Jerusalem in Early Jewish Mysticism

Jerusalem had been the focus of dreams and visions, angelic revelation and divine prophecy as well as of religious poetry and mystical literature all along the first millenium BCE. The city is mentioned as a holy place chosen by God and as the city of the Temple-Mount 870 times in the Old Testament, but its name is completely absent from the Pentateuch in the Masoretic edition. Interestingly, the Dead Sea Scrolls that preserve a vast priestly library of sacred literature that was mainly written in the second Century BCE and the First Century BCE, present numerous descriptions of mystical Jerusalem and its heavenly sanctuaries in sacred writings that correspond to the Pentatuch. The lecture will discuss the significance of the presence of Jerusalem in the mystical and Halakhic literature before the common era and its absence from the Pentatuch that had been edited after the destruction of the Second Temple.

STUDY TEXTS, AUDIO AND VIDEO RECORDINGS OF THE EVENT ARE AVAILABLE ON WWW.ESHKOFEST.RU.