Rāmānuja

The founder of Viśiṣṭādvaita, qualified non-dualism, and Śaṅkara's great opponent from inside the same scriptures. His claim: the self is really distinct from God and really inseparable from Him — related as body to soul, as an attribute to what it qualifies. Unity, yes; identity, no. And so love, worship and a real relationship remain possible, which he thought Advaita had made into a stage-set.

The node a Kabbalist should sit down in front of. Of everything on the cousins' bench, this is the position closest to the Tree's own: a soul that is genuinely of God and genuinely not God, held in a relation rather than collapsed into an identity. Two traditions, no contact, arriving at the same fine distinction — and arriving at it by arguing against their own strongest non-dualist.