What we've just done is to speak about the first big wave of Kabbalah, 12th, 13th, 14th century.

Now, of course, I said they're early sources for Kabbalah, that's what I call it pre-modern Kabbalah, not medieval Kabbalah. It didn't start in the middle ages. But it took it's form in what people call the middle ages. And I won't go now into how accurate the term Middle Ages is, of course. Just to remind that people in the Middle Ages didn't think themselves, didn't know they were in the Middle Ages. They didn't know there would be another period after them. They didn't think of themselves in those terms. I'm not sure how wise it is to use this term at all, Medieval, Middle Ages, etc. But let's leave it at that because we're really focusing on the modern period. And now I'm going to speak about the second wave of Kabbalah, which is very fascinating because, this is when Kabbalah really comes into its own. It's not just a sort of semi-esoteric movement in, moving out gradually from elite circles. It becomes something much more powerful. In the 16th century, there were several centers geographically, in which Kabbalah greatly developed and one of them was in North Africa. I'm just sort of going from west to east, because they spread out from Spain, because the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and afterwards Portugal later, just about the time of discovery of America, maybe with some subtle connection there which I won't go into, just sort of, food for thought. And, so north Africa and, Italy and, the area of what's today Turkey, Greece, after it became the Ottoman Empire. And, a bit northwards also, all the way up into Germany. But most importantly for our purposes, in terms of history of 16th century Kabbalah, the land of Israel, Palestine, which then came under the Ottoman Empire, at the beginning of the 16th century.

First Jerusalem, my city, and actually my first work in the field was under the Kabbalists of Jerusalem. And afterwards, Galilee, home where, Jesus did most of his activity, even though he was born in Bethelahem, near Jerusalem. And in Galilee, especially in the city of Safed, quite high up in the mountains, relatively speaking, it's not the mountains of Switzerland, but the mountains relative to Israel or Safed, a very interesting place, a very interesting atmosphere, somewhat mystical atmosphere. So in Safed, 16th century, we have the emergence of Kabbalah as more of a social movement, because from the 16th century onwards, this is my opinion, some people would say it's before, but I think from the 16th century onwards, Kabbalists get organized in a different way. We're not speaking about two, three people working together, studying together individual people writing. We're speaking about circles of 10, 20 people and these circles especially form, also in Jerusalem but especially in Safed, in Galilee. We're drawn to it. We're drawn to mystical charismatic figures. People of powerful, mystical, magical attainments, according to the belief of the followers at least, and these figures. Develop random in clusters of Kabbalists working together from all over the Mediterranean. They were coming from Spain originally, coming from North Africa, coming from Turkey, all clustered and converging on Safed in the second part of, towards, we go into the second part of the 16th century. And there are two very important figures: one is Rabbi, Moshe Cordevero, C-O-R-D-E, sorry, C-O-R-D-O-V-E-R-O, Moshe Cordevero, the other is Isaac Luria, L-U-R-I-A. Usually called the ARI. Which is an acronym in Hebrew for the divine Rabbi Isaac, so we'll call him the ARI from now on, just

to make things short and simple. And also to be somewhat more in, in tune with the traditional Kabbalistic vocabulary. So, these two figures, Cordovero and the ARI, Luria, work one after another. That is, Luria gets going after Cordovero dies. And they establish the two main circles. There were other Kabbalists operaing in Safed obviously. One of them is the important figure in Jewish law called Joseph Karo, K-A-R-O. However, the important figure that we have is the one who develops the circle. So, it's first Moshe Cordovero, and then ARI. They develop circles of Kabbalists to study together, work as a fellowship together. And even in the case of ARI, they do up a contract. It's so organized, it's so formulated that they actually have a contract, which describes the duties, the obligations and the, the privileges, one could say, of ve, members of a circle. Now they really revolutionized Kabbalah in two ways. Moshe Cordovero systemizes Kabbalah. He takes all of his traditions from all over the Mediterranean. Big, confusion, really, and organizes them. He's a great organizer, very methodical. Isaac Luria, the ARI, is something else. He works based on revelations that he experienced from various, figures, internal figures, one could call it, and this is very psychological, of course. He works and he develops a new system of Kabbalah. Of course, it has debts to other earlier sources. To [UNKNOWN], to the Kabal of Jersulalem. To all kinds of things, North Africa. However, he developed something which is very, perceived at least as a great innovation. Now, how does this relate to psychology? First of all very format of a circle is a social psychology. Part of what people like the ARI do is they look at the souls of their followers, and they see, are they suitable to be in a group, in terms of his soul?

They look deep into the people and see, are they suitable to be part of a group? A bit like what Freud did with his circle through psychoanalysis, a bit like that. And the diagnosis of a soul, that's what the ARI was. He was a soul, dia-, diagnostician. Bit like a fellow with an accent. The ARI also give each one of these students a Tikkun, which is important in Kabbalah. Tikkun means to repair, to correct, to fix his soul. I am saying his because we have to remember a very important fact. That Eliot Wolfson keeps reminding us and its very true. That Kabbalah was written for men, by men. We do not have a single book, book, maybe a page here or there, yes, but we don't, we do not have a single book by a female Kabbalist. The audience is men. The books were written by men. And, to some extent, one could say about the female soul about the male soul from the male perspective. And people sometimes like to ignore this because it's not so comfortable, so where does, cause if people want to feel the Kabbalah as the truth, how does this fit in with modern conceptions of gender? But as academics we're not concerned with that, we're concerned of understanding the world of the Kabbalists on it's own terms. And if they have things there which are problematic from the modern point of view, we'll see more of them as we go along. Okay, that's part of the deal. We want to explore their world, understand it. We're not here to judge it. We're not here to say they were good or bad. Or we agree with them or not. We're just here to understand what their ideas are about. So, that's why I keep on using the term, speaking about, his, his et cetera because we're speaking about men. And one should also say, heterosexual men. And it's true what Elliot says, Elliot

