Benjamin, can you bring a source for the claim that Rabbi Chaim Vital saw Jesus as righteous?

"When you go from Safed northward, toward the village of Ein Zeitun, by way of a certain carob tree, there is buried Jesus the Christian" — Chaim Vital, Sha'ar HaGilgulim, Introduction 37 — graves of the righteous and holy places in the Land of Israel.

That’s not proof that he saw him as righteous.
He said he was buried in a place where the righteous are buried, and referred to him by initials which, according to what is brought here, mean “may his name and memory be erased”; and if he had thought of him as righteous he would have called him “of blessed memory” or “may the memory of the righteous be a blessing,” or at the very least not “may his name be erased.”

Rational(ly speaking), they’re currently discussing this question in a discussion group at the Open University. I imagine your dismissal is familiar to every beginning history student…
Please look at the manuscript itself (if you can find it). Also, look inside the introduction to the list, and especially at the source of the name / nickname “Yeshu.”
It’s also worth paying attention to the distinction between the name Yeshua and Yeshu.

I wouldn’t be surprised if those lecturers are desperately looking for some point to make… and are willing to force interpretations as long as it fits their hypotheses.
You can read the entire context of your quote and the other paragraphs in the book; it really doesn’t look like this was the focus at all, just marking a location. There’s no identification by the author with Jesus here (especially since “Yeshu” means “may his name and memory be erased”)… And by the way, even if you think it means more than that, still remember that Yeshu is judged in boiling excrement; he’s not “just” some wicked person, so I really don’t see anything surprising if he included him there incidentally. Think about it: if he were giving directions to some grave and along the way also mentioned Pharaoh or Amalek, would that sound so strange to you? That he identifies with all their great righteousness? It’s just absurd.:
And I’ll bring the full quote:
"There, near it, is one small valley, and there Nahum of Gam Zu is buried. And know that the entire area of those ruins was once a very great and holy city.

North of Safed, may it be rebuilt and established, when you go from Safed northward toward the village of Ein Zeitun, by way of a certain carob tree, there is buried Jesus the Christian. And there are two paths there: the right-hand one goes to the aforementioned Ein Zeitun, and the left-hand one goes to the aforementioned Kharal. Now between these two paths there is a large valley of olive trees, and at the northern edge of this valley there is a flowing stream descending from a pit called Jafar, between Safed and Ein Zeitun. And there is a bridge there, over which the waters of that stream pass, and this stream continues and descends toward the north side of the aforementioned valley. And at the last olive tree of them all, there is buried the mother of Rabbi Krospedai, precious of heart, mentioned in the Zohar, Parashat Shelach-Lecha.

When you go from Safed by the northern road to Gush Halav, there is a stream called Kharal, and it seems to me that the waters of Beriah and Ein Zeitun descend into that stream. And on this very road leading to Gush Halav, when you have gone 400 cubits northward from the Kharal on this very road, there is one large long stone leaning on the left side of the road, and under it Rabbi Natan the Babylonian is buried."

And see Wikipedia: regarding his grave, the manuscript reads differently:
Rabbi Chaim Vital, in his book Sha'ar HaGilgulim, in a compiled list of graves of the righteous and holy places in the Land of Israel, wrote: "When you go from Safed northward toward the village of Ein Zeitun, by way of a certain carob tree, there is buried Jesus the Christian." Apparently this contradicts both the traditional Jewish attitude toward Jesus [clarification needed] and Christian tradition. In the book Holy Places and Graves of the Righteous in the Galilee (2011), proof was brought from Chaim Vital’s original manuscript that he did not mean the grave of Jesus (in Sha'ar HaGilgulim not only graves of the righteous are mentioned, but also historical places, for example Miriam’s well). Rather, his son, the editor of the book (Shmuel Vital), changed "by way of a certain carob tree of Jesus the Christian" into "by way of a certain carob tree, there is buried Jesus the Christian."[31]

And likewise, if you look in the booklet The Burial Places of the Righteous from the autograph manuscript of R. Chaim Vital, of Rabbi Moshe Hillel, you’ll see that he brings that this same tree had already been mentioned as a landmark by non-Jews before R. Chaim Vital. He also brings there a quote from “the compliments” that Yeshu received in Sefer HaGilgulim, chapter 67…. Once you see that, you understand that R. Chaim Vital really was very fond of the fellow…
Which is exactly what I said: all kinds of bored lecturers. Or abominable ones, etc.

It is known that in the books of the kabbalists (a student of the Ramchal) there is a very positive attitude toward Jesus of Nazareth, to the point of statements that he was supposed to be Messiah son of Joseph, but the moment was ruined because of baseless hatred, and he fell into the kelipot. The things are written in black and white, but are subject to different interpretations.

What’s the problem with statements like that? It’s possible that he had special potential but failed. The Talmud already says that he was a student of Yehoshua ben Perachya and was rejected because of a misunderstanding (Sotah 47a).
The historical Jesus was basically a commandment-observant Jew, who indeed saw himself as the messiah and apparently was not careful enough about Jewish law, but the attribution of divinity to his nature and the break from Judaism were done by others.