The Magical and Theurgic Interpretation of Music in Jewish Sources from the Renaissance to Hassidism (Hebrew)

Since the end of the 15th century we find a long series of Jewish texts containing a new evaluation of music as a means of power. This attitude emerges among Italian Jewish authors and seems to be influenced by parallel views in the Florentine Academy. Writers like Johanan Allemanno and Isaac Abrabanel describe music in magical terms: by singing and playing one can influence the extra-divine world. From the beginning of the 16th century onwards, Jewish Kabbalists frequently wrote about the possibility of reestablishing the lost harmony in the Divine World of the sefirot by theurgical singing. The most important of these authors are Meir ibn Gabbay, Solomon Alqabez and Moses Cordovero. In some texts written in Safed, the magical and theurgical views appear together. These opinions influenced later Jewish authors from the late 16th to the late 18th century, such as Salomon Maimon and R. Israel Baal Sem Tov, the founder of Hassidism.