About

J. H. (Yossi) Chajes (Ph.D., Yale University 1999) is Sir Isaac Wolfson Professor of Jewish Thought at the University of Haifa. Chajes’s research focuses on the intersection of Kabbalah, magic, and science in Jewish cultural history. He has written on spirit possession and exorcism, egodocuments, women’s religiosity, Jewish attitudes towards magic, and, most recently, on the visualization of knowledge (including his co-edited The Visualization of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 2020). Chajes’s recent book, The Kabbalistic Tree, has been lauded as a “monumental achievement that will be valuable to scholars and general readers interested in Judaism, religion, and art history.” For over a decade, Chajes has directed the Ilanot Project, an ambitious and unprecedented attempt to research the history of kabbalistic diagrams; in partnership with the University of Göttingen, he is also creating a platform for the research and presentation of critical editions of kabbalistic trees online: Maps of God. Chajes has also been a visiting professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, a three-time fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and a fellow at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem and the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University Frankfurt. Chajes has also given the EHESS lectures in Judaic Studies (2019), the Yale University Arffa Lecture Series (2025), and was the first scholar of Jewish Studies to deliver the Harvard University Houghton-Medieval Studies Lecture and Workshop in Early Book History in early 2026. 

Dr. Eliezer Baumgarten (Ph.D. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2011) is Research Fellow in the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa. He teaches digital humanities courses at the University. Dr. Baumgarten’s Ph.D. thesis, supervised by Prof. Boaz Huss, examined Eastern European Kabbalah in the modern era. His numerous publications have treated various aspects of the transfer of knowledge, including visualized information, between different regions and cultures, including Italy, Ashkenaz (Central and Eastern Europe), Yemen, North Africa, Kurdistan, and the Land of Israel.

Dr. Hadar Miller is the Chief Technology Officer of ElijahLab. He supports digital transformation processes in heritage organizations in Israel and has extensive experience in information systems planning. He specializes in issues related to information networks and text reuse detection

Dr. Uri Safrai (Ph.D. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2017) is a Research Fellow in the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa. He teaches Jewish thought and Kabbalah at the Herzog College in Gush-Etzion. Dr. Safrai’s Ph.D. thesis, ‘Worship of the Heart in the Kabbalah of the Sixteenth Century’, supervised by Prof. Boaz Huss and Prof. Uri Ehrlich, examined the prayer intentions (‘Kavanot’) of the Kabbalists in Safed and other places during the sixteenth century.

Maximilian de Molière works at the intersection of Jewish intellectual history and digital humanities. He completed his doctoral dissertation in 2020 on the library of the sixteenth-century Christian Hebraist Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter, reconstructing the structure and development of Widmanstetter's collection — its acquisition history, book trade connections, and distinctive engagement with kabbalistic texts — and situating him within a broader humanist milieu alongside figures such as Guillaume Postel and Egidio da Viterbo. This research has since appeared as Confronting Kabbalah: Studies in the Christian Hebraist Library of Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter.

From 2018 to 2024, Maximilian held a position on a DFG-funded project on Moses Zacuto, where he examined the material culture and social networks of early modern Jewish correspondence. A new critical edition of Zacuto's letters is forthcoming. Since 2025, as an Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Haifa, his research has turned to the transmission history of Ilanot across early modern Jewish and Christian Hebraist collections. Alongside this, he serves as a research fellow in the ERC-funded MAJLIS project at the University of Munich, where he leads the development of digital tools for manuscript cataloging and data curation.

Boaz Taub completed his MA thesis at Ben Gurion University in 2025: “Commentary on the Passover Haggadah by Rabbi Nathan Shapira of Jerusalem: Structure, Homilies and Characteristics.” The thesis analyzes Shapira’s Haggadah commentary, highlighting his "compilatory-creative" method as a framework for Lurianic innovation.
Boaz teaches at Yeshivat Otniel and is also a musician.

Dr. Hanna Gentili (Ph.D Warburg Institute, 2021) is a Research Fellow in the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa. Her research focuses on the relationship between medieval Jewish thought and the Italian Renaissance. Her Ph.D thesis ‘The Reception of Aristotle in the Work of Yoḥanan Alemanno: Peripatetic Sources in MS Reggio 23’, supervised by Prof. Charles Burnett and Prof. Guido Giglioni, analyses the philosophical library of the kabbalist Yoḥanan Alemanno in the context of fifteenth-century Florence.

Dr. Menachem Kallus is a scholar of Jewish mysticism whose research focuses on Lurianic Kabbalah, Hasidism, and the contemplative dimensions of Jewish prayer and spiritual practice. He received his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2002 under the supervision of Moshe Idel, with a dissertation entitled The Theurgy of Prayer in Lurianic Kabbalah. His work explores the intersection of kabbalistic metaphysics, ritual, and contemplative experience, with particular attention to the theological and psychological dimensions of Jewish esotericism. Kallus has been affiliated with the University of Haifa and played an important role in the early study of kabbalistic ilanot, contributing foundational descriptions and analysis that helped catalyze later research in this field. He is also known for his translation and annotation of Pillar of Prayer: Teachings of Contemplative Guidance in Prayer, Sacred Study, and the Spiritual Life from the Baʿal Shem Tov and His Circle, a significant presentation of early Hasidic teachings on contemplative prayer.

Emma Abate is Associate Professor of Hebrew and History of Judaism, Jewish Culture, and History of the Hebrew Book in the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Bologna (Ravenna Campus). Her research focuses on the study of the Hebrew manuscript tradition, with particular attention to Kabbalah and magic. She is the Principal Investigator of the project BiNaH: Bibliothèque nationale "Hebraica", Hebrew Manuscripts in Paris funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (France) and based at the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes (IRHT-CNRS) in Paris. She coordinates the Laboratory of Hebrew Epigraphy and Codicology (LECE) and the European project Books within Books: Hebrew Fragments in European Libraries, aimed at identifying and cataloguing reused manuscript fragments. She is co-editor of the journal Materia Giudica (Giuntina). Among her recent publications, “La visione degli arredi del santuario” (in Counting the Miracles, eds. S. Greco and J. Olszowy-Schlanger, 2025), “Hebrew Fragments and Kabbalistic Diagrams in Urbino State Archive” (in Habent sua Fata Fragmenta, eds. E. Abate, S. Campanini, J. Olszowy-Schlanger and G. Veltri, 2025).
Emma has worked with the Ilanot Project for over a decade. She has published on ilanot --including co-authoring with Prof. Chajes -- and provided many of the paleographical assessments found on this platform and in numerous ilanot-related publications.