A World of Piety exam­ines the his­tor­i­cal aspi­ra­tions of kab­bal­ah to prompt a revival of ancient rab­binic piety in medieval Castile.

What were the aims of the cel­e­brat­ed works of rab­binic wis­dom fash­ioned dur­ing the reigns of Alfon­so X and San­cho IV of Castile, includ­ing the for­ma­tive Book of the Zohar? In pur­suit of this ques­tion, Judaica schol­ar Jere­my Phillip Brown turns to the Hebrew and Ara­ma­ic writ­ings com­posed by Todros ben Joseph ha-Levi Abu­lafia of Tole­do, Joseph Gikatil­la of Med­i­naceli, and espe­cial­ly Moses de León of Guadala­jara. These writ­ings set out to dis­sem­i­nate the secret pat­ri­mo­ny of ancients: a knowl­edge of divin­i­ty com­prised of essen­tial­ly Jew­ish attrib­ut­es as a basis for human emu­la­tion. Accord­ing to these texts, God mod­els a pious form of life-not mere­ly a life of Torah and the com­mand­ments, but a pro­gram exceed­ing the norms of reli­gious oblig­a­tion. Mid­night vig­ils for prayer and study, guard­ing the eyes and tongue, sex­u­al aus­ter­i­ty, spir­i­tu­al pover­ty and con­cern for the mate­ri­al­ly poor-the texts affirm that God exem­pli­fies these and oth­er modes of piety, prompt­ing their imi­ta­tion as a pen­i­ten­tial means of indi­vid­ual and even social­trans­for­ma­tion. By means of their writ­ings, the Castil­ian authors sought to form pen­i­tents as ​“oth­er peo­ple” cre­at­ed anew in the Judeo­mor­phic image of God. A World of Piety sheds light on the core moti­va­tions of a dis­course that would emerge as a major domain of reli­gion and thought by recon­struct­ing the socio-his­tor­i­cal ambi­tions of a lit­tle-known cadre of medieval rab­bis active in a Chris­t­ian milieu.