Kabbalist in the Heart of the Storm

The talk will present the fascinating life and thought of the eighteenth century Italian Jewish writer, R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto. We will appreciate the scope of his works: Kabbalah, self-cultivation (Musar), theatre, Talmudics, rhetoric etc. etc., and analyze both the vehement criticism he aroused, and his remarkable subsequent canonization and reception. We shall especially focus on his messianic innovations and on his original theological contributions, in the context of the modernization of Kabbalah and the trajectory of mid-modernity in general.