Yehuda Ashlag (Baal ha-Sulam)

The Ladder: Warsaw-born Jerusalem kabbalist who translated the entire Zohar into Hebrew with running commentary and recast Luria on one axis — the will to receive transformed into the will to bestow. Wrote kabbalistic essays on socialism and globalization decades early; his students (and their students, with varying rigor) seeded nearly every contemporary popular Kabbalah movement.