From Metaphysics to Midrash: Myth, History, and the Interpretation of Scripture in Lurianic Kabbala »

Shaul Magid is Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor in Religious Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.

In From Metaphysics to Midrash, Shaul Magid explores the exegetical tradition of Isaac Luria and his followers within the historical context in 16th-century Safed, a unique community that brought practitioners of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam into close contact with one another. Luria's scripture became a theater in which kabbalists redrew boundaries of difference in areas of ethnicity, gender, and the human relation to the divine. Magid investigates how cultural influences altered scriptural exegesis of Lurianic Kabbala in its philosophical, hermeneutical, and historical perspectives. He suggests that Luria and his followers were far from cloistered. They used their considerable skills to weigh in on important matters of the day, offering, at times, some surprising solutions to perennial theological problems.

Introduction Kabbala, New Historicism, and the Question of Boundaries 1

The Lurianic Myth: A Playbill 16

1 Genesis: "And Adam's Sin Was (Very) Great": Original Sin in Lurianic Exegesis 34

2 Exodus: The "Other" Israel: The Erev Rav (Mixed Multitude) as Conversos 75

3 Leviticus: The Sin of Becoming a Woman: Male Homosexuality and the Castration Complex 111

4 Numbers: Balaam, Moses, and the Prophecy of the "Other": A Lurianic Vision for the Erasure of Difference 143

5 Deuteronomy: The Human and/as God: Divine Incarnation and the "Image of God" 196

Conclusion 222

Notes 229

Bibliography 321

Index 347