Professor Moshe Idel on Jewish Mysticism and Philosophy

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in 18Forty’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

Professor Moshe Idel, Professor Emeritus at Hebrew University, senior lecturer at the Hartman Institute, and really one of the most impressive scholars in the area of Jewish mysticism today. Thank you so much for joining us. So what would you say is Jewish mysticism? Jewish mysticism is one form of Judaism that emerged rather early, meaning at the end of the Second Temple. And it took different forms, so it’s very difficult to define in a simple way, Jewish mysticism, because it was transformed many times in different environments up to modern Chasidut [Hasidism] and various forms of Kabbala. So we should pay attention to each school, in each period, which is rather different from the others. In a simple way, I would say that it’s a way of accelerating Jewish life, but accelerating in different ways, in different periods. So what made you so interested in this area? What made you interested in this school of thought and Jewish mysticism? It’s difficult to answer the question. I started as someone who was supposed to write a PhD in Jewish philosophy, and it doesn’t matter how, I became involved in the manuscripts of Kabbala. So it was a lot of curiosity to see such a vast camp of unknown material. And that’s what attracted my curiosity. Simply, I have seen a lot of unknown material, different, from various periods. And it was a matter of curiosity more than anything else. So you followed your curiosity when you were exposed to the material. Yes. And I studied a lot of manuscripts, not just for writing a PhD but

Jump to a moment

1. 0:00Professor Moshe Idel, Professor Emeritus at Hebrew University, senior lecturer at the Hartman Institute, and really…
2. 3:31curiosity to want to go deeper – does it not interest you to want to think…
3. 6:49bringing down. How do you relate to it? Abulafia doesn’t speak too much about prayer because…
4. 10:08And should Judaism be hard or easy in the mystical thought? Should it be something difficult…
5. 13:32negative. What is a Mashiach [Messiah]? What’s going to happen when Mashiach, when the Messiah comes…
6. 16:44difference. The difference is that once, I’m thinking about one day, I don’t speak about Germans,…
7. 20:16divine name, also in Hinduism. So that’s to use something given but in a new way.…
8. 23:24this. To say complete is a little bit exaggerated. But I attempt nevertheless to judge in…
9. 26:28about what I don’t know. Not only in Kabbala, but Kabbala for sure, but also in…
10. 30:13So, that’s very important to investigate what happened there. What was his magic, how his magic…

Every second of this shiur plays inside FilteredTube — a filtered YouTube library where each video was reviewed against one written standard before it could appear. No ads, no comments, no autoplay into anything unapproved.