Kabbalistic Revolution: Reimagining Judaism in Medieval Spain 9780813568768

Citation preview

KABBALISTIC REVOLUTION I

JEWISH CULTURES OF THE WORLD Edited by Matti Bunzl, University of Illinois, Urbana-­Champaign, and Jeffrey Shandler, Rutgers University Published in association with the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life, Rutgers University

ADVISORY BOARD Yoram Bilu, Hebrew University Jonathan Boyarin, Cornell University Virginia R. Dominguez, University of Illinois, Urbana-­Champaign Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College Barbara Kirshenblatt-­Gimblett, New York University Jack Kugelmass, University of Florida Riv-­Ellen Prell, University of Minnesota Aron Rodrigue, Stanford University Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University Yael Zerubavel, Rutgers University

KABBALISTIC REVOLUTION I Reimagining Judaism in Medieval Spain

H a r t l e y L ac h t e r

rutgers university press new brunswick, new jersey, and london

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Lachter, Hartley, 1974–­ Kabbalistic Revolution : reimagining Judaism in Medieval Spain. p. cm —­(Jewish cultures of the world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–­0–­8135–­6875–­1 (hardcover : alk. paper) —­ ISBN 978–­0–­8135–­6876–­8 (e-­book) 1. Judaism—­Spain—­History. 2. Judaism—­History—­12th century. 3. Judaism—­History—­13th century. 4. Mysticism—­Judaism—­History—­12th century. 5. Mysticism—­Judaism—­History—­13th century. 6. Cabala.  I. Title. BM354.L38 2014 296.1'609460902—­dc23 2014004942 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2014 by Hartley Lachter All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Visit our website: http://​rutgerspress​.rutgers​.edu Manufactured in the United States of America

For Jessica

C O N T E NTS

Acknowledgments  ix Introduction: Kabbalistic Writing in Late Thirteenth-­Century Castile   1 1 Masters of Secrets: Claiming Power with Concealed Knowledge   15 2 Secrets of the Cosmos: Creating a Kabbalistic Universe   45 3 Secrets of the Self: Kabbalistic Anthropology and Divine Mystery   69 4 Jewish Bodies and Divine Power: Theurgy and Jewish Law   100 5 Prayer Above and Below: Kabbalistic Constructions of the Power of Jewish Worship   130 Conclusion  159 Postscript—­Cultural Logics: Kabbalah, Then and Now   163 Notes  167 Bibliography  215 Index  241

vii

ACK N OW L E D G M E N TS

This book is the fruit of many years labor, and I have had the good fortune to work with teachers and colleagues from whom I have benefitted immensely. This project began in the form of my doctoral dissertation, written under the guidance of Elliot Wolfson at New York University. Since completing my degree, the project had taken new form, and Professor Wolfson has provided me with invaluable mentorship and advice over the years, including reading a full draft of this book before publication. I am deeply grateful. I would also like to thank Shaul Magid, Joel Hecker, and Boaz Huss for reading through the manuscript and offering me many helpful insights, and Irven Resnick, who provided helpful suggestions for the first chapter. Conversations with colleagues over the years have added in many great and small ways to the formulation of the arguments of this book, and for that I would like to thank Daniel Abrams, David Biale, Robert Chazan, Jonathan Dauber, Glenn Dynner, Marc Epstein, Pinchas Giller, Joel Hacker, Harvey Hames, Yuval Harari, Moshe Idel, Ephraim Kanarfogel, Jeffrey Kripal, Daniel Lasker, Tony Levy, Shaul Magid, Alan Mittleman, Elke Morlok, David Myers, Yohanan Petrovsky-­Shtern, Jonathan Ray, Robert Sagerman, Sandra Valabregue-­Perry, and Kocku von Stuckrad. I also thank the participants in the Departmental Seminar at Ben Gurion University where I was invited to present some of the central claims of this book. Responsibility for all errors that remain is exclusively my own. Access to sources in manuscript was essential for researching this book. I would like to thank Dr. Piet van Boxel, Hebrew curator at the Bodlian Library at Oxford; Ilana Tahan, lead curator of Hebrew Manuscripts at the British Library; Rabbi Jerry Schwarzbard, director of Special Collections at the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary; and the staff at the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the Jewish National Library at Hebrew University. Their assistance and helpful advice was invaluable to me. My colleagues in the Religion Studies department at Muhlenberg College, Sharon Albert, Jessica Cooperman,

ix

xAck n owle d gme n ts

William Gruen, Peter Pettit, Kammie Takahashi, and Susan Schwartz, have been supportive professional allies to whom I am deeply grateful. I would also like to thank my editors at Rutgers, Matti Bunzl, Jeffrey Shandler, and Marlie Wasserman, for their unfailing support. Brian King’s meticulous and thoughtful copy editing improved the writing of this book in countless ways. My family has been a source of invaluable support during my work on this project. To my parents, Sid and Sandra Lachter, and my in-­laws, Leslie and Bernice Cooperman, I am deeply indebted for the encouragement and countless hours of babysitting that they provided. My two daughters, Zoe and Mollie, gave me the necessary comic relief essential to productive labor. My wife, Jessica Cooperman, has discussed every aspect of this project with me, offering many important observations. Without her keen intellect, sharp historical sensibility, and unstinting support and devotion, this project would not have been possible.

KABBALISTIC REVOLUTION I

INTRODUCTION kabbalistic writing in late thirteenth-­century castile

The Jewish esoteric discourse that developed between the late twelfth and late thirteenth centuries known as Kabbalah had a profound influence on the history of Judaism, as well as on the intellectual history of the West. The kabbalistic worldview, which claims a secret oral tradition stemming from the revelation at Sinai that reveals the mysteries of the Godhead and the theurgic impact of Jewish ritual, became a dominant paradigm according to which many Jews conceptualized the meaning of Jewish life. In the last three decades of the thirteenth century, a remarkable and unprecedented proliferation of kabbalistic texts and discourse took place in Spain, especially in the region of Castile.1 It was during this period that hundreds of texts were composed, ranging from short explications of specific points of kabbalistic doctrine to lengthy compositions that offer systematic treatments of Kabbalah and its interpretation of scripture, rabbinic rituals, and liturgy. Most significantly, it was during this crucial period in Castile that the texts that eventually came to be known as the Sefer ha-­Zohar, or “Book of Splendor,” were composed and began to circulate. The aim of these kabbalists was bold and transformative in scope, seeking to reimagine the traditional forms of Jewish life and the circumstances of Jewish historical experience in terms of an esoteric doctrine with a complex and daring theosophy. According to the kabbalistic tradition, the transcendent divine essence known as ein sof (the endless) or ayyin (the nothing) created the cosmos through a process of emanation in which a series of ten sefirot (luminosities) mediate the continuum of being that connects the physical universe to God. According to this model, the sefirot, which are described with strikingly paradoxical and apophatic language as the ten that are simultaneously one and infinite, channel the divine shefa (overflow) into the world, sustaining the fabric of being and bringing blessing to humanity. Due to the exile of the Jewish people from their land, as well as a history of Jewish violation of covenantal law, the interconnections between the

1

KETER

BINAH

HOKMAH

DIN

HESED

TIFFERET

HOD

NETZAH

YESOD

MELKHUT

Chart of the Sefirot

I nt rodu ct ion

3

sefirot, according to the kabbalists, are damaged, and the lowest sefirah, Shekhinah or the divine feminine presence, accompanies the Israelites in their exile, sharing and embodying their longing for reintegration into the Godhead. The kabbalists claim, however, that their esoteric teachings concerning this theosophy enable Jews to repair the damage to the sefirot by means of the performance of Jewish law and ritual as well as the study of Jewish texts through a kabbalistic lens. In short, the Kabbalah is a claim to secret knowledge that presents a bold and forceful reformulation of Judaism as the mechanism whereby the very being of the cosmos is maintained. The historical impact of these writings is hard to overstate. Though the extent of the immediate impact of these texts in Spain and elsewhere is difficult to gauge precisely, within a few centuries the Zohar became accepted as a canonical text in virtually all Jewish communities, taking its place alongside the Bible and the Talmud.2 The transformative writings of Isaac Luria’s school, as well as the messianic movement surrounding Shabbetai Zvi and the development of Hasidism, were all deeply indebted to the writings and worldview of the Castilian kabbalists. Along with the Zohar, the writings of Joseph Gikatilla and Moses de Leon attracted the attention of Christian Hebraists and were translated into Latin starting as early as the fifteenth century, making a lasting impression on Renaissance thought as well as later schools of European philosophers, esotericists, and scientists. An important desideratum in the scholarship on Kabbalah is why this particular period in Castile, from the 1270s through the early 1300s, was so remarkably prolific and boldly creative. This study will explore this question by considering the function that kabbalistic discourse served in the particular historical circumstance of Castile and the Iberian peninsula. It will be argued that the kabbalists sought to address the tenuous political status of Jews in Western Europe, as well as the rise of Aristotelianism and Christian anti-­Jewish argumentation,3 by claiming to reveal a secret doctrine hidden among the sages of Israel since the revelation at Sinai in which Jews are placed at the very center of the cosmic-­ divine drama. By appealing to a secret form of traditional knowledge, the kabbalists argued that the observance of traditional Jewish law and ritual empowers them to maintain the very being of the cosmos and bring harmony to the Godhead. Reinterpreting rabbinic Judaism in this way, the kabbalists of medieval Castile sought to bring about nothing short of a kabbalistic revolution initiating a shift in Jewish self-­perception through an audacious claim regarding the cosmic importance of Jews and their religious life. A particularly remarkable aspect of the development of Kabbalah toward the end of the thirteenth century is that the kabbalists’ formulation of Judaism was adopted by erudite Jewish men who would have been well aware of the apparent novelty of many of the ideas presented in kabbalistic texts. This can

4

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

be partially explained by the fact that thirteenth-­century Kabbalah bears many striking affinities to images and motifs found in rabbinic literature and other Jewish sources from late antiquity. In this respect I am in agreement with Moshe Idel, who “postulates a long series of links” connecting medieval Kabbalah with “a genuine ancient tradition which is an esoteric interpretation of Judaism.”4 Nonetheless, the learned Jewish readers among whom these texts first circulated would have recognized that Kabbalah as a discursive form, or as a way of talking about and imagining the meaning of rabbinic Judaism, also differs in many respects from sources commonly regarded as authoritative in traditional Jewish circles.5 My intent is not to provide a history or genealogy of kabbalistic thought or to claim that Kabbalah represents entirely new ideas or a radical break with rabbinic Judaism. Rather, I wish to consider the social and cultural implications of the proliferation of kabbalistic texts as a new form of discourse during the period in question. How did Kabbalah gain such momentum so quickly? And why were these particular texts appealing to so many in Castile? Or, to formulate the question in terms of Pierre Bourdieu’s work,6 by what strategies did medieval kabbalists succeed in constructing symbolic and cultural capital? I believe these questions can be illuminated by considering the purposes that Kabbalah served and the conception of Jewish identity that it sought to advance. By adopting a more historically and culturally contextualized perspective, this book will ground thirteenth-­century Kabbalah more firmly in the environment and time period in which it took shape.

reading kabbalah in context The study of Jewish mysticism in the academy has had, generally speaking, two major foci—­the phenomenology of ideas and historical criticism. While it has been widely accepted by most scholars that there should be a reciprocal interchange between these two domains of research,7 the tendency has been to pursue these interests separately, which has often led to a diminished interest in the social, political, and cultural location of kabbalistic ideas and texts. Classical historical criticism focused largely on how historical context allowed for influence among Jews, Christians, Muslims, philosophers, Gnostics, Neo-­Platonists, traditionalists, and kabbalists. The model has been one in which ideas and symbols are imagined to migrate across presumed cultural and religious boundaries through a process similar to that of contagion wherein the values, thinking, and symbolism of a majority culture “infect” a weaker minority community, resulting in a kind of syncretism in which the modes of discourse of the minority assume an almost unwitting imitation of the majority. Such an approach can easily lead to a search for parallels as the explanation for the development of novel elements in Jewish discourse—­an approach that Samuel Sandmel has

I nt rodu ct ion

5

rightly dubbed “Parallelomania.”8 However, methodological developments in recent decades in the fields of religious studies, sociology, anthropology, and the observations of New Historicism have called into question many of the assumptions of earlier scholarship regarding the stability of the boundaries of communities, identities, and books. There is a growing interest in considering the ways that the production of texts is part of a strategy for imagining and constructing identity within cultural contexts in which identity is always fluid and contested. As Boaz Huss has argued, kabbalistic texts should be regarded not as the Jewish manifestation of a universal “mystical” phenomenon, but instead “as cultural products that were created as a result of political demands within particular historical, economic, and social contexts.”9 Harvey Hames has similarly argued that “[o]ne cannot divorce text from context, and the kabbalists were not living in a vacuum. . . . If they wrote texts and preached, partook in disputations and spread their teachings, it was because they saw in them the potential to reform Jewish life and practice, and reinforce the bond between God and Israel and they were reacting to particular circumstances and to similar stimuli as were their Christian contemporaries.”10 The production of kabbalistic discourse is a cultural practice11 taking form in the public sphere, despite the frequent claim within these texts that such discourse is a “secret” matter. It is therefore useful to consider the ways that kabbalists sought to function as historical actors, rather than exclusively as subjects of historical circumstance, by producing kabbalistic texts. When viewed from this perspective, the rich and diverse corpus of kabbalistic literature produced in Spain provides a valuable reservoir of data for understanding how Jews endeavored to construct a meaningful self-­conception in a particular time and place.12 One important working assumption is that in studying kabbalistic literature the data in question are not personal experiences, states of mind, or God, but rather, discourse. As Kocku von Stuckrad rightly reminds us, “The only thing religious studies should be interested in is analyzing the public appearance of religious propositions,”13 which is to say, the study of religion should focus on “communication and action.”14 In a similar vein, Gershom Scholem notes that “from a historian’s point of view, the sum of religious phenomena known as mysticism consists in the attempts of mystics to communicate their ‘ways,’ their illuminations, their experience, to others.”15 Elliot Wolfson’s observation that Kabbalah is a form of poesis that does not distinguish sharply between sign and experience opens a path for the discursive study of this literature: “It [is not] anachronistic to say that kabbalists were aware of the plight of human consciousness that has been documented in a particularly poignant way by modern philosophers pondering nature from a post-­Kantian constructivist perspective: All knowledge is mediated, and hence nothing can be known without the intermediary of a sign. . . . To be sure, kabbalists posit an indissoluble link between

