Kabbalah on the Margins: Sabbatian, Jewish-Christian, and Theatrical Transformations of the Kabbalah in Ashkenazi Society

February 2, 2010 | 12:00-2:30 PM | Free & Open to the Public
Humanities 1 Building, Room 210, UC Santa Cruz
Directions and Parking Information

Please join us for an international conference on the Kabbalah, bringing together four eminent scholars of Jewish mysticism from France, Israel, and the United States. The conference will explore the elaboration and transvaluation of kabbalistic traditions in the Yiddish speaking cultural-geographic zone known as “Ashkenaz.”

The program will include the following talks along with a response by Nathaniel Deutsch, Professor of Literature and History, Co-Director of the Center for Jewish Studies, The University of California, Santa Cruz:

Daniel Abrams, Professor of Jewish Philosophy, Bar Ilan University, Israel.
“Christian Proselytizing in Yiddish with Kabbalistic Traditions: Metatron, Shekhinah and Jesus”

Jean Baumgarten, Professor and Directeur de Recherche (CNRS), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre des Hautes Etudes Juives, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France.
“Echoes of Sabbatianism in the Old Yiddish Literature”

Yossi Chajes, Professor of Jewish History, the University of Haifa, Israel.
“The Fall is the Ascent: Ancient-Modern Myth in An-sky’s Dybbuk”

Elliot Wolfson, Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University.
“Heinrich Christian Immanuel Frommann’s Commentary on Luke and the Christianizing of Kabbalah in the Sabbatian Aftermath in Eighteenth-Century Germany”

The event is sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies. Support provided by the David B. Gold Foundation. Staff support provided by the Institute for Humanities Research. Image courtesy of the Gross Family Collection.