Isaac Luria

Isaac Luria, known as the Ari (the Lion), was the most influential Kabbalist since the Zohar and the founder of Lurianic Kabbalah—the dominant form of Jewish mysticism from the sixteenth century to the present. Working in Safed in Palestine, he developed a revolutionary cosmological mythology that transformed the understanding of creation, exile, and redemption.

Luria's three central concepts—tzimtzum (God's self-contraction to make room for the world), shevirat ha-kelim (the shattering of the divine vessels), and tikkun olam (the repair of the world through human action)—created a framework in which human beings are participants in a cosmic drama of divine redemption. His ideas influenced Sabbatianism, Hasidism, and have had remarkable resonance in modern Jewish thought. He died at thirty-eight, transmitting his teaching orally to disciples.