarship forward." (AJS Review) "Lachter succeeds admirably in moving scholarship forward." (AJS Review)