A conversation between J. H. (Yossi) Chajes, the Sir Isaac Wolfson Professor of Jewish Thought in the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa, and Vassar’s Marc Michael Epstein, Professor of Religion on the Mackie M. Paschall Davis and Norman H. Davis Chair and Director of Jewish Studies.

Professor Chajes will discuss with Professor Epstein the genre of “ilanot” (trees), the striking parchment rolls devoted to visualizations of kabbalistic lore that have been created and used by kabbalists since the fourteenth century for study and contemplation. Though nearly unknown today, these divinity maps were made wherever there were kabbalists throughout the Jewish world. Each has a unique story; individually and collectively they offer new perspectives on the ways in which Jews visualized knowledge, assimilated diverse traditions, and interacted with contemporary cultures. Chajes’s The Kabbalistic Tree (PSUP, 2022) is the first ever study of this practical expression of Kabbalah, about which he is the pre-eminent authority.

J. H. (Yossi) Chajes (Ph.D., Yale University 1999) is the Sir Isaac Wolfson Professor of Jewish Thought in the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa. Chajes has been visiting Erasmus Professor at Queen Mary University London, a visiting professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, a fellow at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University Frankfurt, and a three-time fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Chajes directs the “Ilanot Project”—an ambitious and unprecedented attempt to research kabbalistic cosmological diagrams. Chajes’s pioneering work has been awarded four Israel Science Foundation (ISF) research grants, the Friedenberg Prize for the outstanding ISF-funded project in the humanities, and two Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony/Volkswagen Foundation grants to develop the digital humanities project “Maps of God—Building a Portal to Visual Kabbalah.” Chajes’s recent book, The Kabbalistic Tree (PSUP 2022) has been lauded as “a monumental achievement that will be valuable to scholars and general readers interested in Judaism, religion, and art history.”