6

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

words and things.”16 The study of Kabbalah as a historically situated, discursive phenomenon is thus consistent with how kabbalists understand the nature of experience and the presuppositions that inform the production of kabbalistic writing. Since, as Wolfson observes, kabbalists embrace the notion that “immediate experience is, upon reflection, a complex lattice of semiotic signs informing the mind having the experience,”17 the production of kabbalistic discourse is not simply a faint echo of the “real” object we seek to uncover. For the contemporary scholar, no less than for the kabbalists themselves, there is nothing to seek beyond the text. From the perspective of the history of ideas, it is thus important to consider how certain discourses, such as the one conventionally referred to as Kabbalah, manage as historical phenomena to develop and acquire legitimacy and authority. If a particular kind of discourse becomes more vocal at a specific time and place, it is reasonable to regard this as evidence that such discourse is serving a perceived strategic purpose for those involved in its production and dissemination and that the cultural context is one in which an opening for such discourse exists. Talal Asad has noted that when considering the development of religious modes of discourse, we must bear in mind “the sense in which power constructs religious ideology, establishes the preconditions for distinctive kinds of religious personality, authorizes specifiable religious practices and utterances, [and] produces religiously defined knowledge.”18 If religious discourse acquires its force and meaning at least in part through the dynamics of power that inform and give shape to the broader social environment, our understanding of that discourse is enhanced by considering the political, social, religious, and intellectual context in which it takes shape. In other words, as Asad argues, It is not just that religious symbols are intimately linked to social life (and so change with it), or that they usually support dominant political power (and occasionally oppose it). It is that different kinds of practice and discourse are intrinsic to the field in which religious representations (like any representation) acquire their identity and their truth. From this it does not follow that the meanings of religious practices and utterances are to be sought in social phenomena, but only that their possibility and their authoritative status are to be explained as products of historically distinctive disciplines and forces.19

The contextualization of Kabbalah is thus an endeavor to reveal the multiple ways in which this discourse constructs meaning, serves strategic interests, and bolsters contested identities within specific contextual parameters that make such discursive production possible and useful. Echoing a more complex version of Michel Foucault’s claim that “discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power,”20 Asad draws our attention to the ways that discursive constructs

I nt rodu ct ion

7

acquire force and meaning within the confines of particular social realities. As an important development in Jewish cultural production in the Middle Ages, Kabbalah, like any form of religious discourse, reflects the reciprocal interchange of power and ideas, literatures, and life circumstances. In his recent work on Lurianic Kabbalah, Shaul Magid has observed, drawing upon the work of Stephen Greenblatt and Louis Montrose, that Lurianic literature is a form of discourse that “illustrates a ‘cultural poetics,’ showing that texts often create a prism simultaneously refracting realia and constructing an idealized vision of what the author would like the real to be.”21 In other words, while the production of texts is always, in a sense, informed by their context, such literary activity is also part of an endeavor to project a context in which the proposed worldview is both viable and authoritative. The contextualization of Kabbalah is thus more than a consideration of how external factors or historical forces find their way into the literature and leave their mark on it, or somehow “create” it. The examination of Kabbalah with an eye toward context suggests attentiveness to the kinds of social and intellectual dynamics that allow kabbalistic discourse to develop and an appreciation of the ways in which kabbalistic texts themselves seek to construct a conception of reality in which their discourse speaks from a position of authority. Thus, while it is important to take into consideration the historical and intellectual environment in which the kabbalists were working and writing, the texts written by kabbalists constitute the most important body of evidence for piecing together the world that kabbalists simultaneously navigated and constructed. My primary intention is thus not to provide a comparative analysis of medieval Kabbalah in relation to “non-­Jewish” literature from the same time period and location. As Yoseph Hayim Yerushalmi has noted, the study of Jewish life in medieval Christendom can quickly devolve into “the history of what the Christians said against the Jews.”22 The “internal” products of Jewish culture, Yerushalmi argues, provide a much richer picture of how Jews understood themselves since “most of what they created, they created for their own needs.”23 My objective in this book is to examine late thirteenth-­ century Castilian Kabbalah with an attunement to the kinds of evidence that these compositions provide regarding the ways that medieval kabbalists sought to construct an empowered Jewish identity. Through an exploration of the formulation of Judaism reflected in these texts, I wish to uncover how these kabbalists understood the world and created a way of imagining their place in it through the production of a new Jewish cultural form. By considering the political strategies implicit in the kabbalists’ claims to esoteric knowledge and by exploring the conception of Jewish selfhood and identity that kabbalistic texts seek to create, we can thus better appreciate the ways in which Kabbalah engaged a wide variety of interests and concerns for Jews living on the Iberian peninsula. I should emphasize that I would not argue that the historical

8

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

and sociocultural contextualization of this phenomenon implies that the kabbalists were simply addressing current political anxieties, and that noting the possible strategies at play in kabbalistic discourse somehow “explains” the phenomenon in its entirety. However, I would also argue that the existence of affinities between late thirteenth-­and early fourteenth-­century kabbalistic texts and earlier materials scattered throughout a wide variety rabbinic and postrabbinic sources does not sufficiently account for the rapid development of kabbalistic literary activity in medieval Spain. By situating this phenomenon within its broader context, we uncover what Talya Fishman refers to in her research on the penitential practices of the Hasidei Ashkenaz as the “proximate cause,”24 or the more temporally immediate concerns that drove medieval writers to extract particular strands from the staggering array of options presented in late antique and early medieval Jewish sources. The production of a substantial body of kabbalistic literature in medieval Spain, in some cases by Jews who composed impressive oeuvres comprising more than a thousand folios of exclusively kabbalistic material, is an important phenomenon representing a shift in Jewish cultural practice. Greater emphasis on the issue of context sheds light on these texts and reveals an important development in the history of Jewish culture and identity.

a place on the map The kabbalistic texts that serve as the central focus of this study function much like maps guiding their readers through complex divine territory and empowering them to navigate their own situation by providing knowledge of a transcendent divine topography. Jonathan Z. Smith has used the idea of the map as a fruitful device for thinking about the function of analytical models in the study of religion and as a way of understanding the content of religious discourses themselves. Religious worldviews and their myths, Smith argues, take on meaning by providing a way, within a particular historical context, of coping with a given reality. Building on the work of Kenneth Burke, Smith notes that religious myths and their attendant “maps” constitute “a strategy for dealing with a situation.”25 Smith has identified a few kinds of maps of the world that are reflected in a variety of religious discourses. He refers, for instance, to what he calls the “locative” map, which seeks to reveal the underlying order of reality and provide a guide for orienting the self to the divine in a way that is in harmony with the firmly ordered boundaries of the sacred. As Smith puts it, the locative is “a map of the world which guarantees meaning and value through structures of congruity and conformity.”26 It is the locative view of the world that Mircea Eliade described in his many studies, but Smith argues that it might be a mistake to regard Eliade’s “imperial” structures as the only, or even the predominant, religious view of the world. There are also the utopian maps, which reject the prevailing orders of

I nt rodu ct ion

9

congruity and seek to escape reality for the “no-­place” or utopia. Such religious discourses present a rebellion against presumed sacred schema. And then there is what Smith refers to as the “disjunctive” maps, which “neither deny nor flee from disjunction, but allow the incongruous elements to stand.”27 In these modes of religious thinking, the paradoxical and ineffable become the primary locus of meaning, and contradictions and tensions are understood to be freighted with sacred significance. Building upon the phrasing of Paul Ricoeur, Smith notes that “it is the perception of incongruity that gives rise to thought,” and thus disjunctive maps are ones that point out the tensions in the human condition, in order “to play between incongruities and to provide an occasion for thought.”28 Below I wish to consider the ways that medieval Kabbalah provides a rich body of evidence for considering how Jewish cultural production shifted to cope with the “situation” of medieval Jewish life. The kabbalistic texts examined in this book present a combination of the locative and disjunctive that helps these texts acquire force and meaning for the Jews who wrote, read, and preserved them. Medieval Kabbalah describes Jewish esoteric knowledge as the superior form of truth, and Jewish religious praxis is regarded as that which literally maintains the very fabric of reality and stability of the cosmos. Yet, it would not have escaped the attention of the Jewish readers of these texts that they and their coreligionists in the medieval Christian West were not graced with unassailable political agency, but instead faced tenuous and at times dangerous circumstances. That is to say, medieval Jews were not confronted with mere chaos in need of order—­that is, a locative map—­they were grappling with a contradiction between the discourse of their culture and the reality of their condition. An important element that informs the composition and circulation of at least some late thirteenth-­century kabbalistic literature is, I would argue, a desire to navigate this incongruity by constructing a worldview that enables Jews to imagine themselves as masters of secrets, with the capacity to bring harmony to the Godhead and sustenance to the world while at the same time embracing the tensions of mystery and paradox as central feature of reality, both cosmic and divine.29 As Smith has argued persuasively in his comments on the object of the study of religion: Religion is the quest, within the bounds of the human, historical condition, for the power to manipulate and negotiate one’s “situation” so as to have “space” in which to meaningfully dwell. It is the power to relate one’s domain to the plurality of environmental and social spheres in such a way as to guarantee the conviction that one’s existence “matters.” . . . What we study when we study religion is the variety of attempts to map, construct and inhabit such positions of power through the use of myths, rituals, and experiences of transformation.30

1 0

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

Bearing this observation in mind, I wish to consider below some of the ways that medieval kabbalists sought to address the Jewish situation in terms of how they conceptualize Jewish esoteric knowledge and how they place Jews and Jewish religious praxis in relation to the divine. By exploring the interplay between locative and disjunctive modes of discourse in kabbalistic literature, we will gain valuable insight into the struggle with Jewish identity presented in these texts The development of Kabbalah as a distinctive and influential form of Jewish religious discourse finds its roots in an engagement across the perhaps overly constructed boundaries of Jews and Christians, philosophers and esotericists, traditionalists and kabbalists. The formation of each group is an ever-­shifting negotiation of the conception of the self in relation to the other,31 and the assertion of claims to authority in light of the possibilities of certain discourses created by competing regimes of power and truth. As Elliot Wolfson has observed, building on Jacques Derrida’s comment that “the same is the same only in being affected by the other, only by becoming the other of the same,”32 a clear picture of Jewish self-­understanding requires an attunement to the dynamics of self and other since “the referentiality of self cannot be demarcated in isolation from an intricate mesh of social interconnectivity.”33 In this way we can see the transformative development of Kabbalah as yet another indicator of the ways in which Jewish identities in the frontier context of Castile were, as Jonathan Ray puts it, “as much a product of the prevailing historical processes and social dynamics of the age as they were of the discrete traditions of the Jewish community.”34 The kabbalistic conception of Judaism that arose in during this period reflects an attempt to situate the place of Jews in a complex cultural, intellectual, and political landscape. The frontier conditions of Castile and the cosmopolitan and diverse collection of scholars in the court of King Alfonso X created a space for kabbalists to advance their particular vision of an esoteric Jewish tradition. As Kocku von Stuckrad has pointed out, “Religious identities are shaped through communicative processes. They are not found but negotiated.”35 The religious identity proffered by kabbalists in Castile accords well with the increased interest in esotericism, and well-­established “secret” ideas are recast in these texts as a distinctively Jewish mytho-­poesis. The fact that this trend of kabbalistic esoteric discourse became such an influential strand of both Judaism and Western esotericism as a whole is instructive for helping us to appreciate the complexities and diversities of the European intellectual heritage and the important role that claims to secret knowledge of the transcendent have played in the construction of Western identities. The chapters below explore how the kabbalists constructed a conception of the world that enabled a meaningful, indeed powerful, way of imagining Jews and Judaism. The discussion begins in the first chapter with an analysis of kabbalistic claims to esoteric knowledge and the ways in which the notion of the

I nt rodu ct ion

11

secret is employed by kabbalists to assert the supremacy of Jewish wisdom. I argue that the use of esoteric claims is informed at least in part by the increased cultural capital within the broader society associated with the retrieval of ancient, lost, and esoteric forms of knowledge, and the association of Jews with the transmission of such knowledge, as well as the pressures created by Christian missionary and polemical discourse and the perceived threat of the spread of rationalism. The second chapter considers how the kabbalists make use of their claims to secret knowledge to support a particular way of imagining God and the world. Through an examination of kabbalistic images and ideas regarding the emergence of the ten sefirot within God and the creation of the universe, it will be shown how kabbalistic ontology confounds the boundaries between the divine realm and the created world in order to set the stage for reimagining Jewish identity and religious praxis. Kabbalistic anthropology, or how the “human” self is conceived, is examined in the third chapter, describing the ways in which Jews are depicted in these texts as unique, godlike beings who sustain the fabric of being through the endowment of the divine soul in their bodies. The fourth chapter describes how the kabbalists deploy the notion of theurgy, or the capacity for human actions to influence the divine realm, as part of a forceful articulation of the centrality and power of the Jewish people. The kabbalists radically enhance the stakes of Jewish religious praxis by depicting it as necessary for maintaining divine unity and the very fabric of the cosmic order. The study concludes with an analysis of depictions of the theurgic efficacy of prayer, considering how the kabbalists construe Jewish liturgical practices as a means whereby Jews fulfill their role as the earthly ministers of divine power. Taken together, the texts explored present a rich diversity of voices that coalesced around a particular approach to Jewish identity through the production of an important emerging facet of Jewish culture—­the writing of kabbalistic texts. A comparison between this phenomenon and some contemporary forms of Kabbalah, especially those that have had an impact on popular culture, is briefly considered in the postscript.

