Dr. Assaf Tamari
The David & Judith Lobel Core Curriculum
Dr. Assaf Tamari is a lecturer in the Lobel Core Curriculum and in the Interdisciplinary Program in Jewish Philosophy and Thought at Shalem College. His research is devoted to the intellectual history of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period, focusing on the intersection of theology, science, and political thought. Dr. Tamari has published numerous articles in journals and books, and his book God as Patient: The Medical Discourse of Lurianic Kabbalah was published in 2023 by Magnes and the Van Leer Institute. Tamari serves as Deputy Chairman of the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Israel Communities in the East, as well as a lecturer in the “Shear Ruach” program at Tel Aviv University and at “Alma – Home for Hebrew Culture”.
Selected Publications
Book
God as Patient: The Medical Discourse of Lurianic Kabbalah, Jerusalem: Magnes Press and Van Leer institute Press, 2023 [Hebrew]
Edited Special Issue
Assaf Tamari (guest ed.), "Eleh Shemot": Political Thought in Hebrew, special issue of Mafte'akh: Lexical Review of Political Thought, 14 (2019) [Hebrew]
Refereed Articles in Journals and Books
“The Clinical Gaze of Lurianic Kabbalah,” Harvard Theological Review, 117:2 (2024), pp. 268-292.
“’Like the Proficient Physician’: The Long Tradition of Soul Physicians from Al- Kindī to Isaac Luria,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 27 (2022), pp. 123-187. (Hebrew)
“The City of the Kabbalists? Sixteenth Century Safed as Center and as Periphery”, Zion, 87.4 (2022), pp. 505-547 (Hebrew)
“Medicalizing Magic and Ethics: Re-Reading Lurianic Practice”, JQR, 112.3 (2022), pp. 434-467.
“’I misled such a great nation and my time […] has passed’: Ottoman Millenarianism and the ‘True Religion’ in R. Hayyim Vital’s Sefer ha-Hezyonot”, Jama’a: an Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle East Studies, 25 (2021), pp. 297-314 (Hebrew)
“The Place of Politics: The Notion of Consciousness in R. Yitzchak Ginsburgh’s Political Thought”, Israel Studies Review, 29.2 (Winter 2014), pp. 78–98
"Erev Rav", Mafte'akh: Lexical Review of Political Thought, 2 (2010), pp. 43-74 (Hebrew)