Garb’s research interests cover rabbinic thought, modern and contemporary Kabbalah, and the comparative study of mystical techniques and experiences, particularly Shamanism and Trance. From a geographical point of view, Garb’s scholarship has focused on Jerusalem, North Africa, and Prague. Recently, he focuses on Italy, particularly on the circle of R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto. He claims that other members of the circle may have written many texts attributed to Luzzatto. His research strongly draws from post-modern theory, especially the work of Michel Foucault and its antecedents. Following the phenomenological approach of his main teacher, Jonathan Garb is considered one of the leading students of Moshe Idel. As such, he has been critiqued — among others by Peter Schäfer — as using “academic scholarship and its results as building blocks for a new, postmodern mystical Jewish religion.” Garb’s monographic studies significantly exceed the dominant philological-historical approach in the study of Jewish mystical texts applied by Gershom Scholem and his followers. In his Manifestations of Power in Jewish Mysticism, Garb offers a Foucauldian reading of rabbinic thought and earlier Kabbalah. The Chosen Will Become Herds “examines twentieth-century Kabbalah in its Israeli and global context, drawing from an impressive range of Hasidic, Lithuanian, Oriental-Sephardic, and Religious Zionist sources.” It is considered as one of the most comprehensive studies of modern and contemporary Kabbalah to date. Garb’s third monograph, Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah, offers an Ericksonian reading of sixteenth century Kabbalistic writings and Hasidic literature. His fourth monograph is an intellectual biography of the eighteenth-century Italian kabbalist R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto. His fifth book covers'indigenous' psychological theories found in modern Kabbalah from R. Moshe Cordovero till today, focusing on the heart and soul. In his latest monograph, Modern Kabbalah as an Autonomous Domain of Research, Garb argues that modern Kabbalistic writings can be shown to reflect a strong awareness of its autonomy from pre-modern sources and practices. In dozens of articles, he has discussed issues such as gender, language, antinomianism, poetics, magic, and sainthood. Besides his academic writing, Garb has published essays in Hebrew on social critique, the New Age, and the contemporary Haredi world.
Works
Manifestations of Power in Jewish Mysticism: From Rabbinic Literature to Safedian Kabbalah. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005 . The Chosen Will Become Herds: Studies in Twentieth Century Kabbalah. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009 . Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2011 . Kabbalist in the Heart of the Storm: R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2014 . Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015 . Modern Kabbalah as an Autonomous Domain of Research. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2016 .
