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Faculty of Arts and HumanitiesMartin Buber Institute for Jewish Studies

Prof. Agata Paluch

Short Vita

Agata Paluch is a historian specialising in Jewish knowledge, culture, and religion, with focus on medieval and early modern Central and Eastern Europe (Ashkenaz). Her research interests include the history of Jewish esotericism, magic and kabbalah, as well as Jewish book history and material text cultures. She received her PhD in Hebrew and Jewish Studies from University College London in 2013. Prior to joining Universität zu Köln as Professor in Premodern Jewish Studies, she led a DFG-funded research group "Patterns of Knowledge Circulation," based at the Freie Universität Berlin (2019-2025), examining how the interplay between Jewish manuscript culture and early printing shaped the transmission of esoteric knowledge in early modern East-Central Europe. She has held fellowships from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Herbert D. Katz Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and served as a cataloguer of the major Hebrew manuscript collection at the British Library.

Select publications

Monograph:

  • Megalleh ‘Amuqot: The Enoch-Metatron Tradition in the Kabbalah of Nathan Neta Shapira ofKraków (1585-1633), Los Angeles-Jerusalem: Cherub Press, 2014

Edited volumes:

  • Representing Jewish Thought: Proceedings of the 2015 Institute of Jewish Studies Conference Held in Honour of Professor Ada Rapoport-Albert, ed. Agata Paluch (IJS Studies in Judaica; Leiden: Brill, 2021)
  • Kabbalah and Knowledge Transfers in Early Modernity, ed. Agata Paluch, Patrick B. Koch, special issue of European Journal of Jewish Studies 16.1 (2022)
  • Kabbalistic Afterlives: Copies, Reproductions, and Textual Circulation in the Making of Kabbalah in Postmedieval Ashkenaz, ed. Agata Paluch, special issue of Aschkenas 34.2 (2024)

Articles/Book chapters:

  • "Between Active Matter and Letters: Kabbalah, Natural Knowledge, and Jewish How-To Books in Early Modern East-Central Europe," Early Science and Medicine 29 (2024): 271-303
  • "On Making Jewish Books in the Early Modern Period," European Journal of Jewish Studies 18 (2024): 155-163
  • "On Loss and Recovery: Manuscript Remediations, Digital Simulacra, and the Conditions of Kabbalistic Material Text," in Editing Kabbalistic Texts, ed. Bill Rebiger, Gerold Necker, Studies in Magic and Kabbalah 2 (Harrassowitz, 2024)
  • "Kabbalistic Afterlives: Copies, Reproductions, and Textual Circulation in the Making of Postmedieval Kabbalah in Eastern and Central Europe (Ashkenaz)", Aschkenas 34.2 (2024)
  • "Entertaining Knowledge: Play and Chance in Premodern Kabbalistic Recipe Books," Jewish Quarterly Review 113.4 (2023): 571-578
  • "On Practical Uses of Ten Sefirot: Material Readings in an Early Modern Kabbalistic Collectaneum (MS Michael 473)," Harvard Theological Review 116.2 (2023): 276-301
  • “Metatron Revisited: Prayers, Adjurations, and the Fashioning of Interpretive Authority in Jewish Mystical, Magical, and Practical Texts,” Entangled Religions 12.6 (2022)
  • “The Circulation of Jewish Esoteric Knowledge in Manuscript and Print: The Case of Early Modern East-Central Europe,’ in Print Culture at the Crossroads: The Book and Central Europe, ed. Elizabeth Dillenburg, Howard Louthan, & Drew Thomas (The Library of the Written Word 94; Leiden: Brill, 2021), 472-493
  • “Copying, Compiling, Commonplacing: Sefer Heshek and the Kabbalah of Divine Names in Early Modern Ashkenaz”, in Representing Jewish Thought: Proceedings of the 2015 IJS Conference Held in Honour of Professor Ada Rapoport-Albert, ed. Agata Paluch (IJS Studies in Judaica; Leiden: Brill, 2021), 100-125
  • “Intentionality and Kabbalistic Practices in Early Modern East-Central Europe”, Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 19 (2019), 83-111
  • “The Ashkenazi Profile of Kabbalah: Some Aspects of Megalleh ‘Amuqot ReNaV Ofanim ‘al Ve-Ethanan of Nathan Shapira of Kraków’, *Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 25 (2011), 109-133

Public engagement: