The Spiritual Language in Israeli Society: Inspiration, Opportunities and Challenges.

A collection of sources from the world of Kabbalah and Chasidut.

This seminar will seek to harness the renewed interest in Kabbalah and Chasidut—both in the research world and in Israeli culture—in order to design an Israeli-Jewish agenda in the spirit of the Hartman Institute.

The group will discuss the opportunities, challenges, and dangers inherent in the field of Kabbalah and Chasidut. Seminar participants will present questions that emerge from the encounter between their cultural, spiritual, and sociopolitical worlds and Kabbalistic and Chasidic texts. The discussion will not be severed from realities of contemporary Israeli society: a renewed interest in Jewish spirituality and the hidden wealth of the world of Kabbalah on one hand, and the exclusive and harmful use of these texts in fundamentalist circles on the other.

At the same time, the group will compile an anthology of texts from the worlds of Kabbalah and Chasidut that will serve as a resource for a conscious and revitalized debate on key religious, social and cultural questions. These sources will be accompanied by notes, reflections, observations, and an interpretive reflexive discussion about the importance of these texts in Jewish-Israeli culture.

The collection is intended for the use of teachers, rabbis, lecturers, and intellectuals who seek to contribute to the design of an open and pluralistic Jewish-Israeli culture using the cultural resources hidden in the Jewish mystical world.

Coordinators: Melila Hellner Eshed, Dov Elbaum, Omri Shasha

This seminar takes place at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Israel.