Ramak — Rabbi Moshe Cordovero הרמ"ק — רבי משה קורדוברו
systematiser of Kabbalah, head of the Safed school before the Arizal
Rabbi Moshe Cordovero was born in 5282 to a family of Spanish exiles and lived his whole life in Safed. He studied halakhah with Rabbi Yosef Karo and Kabbalah with Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, author of «Lecha Dodi».
Before him Kabbalah was a sea of scattered hints: the Zohar, the books of the Rishonim, oral traditions. At twenty-seven Ramak wrote «Pardes Rimonim», the Garden of Pomegranates, gathering all of it into a system — what the sefirot are, how the Infinite relates to the world, how the language of the Zohar is to be read, why the sources appear to contradict one another. It is a textbook, not a collection of secrets, and the subject still cannot be entered without it.
His second book is entirely different: the small «Tomer Devorah», Deborah's Palm Tree. If a person is made in the divine image, then work on one's character is imitation of God's attributes. From this come practical rules: forgive before you are asked; do not turn away from one who has wronged you; bear as He bears.