Wolfson, my friend, that, there are homosocial relationships between Kabbalists, because when people work together so closely in a circle, we know today from gender studies, we know from masculinity studies, that homosocial connections can form. There are descriptions of it. That's true. Even before Kabbalah. However, the ideal is heterosexual, and that's also something that we're not here to judge, we're not here to agree with or disagree with. That traditional Jewish approach, eh, which maybe now is changing. But the traditional Jewish approach from the book of Leviticus is, condemnatory towards homosexuality. And lesbianism, of course, doesn't even factor in Kabbalahlistic discussions very much. Here and there, perhaps. But it's not a, a very strong social category. It's something which is more or less ignored most of the time. Now, why do I speak so much about gender? Because part of what the Kabbalahist of Safed did, just like early Kabbalists, but even more so to some extent, is to really rethink questions of gender. And to speak about the male and female parts of the soul. And its part of a project, again, from a male perspective, one has to bear that in mind. Now, what we have here is a group of people working as I said very closely together, in a circle. And people like Walid diagnose them for students souls giving them corrections, tikkun, to fix their souls, to fix their sins with flaws that people maybe carry with them from previous incarnations even. And what we have here is a kind of social psychology. Now, when does social psychology start? If psychoanalysis starts in the 20th century, century or earlier 20th century, Kabbalah scholarship, modern Kabbalah scholarship, Scholem, Samowitz, predecessors in Germany, also

begins there to a large extent. We have a third figure from the same milieu, from early 20th century central Europe, Max Weber, he begins social psychology. There were other people involved but I want to focus on him. Becomes he really comes from the same milieu, from the same background, the same period and place. So, here we're speaking about Kabbalah becoming a social psychological movement. And this is why Kabbalah is beginning to interest people who are working in social psychology, just like Kabbalah is interesting people who are working in general psychology, also it's capturing the interest of people in social psychology like my friend and collaborate in many ways, Philip Vexler. That are working on developing Kabbalistic social psychology like in his recent book Mystical Sociology. So, in the 16th century, the Kabbalah begins to develop its social psychology. We have these circles of Kabbalists focused on a charismatic figure. We have close social interactions between the members of the group and between the members of the group and the leader of the group. And this is a big change. Now, 16th century Kabbalah greatly develops the theory of reincarnation and actually does, brings it to it's peak and from then on it's not really developed very much because it's more or less done what there is to do on reincarnation. And to identify all the reincarnations of the people inside the circle we've got a student of the ARI writes a whole book, The Gates of Reincarnations, describing all of the reincarnations of himself, and his teacher, and all kinds of other people. So, one shouldn't be, this is also one of the problems today, one shouldn't, it's important subject, reincarnation, but one shouldn't be, too focused on it. Because a big part of what the, Kabbalists of Safed do, it's part of also the social psychology, is to describe the soul, the heart.

To describe the human psyche. And I want to speak about two ideas from this period. Just so to give a taste. Cause it's not, we moving ahead in time we going to end up pretty soon in the 20th century. But I want to give two ideas which relate to this big second wave of Kabbalah in the 16th century. One of them is the idea, and we've spoke about the Torah, how important the Torah is for Kabbalists. When a Kabbalahist according to the, the Safedian writers, and writers of Jerusalem also by the way, when we read the text people are finding the soul inside the texts. Each person interprets the texts according to their own soul. So we have 600,000 main souls in the Jewish people and later we'll speak why the focus is on the Jewish people. It's another somewhat disturbing issue, from the modern point of view, from a contemporary point of view. And when the Kabbalists are focusing on the soul, they're interpreting the text according to the soul. So, there's 600,000 main souls and 600,000 interpretations, main interpretations of the Torah. Each person interprets the Torah according to their own soul. So, it's very physiological view of what we call Hermeneutics, of how to read the text at all. Very Freudian in that sense, but when we read something post-Freudian, when we read something, when we read Freud, even, we read in our souls, in a way. So, that's one very big idea. Now, I want to speak about another central idea, which is developed in Lurianic Kabbalah, in the Kabbalah of ARI. Also earlier, in the [INAUDIBLE], but it's really very sophisticated in the Kabbalah, over in the sixteenth century Safed. The idea of the Plural Psyche, that's a book by, Jungian psychologists, Andrew Samuels. The psyche is not one and this is

something which really, here, Kabbalah predates modern psychoanalysis, which speaks about Freud speaks about the ego and the id and the superego, free parts, and then Jung makes it much more complex, and then he speaks about all kinds of parts, the anima, and the animo, and the shadow, and the old man, and the young person, the old man, the young man, the, the and so on and so forth, all kinds of archetypes put internal parts. And then the post-Yungians take it much further and say James Hillman, my late friend, said falling apart, psyche really, splinters into so many parts, so many internal figures. The Kabbalists of Safed really developed this. We speak about many parts of the soul that all the time are getting swept around, reincarnated, bits and pieces of a soul are, even in one's own lifetime, one can certainly borrow a piece of soul from somebody from a previous generation. The psyche becomes plural, it becomes fragmented in a way. There's all kinds of sparks of souls hidden all over the place. It could be hidden in a piece of bread, even. You can do the Tikkun, you can uplift this piece of soul if you say the blessing on the bread properly. So, these are really radical ideas, far out ideas, one could say, about the plurality of a soul. There are five main form, forms of configurations of a soul. And, the the three that are in [UNKNOWN] and two extra ones. But actually there're many more, because the five is just a generality. So, basically what we do now is to summarize the second wave of Kabbalah, 16 century Safed, the beginning of maternity, the beginning of modern Kabbalah.