a note on sources This study will focus on kabbalistic texts produced in Spain, mainly in the region of Castile-­Leon, during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Kabbalists whose works will be of particular importance include Joseph Gikatilla, Moses de Leon, Joseph of Hamadan, David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, and to a lesser extent, Joseph ben Todoros ha-­Levi Abulafia and Isaac ibn Sahula. Occasional reference will also be made, as a point of comparison, to kabbalists who lived and worked either earlier in the thirteenth century (such as Ezra and Azriel of Gerona, Nahmanides, Asher ben David, and the circle of the Iyyun texts,

1 2

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

or “Books of Contemplation”), or those who lived contemporaneously with the kabbalists in question but outside of the region of Castile, mainly in Catalonia and Aragon (prominent examples would include Bahya ben Asher from Segovia and the students of Nahmanides living in the region of Catalonia), where kabbalists were somewhat more conservative.36 Notably absent from this list is Abraham Abulafia, an important kabbalist and most prominent example of “ecstatic” Kabbalah. While the significance of his contribution to the history of Kabbalah is not to be underestimated, Idel has questioned Scholem’s characterization of Abulafia’s Kabbalah as “the culminating point in the development of two opposing schools of thought in Spanish Kabbalism,”37 pointing out that “Abulafia was present in Spain for only three or four years” before leaving in the mid 1270s, as a result of which, “all of Abulafia’s important writings were composed outside of Spain.”38 Given this fact, the present study does not employ Abulafia’s writings as a major source of evidence, though in the notes occasional references are made to interesting parallels. While the central claims of this book could be supported by focusing exclusively on works that we can locate definitively in Castile and attribute to known authors during the period in question, this would exclude much of the anonymous, unpublished material that comprises a large corpus of intriguing—­if also somewhat problematic—­sources for considering the development of kabbalistic literature as a cultural phenomenon. The most significant anonymous text addressed in this book is the Sefer ha-­Zohar. As Daniel Abrams has persuasively argued, the Zohar is not a “book” in the conventional sense, and it would be a mistake to construct any argument on the basis of a presumption that this text, in the printed form that it assumed in the sixteenth century, represents an identifiable authorial product that we can easily locate.39 Starting with Jacob Emden, followed by Adolph Jellinek, Heinrich Graetz, and most notably, Gershom Scholem, the writing of the Zohar has been closely associated with Moses de Leon.40 Yehuda Liebes has argued that, although there is certainly a stronger connection between de Leon and the Zohar than any other single kabbalist, we can better account for the details of the evidence and early textual witnesses of the Zohar starting at the end of the thirteenth century if we assume that “Sefer ha-­Zohar is the fruit of a complete fraternity that worked together on kabbalistic doctrine, relying on a diverse tradition and ancient texts.”41 Liebes argued that the many intriguing parallels, as well as the differences, between the Zohar and the writings of known kabbalists from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries can best be explained if we assume that they were part of a collaborative effort in the composition of the zoharic literature and incorporated ideas and even preliminary passages from the work in progress into their own independent writings.42 The compositions produced by this fraternity began to be disseminated piecemeal in the latter part of the thirteenth century under a variety of names,43

I nt rodu ct ion

13

eventually becoming known as Sefer ha-­Zohar. Interestingly, we have no complete manuscripts dating from before the first printing of Zohar in Mantua and Cremona in 1558–­1560, reflecting the fact that, as Abrams has argued, “the Zohar was neither written, nor edited, nor distributed as a book by the various figures who produced the literary units that were later known by the name ‘Zohar.’”44 Ronit Meroz has shed new light on the complexities of the various strata of the Zohar, as well as offering possible evidence for elements of the text that were composed in earlier or later periods, in some cases outside of Spain.45 Bearing this in mind, the discussions of zoharic literature will not presume an internal coherence or stable, unifying ur-­text as the basis for reading a given passage from the corpus.46 Readings will focus on the portion of the zoharic literature referred to as the “guf ha-­Zohar,”47 the majority of which appears to derive from late thirteenth-­ century Castile, though a more conclusive demonstration of this remains an important desideratum. The fact that the Zohar has no single author and was not composed as a book adds to its importance as a witness to the cultural phenomenon of the spread of kabbalistic discourse. While the possibility exists that certain passages cited may at some point be demonstrated to derive from a later period in a different location, I believe that enough of the material reflects the time and place under consideration to render it an important and useful source for the purposes of this study. Other anonymous texts considered include the large body of commentaries on the ten sefirot. Scholem catalogued 134 of these texts in 1933,48 and many more have been identified since then and included by Rachel Nisan in the online catalogue at the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the Jewish National University Library.49 Also of interest are the many anonymous compositions referred to as sodot, dedicated to the explication of the kabbalistic meaning of the commandments, as well as other anonymous texts, such as the Sefer ha-­Yihud, that bear a title but no attribution to an author. In many cases, it is impossible to demonstrate conclusively that a given text can be definitively dated to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, though that was Scholem’s conclusion in the case of the commentaries on the ten sefirot,50 despite the fact that many of the manuscript witnesses were copied in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with a few important exceptions such as Parma (de Rossi) 1390, which was copied in 1286. The field still awaits a comprehensive study of the anonymous material composed during this period. Despite the somewhat blurry temporal and spatial boundaries for some of the compositions, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the majority of these texts were composed on the Iberian peninsula, predominantly in Castile, during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, to warrant inquiry.

chapter 1

I

MASTERS OF SECRETS claiming power with concealed knowledge Late thirteenth-­to early fourteenth-­century Castile saw the development of a very open ethos with regard to disseminating esoteric discourse. Moshe Idel has referred to this creative moment as a “window of opportunities”1 during which highly creative kabbalistic literature was composed and circulated, which he has aptly referred to as “innovative Kabbalah.”2 While Castilian kabbalists still accepted the notion that some secrets cannot be fully divulged, they defined the boundaries of what can be put down in writing much more capaciously than some other kabbalists, especially those living and writing in Catalonia. Many of the kabbalistic texts written during this period in Castile are detailed expositions designed to train the reader in the kabbalistic meaning of all aspects of scripture and religious praxis. The question that I wish to explore is not the extent to which this literature is innovative or conservative—­a dichotomy that Elliot Wolfson has demonstrated is not easily demarcated in texts from this period.3 Rather, I wish to consider the social and cultural function of the claim to esoteric knowledge in the advancement of the kabbalistic understanding of Judaism. As Hugh Urban has observed, “Secrecy is a discursive strategy that transforms a given piece of knowledge into a scarce and precious resource, a valuable commodity, the possession of which in turn bestows status, prestige, or symbolic capital on its owner.”4 The fact that the esoteric reformulation of Judaism presented in this kind of kabbalistic literature was compelling to a significant number of Iberian Jews during this period, especially in the region of Castile, is an important indicator of the degree to which the idea of the Jewish sage as a ba’al sod (master of secrets) and the presentation of Judaism as a torat ha-­sod (esoteric teaching)5 spoke to the aspirations of Jews in that particular historical moment.

15

1 6

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

kabbalah and the alfonsine renaissance in castile In the dynamic cosmopolitan environment engendered by King Alfonso X of Castile, Jewish scholars, physicians, and translators played an important role in the advancement of what has come to be called the Alfonsine Renaissance, of the mid-­thirteenth century in Castile.6 Alfonso’s intellectual and cultural endeavors earned him the title Alfonso Sabio, or Alfonso the Wise. Scholars dispute the degree to which he was in fact a “wise” king in terms of political success since his imperial ambitions were ultimately unsuccessful and his reign ended ignominiously with the loss of power to his son Sancho IV after the rebellion of his nobles in the mid 1270s. As Peter Linehan notes, “Alfonso X might have been happier organizing a research institute and keeping an eye on theses in progress than in running a kingdom.”7 Monetary policy went disastrously awry under his watch, and his micromanaging style, which included a complex sumptuary code regulating everything from the food to be consumed by his subjects to the eating habits of knights and the kinds of clothing permissible for different groups, did little to ingratiate him to the wealthy and powerful in Castile-­Leon.8 Despite his failings, the overwhelming perception of Alfonso, starting even in his own lifetime and persisting to this day, is that he was a man of letters who amassed knowledge to a nearly unprecedented degree. Alfonso X attracted scholars, Christian as well as Jewish and Muslim, to his court and rewarded them handsomely to translate books on all forms of knowledge into Castilian.9 These scholars also produced original scientific works such as the Alfonsine astronomical tables, which served as the seminal text on the subject for centuries thereafter. Other texts produced under his patronage, including the General Estoria and the Siete Partidas, became classics of medieval Spanish law and lore. In the words of Alfonso’s nephew, Juan Manuel, he was able to achieve his intellectual aspirations because, in addition to his natural intelligence, at his court he had many masters of the sciences and knowledge, whom he generously compensated to advance knowledge and ennoble his kingdoms, because we find that in all the sciences he created many books and all very good. Also, because he devoted much time to studying the subjects about which he wanted to compose his books, for which purpose he spent a year or two in some places and sometimes more, and according to those who lived from his favor, whoever wanted could speak with him, whenever they wanted and whenever he wanted, and in such a way he had time to study what he wanted on his own and even to supervise and finish the works of knowledge he commissioned from learned men and teachers he had at his court for this purpose.10

The image here is one of a king who succeeded in promulgating the perception of himself as a master of science and wisdom who through his royal power was

M ast er s of Secrets

17

able to gather a comprehensive and global archive of knowledge, which he himself mastered. Although the precise historical veracity of this narrative may be debatable, Alfonso X’s success in creating this conception of himself as a master of all forms of knowledge must be understood as an inherently political move intended to support his aspiration for expansive power as the ruling emperor.11 The prominence of this strategy in Alfonso’s reign serves as a significant indicator of the degree to which, in the climate of mid-­to late thirteenth-­century Castile, assertions regarding the possession of knowledge were associated with legitimacy and authority. Alfonso was open in his approach to knowledge, and Jews played an important role in producing the translations, histories, and scientific works written in his court despite the highly negative depictions of Jews found in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the negative legislation regarding Jews found in the Siete Partidas.12 Norman Roth has noted, for example, the prominence of Jewish translators in Alfonso’s court.13 Far from being mere “vehicular agents” of transmission, Eleazar Gutwirth has demonstrated the importance of the Jewish translators as cultural and intellectual actors in their own right, functioning within what he terms a “translating culture.”14 Jews also played an important role in the Castilian economy as moneylenders and, as in the case of the Jewish tax farmer Cag de la Maleha, prominent and favored members of the royal household.15 The same can be said of Alfonso’s son Sancho IV, who according to one report spent the Christmas of 1292 socializing at a Jewish household in Cordoba16 and who like his father had Jews present at his deathbed.17 The place of Jews in the royal court was not without its tensions, however—­Jewish tax farmers were imprisoned in 1279, at which time Cag de la Maleha was hanged, and in January 1281 many Jews in Toledo were held in their synagogues and forced to pay sizable ransom.18 Nonetheless, Jewish wisdom is described as an important element of Alfonso’s intellectual project as we find in another passage from the king’s nephew D. Juan Manuel: The Almighty endowed him with a zeal for the increase of knowledge such as no king since Ptolemy nor any other man has been possessed of. So determined was he that the men of his kingdom should be wise that he had the whole of theology, logic, and the seven liberal arts, as well as what they call mechanics, translated into Castilian. Also all the false teachings of the Moors, in order to reveal the errors into which their false prophet Mohammed had plunged them; . . . also the entire law of the Jews as well as their Talmud and another doctrine of theirs which they keep safely hidden and call cabbala. And this he did . . . so as to show that like the Moors they are in great error and in danger of losing their souls.19

1 8

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

Leaving aside the pious justification for Alfonso’s consultation with non-­ Christian scholars as simply part of a project to reveal to them the errors of their ways, it is clear that the Alfonsine project was one that was understood to have the broadest possible scope. In his court, the king sought to amass the world’s knowledge. While many of the texts and domains of knowledge that Alfonso sought to recover can reasonably be considered exoteric sciences such as astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and Aristotelian philosophy, there is also a pronounced interest in the notion of retrieving and making use of esoteric, secret, or lost forms of knowledge. As Charles Fraker has noted, part 2 of the General Estoria employs the category of the esoteric as a strategy for grounding the astral-­ magical claims in the book.20 The text includes a narrative in which a wise man, Esculapio, the Castilian version of the Greek Asklepios of the Hermetic tradition, receives a mysterious book in a language he cannot understand. The text turns out to be from Hermes himself, described as “el grant philosopho que uos aumeos dicho,” and Esculapio is able to unlock its meaning by consulting a female giant from Chaldea—­the niece of Nimrod—­named Gogligoban.21 The knowledge revealed in this book turns out to be a mixture of astrology and natural philosophy, but retrojected onto an ancient past and arcanized as a form of powerful secret knowledge.22 In the prologue to a work on the magical properties of stones known as the Lapidary, commissioned by Alfonso before he had assumed the throne between 1243 and 1250,23 we find another use of esoteric claims to ground the legitimacy of a text, but in this case the origin of the concealed knowledge is not a race of giants from the ancient past but rather a pair of Jewish contemporaries. In the prologue, we read that He [Alfonso] obtained it from a Jew who held it hidden, who neither wished to make use of it himself nor that any other should profit there from. And when he [Alfonso] had this book in his possession, he caused another Jew, who was his physician, to read it, and he was called Yehuda Mosca el menor and he was learned in the art of astrology and understood well both Arabic and Latin. And when through this Jew his physician he understood the value and great profit which was in the book, he commanded him to translate it from Arabic into the Castilian language.24

