Author: Agata Paluch

Research Fellow, Free University of Berlin. Agata Paluch is the head of the Emmy Noether Junior Research Group “Patterns of Knowledge Circulation” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and a research associate at the Institute for Jewish Studies, Free University of Berlin. Her research focuses on early modern kabbalistic literatures and Hebrew manuscript cultures.

Practical Kabbalah and Practical Knowledge: Kabbalistic Manuals and Natural Knowledge in Early Modern East-Central Europe

~ Agata Paluch

An impressive handwritten codex at the National Library of Israel embodies the intricacies and peculiarities of crafting, reading, and transmitting practical knowledge in early modern Jewish contexts. The volume, known today as manuscript NLI 8º 1070, was likely produced in the 1730s somewhere in the Polish territories. A variety of local Polish-Ashkenazi traditions are well attested throughout the codex: vernacular and elite, theoretical and practical, of Jewish and Christian provenance, and transmitted mainly in Hebrew and Yiddish, but with elements of Latin, German, Polish, Russian, and Ruthenian.

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