Avinoam J. Stillman studies Jewish intellectual history in the early modern period, with particular interests in kabbalah, Hebrew books, and interactions between Jews in East-Central Europe and the Ottoman Empire. He completed his BA in Religion at Columbia University, where he also studied Yiddish and worked in the Hebraica and Judaica Collection of the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library. He pursued his MA at the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. His Master’s thesis, submitted under the supervision of Professor Jonatan Meir, focused on the Hebrew printing press in Korets and illuminated the study of kabbalah in the 18th century and the emergence of Hasidism and the Haskalah. 

Avinoam Stillman's current research focuses on the circulation of Lurianic kabbalah in the 17th century; his dissertation will be an intellectual biography of the itinerant kabbalist Meir Poppers (d. 1662). In addition to his academic work, he is the co-founder “Blima Books,” a small press based in Jerusalem and Berlin and dedicated to “Radical Jewish Literature.”

Selected Publications

• “Transcendent God, Immanent Kabbalah; Polemics and Psychology in the Hasidic Teachings of R. Aʾvraham haMalakh,” Be-Ron Yahad: Studies in Jewish Thought and Theology in Honor of Nehemia Polen (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2019)
• “Nathan of Gaza, Ya’akov Koppel Lifshitz, and the Varieties of Lurianic Kabbalah,” El Prezente: Journal for Sefardic Studies 12-13 (2018-2019 [2021]).
• “A Printed Primer of Kabbalistic Knowledge: Sha‘arei Orah in East-Central Europe,” European Journal of Jewish Studies (forthcoming).