Like in the narrative from part 2 of the Genral Estoria, here too the credentials of the text are established by claiming an esoteric origin for the contents of the book. Gutwirth has noted that “in Mosca’s representation the intellectual decisions are those of the translator, who understands, explains to the King, and knows Arabic and Latin. It is true that the King gives orders, but he does so only after the Jew’s

M ast er s of Secrets

19

explanations.”25 The passage from the Lapidary would seem to indicate that Jews were regarded as repositories of empowering secret knowledge, at times seeking to prevent access to such knowledge, as is the case with the first anonymous Jew, and at other times serving as convenient guides to attaining access to such secrets, as we see in the case of Mosca, the personal physician to the then Infante Alfonso. Like the mysterious hermetic text in the General Estoria, the Lapidary, as depicted here, was a text that was in the possession of a Jew, was incomprehensible to Alfonso, and thus required the expertise of a second learned and trusted Jew in order for the aspiring king to be able to access its valuable contents. These examples give some indication of the degree to which claims regarding the secretly revealed nature of esoteric knowledge were regarded as important for establishing legitimacy and authority, even in cases where the knowledge itself is primarily scientific rather than theosophical. This is particularly the case with astro-­magical knowledge. Moreover, as we see in the passage from the Lapidary, Jews were regarded as possible points of access to restricted forms of knowledge. In such a context, it is hardly surprising that we find an increased interest among Jews in laying claim to esoteric wisdom.26 In Alfonso X’s Castile, philosophical compositions competed for influence with esoteric forms of knowledge such as Hermetic, Neoplatonic, and Neo-­Pythagorean texts.27 We find evidence of the participation of Jews in the circulation of these ideas through their interest in texts such as Sefer ha-­Levanah (“Book of the Moon”);28 the Arabic Ghayat al-­ Hakim (“The Goal of the Wise”), translated in Alfonso’s court as the Picatrix29 and known in medieval Jewish circles as the Tahlit he-­Haham;30 as well as the hermetic pseudepigraphy transmitted in the name of Aristotle in Latin as the Secretum Secretorum, and in Hebrew as the Sod ha-­Sodot (“Secret of Secrets”).31 While these texts encompass a diverse range of ideas and sources, a consistent strategy employed in this literature is the representation of their contents as knowledge revealed in secret from a heavenly source and passed on through concealed channels. In the Sod ha-­Sodot, for example, the “Ishmaelite” translator states that he found the text in a temple dedicated to Hermes, where he found the book “written in Gold,” containing the alleged letters sent by Aristotle to Alexander the Great relating the divine secrets of leadership that had been revealed to him.32 However, the prominent and lasting form of esoteric discourse that Jews involved themselves with was Kabbalah—­the boldest and most transformative Jewish cultural product to emerge from this period. The increased interest in esoteric knowledge in Spain thus presented an opportunity for kabbalists. I would suggest that the propagation of kabbalsitic discourse among Jews in Castile was informed by the increasing interest in esoteric forms of knowledge in the broader cultural context as well as by changes in the material conditions of Jewish life. As Yitzhak Baer has argued, “The thirteenth century marks a cultural turning point” in Spanish Jewish history, in that Jews

2 0

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

“had to adjust themselves to a Christian state and society,” in which a popular monastic movement, “typified by the Dominicans and Franciscans, was attempting a new interpretation of Christian tradition.”33 Moreover, many Jews, especially in Castile, were living in “widely scattered, even isolated communities” in which, one can assume, it was impossible for a “small aristocratic upper stratum to dominate.”34 Nonetheless, the total number of Jews spread across these Castilian communities was significant: Baer counted 3,900 tax-­paying families recorded in the registers of the crown in the year 1290.35 In the context of these numerous yet individually small communities, kabbalists seem to have been able to function freely. Guadalajara, where Moses de Leon lived and worked for a period of his life, had only thirty or so Jewish families, and other towns, such as Medinaceli, home of Joseph Gikatilla, may have had an even smaller Jewish population.36 Large synagogues were rare, but small groups or minyanim were common throughout the communities Spanish frontier37 where Jews lived as Ray observes, in “a dynamic, fluid, and often volatile society” in which “available land, exemptions from royal taxes, and a host of other economic possibilities” produced new Jewish settlements that were largely unrestrained by centralized rabbinic authority and “that were marked by a high degree of openness.”38 Moreover, Idel has noted the “arrival of new kabbalistic material” and “the encounters with representatives of other forms of Jewish thought” that took place in Castile in the 1260s and 1270s as important considerations in the development of Kabbalah during this time.39 It is likely that in such a context, Jews would have been engaged with the discourse of the surrounding culture, and kabbalistic literature, at least in terms of its formation as a discursive phenomenon, can provide evidence for how Jews constructed meaning under such open circumstances. Historically situating the proliferation of kabbalistic discourse in this way contributes to our understanding of how Kabbalah—­both for those who produced it as well as those who chose to value and preserve it—­was able to reconceptualize Judaism based on claims regarding an exclusively Jewish chain of esoteric wisdom.

the politics of secrets The assertion of secrecy is inherently political. Laying claim to restricted knowledge is a gesture of power and superiority over those who are excluded from such knowledge and its method of transmission. In some Christian circles, such claims were greeted with suspicion and even hostility, as Bernard McGinn points out, “[i]n Christianity, esotericism is generally seen as a bad thing—­it is what heretics, especially Christian heretics, are always accused of.”40 In Jewish circles, esoteric claims tended to be construed more positively. For instance, Nahmanides famously claims in the introduction to his commentary on the Torah that all knowledge, cosmic and divine, is contained within the scriptural text, but the

M ast er s of Secrets

21

allusions and hints to these secrets are completely inaccessible to human reason. Only those who have received these matters from a reliable kabbalist can understand the mysteries encoded in the Torah.41 Joseph Gikatilla is even more explicit in his Ginat Egoz, written in Castile in 1274. There he argued that “all of the wise men of the gentile nations move about the circumference of the circle, and their intention is to attain the inner point, but they have nothing upon which to rely in order to know that point, since the Torah has not been transmitted to them.”42 Similar claims were frequently made by other kabbalists, asserting that the content of their teaching is inaccessible to rational speculation and that, through a reliable—­and secret—­chain of exclusively Jewish transmission, their texts contain divine mysteries revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai.43 As Kocku von Stuckrad has observed, from the perspective of the study of Western esotericism in relation to the dynamics of Western culture, it is important to consider “not only the content of these systems but the claim to a wisdom that is superior to other interpretations of cosmos and history.”44 David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid states that when Moses spoke to God on Mount Sinai, “he desired to know the secret of His holy name . . . immediately he clove to Him and knew more than any man in the world.”45 Through the experience of “cleaving” (devekut),46 Moses came into possession of knowledge of the secrets of God’s name that would be otherwise inaccessible to human reason. For this reason, according to he-­Hasid, Moses became more knowledgeable than “any man in the world,” thereby bequeathing to the people of Israel a superior and unassailable tradition of secret knowledge of the divine. A similar claim associating secret knowledge with mystical encounter can be found in the anonymous Sod ve-­Yesod ha-­Kadmoni: The Holy One, blessed be He, subsists over all and grasps everything in the power of existence. This attribute was transmitted to Enoch, son of Jared, and he embraced it and endeavored to know the Holy One, blessed be He, through that attribute itself. When his soul clove [to God], it longed to draw forth overflow that flows forth from Hokhmah, until his soul ascended and was bound within Binah, to the point that it clove within the power of Binah and became like God, and it and He became one thing. This is as it is written, “and Enoch walked with God, and he was no more, for God took him.” In the Alphabet of Rabbi Akiva it is written that his flesh was turned to flames of fire, and he became as though he were one of the spiritual beings. And Noah took hold of that attribute and was bound to its secret, until he became the attribute of Enoch. And he was the teacher of our father Abraham, peace be upon him.47

Enoch’s unique insight into divine matters, and thus his importance as a source of esoteric wisdom, is associated with his apotheosis. A similar claim is made in an anonymous commentary on the ten sefirot in which there is a discussion of

2 2

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

how the wise men and prophets of Israel attain kabbalistic secrets through the cleaving of thought to God via the sefirot.48 Idel has noted that the resurgence of interest in the image of Enoch as a source of secret knowledge and as a “son” of God in the last three decades of the thirteenth century was “unlike anything in the history of Kabbalah 100 years previously”49 and that this may be connected to the increased interest in Hermetic literature, given the fact that Enoch is at times associated with Hermes.50 Many kabbalists also describe rabbinic literature as a repository of Jewish esoteric knowledge. As we read in an anonymous commentary on the ten sefirot: Thus says the wise man, the Rabbi great in wisdom, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai of blessed memory. I attest in clear testimony that these words are the words of the living God and the words of the Kabbalah that the wise men of the generations have received from the day that the Torah was given on Sinai until now, and they contain nothing but the unity of God, may He be blessed and exalted, and truth and faith. All of these matters that I write are the powers and attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He.51

After establishing the revelatory source for this knowledge and making at least brief use of the pseudepigraphic attribution to Shimon bar Yohai—­a move that is only half-­heartedly employed since the text goes on to cite medieval authorities such as Nahmanides52—­the author describes his treatise in the following way: All of these allusions are not revealed except to the enlightened ones, “pursuers of justice, seekers of the Lord” (Isa. 51:1), and they should be concealed from the eyes of the masses “in whom the Lord has instilled a spirit of distortion” (Isa. 19:14). You will find that our Rabbis, of blessed memory, say much in the Talmud that conflicts with reason. And therefore, I have written this book in order to refute all those who speak with arrogance of the righteous ones, for the ways of our Rabbis are the ways of the Living God, and they are all said in accordance with the Kabbalah. When our Rabbis say that the Holy One, blessed be He, wears phylacteries,53 or that he prays,54 or that he roars like a lion55 or weeps,56 and many other things similar to these, far be it that such things pertain to the one who spoke and created the world. Rather, these things contain great and wondrous secrets, and one who knows them is prohibited from revealing them except to one with a settled mind, for these sefirot are affixed to the Root of Roots57 and the Foundation of Foundations. May the Lord our God show us his straight paths so that we will be able to worship him and not transgress, amen, amen.58

Conscious of the anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms that abound in rabbinic literature, the author of this text argues that all such statements by

M ast er s of Secrets

23

the rabbis can only be properly understood as secrets that allude to kabbalistic mysteries.59 The author claims that he composed this text in order to respond to critics who would dismiss the legitimacy of the rabbinic tradition, despite his admonition that the reader should only share it with one who is appropriate for such knowledge. While I believe that it would be a mistake to interpret the warning to conceal the contents of this text too literally, the presentation of kabbalistic discourse as a secret grounded in divine revelation and transmitted in a concealed way throughout the rabbinic tradition is a powerful device for claiming a particular kind of authority for Kabbalah. The repeated assertion of the continuity of kabbalistic secrets with biblical and rabbinic tradition reflects the “relationship between rupture and tradition,” as described by Baumgarten and Rustow, wherein “claims to continuity are most vocal precisely during times of rapid change.”60 The esoteric teachings of the Jewish tradition are frequently presented as the true inner meaning of rabbinic lore that has long been the secret inheritance of the Jewish people, thereby claiming that only one who is well versed in Kabbalah can grasp the real meaning hidden in the words of the Sages. As the anonymous author of Sefer ha-­Mafteah puts it, “all of the words of the wise men have an inner and outer meaning.”61 We find a similar formulation of this argument in another commentary on the ten sefirot preserved in British Library Hebrew manuscript Or. 10,324: These are the sefirot according to the true tradition [kabbalah], happy is the one who merits them, for the heavens and the earth, land and sea, Torah, Prophets and Writings, laws and aggadot, all hosts of the heavens and the earth, are reliant upon these ten sefirot. And that which is written, that the Holy One, blessed be He, prays and roars like a lion and weeps and wears phylacteries62 . . . and thus with regard to many matters, these are sealed and enclosed words, and they are not revealed except to the elect, “pursuers of justice, seekers of the Lord” (Isa. 51:1), and they are concealed and hidden from the eyes of the masses, “in whom the Lord has instilled a spirit of distortion” (Isa. 19:14). The words of our Rabbis are the words of the living God that they derived from the true tradition [kabbalah] which they knew, and the Holy Spirit was upon them and never departed from them, and thus they would allude to matters that subsist in the very heights of the world, having no end or limit. . . . For one who merits this wisdom, these wondrous matters are engraved upon his heart, and he is blessed by them every day, and these words blossom forth in his heart and all of the secrets of the Torah are revealed to him.

