The Clinical Gaze of Lurianic Kabbalah

Abstract

What changes in the conceptualization of God, the ultimate healer, once God himself becomes the object of healing? This article examines the delicate tensions between divine and human agency in the Lurianic kabbalah, focusing on its grammar of action, and the complex relations between the subjects and the objects of this action. Rather than analyzing the relations between the kabbalists and their God through their conscious perceptions, the article explores how these relations emerge from the Lurianic discursive configurations and describes the role of medical discourse in their shaping. I claim that in order to perceive the transformation in the image of God in this early modern kabbalistic corpus, we should place at the heart of our inquiry the questions of who the patient is in the Lurianic medical clinic and how the relations between the human and the divine protagonists of the Lurianic drama are woven in this clinic.