“Phonetic Mysticism in the Kabbalah of Asher ben David and His Contemporaries”
Eitan P. Fishbane

An article on the “Commentary to the Divine Name” by Rabbi Asher ben David, a section of his Sefer ha-yihud, a “major break in the literary history of the early Kabbalah, serving as a virtual primer of sefirotic symbolism” which “opened the hermetically concealed symbolism of prior generations of kabbalists and inaugurated an entirely new form of kabbalistic discourse in southwestern France.”

The cosmos is alive with the breath of God, brimming with the speech of Divinity.

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Republished here with thanks to the author and the Jewish Quarterly Review.