In this passage the author frames the claims regarding the superiority of Jewish esoteric knowledge with the assertion that the entire cosmos and heavenly

2 4

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

retinue are comprised within the ten sefirot. Kabbalistic wisdom is thus the key to all matters earthly and divine. The text then focuses, as we saw in the previous citation, on the question of rabbinic anthropomorphisms. The rabbis, our anonymous author argues, were masters of the Kabbalah inspired by the Holy Spirit, and thus all of their words are to be understood as allusions to kabbalistic matters—­that is, as oblique references to the interactions of the ten sefirot. The passage concludes with the bold and assertive claim that one who is a master of kabbalistic knowledge is not only able to perceive the true meaning hidden within rabbinic texts, but also to be blessed by the kabbalistic secrets that are “engraved upon his heart,” and thus he will merit having all of the secrets of the Torah revealed to him. Such repeated justifications of rabbinic anthropomorphisms by making recourse to esoteric claims, focusing specifically on the images of God wearing tefillin, praying, weeping, and roaring like a lion, may reflect an engagement with Christian anti-­Jewish polemical discourse. Petrus Alfonsi (born Moses Sefardi), a Jew from al-­Andalus who converted to Christianity in the early twelfth century, composed an important polemical tract known as the Dialogi Contra Iudaeos, which, according to John Victor Tolan, became “the preeminent anti-­Jewish text of the Latin Middle Ages.”63 The Dialogi has been preserved in eighty known manuscript copies from across Europe.64 More than twenty of these copies were produced in the thirteenth century, two of them in Iberia.65 Alfonsi employs rational philosophical techniques in his arguments against Judaism, at times focusing in particular on the irrationality of certain statements in rabbinic literature regarding the nature of the divine. The Christian protagonist in the dialogue, Petrus, argues in the prologue that the Jews are particularly prone to error because “they attend to the surface [meaning] and the letter of the law alone, and do not explicate it spiritually but rather carnally, and this is why they are especially beguiled by error.”66 Alfonsi then critiques the theological discourse of rabbinic literature67 as misguided and intellectually absurd in that “they claim that God has a form and a body, and they attribute such things to his ineffable majesty as it is wicked to believe and absurd to hear, seeing that they are not based on reason.”68 Alfonsi dedicates a substantial portion of the first Titulus of the book to a presentation of the rational absurdity of rabbinic anthropomorphism, specifically addressing the tradition from b. Berachot 6a that God wears tefillin. Elsewhere he also addresses the rabbinic traditions that God weeps, roars like a lion, and prays.69 When the Jewish “Moses” of the dialogue argues that such statements draw their authority from God through Moses via “the tradition of the ancients,” by means of which, in turn, they “came to the attention of our sages,” Petrus responds, “Your argument wanders to the refuge of an irrational conclusion, since you will be able to ground every falsehood on the tradition of the ancients.”70

M ast er s of Secrets

25

In the mid-­twelfth century, Peter the Venerable wrote his Adversus Iudaeorum inveteratum duritiem, or “Against the Inveterate Obstinacy of the Jews,”71 taking up Alfonsi’s charge against the Talmud with even more vigor.72 In addition to critiquing rabbinic literature for its irrationality and excessive anthropomorphisms, Peter also attacked the Talmud as obscuring Jewish appreciation of the Bible, leading Jews to read scripture through the lens of rabbinic tradition. As he states, “For is that book of yours, oh Jew, holier than the five books of Moses, holier than the books of the prophets, better or more worthy?”73 Due to their veneration of the Talmud, Peter argues, Jews have replaced “divine books with diabolical ones” and are thus guilty of not just ignorance, but also blasphemy.74 Though the Adversus Iudaeorum was not as widely disseminated as Alfonsi’s book, it represents another important perspective in the challenge to rabbinic authority among the Christian polemicists.75 While it cannot be demonstrated with certainty that either Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogi or Peter the Venerable’s works directly informed the composition of the kabbalistic texts composed in Spain in the late thirteenth century, it is reasonable to assume, given the widespread popularity some of these anti-­Jewish tracts, that the kabbalists of Castile and across the Iberian peninsula were likely aware of such lines of argumentation. In light of Nicholas Donin’s disputation in Paris in 1240 and his thirty-­five accusations against the Talmud, some of which attack the allegedly absurd homilies addressed by Petrus Alfonsi and Peter the Venerable, as well as the burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1242,76 it is not unreasonable to imagine that Jews would have been at pains to reassert the legitimacy of the rabbinic tradition in new ways. Though the kabbalists do not fall into the growing category of what Daniel Lasker has referred to as “professional polemicists” that developed in response to the growing missionary pressure on Jewish communities in the late thirteenth century,77 the “refuge” of the “tradition of the ancients” is precisely the strategy at play in the kabbalistic texts under consideration. By placing the authority of esoteric revelatory tradition above all other forms of truth authorization, the kabbalists sought to construct a theological discourse immune from rational, non-­Jewish critique. In this way, statements in rabbinic literature that offend reason can be resuscitated as sodot, or secrets, that allude to divine mysteries known only to the kabbalists. During the mid-­to late thirteenth century, Christian anti-­Jewish polemicists increasingly condemned or made use of rabbinic materials in their polemical discourse, especially Aggadic passages from the Talmud and Midrashim,78 prompting some authorities such as the Rashba to compose commentaries on these texts in order to strengthen their resistance to such lines of argumentation.79 Kabbalists such as Azriel of Gerona and Todros Abulafia also composed commentaries on the rabbinic Aggadot in the mid-­to late thirteenth century, and Christian attacks would undoubtedly have been present in their minds. By making recourse to a chain of secret knowledge

2 6

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

stemming from ancient revelation, kabbalists sought to affirm a particular way of reinvigorating the meaning of rabbinic traditions. Genealogies of kabbalistic mysteries can be found in many places in medieval kabbalistic literature, describing Kabbalah as a Jewish prisca theologia,80 in some cases tracing their sources back as far as Adam.81 For example, as we read in Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi’s commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, The teachers of the Patriarchs were knowledgeable angels sent from the Holy King, may His name be exalted, in order to instruct and educate them in the paths of the primordial wisdom. This is what the masters of the Kabbalah, may their memories be blessed, say: the teacher of Adam was Razi’el, the teacher of Shem was Yofi’el, the teacher of Abraham was Tzadki’el, the teacher of Isaac was Rapha’el, the teacher of Jacob was Peli’el, the teacher of Joseph was Gavri’el, the teacher of Moses was Metatron, the teacher of Elijah82 was Malti’el. Each one of these angels would transmit Kabbalah to his student in a book or orally in order to teach him and make known to him future events.83

No matter the particular configuration of the esoteric claim, the basic point remains that for most medieval kabbalists, the verities of God and the universe cannot be obtained through the exercise of reason alone or even through knowledge of the literal language of the biblical text.84 As Jacob Katz has observed, “The Kabbalah presented itself as the deepest truth of Judaism, the fruit of revelation, be it Sinaitic or of another source of divine inspiration, and certainly not the result of mere human ratio.”85 Only those who occupy a privileged place in the Jewish chain of secret transmission can count themselves among the fortunate few who have access to ultimate truth.86 Such strategies of “archanization,” a term adopted by Idel from Jan Assman to denote the implication of esoteric meanings into known texts and practices,87 indicate a deliberate power gesture in which Jewish knowledge of matters divine is portrayed as uniquely superior. As David ben Yehudah he-­Hasid notes in a formulation characterizing the value of kabbalistic mysteries, “Comprehend all of these matters, for they are extremely wondrous, and the enlightened will understand. Happy are the righteous ones to whom the Holy One, blessed be He, has revealed His Shekhinah and the secrets of His holy Torah. Thus it is written, ‘the secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him; to them he makes known His covenant.’”88 Or, as he puts it a few pages later after translating some passages from the zoharic literature, “Happy are the righteous in this world and the world to come, for the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed secrets to them that have not been revealed to any other people. Thus it is written, ‘He did not do so for any other nation.’”89 The use of esotericism in Zoharic literature takes a similar tack. The pseudepigraphic construct of the text as the teachings deriving from the school or

M ast er s of Secrets

27

havraya surrounding Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai (Rashbi) is a strategy to project an ancient rabbinic authority onto a medieval kabbalistic discourse, but in a manner that fit with certain writing practices in the Middle Ages. As Abrams has argued, “The kabbalists were very much at home, and therefore self-­aware, with the apparent contradiction in their writing (new) texts in the name and style of ancient traditions and they presumed that their readers shared in this understanding.”90 Couched in a version of second-­century Aramaic instead of medieval Hebrew, the various textual strands that are woven together in the zoharic literature reflect an ethos in which ancient secrets are the core of the meaning of the Torah and commandments, and the revealing of those secrets, albeit in an allusive way, is the highest priority of the Jewish sage. The Zohar is thus, as Liebes points out, a “renaissance” in which kabbalistic innovation is embraced as part of a project of cultural renewal.91 The Zohar even makes free use of a creative library of mythic works such as the Book of Adam and the Book of Rav Hamnuna Sava.92 As Daniel Matt has argued, in order “to revitalize tradition and restore its authority, Ramdal and the havrayya reveal the ancient secrets. But, these ‘ancient secrets’ are themselves often new; revealing them means disguising their newness, transmitting them through Talmud figures, i.e., making the new ancient.”93 The Zohar often employs dramatic language to reflect the tremendous conflict experienced by those, especially Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai himself, who wish to reveal kabbalistic secrets.94 Eitan Fishbane has demonstrated the importance of the image of weeping in zoharic literature as a literary device to dramatize the tension of transgressing the prohibition against revealing secrets that occurs at certain key moments in the narrative.95 In one well-­known passage, the members of the fraternity approach Rabbi Shimon during a moment in which he was experiencing an elevated prophetic inspiration. The text then relates, Rabbi Shimon cried and said, “a word from among those whispered to me by the head of the academy of the Garden of Eden, which were not spoken openly. This matter is a secret, but I will tell it to you, my dear sons, dear sons of my soul. What shall I do? They said it to me in a whisper, and I will say it openly.”96 Playing on the locution in Genesis Rabbah 3:4 in which Rabbi Shemuel bar Nahman relates a teaching regarding creation in a whisper, stating “since I heard it in a whisper, so too I have said it to you in a whisper,” the Zoharic passage indicates that Rabbi Shimon has chosen to reveal this mystery openly rather than in the manner in which it was revealed to him by the head of the supernal academy. Even in cases where the image of weeping is not employed, the zoharic text constructs the event of revealing secrets as an act fraught with ambivalence.97 In one famous passage Rashbi exclaims before revealing a series of kabbalistic mysteries, “Woe if I Speak! Woe if I do not speak!98 If I speak, sinners will know how to worship their master. If I do not speak, the havrayya will be deprived of

2 8

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

this matter.”99 It would be a mistake to take these declarations at face value, as an indication that the zoharic texts reflect a context in which the valuation of esoteric knowledge implied that such knowledge was actually restricted to certain groups or held back from public circulation. The zoharic corpus, comprising more than a thousand folios, is anything but restrained in terms of creating a literature that reveals the purported secrets of the Jewish tradition.100 The admonitions scattered throughout these texts to conceal such secrets serve more as a mechanism to mark the value of the kabbalistic conception of Judaism rather than as a reflection of a practice of restricting access to kabbalistic ideas.101 The esoteric claims of the Zohar, and medieval kabbalah more generally, constitute a discursive strategy in which the authority of the kabbalistic worldview is asserted by virtue of its antiquity and revelatory origin, while its apparent novelty is accounted for by virtue of its secrecy—­the implication being that kabbalistic matters cannot be found in exoteric traditional sources because they have been, until that point, kept secret. In keeping with an approach we find in many places in kabbalistic texts, the Zohar presents the revealing of secrets as a necessity created by the historical circumstance of the Jewish people. In order to rally the faithful and rekindle commitment in those Jews who are close to losing hope, esoteric teachings are revealed.102 In one place the Zohar asks, “If Ezekiel was a faithful Prophet, why did he reveal everything that he saw?”103 Given that Ezekiel’s revelation is one of the most dramatic theophanies in the Hebrew Bible, it stands to reason, according this passage, that the prophet should have concealed such a sensitive and secret matter. But, Ezekiel’s revelation occurred during a harsh moment of exile that was close to causing many Israelites, as the Zohar claims, to lose their faith. Once Ezekiel shared his vision with the Israelites, according to the continuation of the zoharic passage, “they rejoiced; and when they heard the words from Ezekiel’s mouth they felt no anxiety at all about their exile, for they knew that the blessed holy one had not forsaken them. Whatever he revealed, he revealed with permission.”104 The uncovering of kabbalistic secrets is justified as a necessity brought on by circumstance. The normal strictures constraining the revelation of divine mysteries are, within the construct of this common model in thirteenth-­century Kabbalah, suspended in order to reinvigorate Jewish commitment by sharing the secret core of the tradition.105 Moses de Leon makes just such an argument when he states that the wise men of Israel have throughout the generations carefully guarded the “Kabbalah of the ancients from days of yore,” never speaking of it or writing it down, such that, “for this reason much Torah was forgotten from Israel, until God, may He be blessed, brought forth a new spirit, granting men good council to return to the religion of the true Creator, may He be blessed, and they came to understand the matters contained in the words of the Sages by means of this awakening.”106 The strict adherence to the concealment of

M ast er s of Secrets

29

secret knowledge leads, according to de Leon, to the loss of true Jewish knowledge. In response, God himself arouses the spirit of the faithful to perceive the secrets of Judaism in order to revive the faith. Moreover, as Wolfson has argued persuasively in a number of studies, the kabbalistic revelation of the secret still retains an esoteric character in the sense that, despite being divulged, it entails elements that are incomprehensible, such that “the secret presupposes the concomitant transmission and withholding on the part of the one in possession of the secret.”107 In this sense, “[t]he concealment of the secret is dialectically related to its disclosure. Simply put, the utterance of the mystery is possible because of the inherent impossibility of its being uttered. . . . The secret has an ontological referent that is separate from the phenomenal realm and thus transcends the limits of human understanding and modes of conventional discourse.”108 When we take the social and political context of late thirteenth-­century Castile into account, the kabbalists’ choice to construct their esotericism in this manner reflects a deliberate strategy. In addition to the general theological problems associated with prolonged exile and disempowerment, medieval Jews were also forced to grapple with the advance of Aristotelian rationalism and the scholastic anti-­Jewish argumentation of the mendicant friars.109 Kabbalistic secrecy, drawing upon the increased interest in arcane knowledge that developed in Castile in the middle of the thirteenth century, provided a response to each of these threats. To the rationalists who claimed that the mandates of Jewish law and anthropomorphisms of Jewish texts were absurdities that must be allegorized if they were to be tolerated at all, the kabbalists responded that secret tradition stemming from revelation, not rational speculation, provides the most exalted form of truth. The core of Judaism, the kabbalists argued, consists of mysteries that transcend the human mind and that can be acquired only through the divinely revealed mythopoesis of kabbalistic symbolism. This move also allows the kabbalists to elevate traditional texts and rituals beyond a simple anthropomorphic literalism without having to resort to rationalist allegory110—­a practice that many kabbalists regarded as highly destructive.111 As for the Christian polemicists and their claims that Jews are blind to the true meaning of scripture,112 that a systematic analysis of the Hebrew Bible as well as rabbinic sources demonstrates that Jesus is in fact the Messiah,113 and that Christians, rather than Jews, are the verus Israel,114 kabbalists likewise offered a response based on esoteric claims. The true meaning of the Torah and rabbinic texts, the kabbalists maintained, cannot be accessed through mere knowledge of Hebrew. Only those who are privy to the esoteric chain of kabbalistic transmission originating in divine revelation can control the secret meaning concealed within biblical and rabbinic statements. The claim of secrecy based on revelatory tradition thus served the important function of both defending and constructing Jewish identity in the face of serious challenges posed in the intellectual and political landscape of medieval Jewish life.

