Azriel was one of the most important Jewish mystics in the Spanish town of Gerona (north of Barcelona) during the thirteenth century when it was an important center of the Kabbalah. (The most important figure from the kabbalist community of Gerona was Nahmanides.) The tree of life. ... Nahmanides is the common name for Moshe ben Nahman Gerondi; the name is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Ben Nahman, meaning Son of Nahman. He is also commonly known as Ramban, being an acronym of his Hebrew name and title, Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman, and by his Catalan name...
Azriel was the most important student of the neo-Platonist mystic Isaac the Blind. Neoplatonism (also Neo-Platonism) is an ancient school of philosophy beginning in the 3rd century A.D. It was based on the teachings of Plato and Platonists; but it interpreted Plato in many new ways, such that Neoplatonism was quite different from what Plato taught, though not many Neoplatonists would... Isaac the Blind (c. ...
Azriel’s writings covered subjects pertaining to the sefirot and included his mystical interpretation of Jewish liturgy and of the aggadah. Sephirah, also Sefirah (Hebrew language סְפִירָה Enumeration); plural Sephiroth or Sefiroth סְפִירוֹת. ... Aggadah ( Aramaic אגדה: tales, lore; pl. ...
While his teacher Isaac the Blind considered Divine Thought to be the first supernatural quality to emanate from the Ayn Sof (or Divine Being), Azriel argued that Divine Will was the first emanation. Therefore, it was the act of the will rather than the act of the intellect that was the first manifestation of God’s Divine Being. In the Jewish Kabbalah tradition, Ayn Sof (Ain Sof, Hebrew boundlessness or without end), also known referred to as Divine Being, is the name for God as he is unknown, or the mysterious and ultimate source of all existence. ...
The 72 names of God which are used in Jewishmysticism are derived from the Hebrew verses Moses spoke to part the Red Sea, allowing the Hebrews to escape their approaching enemies with the assistance of an angel.
In dwelling upon the nature of God and the universe, the mystics of the Talmudic period asserted, in contrast to the transcendentalism evident in some parts of the Bible, that "God is the dwelling-place of the universe; but the universe is not the dwelling-place of God".
Following the upheavals and dislocations in the Jewish world as a result of the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, the trauma of Anti-Semitism during the Middle Ages, Jews began to search for signs of when the long-awaited Jewish Messiah would come to comfort them in their painful exiles.
Jewish law in the diaspora: confrontation and accommodation; a study of the development, composition and function of the concept of Dina D’Malkhuta Dina--the law of the kingdom (the state) is the law.
The Jewish resistance: the history of the Jewish partisans in Lithuania and White Russia during the Nazi occupation, 1940-1945.
Jewish identity on the suburban frontier; a study of group survival in the open society.
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