VITAL, ḤAYYIM (1543–1620), noted Jewish mystic. Ḥayyim Vital was born in Safad, the Galilean town north of Tiberias that was the site of an important renaissance of Jewish mystical activity in the sixteenth century. His teacher in rabbinic subjects was Mosheh Alshekh, who ordained him as a rabbi in 1590. In 1564 he became a student of Mosheh Cordovero, the most important teacher of Qabbalah (Jewish mysticism) in Safad before the arrival of Isaac Luria. When Luria came to Safad in 1570, Vital became his chief disciple, the role for which he is best known.

Following Luria's death two years later, Vital was one of several disciples who assembled a written version of the master's teachings, since Luria himself had recorded almost nothing on his own. Vital's corpus, the Shemonah sheʽarim (Eight gates), is the most detailed version and the main one in which Lurianic...