3 0

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

kabbalah and secret knowledge Castilian Kabbalah can be regarded as a comprehensive reimagining of the rabbinic Jewish tradition based on the notion that the most fundamental registers of meaning associated with traditional Jewish texts and religious practices are esoteric or secret matters pertaining to the mysteries of the divine, and accessible only to Jews through a concealed chain of transmission. By situating secret knowledge of divine matters at the center of Judaism, kabbalists sought to enhance the cultural capital associated with Kabbalah, which in turn served to promote the authority of the kabbalists as an important and distinct group of Jewish intellectuals who served as guardians and purveyors of Jewish wisdom. As Wolfson has pointed out, in the broader cultural context, “new ideas were typically presented as the old traditions. Medieval Jewish mystics should not be isolated from their Jewish heritage or from their immediate intellectual and social environment.”115 The flourishing of Kabbalah in the thirteenth century further demonstrates how Jewish identity on the Iberian peninsula was contested, fluid, and local, entailing a number of overlapping and competing conceptions of what Judaism means and who is empowered with the authority to articulate that meaning. Building on the image in Mark 2:22, Scholem has noted that “mystics are always striving to put new wine into old bottles” as part of a project to “rediscover the sources of traditional authority.” The result, Scholem argues, is that “old values acquire a new meaning, even where the mystic had no such intention or was not even aware of doing anything new.”116 Within a relatively short period of time, Kabbalah became a significant new paradigm for the conceptualization of Judaism. In the first half of the thirteenth century in the regions of Provence and Catalonia, there was a degree of controversy surrounding the production of kabbalistic literature. Isaac the Blind, an important kabbalist from Provence, protested in a letter sent to Nahmanides against the practices of some kabbalists in Spain who elaborated both orally and in writing on matters relating to Kabbalah. Isaac claimed with regard to himself, “I am of an entirely different habit, since my fathers were indeed the most distinguished in the land and public masters of the Torah but never did a word [relating to mystical lore] escape their lips.”117 Isaac fears that once Kabbalah enters the public arena, it can no longer be controlled as a body of restricted knowledge. As Kabbalah migrated through Spain during the thirteenth century, there was an increasing tendency to speak and write more publicly about at least the existence of an esoteric Jewish tradition, though much of the content of that tradition was often withheld. Nahmanides was one of the most important authorities whose integration of allusions to kabbalistic matters into his public writings, especially his commentary on the Torah, played a key role in strengthening the broader acceptance of Kabbalah and the notion of an esoteric core to the Jewish

M ast er s of Secrets

31

tradition. While Nahmanides was forthright regarding the existence of a Jewish esoteric tradition, he was fairly reticent with regard to the specific details. He asserts in the introduction to his commentary on the Torah that the meaning of the kabbalistic hints and allusions he has placed in the text cannot be comprehended through human reason but only through a tradition received “from the mouth of a wise kabbalist to the ear of an understanding kabbalist.”118 With the migration of Kabbalah into Spain, especially the region of Castile during the latter part of the thirteenth century, reluctance to produce kabbalistic discourse is replaced by an enthusiastic embrace of kabbalistic writing. Castilian kabbalists produced kabbalistic texts comprising thousands of folios.119 Contrary to the more conservative tendencies of the kabbalists in Catalonia who tended to follow the example of Nahmanides, Boaz Huss has demonstrated that the authorship of the zoharic literature was consciously following a different path more open to the dissemination of Kabbalah.120 For this reason, Huss argues, Rabbi Shimon is depicted as a wise man whose knowledge of divine mysteries and capacity to reveal them is superior to Moses, who serves in some cases in the Zohar as a symbol for Nahmanides. Thus the Zohar comments, “Meritorious is the generation of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. Happy are they among the supernal and terrestrial entities, concerning whom it is written, ‘Happy are you, oh land whose king is a free man’ (Eccl. 10:17). What is a ‘free man?’ He holds up his head to reveal and interpret words and he does not fear, for in this way he is a free man, and he says that which he desires and he is not afraid.”121 Comments such as this reveal the unique quality of the Castilian Jewish context and the attitude toward revealing esoteric wisdom. In that setting, revealing Kabbalah was not only permitted, but touted as a public good. One of the reasons why Kabbalah may have been embraced by Castilian Jews is the strategy it employs for advancing an emphatic conception of Jewish power. The notion of a secret Jewish triumph operative in medieval kabbalistic texts assigns Jews a central role in the cosmic-­divine relationship and regards Jewish practice as the key to sustaining not only Jews, but other peoples as well. Jewish esoteric discourse thus incorporated a significant polemical element in which Jews were imagined as masters of secrets whose power and knowledge places them in a position of superiority vis-­à-­vis other peoples.122 Joseph Gikatilla argued that the superiority of Judaism over other religions is because of the fact that it contains an esoteric dimension—­something the religions of other nations lack in his estimation. Judaism is, in his eyes, the most dependable and stable tradition upon which to rely regarding ultimate knowledge concerning divine matters, since “[the religions of the other nations] do not contain the concealed and revealed [nistar ve-­nigleh], and they lack the [combination of] outward and the hidden [galui u-muflah]. They are not designed [to reveal] any other [hidden] meaning. Of themselves they cease and perish. . . . ‘They shall be

32 

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

trampled under foot.’”123 Or, as Moses de Leon states in his introduction to Or Zarua, one of his earliest kabbalistic treatises, “I have discovered in the secret of the paths of wisdom that God, may He be blessed, and the secret of His truth, cannot be comprehended by knowledge. . . . However, we can attain a measure of His truth through the secret of the paths of the Torah. . . . From it we can understand the secret of His concealed hidden dwelling, and ascend the gradations of the ladder.”124 By asserting that the “wisdom of God” cannot be attained through reason and by claiming that access to such privileged knowledge can be acquired only through an exclusively Jewish chain of esoteric speculation, kabbalists placed the most desirable and powerful forms of knowledge not only within the text of the Torah but specifically within the secret layers of meaning associated with the Torah that are known exclusively to the masters of the Kabbalah.125 The composition and circulation of kabbalistic texts thus entailed a power gesture that constituted a strategy for reimagining sources of Jewish legitimacy and authority based on claims to esoteric knowledge.

kabbalistic mysteries versus rational truth The relationship between Kabbalah and philosophy during this period is complex, standing in the wake of the controversy surrounding Maimonides’s philosophical writings.126 Maimonides, referred to at times as the Great Eagle, had an important impact on the development of Jewish esotericism. On the one hand, kabbalists took serious issue with Aristotelian trends that placed the highest value on rationally derived knowledge. Most kabbalists were emphatic that the mysteries of the divine and the relationship between God and the cosmos cannot be garnered through the use of human reason alone.127 Only through an esoteric divine revelation can such knowledge be acquired, the kabbalists argued, since the mysteries of the divine are matters that transcend the boundaries of the mind. Many Jewish philosophers, most famously Maimonides, also associated philosophical truths with secret teachings within Judaism, especially those according to rabbinic tradition connected to the mysteries of creation (ma’aseh bereishit) and the chariot vision of the prophet Ezekial (ma’aseh merkavah) mentioned in the Mishnah.128 In this sense, philosophy and Kabbalah present competing claims to esoteric knowledge, with each associating their doctrine with that of the ancient rabbinic sages and the Oral Torah stemming from Sinai.129 Opposition to the philosophical understanding of the content of these “secrets” of the rabbinic tradition was an important impetus, according to Idel, for the increased production of kabbalistic literature in the thirteenth century.130 Wolfson has demonstrated the importance of Maimonidean thinking for medieval kabbalists, arguing that the development of medieval Kabbalah “is unimaginable unless one takes to heart that the ruminations of the masters of Jewish

M ast er s of Secrets

33

esoteric lore were incubated in the shadows of the great eagle.”131 With regard to the issue of esotericism in particular, Wolfson argues that both Maimonides and the kabbalists embraced the notion that the secrets of Judaism are not betrayed in their explication, since they remain hidden by virtue of their inherent incomprehensibility.132 In this sense, Wolfson argues, “the Maimonidean resolution to the tension between the mandate to conceal secrets, on the one hand, and the need to reveal them, on the other, was widely held by kabbalists of the various schools of the thirteenth century. . . . Maimonides was not just a negative catalyst in the evolution of Jewish esotericism.”133 The key difference between the philosophers and the kabbalists regarding the content of these secret traditions is that the philosophical secrets can be derived rationally, while the kabbalistic secret can only be accessed through an esoteric, and uniquely Jewish, tradition.134 On the other hand, kabbalists did not deny all legitimacy of rational scientific knowledge.135 Instead, they tended to adopt a position in which the scope and meaning of rational knowledge was limited by a more capacious esoteric tradition that reveals mysteries that would be otherwise inaccessible to the human mind. By configuring the esoteric tradition in relation to philosophical knowledge in this way, the kabbalists advanced a conception of Jewish wisdom that encompassed all forms of exoteric knowledge, while at the same time preserving an elite form of esoteric wisdom accessible only through a Jewish revelatory tradition. As Dov Schwartz has noted, by the end of the thirteenth century, the conflict between traditionalists and rationalists had shifted such that “[b]oth camps considered Torah and science as complementing one another to some degree.”136 Philosophical knowledge, when accorded a secondary and subordinate status to Kabbalah, was not inherently problematic for most kabbalists. Jonathan Dauber has argued persuasively that “a major factor that led to the development of kabbalah was the adoption by the first kabbalists of a philosophic ethos that, under the influence of newly emergent Hebrew philosophic materials, had taken root in Languedoc and Catelonia.” The infusion of this novel approach to Jewish texts and practices, which involved a “meta-­reflection on classical Jewish texts” in the early thirteenth century, reverberated in later generations as well.137 In this sense, Kabbalah and Jewish philosophy are analogous, even if their content is not the same. Though at times the kabbalists express sharp critique of specific philosophical positions, their opposition is not one of outright rejection. Rational knowledge poses a serious threat for them only when it is valued more highly than, or even to the exclusion of, esoteric knowledge. In a discussion found in Gikatilla’s Hassagot al ha-­Moreh, a critical gloss on Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, Gikatilla asserts that “the Torah of God, may He be blessed, possesses inner and outer attributes, for the wise man and for the fool . . . and when one attains the inner matters [of the Torah], then one enters the divine palace and beholds the true faces. This is why all foreign

3 4

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

wisdoms are called ‘external’ [hitzonot], for they do not possess the truth of the internal faces. All of them are in accordance with the conventional knowledge of a people, and nothing more.”138 Gikatilla goes on to note that the secret faces of the Torah are included in the multiplicity of readings that were transmitted to Moses and passed on in secret oral tradition, which is the reason why “there is no wisdom or knowledge in the world that is not alluded to in the Torah, be it through a letter, word, vocalization, or some other manner—­hear this and understand it.”139 Foreign knowledge, including of course Aristotelian philosophy, is not simply negated by the secret knowledge of the Jewish tradition but rather subsumed within the all-­encompassing esoteric doctrine revealed at Sinai. Gikatilla goes on to describe the nature of one who has mastered this secret tradition with a commentary on Proverbs 5:15, “Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well,” arguing that one must not fabricate one’s own Torah from one’s own mind, but rather “one must receive the Torah from his teachers in order that he should be able to base his wisdom upon the foundation of the divine wisdom. After one has received [this knowledge] and the secrets of the Torah have been transmitted to him, if he is a wise man who understands on his own, he transforms himself into a well flowing with the matters he has received.”140 The secrets of the Torah were, for Gikatilla, the unique inheritance of the Jewish people and were superior to all other forms of knowledge. By knowing the secrets of the Torah, Jewish masters of esoteric knowledge control all forms of wisdom, both Jewish and non-­Jewish, as well as a uniquely Jewish esoteric tradition that entails the ultimate truth of all forms of knowledge.141 Moreover, the “wise man” in this case is not simply a conduit relating the content of the tradition by rote but rather a master of secrets who brings forth new innovations based on the esoteric wisdom he has received. Gikatilla’s presentation of secret wisdom in this passage accords well with Wolfson’s discussions of the kabbalistic “hermeneutic of esoteric disclosure” in which “mysteries may be transmitted orally from master to disciple, but their elucidation is dependent on the exegetical prowess of the recipient.”142 The conception of secrecy in these texts, according to Wolfson, thus embraces the possibility for hermeneutic creativity on the part of the one who receives, and then later transmits, kabbalistic knowledge.143 Gikatilla’s comment reflects the notion that once a kabbalist has received a secret through tradition, either orally or in writing, they then become both a conduit and a source of further kabbalistic wisdom. Through their own creative capacity, the kabbalist both transmits and further elucidates the secrets they have received. In a similar vein, Moses de Leon laments the tendency among some Jews of his generation who are drawn to philosophical speculation and rely exclusively on rational knowledge, so much so that they reject non-­rational forms of knowledge outright as both absurd and outside of the confines of true Torah knowledge:

