Kabbalah and Jewish Modernity

Something crucial and quite unprecedented happened to kabbalah in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Though it had previously been considered a highly secretive and esoteric tradition, its practitioners began to spread its doctrines throughout the Jewish world with missionary zeal. Their goal was ambitious: no less than the remodelling of the religious and ethical attitudes of the entire Jewish population, a reformation of Judaism. Few aspects of Jewish life and religious practice were not