Talk:Isaac Luria

I say Kabbalah you say Cabala

Actually, I say Qabalah, but that's beside the point.

I've noticed there are mixed spellings of the subject of Luria's work here. In three places the adjective cabalistic is used, while the noun is Kabbalah. In most of the material I've read references to the purely Jewish practice is spelled Kabbalah, the Christian form is spelled Cabala or a variant and the Hermetic form is Qabalah or Qabala. In the interest of clarity and consistency I propose changing cabalistic to Kabbalistic. I will wait a reasonable time, perhaps a week or two, and if someone doesn't object or make the changes before then I will do it. < Puck 13:22, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Based on this Reference desk conversation I'm cleaning up the spelling in this article. Since this article concerns a Judaic Kabbalist I am using Kabbalah for nouns and kabbalistic for adjectives. Since I'm feeling puckish I'll add that we should all just start calling it קבלה and have done with it.--◀Puck^talk▶ 15:06, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

"Kabbalah" is the spelling mainly used by the english (mainly ashkenazi oriented) language. As it is written with a qof and as to distinguish it from a kaf, it would sound more natural to speak stricto sensus of Qabalah. However what is generally accepted is not to be changed, though incoherent to the spelling in hebrew. I do agree we should use קבלה. --hasofer

Lurianic Kabbalah is not the only branch of Kabbalah

Lurianic Kabbalah is not synonymous to "modern Kabbalah", as wrote one of the previous authors; for example, rabbi Moshe Kordovero was very influentialamong Hassidim, and Hassidism itself (or various branches of it) can perhaps be considered as (number of) different Kabbalistic schools. M.L.

Was Arizal actually believed by some to be a Messaiah?

What are the sources for this?

Please ! This is a very well documented statement of the Mar`ho (`Hayim Vital) ... only that the references are solely in Hebrew (which is the case for the majority of statements on such a subject), so cannot be left as references in this page for english speaking readers. One example of a source is: Peri Ets `Hayim, Sha`ar he`Amidah chap. 19, with annotations of R' Natan Shapira, Karets edition, 5542. hasofer 13:09, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there is anything wrong with adding references in other languages than the language of the document one is reading. You are presuming that those who speak English don't speak any other language. Also (IMHO) it is better to have a reference in a language one can't read than to have no reference at all. At least then one has the hope of getting it translated if one is keen enough to follow up sources. Morgan Leigh 00:53, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Madonna

Did anyone catch the Fall 2005 news stories on Madonna and the rabbis caring for Luria's tomb? Apparently, the rabbis more or less dissassociated themselves from her b/c of her use of his legacy for $.

Someone needs to write an article about the differences between Madonna's brand of Kaballah - which seems like a bastardised, US self-help version of the movement not unlike Scientology as a pseudo-cult - and historic Kaballah. Historic Kaballists would have been horrified by the Kaballah Centre as far as I can see. ThePeg 22:26, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Article very Luriaic

There is no mention of the Vilna Goan. Bias about play downing. No mention that Rabbi Yosef Karo says Luria's opinion is base on a misinterpertation. (Afkat Rokhel 136). etc. 203.206.248.147 18:43, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

What exactly is 'Ottoman Palestine'?

Unfortunately, Wikipedia does not feel the need to err on the side of accuracy. There was no subdivision of the Ottoman Empire, at any time, called 'Palestine'. Not a vilayet, not a sanjak, not a mutaseriflik, nothing. 'Palestine' became an entity only as a League of Nations territory under British mandate. There was no subdivision of the Ottoman Empire that even corresponded to the boundaries of that mandated territory.

It is also significant that the term 'Palestine' was rarely used, if at all, in European circles of the Renaissance era in which Isaac Luria was born (16th century). As someone who is interested in old maps, it has not escaped my attention that in the cases where Renaissance maps delineated the land in question as a differentiated area from surrounding Syria, the term overwhelmingly used was Judaea, or rather the Latin term of the Roman era, IUDAEA. The term 'Palestine' started creeping into Western public discourse only in the 18th century, with the secularizing tendencies of the Enlightenment era to avoid the ecclesiastical associations of the term 'Terra Sancta'.

Why, then, it is it more correct to speak of an Ottoman Palestine than an Ottoman Israel, Ottoman Eretz Israel, or Ottoman Judaea?

Jacob Davidson