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The mystical teachings of Kabbalah revealed by Rabbi Isaac Luria and his students sought to explain the reason for the long, bitter exile. Lurianic Kabbala teaches that the entire world is full of hidden sparks of holiness, and the task of the Jews is to release those sparks across the world by serving God. These ideas gained enormous influence on Jewish thought, opening the door for the Hasidic movement two centuries later.

• The Ari, Rabbi Chaim Vital, and the great mystics of Safed
• The Kabbalistic perspective of Jewish suffering
• the legend of the Maharal's golem
• pilgrims, Puritans, and the American exile
• Rabbi Menashe ben Yisroel and Oliver Cromwell - a surprising relationship