The Reception of “The Kabbalah”: The Emergence of the Sefirotic Literature and its Theological Context

This presentation offers a fresh view on one of the fundamental problems concerning the history of Jewish thought, namely – the cause for the dissemination and development of the sefirotic literature in the turn of the thirteenth century. Based on testimonies of thirteenth century sefirotic authors and non-sefirotic authors, I show that the wide reception and rapid development of the sefirotic system in this period were due to the fact that it provided theological solutions to a few concrete and acute difficulties with which contemporary believers and theologians struggled.