Three Maggidim

• In Event: Pneumatic and Bodily Experiences in Jewish Mysticism

Abstract

The phenomenon of the maggid--a heavenly mentor--was known in the Jewish world since the Middle Ages but was rare and esoteric until the sixteenth century. From the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries dozens of maggidim are known.

I will speak about three of these maggidim: those revealed to Hakham Joseph Karo, Rabbi Mordecai Ashkeanzi, and Rabbi Moses Hayyim Luzzatto. I will compare the historical background and the phenomenology of these three cases in an attempt to determine whether there is a unified concept of maggid revelation in the early modern period, what its features might be if there is, and how it compares with other revelatory phenomena in the Jewish and Christian worlds.

author

• Matt Goldish, The Ohio State University