Love of the Shekhina : Mysticism and Poetics in Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar

Composed in the fourteenth century, Tiqqunei ha-Zohar is one of the most influential texts in the Kabbalah. Its idiosyncratic phrases and expressions permeate Jewish liturgy, halakhic discourses, and daily customs and rituals. Its fundamental teachings have echoed through all types of kabbalistic thought across the centuries, from the grand confraternities in sixteenth-century Safed to Hasidic masters active in the nineteenth century. However, despite its overwhelming influence, Tiqqunei ha-Zohar was largely considered inferior to the main body of Kabbalistic literature. Love of the Shekhinah introduces English-speaking readers to this composition, offering a comprehensive reading of Tiqqunei ha-Zohar as a fundamental text in the development of Jewish mysticism. Combining established philological and historical approaches with gender studies, psychoanalysis, and anthropology, Biti Roi guides readers through the text, analyzing the central relationship between its author and the divine Shekhinah, unravelling his unique poetic style, and uncovering a theory of social protest. Contrary to claims that the divine feminine figure is always subordinate to the male and the characterization of Kabbalistic thought as phallocentric, Roi argues that, rather than serving as an appendage to a male system, the feminine figure of the Shekhinah stands at the center of religious worship, encompassing everything. An important contribution to the scholarship of Jewish mysticism, Love of the Shekhinah offers an interpretive key to a fundamental work of Kabbalistic literature.