Zefat Academic College

Vision

The creation of the Moshe Idel Matanel Professor of Kabbalah Studies position at Zefat Academic College is to promote the academic study of Kabbalah at Zefat Academic College, and in the city of Zefat. Professor Moshe Idel is widely considered to be the greatest living scholar of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism in the world today. He has transformed the study of Kabbalah, critically expanding the historical-philological groundwork first laid by Professor Gershom Scholem.

Activity

The 2013 Moshe Idel Matanel Professor of Kabbalah Studies will include the deciphering and printing of the manuscript Tzafnat Pa’aneah that was written by Rabbi Yehudah Hallewah in Zefat.

The Open Public Lecture Series at Zefat Academic College will be launched, which will highlight the development of Kabbalah in Zefat.

Professor Idel’s innovative approach combinesphenomenological methodology emphasizes the experiential and performative aspects of kabbalistic practice and profound reflection on kabbalistic hermeneutics and theories of languages. He has identified, dated, analyzed and translated thousands of unknown or little-known texts, exhibiting from the outset, an unparalleled understanding that has enabled him to give fresh interpretations of ideas, attitudes and patterns of behaviour evinced in them. His contribution has transcended the academic study of Kabbalah, touching the broadest possible spectrum of issues of Judaism, history and phenomenology of religion.

Moshe Idel

Currently Professor Emeritus, Max Cooper Professor of Jewish Thought, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. For his transformative research into Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism, for development of methodology which introduces phenomenological modes of investigation and the development of theoretical tools that have facilitated interchanges between his field and other domains of Religious Studies. He has dealt with relations between mystical and other trends, halakha, renewal and change in Judaism; he has delved into hermeneutics, placed religious practice in new light; and examined the place of ‘myth’, ‘ritual’ and mystical techniques at various stages of Jewish religious development. His work has evoked the interest of the greatest interpreters of intellectual and religious heritage of the West, including Umberto Eco, Harold Bloom and Jacques Derrida. He has authored over 20 books and edited eight volumes, and his books were translated in many languages. He has been instrumental in the development of Jewish Studies as an international academic field and in the revival of Jewish Studies in Eastern and Central Europe. Professor Moshe Idel was born in Târgu Neamţ, Romania in 1947. He holds the Max Cooper Chair in Jewish Thought at The Hebrew University. He is Professor Emeritus since 2008. He chaired the Department of Jewish Thought in 1992-1994. Professor Idel received his PhD in Kabbalah, summa cum laude from The Hebrew University in 1976. He has been a Visiting Professor at Yale, Harvard, and Princeton Universities, the University of Pennsylvania, at the College de France and at Ecole de Hautes Etudes en sciences sociale in Paris, at Dartmouth College, and UCLA, and taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Studies at The Hebrew University, and The Tikvah and Straus Institutes at NYU, and served as Head of the Academic Committee of Makhon Ben-Zvi and of the Centre of Jewish Music at the National Library of Israel. He is a member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Among his numerous awards and honours, he received the Koret Prize, the EMET Prize, the Jewish National Book Award and the Gershom Scholem Prize for Research in Kabbalah at the Israeli Academy, and the Israel Prize for Jewish Thought in 1999.

Activity Reports

2018-2019

Activity Report

2017-2018

2016-2017

Activity Report 2016-17