The Kabbalistic Tree

Lecture and book launch.

Parchment sheets presenting the kabbalistic “tree of life” have been at the center of Jewish mystical practice for the past seven hundred years. The leading expert on these 'ilanot', Professor Chajes will talk about the history of these arboreal “maps of God.” He will show when, where, and why Jews began to visualize and to draw the mystical shape of the Divine as a Porphyrian tree. At once maps, mandalas, and memory palaces, ilanot provided kabbalists with diagrammatic representations of their structured image of God. Scrolling an ilan parchment in contemplative study, the kabbalist participated mimetically in tikkun, the development and perfection of Divinity. Professor Chajes will talk about the complex lore behind these objects. His book begins with the classical ilanot of pre-expulsion Spain, Byzantine Crete, Kurdistan, Yemen, and Renaissance Italy. A close examination of the ilanot inspired by the Kabbalah taught by R. Isaac Luria in sixteenth-century Safed follows, and he concludes with explorations of modern ilan amulets and printed ilanot.