Kabbalah’s Tree of Life: The Diagrams That Illuminate Jewish Mysticism
Hosted By: My Jewish Learning
Perhaps you know the image: The Kabbalistic tree of life, a diagram of ten networked medallions. It has been reproduced on book covers, album art and celebrity tattoos.
It is, in its way, inescapable — but it is also just the beginning.
Ilanot (“trees”) — parchment diagrams that kabbalists produced across the Jewish world for over 500 years — took that familiar diagram and expanded it into something of an entirely different order: Instruments for learning Kabbalah, for organizing its vast and intricate body of knowledge, and for the ritual work of tikkun, the kabbalistic practice of cosmic maintenance and repair.
In this unique five-session online course — led by Prof. J. H. (Yossi) Chajes of the University of Haifa, author of “The Kabbalistic Tree” and founding director of the Ilanot Project — we will cover the earliest experiments in medieval kabbalistic manuscripts through the great classical scrolls of the Renaissance and the genre’s intersections with Christian Kabbalah, magic and modern art.
Along the way, Prof. Chajes will introduce and use his new interactive ilanot digital tool, which will allow us to zoom in to see previously unseen aspects of Kabbalah tree documents that are hundreds of years old. The tool pairs high-resolution images with transcriptions, translations, and searchable visualized concepts, enabling users to study, compare, and teach these complex works in entirely new ways.
And don’t worry if you haven’t heard any of these terms before — no prior Kabbalah knowledge is required to enjoy this course!
5 Mondays from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. ET
May 11 – June 15
All classes will be recorded and sent to registrants.
