Les grands textes de la cabale

Religious practices and Theurgic effectiveness in the Kabbalah, from its origins until the middle of the 18th Century, this is the topic of study in this work. The first monograph entirely dedicated to the meaning and function of religious observance (ta'amé ha-mitsvot), this book brings together a French translation of the writings of around one hundred Kabbalists, presented and explained in chronological order, school by school, author by author. One of the most original contributions of the Kabbalists was the development of a mode of thought about practice and works which imbued them with a power over creation and the divine world, a power so extraordinary that it is itself capable of the work of God. The modes of thought developed by the Kabbalists to comprehend this power of the acts of man are not expanded by blending certain concepts deriving from late Neoplatonism and its theurgy with biblical beliefs and ancient Rabbinic exegesis. This fusion of some of the aspects of thought of the last philosophers from the final days of Antiquity and of the Jewish tradition has proved a rich breeding ground providing a raft of literature aiming to shed light on the innermost secrets of the Torah. This essential area of Jewish thought, very often ignored and sometimes even refuted as an unwelcome and inauthentic intrusion, is to be found at the heart of the theological and anthropological conception of certain among the most eminent masters of the history of Judaism.