M ast er s of Secrets

35

There are men from the people of our Torah who hold fast to the words of the philosophers, since such men rely exclusively upon the matters of their own thought, and believe that such a path is verily the path of truth, and they think that all of the words of our Torah are contained in that very path [of the intellect]. Anything that would depart from this path is regarded by such men as though it forces them from the path of life, and they refuse to accept it. . . . However, the Torah, which all people of the world accept, says, “But as the heavens are high above the earth, so are my words above your words [sic] and my thoughts above your thoughts” (based on Isa. 54:16). How can our knowledge and thought possibly grasp that which transcends it, namely, the perfect thought and knowledge of the Creator, blessed be He. . . . And is the Torah not the thought of the Holy One, Blessed be He, and his perfected knowledge? . . . No man can grasp His thought and knowledge, may He be exalted. Therefore, it was necessary for Moses to receive through tradition [kabbalah] the interpretation of the Torah. . . . All of the Torah is the knowledge of God, may He be blessed, and it does not contain a single story or event that does not pertain to a matter upon which the entire world depends, and which contains the secret of His name, may He be exalted, which is the secret of the Tetragrammaton.144

De Leon’s response to the Jewish rationalists of his day is to argue that the Torah entails the knowledge of God and therefore must contain matters that transcend the capacity of the human mind.145 The only way to gain true insight into the meaning of the Torah is by reading it in light of a parallel tradition, or “kabbalah” deriving from revelation at Sinai and passed on from Moses to subsequent generations of Jews.146 De Leon reflects in this comment the general tendency among medieval kabbalists to regard the origin of kabbalistic wisdom as an oral tradition revealed to Moses, similar to the rabbinic notion of the Oral Torah, in which Moses received a separate legal tradition in terms of which the written legal ordinances of the Torah are to be enacted. By making recourse to this familiar source of authority, kabbalists like Moses de Leon sought to advance a different kind of Oral Torah: one that focuses on theosophical mysteries “upon which the entire world depends” and which reveals the mysteries of God’s name through an exclusive Jewish tradition rather than a universal operation of the human intellect. The political implication of this formulation of kabbalistic secrecy is clear: by asserting that Kabbalah relates mysteries inaccessible to the human mind, kabbalists tried to establish a domain of ultimate knowledge that was uniquely Jewish and not subject to rational analysis and debate. Such is the implication of a statement found in a version of de Leon’s Sodot or commentary on the kabbalistic meaning of the commandments. Since true knowledge of God can only be acquired from revelatory tradition, he urges his readers, “Do not

3 6

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

weary your body and mind, for one cannot discover divine matters except by means of a wise and knowledgeable sage who opens your eyes, unlike those who think that they have already found and received such wisdom. Instead, [such knowledge can be learned] only from a sage great in the wisdom of the depths of the supernal secrets, matters about which those of this generation who are wise men in their own eyes are completely unaware and insensible.”147 In a text likely composed by Joseph Gikatilla, preserved in Jerusalem Manuscript 488:8,148 dealing with the thirteen attributes that flow forth from Keter, we find a similar argument for the incomprehensibility and ineffability of the kabbalistic secret. The author asserts that the highest reaches of the divine are inaccessible to the human mind and therefore “there is no way for thought to attain them except by way of the revealed traditions [ha-­kabbalot ha-­giluiyot] that derive from Sinai through our holy Torah, for through them the innermost mysteries are revealed from the mouth of God, may He be blessed, and in this way we can acquire a small measure of the paths of faith. But, there is no way for any being to enter into the knowledge of God, may he be blessed.”149 The author emphasizes that the independent operation of human reason is incapable of acquiring any knowledge of the Godhead since the divine essence is incomprehensible. Only through the traditions revealed by God at Sinai can one attain something of the mysteries of the divine. Nonetheless, the author maintains, ironically that “it is impossible for thought to contemplate [these matters], or even for the mouth to speak [of them], much less for the hand to write about them.”150 This apophatic stance is adopted not out of despair for the possibility of constructing a meaningful discourse regarding the mysteries of God, but on the contrary, as a rhetorical strategy for granting legitimacy and authority exclusively to Jewish kabbalistic traditions. Thus, with regard to divine mysteries the text argues that “the root of this matter is dependent upon the faith that flows forth from the secrets of the Torah, and not from intellection and knowledge.”151 We find a similar argument in an anonymous text where, in a passage discussing the relative merits of the “words of the philosophers” and the teachings of the Kabbalah, the author notes that while in some matters the philosophers espouse a doctrine that “one can reconcile with our Torah and traditions [kabalateinu], there are many doctrines in which they are far from the intention [of the teachings] of our rabbis that they have received from the prophets, who apprehend faith and knowledge, which they know through prophetic revelation, and not through reason [shikul ha-­da’at].”152 The text continues with the assertion that, with regard to specific topics, “such as the mysteries of the Chariot and the secrets of the Torah, we have traditions in our possession from the prophets, and from Moses, master of all, who sees the face of the King, of whom it is said, ‘face to face I shall speak with him’ (Num. 12:8), and one who is a master of reason and speculation has no portion in this, and their words and wisdom and

M ast er s of Secrets

37

demonstrations we shall not accept.”153 Here again, the mysteries of the Kabbalah are not primarily characterized as knowledge that is preserved for an elite subset of the Jewish community. Rather, Kabbalah is presented, in contradistinction to philosophy, as an esoteric Jewish tradition that serves as the basis for grasping matters that are beyond the reach of human reason. As one anonymous author puts it, “it is appropriate to attribute a secret name to God, for he is concealed even from the angels.”154 While Kabbalah is often described in these texts as a form of knowledge that transcends the intellect, it was not necessarily in direct confrontation with philosophy in every case. As long as philosophical ideas are subordinated to the claims of kabbalistic esoteric knowledge, kabbalists are happy to incorporate philosophical ideas and terminology into their discourse.155 In an anonymous commentary on the ten sefirot we find a typical combination of kabbalistic and philosophical ideas often found in these texts. Near the beginning, the author establishes the esoteric nature of the doctrine he is seeking to explicate for his readers. All of the sefirot are regarded as “secret” matters, but the first sefirah, Keter, is particularly concealed, so much so that the author asserts, “there is no path by which to enter into it . . . except for the pure and holy wise men, those who were designated by name, for they fear the Holy One, Blessed be He, and know His name. Blessed be the One who has chosen them and their words, for they know the truth.”156 As we find reiterated frequently in kabbalistic texts composed during this period the unique knowledge associated with kabbalah is not accessible through rational speculation. Rather, this particular esoteric knowledge, associated with the divine Name,157 is accessible only to a privileged Jewish elite who possess the requisite piety and are privy to an esoteric chain of transmission. Nonetheless, in a comment near the very end of the composition, the author reflects generally on the nature of relationship between the Divine and the ten sefirot, arguing that “God, who is the Cause of Causes [’illat ha ’illot ve-­ sibat ha-­sibot], He controls the sefirot and that which emanates forth from Him, may He be blessed, and they are the instruments of His workmanship, and his essence [’atzmuto] is concealed within them, and He is within them and bound to them like the flame is bound to the wick and cleaves to it, for these matters are alluded to in the depths of the Kabbalah, for all ten of the gradations are encompassed and bound within Him.”158 Here again we encounter the assertion that the mysteries of the Godhead are accessible only through a Jewish esoteric tradition, but it is important to note that the author incorporates the philosophical notion of the Cause of Causes—­a philosophical term that was commonly employed by kabbalists as a name for Keter. The core claim of this passage centers around the paradoxical linkage of the ten sefirot with the infinite divine essence, and the philosophical terminology is appropriated in a manner that leaves one with the impression that the conception of the deity as the “Cause of Causes” is

3 8

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

to be understood in a manner compatible with a kabbalistic theosophy in which God’s essence is concealed within the ten sefirot and bound to them. The philosophical position was, of course, distinctly incompatible with this theosophy. However, if the author’s goal was to give priority to an esoteric, rather than a rationalist conception of Judaism, the passage cited above can be understood as a coherent move in advancing that position. Philosophical ideas and terminology were not regarded as threatening per se, as long as they were accorded meaning within the esoteric theosophical system of the Kabbalah. An argument for the all encompassing nature of the Torah as the source of all forms of knowledge is found in an anonymous commentary on the ten sefirot, noting that the second sefirah, Wisdom (Hokhmah) is so called because “the two Torahs, the Oral Torah and the Written Torah, are emanated from it, and all sciences [hokhmot] are within it. And it is called Wisdom because the entire world is made wise by means of it.”159 In the introduction to an anonymous commentary on the ten sefirot published by Michal Oron, we find an intriguing discussion of the relationship between Jewish esoteric wisdom and other forms of knowledge. According to this anonymous kabbalist, the Torah encompasses all forms of instruction,160 including moral instruction regarding proper conduct, and “wisdom” or instruction concerning truth. Wisdom, according to this text, entails two forms—­the revealed and the concealed. The revealed wisdom itself contains two domains: one addressing natural earthly phenomena, the other addressing astronomical speculation. Regarding these exoteric forms of knowledge, the text argues that “in pursuit of this, the [gentile] sages resort to their minds and intellect / this is the wisdom of the philosophers.”161 Similarly to de Leon’s argument in Sefer ha-­Mishqal cited above, philosophical knowledge is defined primarily as a product of reason, rendering it inferior since it is constrained by the limits of the human mind. Esoteric knowledge, on the other hand, is accorded a superior position: “The concealed [form of wisdom] is the wisdom of Kabbalah [hokhmat ha-­kabbalah] . . . transcending above the intellect / thus it is not perceptible to the eyes of the men of this generation / and their knowledge cannot penetrate it.”162 This special knowledge associated with Kabbalah is once again defined as both of a higher order and more exclusive precisely because it is inaccessible to the rational mind. It is for this reason that “the men of this generation,” a reference that could imply both Jewish Aristotelian philosophers and members of the non-­Jewish intelligentsia, are unable to acquire this special form of knowledge, that is, “their mind cannot penetrate it,” and they have no other source of truth upon which to rely. Kabbalistic knowledge is further divided into two more domains, the first of which is described as relating to the knowledge of the magical operation of divine names, biblical texts, and nomina barbara derived from a tradition, “from

M ast er s of Secrets

39

one man to another [ish mi-­pi ish]” since Moses.163 The second domain of “concealed” or kabbalistic knowledge entails the Wisdom of the Kabbalah concerning knowledge of God . . . knowledge of His precious names / mentioned in the holy books / concerning the knowledge of the ten sefirot and knowledge of the mysteries / which are alluded to and concealed and hidden / which are sealed in the mysteries of the Torah / and in the words of the prophets and those who speak in the holy spirit, “[the Lord] among them as in Sinai in holiness” (Ps. 68:18), and the words of the wise men and their secrets according to their schools of thought / also giving sense to the secret of the small and great letters and their crowns / and the names written with punctuation according to their kinds / also their combinations and permutations according to their principles / and the secret of defective and plene spellings.164

Since the “Kabbalah concerning knowledge of God” is the main subject matter of the book, it seems fair to say that for the author of this treatise such knowledge represents the highest attainable form of wisdom. Like other kabbalists, the author relates the secrets of this form of Kabbalah to the divine name, the symbolic system of the ten sefirot, and the inner meaning of scripture, including the secret meanings associated with scribal practices for the composition of Torah scrolls and the orthographic anomalies found throughout the Hebrew Bible.165 The author also makes an intriguing reference to “the words of the wise men and their secrets according to their schools of thought,” a statement one can reasonably surmise refers to postrabbinic texts written by kabbalists. The knowledge of the Kabbalah was thus a secret doctrine that not only relates to mysteries of the Godhead, but also serves as a hermeneutical key for reading the concealed essence of traditional Jewish texts. One who has acquired this tool can, like other kabbalists, perceive the esoteric truth of Judaism from within its exoteric concealment. It is at this point that the discussion turns to address the “ba’alei ha-­peshat” or exegetes who seek to render scripture literally “in the manner that it occurs to them according to their own mind.”166 The anonymous author of Sefer ha-­Shem was in many respects just as bothered by the literal rendering of scripture as he was by philosophical speculation since both entail a reliance on the human intellect for determining the ultimate meaning of revelation.167 According to Sefer ha-­Shem, such matters can only be known “by way of truth” and not through the rational operations of the human mind “for these things are known to those who have knowledge of Kabbalah, and not through speculation and supposition, as Solomon says, peace be upon him, ‘She [wisdom] does not chart a path of life’ (Prov. 5:6), ‘does not chart [pen tifales]’ meaning, in the scale [peles] of the balance

