Isaac ben Solomon Luria, the Jerusalem-born son…
August 1572 CE
Isaac ben Solomon Luria, the Jerusalem-born son of an immigrant Ashkenazic father and a Sephardic mother, had in Egypt studied the Talmud and the Zohar, the central and revered work of the Kabbalah.
The thirty-six-year-old Jewish mystic had settled round 1570 in Zefat in Galilee, where he had studied under Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, the greatest Kabbalist of the time.
Although Luria’s teaching will traditionally be associated with Safed, he dies on August 5, 1572, having spent only the last three years of his life here.
The influential Jewish mystic, whose thinking combines kabbalistic mysticism and messianism, had held a form of emanationism, teaching that, by voluntary self-contraction (tsimtsum), God had made room for creation, which took the form of an emanation, or "overflowing," of the divine light.
This light was enclosed in finite "vessels" (kelim), which shattered and brought darkness (evil) into creation and mingled with the light.
To prepare the way for the Messiah, humankind, through the practice of saintliness and asceticism, must release the divine sparks from this mixture to make possible the restoration (tikkun) of God’s divine light.
His disciples continue his school of mysticism, referred to as Lurianic Kabbalah.
Although Luria had written very little, his doctrine will be transmitted, amplified, and probably somewhat distorted through the works of his disciples, of which the main one is Hayyim ben Joseph Vital, who, a couple of decades on, will write 'Etz Hayyim (”Tree of Life”), the standard presentation of Lurianic Kabbala.
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