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Acknowledgments This study originated in my Ph.D. dissertation at the Hebrew University written under the guidance of the late Prof. Shlomo Pines. I thank Prof. Pines for initiating me into medieval Jewish philosophy . His impeccable scholarship will always remain my ideal. My original dissertation focused on the relationship between Aristotelian philosophy and Kabbalah in the writings of R. David ben Judah Messer Leon. This book, however, reflects my own methodological shift from the history of ideas to intellectual history which took place during my years at Columbia University. I am grateful to Prof. Yosef Yerushalmi of Columbia University for the opportunity to learn from his historical insight and to teach the inquisitive students of Columbia University. As a person who herself stands "between worlds" (i.e., the academic communities of Israel and America), I am thankful to several colleagues from Israel with whom I have kept in touch over the years, in particular, Prof. Moshe Idel of the Hebrew University, who kindly shared with me his immense knowledge of Kabbalah and Renaissance culture and extended warm support over the years. Prof. Robert Bonfil and Prof. Joseph Hacker of the Hebrew University also shared their knowledge with me in several private conversations. To my colleagues in America, Prof. Aryeh Leo Motzkin of Boston University and Prof. Yael Feldman of New York University, many thanks for being such good friends and offering much needed insight. Special thanks is given here as well to Zeev Gries of Hebrew College who helped with his vast bibliographical knowledge. Last, but not least, I am indebted to William L. Rothschild, who laboriously edited vii VIII Acknowledgments the manuscript with utmost care and dedication. I take full responsibility for the remaining mistakes. Most of R. David's writings are extant only in manuscript. I have viewed these manuscripts in the National and University Library of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I would like to thank the following libraries for permission to cite from manuscripts in their possession: Jews' College, in London,s the Bodleian Library of Oxford University, and the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Firenze, Italy. Most of Chapter Three already appeared in an article published in Jewish History. Vol. III (1988), no. 2. I thank Haifa University Press for allowing me to reprint that article in this book. I also thank the Rabbinical Assembly for allowing me to reprint sections from my article "Maimonides and Aquinas: The Interplay of Two Masters in Medieval Jewish Philosophy," published in Conservative Judaism, Vol. XXXIX (Fall 1986), no. 1. Likewise, I thank the AJS Review for permission to incorporate selections from my article "Sefirot as the Essence of God in the Writings of David Messer Leon," published in the AJS Review 7-8 (1982-83). Situated in the context ofthis book, the previously published material receives a new nuance. ...

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