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October 31, 2024

The Mystical Diary of Hayyim Vital

Reincarnation, visits to Muslim fortunetellers, and exorcisms.

While his name is not widely known, there is a good case to be made that Hayyim Vital Calabrese (1542–1620) was one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the post-talmudic era. Born in Safed in the Galilee, Vital (as he is generally know) studied with some of the outstanding rabbis of his day, and eventually became the favored disciple of the great kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria. Because Luria never committed his teachings to writing, it was largely the work of Vital that disseminated Lurianic mysticism to the Jewish world. Without this contribution, the rise of Hasidism is difficult to imagine, and much Ashkenazi and Sephardi theology and practice would be very different today.

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