Kurzvita

Avinoam J. Stillman studies Jewish intellectual history in the early modern period, with specific foci on kabbalah and the history of Hebrew printing. He completed his undergraduate studies in Religion at Columbia University, where he also studied Yiddish. He pursued his Master’s degree in the Jewish Thought Department at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. In his thesis, submitted under the supervision of Professor Jonatan Meir, he produced a study of the printing of kabbalistic books at the Hebrew press in Korets in the late 18^th century. The history of the editors and rabbinic scholars who participated in these printing enterprises provides a new perspective on the emergence of Hasidism and the Haskalah, as well as the dissemination of modern kabbalah in Eastern Europe and beyond. His current research focuses on the editing, interpretation, and circulation of Lurianic kabbalah between the Ottoman Empire and East-Central Europe in the early 17^th century, and particularly on the life and work of Rabbi Meir Poppers (d. 1662).

His recent or forthcoming publications include “Transcendent God, Immanent Kabbalah; Polemics and Psychology in the Hasidic Teachings of R. Aʾvraham haMalakh,” in Be-Ron Yahad: Studies in Jewish Thought and Theology in Honor of Nehemia Polen (Academic Studies Press, Boston, 2019) and “Nathan of Gaza, Ya’akov Koppel Lifshitz, and the Varieties of Lurianic Kabbalah,” El Prezente: Journal for Sefardic Studies.