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 Philosophy & Jewish Thought at Shalem College. His research focuses on the intellectual history of Jews in the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period, focusing on the encounter between theology, science, and political thought.
Dr. Tamari has published many articles in journals and books. His book God as Patient: The Medical Discourse of Lurianic Kabbalah was published in 2023 by Magnes and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, and won the Goldstein-Goren Prize for the best book in Jewish thought for the years 2022-2024. In addition to teaching at Shalem College, he serves as a lecturer in the Alma Fellows Program – a 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
"’Asya Ḳarṭinah’s Book of Medicines and the Shekhinah’s Lovesickness: Notes on Medicine and Kabbalah in Zoharic Literature," Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 33 (2025), pp. 89-109.
"The Political Imagination of the Temple Mount", Political Theology, 26.6 (2025): 652-679.
“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)