Project Details
Projekt
Subproject 10: Shekinah: Spiritual Intermediality in Early Modern Kabbalah
Subject Area
Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 435118611
The aim of subproject 10 is to recognize early modern Kabbalah as a spiritual-intermedial phenomenon for the first time. In particular, it focuses on the conceptual figure of the female Shekinah, one of the divine attributes (Sefirot), and its vertical-intermedial function. The phenomenon of “Kabbalah” will be studied both in its Jewish context and in the framework of its cross-denominational Christian reception and functionalization. This dual approach allows for an examination of the role of female-connoted intermediatlity in the respective religious perspectives, its temporal development and geographical spread, and transformation through reciprocal transfer processes. Using the approach of spiritual intermediality, this subprojects aims to determine the interdependencies between “text,” “image,” and “performance” within both the Jewish and Christian-kabbalistic environments, and to precisely describe their media-historical consequences. It concentrates on materials that (a) describe the intermedial position of the feminine aspect of God on a purely textual level, (b) present this position in intermedial text-image combinations, and (c) document her central role in early modern kabbalistic rituals. A close analysis of the sources will illustrate how the Sefirot, in their functions, are both composed medially as a unified whole within the fragmentarily conceived deity and simultaneously intermedially positioned between the heavenly and earthly realms. Additionally, it will demonstrate how the Sefirot are represented through a combination of media. The subproject will also explore how this intermediality extends into the liturgical domain, in which the intermediality intrinsic to text-image combinations is further elaborated through performance, as an event in which the body of the Kabbalist is actively engaged as a medium. By examining two key areas – namely the function of intermedial constellations in the representation of Lurianic Shabbat liturgy and the intermedial function of the Sefirot in both Jewish and Christian Kabbalah, or in the transition between the two – this approach facilitates a new understanding of how Christian Kabbalists adopted intermedial concepts and media combinations from Jewish kabbalistic systems of thought and reinterpreted them. On this basis, it will be assessed which intermedial models and constellations were deemed relevant or irrelevant within each tradition, and how these appraisals are reflected in other aspects of the respective religion.
DFG Programme
Research Units
