Prof. Daniel Abrams
My research has focused on Jewish mysticism in Europe in the middle ages, in Ashkenaz, Provence, Gerona and Castile. I have published a number of editions of texts from the Early Kabbalah and a series of articles on divine hypostases and angelic figures, tracing traditions from rabbinic times through the Spanish Expulsion. I have published a number of studies on the meanings of the masculine and feminine in kabbalistic literature and a book that discusses for the first time the positive description of the subjective and embodied experience of the divine female body in kabbalistic literature. I have published a number of studies on the Zohar showing that it was not composed as a book but rather was edited as such at a much later date. More recently, I published a book of textual scholarship and methodologies of kabbalistic research in light of the wide-spread phenomenon of textual fluidity in Kabbalah and the existence of multiple versions with which that the editor and academic interpreter of these texts works. Since 1996 I have served as editor of ‘Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts’.
Courses
03156-01 A mystical classic of the Kabbalah: The Zohar
The course will offer an overview of kabbalistic thought and the rise of kabbalistic literary production in the thirteenth century, culminating with the publication of the Zohar in the last decades of the thirteenth century. The course will review the questions and directions that have guided modern scholarship and from there we will turn to read together from the recently completed annotated translation of the Zohar into English published by Stanford University. The course will begin with an overview of kabbalistic thought and the rise of kabbalistic literary production in the thirteenth century, culminating with the publication of the Zohar in the last decades of the thirteenth century. The course will review the questions and directions that have guided modern scholarship and from there we will turn to read together from the recently completed annotated translation of the Zohar into English published by Stanford University.
Last Updated Date : 09/09/2025