40 

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

of speculation and demonstration, as it says, ‘the path of life is perfect joy in your presence’ (Ps. 16:11), and he who is wise will see the truth of this verse with the eyes of his heart.”168 The author’s critical assessment of Jewish biblical exegetes who interpret scripture according to its literal sense—­an approach made famous in the commentary of Rabbi Solomon Isaac of Troyes, also known as Rashi—­is significant for understanding the intellectual and political strategy at play in the advancement of kabbalistic esotericism. One could understand the conflict with philosophical speculation as indicative of a difference over Jewish-­versus-­non-­ Jewish intellectual traditions. By objecting to the well-­established Jewish practice of interpreting scripture through a “rational” analysis of the meaning of the text, we can see that our author was not simply privileging “foreign” over the “indigenous” forms of knowledge. More specifically, the author’s intent, in keeping with that of many other kabbalists, was to privilege a Jewish esoteric tradition over rationally derived forms of truth or exegetical approaches, be they Jewish or non-­ Jewish in origin. Moses de Leon levels an even more sharply worded criticism against those who engage only in literal biblical exegesis, arguing that “it appears to them in their stupidity that they have grasped everything that He intended and wrote in His pure Torah.”169 While many kabbalists rejected the philosophical prioritization of human reason as the primary source of metaphysical knowledge, arguing instead that the most important forms of knowledge are to be found in esoteric traditions stemming from divine revelation, they were not simply reacting negatively to the spread of philosophy. I believe it is more accurate to regard the proliferation of Kabbalah in late thirteenth-­century Castile as an attempt to advance an esoteric formulation of Judaism in order to support what the kabbalists regarded as a meaningful and powerful way of imagining Jews and Jewish religious praxis that places them at the very center of the cosmic-­divine drama.170 Like the philosophers, the kabbalists were fully engaged participants in the debates of the broader Iberian and Mediterranean culture in which they lived. But, instead of reconciling Judaism with the philosophy of Aristotle, the kabbalists chose instead to employ the modality of the secret, and the claim to an ancient esoteric tradition, as the core of their defense of Judaism.

public secrets: kabbalah and the dissemination of esoteric knowledge Harvey Hames has argued persuasively that Kabbalah in the thirteenth century “was not just an esoteric doctrine restricted to an elite, but a religious system that sought to engage with the wider community providing Jewish teachings with new content.”171 The aims of such a project would indicate that many kabbalists, despite their declarations regarding the necessity to conceal the kabbalistic

M ast er s of Secrets

41

matters about which they wrote so much, were in fact committed to disseminating their ideas in order to transform how Jews conceptualized the meaning of Judaism. When we take the broad scope of kabbalistic compositions from the late thirteenth century into account, we find that a substantial number of these texts were written with the express intention of instructing the uninitiated in Kabbalah.172 As Oron has noted, commentaries on the ten sefirot are particularly interesting evidence of this since the purpose of such texts is to introduce the reader to the symbolic structure of the kabbalistic conception of the divine and to provide a guide to the common terms and ideas associated with each of the sefirot.173 As opposed to the laconic and difficult style of Talmudic discourse, most of the kabbalistic texts under discussion are comparatively straightforward and lucidly written. And while some of them are lengthy, the majority of them are relatively short.174 In many cases the authors are careful to describe the basic symbolic structure of the ten sefirot in such a way as to enable their readers to comprehend other, more complex kabbalistic texts. Far from being an elitist and exclusive enterprise, a significant number of these compositions evince a clear interest in making their ideas accessible to a broad Jewish readership. In the commentary on the ten sefirot mentioned above, Sefer ha-­Shem, the author states his intent concerning the composition of the book, indicating that he wrote it to create a guide to help those who are beginners in the wisdom of Kabbalah, as a service “to all of Israel, according to their capacity.”175 He notes that there are many texts addressing the matters put forth in this treatise, but they are confusing and scattered: “I saw fit to set forth a disquisition to enlighten / the eyes of one who is beginning to learn Kabbalah.”176 Or, as he informs his reader a few pages later, “when you understand and comprehend all of the words that we have said in this disquisition, you will be able to understand a number of concealed mysteries in the holy writings, as well as in the words of the wise men. . . . This disquisition is sufficient to set straight every beginner in this wisdom, to guide him and caution him and strengthen him, so that he will not confuse his intellect when he hears analogies [devar mitokh devar] in the words of this wisdom.”177 These passages reaffirm the sentiment expressed earlier regarding the intention of this book to serve as a guide for understanding Judaism in terms of an esoteric kabbalistic tradition. They also introduce another important element of this kabbalists’ agenda, namely, the instruction of the uninitiated in the wisdom of the Kabbalah. The author describes his enterprise as one intended to spread broadly among his coreligionists the notion that Judaism contains, at its core, an esoteric tradition, as well as to relate something of the content of that tradition so that more Jews will be made aware of the mysteries alluded to in Jewish texts.178 He returns to this point toward the end of the book where he describes his project of delineating the relationships between the cognomens of the divine names and the ten sefirot as one designed “to expand a bit wider the

4 2

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

apertures of the lattice, the chapter headings, matters to which it is permissible to allude, in order to open an opening for ‘he whose spirit is moved’ (based on Ex. 35:21) to learn this wisdom and to understand, according to their capacity, the holy books, the mysteries alluded to in the mysteries of the Torah and the books of the wise men.”179 A similar idea is found in Moses de Leon’s Mishkan ha-­Edut, when he says that he felt compelled to compose this book when he saw that his fellow Jews were “enmeshed in foreign ideas and false, extraneous [or heretical] notions,” but kabbalistic ideas “with which the holy sages of old concerned themselves all their lives . . . are scattered in the Talmud and in their [other] words and secret sayings, precious and hidden better even than pearls. And they [the sages] have closed and locked the door behind their words and hidden all their mystical books, because they say that the time had not come to reveal and publish them.” Nonetheless, de Leon claims that he has decided to reveal these secret matters “in order that many may become wise and retain their faith in God, and hear and learn and fear in their soul and rejoice because they know the truth.”180 The composition of this kabbalistic text, according to de Leon, is a service to “many” of his coreligionists, sustaining their faith and commitment to Judaism. It is also significant that he cites exposure to “foreign ideas” as one of the reasons why he felt compelled to write. As he articulates it here, de Leon regards the sharing of kabbalistic secrets as a restorative activity that both reclaims ancient secrets from the rabbinic tradition that have nearly become lost while also reviving the faith of a generation of Jews he perceives to be particularly at risk. We find a similar formulation in another anonymous commentary on the ten sefirot where the author introduces his work by stating that he wrote it for “one who desires [to comprehend] the wisdom of the Kabbalah in its entirety.” The author indicates that his enumeration of the divine names associated with each of the sefirot will serve as a guide to understanding the meaning of other kinds of Jewish texts, since “once one knows this, it will be possible for him when he reads a biblical verse or dictum of the Rabbis of blessed memory, or a matter described in a kabbalistic composition, that he will understand the intention of that verse or dictum, and to what matter it alludes. It is for this purpose that I composed this text.”181 Similarly, we read in another anonymous text that a systematic description of the ten sefirot serves an urgent need for Jews, since through these matters one can comprehend the intention of all of the commandments of Israel, and the meaning of the [mysteries of the] chariot, for these matters are the intention of everything . . . and they cannot be comprehended except from the mouth of a kabbalist to the ear of a kabbalist . . . for all of the Torah and the Prophets and the writings, and all of the Talmud are bound to one another, and everything is dependent upon these sefirot,

M ast er s of Secrets

43

which are the roots of the perfected unity. . . . Therefore we must understand their order.182

Comments such as these can be found in many places in the anonymous kabbalistic texts composed in late thirteenth-­century Castile. The ambitions of this open esotericism are far reaching and transformative in that the author boldly asserts that neither the Hebrew Bible nor the rabbinic corpus can be understood in the absence of the kabbalistic system, and the knowledge of Kabbalah is available only to one who has been brought in to the chain of esoteric transmission. The composition of such ostensibly esoteric texts is directed toward the task of inclusion rather than exclusion, since the stated purpose is to empower the reader with the requisite knowledge necessary for a proper understanding of the entirety of rabbinic Judaism that would otherwise be impossible. The embrace of a discourse of esotericism in this case does not imply a regime of restricted access to esoteric doctrines.

Late thirteenth-­century Castile was a creative, even revolutionary moment in Jewish religious and intellectual history. Castilian Kabbalah was, of course, not created from nothing during the closing decades of the thirteenth century. Kabbalistic texts like those examined above bear the strong imprint of the kabbalists who came before them. These writings also reflect the many other texts from the long history of rabbinic Judaism that bear an affinity to various themes and ideas in kabbalistic literature. These kabbalists’ primary contribution was their production of a large quantity of literature in order to put forth a comprehensive, and in many cases highly detailed, reinterpretation of the meaning of Judaism. As Jonathan Ray has demonstrated, the frontier conditions prevailing in Castile created a dynamic and fluid environment in which Jews were able exploit opportunities for economic and social advancement that was in many cases analogous to those available to Christians. While the open society and the many options it accorded to the Jews eventually did see a decline, it came at the end of a period in which Jews were able to explore social, political, and intellectual avenues less accessible to their coreligionists in the more established communities further east.183 While it might be tempting to regard the kabbalistic rereading of Judaism as a kind of Jewish retreat and a sign that Jews during this period were cloistered in an insular, self-­referential world, an analysis of this phenomenon with an eye toward the social and intellectual context leads to a different conclusion. Far from being a symptom of social and intellectual isolationism, it may be more accurate to understand the proliferation of kabbalistic literature as an indicator of the degree to which Jews were full participants in the conversations of their historical

4 4

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

moment.184 As Marc Epstein has argued with regard to the production of Jewish art in the early fourteenth century, the adoption of what might strike the eye as “Christian” themes is in fact evidence of the ease Jews felt in “adopting, adapting, reframing, and subverting the conventions of the general culture,” since “such interpretive moves constituted the means by which they made the culture belong to them, even as they belonged to it, despite the tensions sometimes caused by their social and political interactions with Christians.”185 By shifting the emphasis of rabbinic Judaism toward an esotericism that bore striking affinities to other esoteric trends current in their milieu, kabbalists were imagining Judaism in a way that was consonant with elements of the cultural logic of their day. It should come as no surprise that the augmentation of a kabbalistic field of discourse within medieval Judaism was generated in a context in which there were many social and political options open to Jews, and when avenues for intellectual engagement across religious and cultural boundaries were many. The emergence of a prominent esotericism in the formulation of Judaism in this context is thus best understood not as a singular and internal Jewish retrieval of arcana, but rather a move within a context of multiple competing options since “[l]ike identities, traditions are negotiated in a complex process of cultural exchange.”186 The Jewish identity negotiated by kabbalists in Castile reveals a rich and complex environment, echoing a conversation that transformed Judaism though an engaged encounter with a unique and cosmopolitan Iberian society.

chapter 2

I

SECRETS OF THE COSMOS creating a kabbalistic universe Medieval kabbalistic texts expend considerable energy describing the process of creation and the nature of the connection of the physical cosmos to God. As noted above, creation is identified in rabbinic literature, along with the descriptions of Ezekiel’s chariot vision, as one of the esoteric topics that can only be taught to individual, worthy students.1 Drawing upon this identification of the account of creation as one fraught with esoteric implications, medieval kabbalists provide extensive discussions regarding the emergence of being and the establishment of the cosmic order. This important area of kabbalistic discourse, however, constitutes more than a theoretical engagement with an intellectual curiosity. The kabbalistic construction of the creative process establishes a conception of both the divine and cosmic realms that sets the stage for imagining the theurgic empowerment of Jewish religious praxis. Discussions of theogony (creation within God) and cosmogony (creation of the cosmos) ground the kabbalistic understanding of Jewish empowerment and identity by depicting a universe in which God and the world are interwoven and interconnected through a paradoxical process of emanation. As we shall see, the details of the kabbalistic descriptions of the coming-­to-­be of the cosmic and divine orders serve as the basis for a worldview in which Jews occupy a central role in maintaining the fabric of being itself. That is to say, kabbalistic articulations of the secret of creation reflect a strategy for constructing Jewish meaning. In many of the texts examined below, the physical universe and natural order are identified as locations of divine mystery and as central subjects in Jewish esoteric lore. For example, Joseph Gikatilla states, “The secret of the entire Torah is the creation of the world and the sustenance of nature.”2 The identification of the creation and continued maintenance of the cosmos with the secrets of the Torah reflects the importance this subject held for many medieval kabbalists. The natural order is freighted with theological importance in these texts since

45

46

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

the creation of the cosmos is regarded as the result of as an emanative process that begins within the divine economy, rendering the ontological status of the physical universe deeply conflicted. The created world, at times referred to as the olam ha-­peirud or alma de-­peiruda, the “world of separation,”3 presents a theological conundrum for many medieval kabbalists since it could imply a compromise of the infinite primordial perfection of God. Kabbalists rejected the theistic conception of the creation of the physical cosmos as a process that results from an act of divine volition, creating a universe that is ontologically separate from the essence of God. As Scholem has noted, “Since the early kabbalists allowed no interruption of the stream of emanation from the first sefirah to its consolidation in the worlds familiar to medieval cosmology, creation ex nihilo may be interpreted as creation from within God Himself.” 4 Many medieval kabbalists held the view that all reality would cease to exist in the absence of an ontological connection to God. According to this doctrine, the creation of the cosmos, or cosmogony, is understood as the culmination of the emergence of the facets of the divine self, or theogony, that together comprise the divine unity. As Wolfson has observed, “In kabbalistic accounts of creation, the cosmogonic and theogonic elements are not separable; the unbroken chain effaces any unambiguous distinction between creation and emanation.”5 The association of the physical world with God in this way raises the question of how finite entities can exist and how a world that contains imperfection and evil can emanate from a perfect and infinite deity. This question lingers behind many of the medieval kabbalistic discussions of creation. As we will see, the embrace of the irresolvable contradiction implied by the connection of an infinite and transcendent deity with the finite and physical universe is a prominent feature of the discussions of creation in these texts. Ultimately, the existence of the cosmos is a mystery for the medieval kabbalists that involves the convergence of opposites, in this case, the emanation of a finite universe from within the limitlessness of God. By understanding the paradoxical and apophatic descriptions of creation in these texts as part of a framework for establishing the efficacy of Jewish ritual, we can better understand the purpose behind this dialectic at the core of kabbalistic cosmology.6 Walter Stace makes a distinction between dualism, monism, and pantheism that is instructive for our discussion of creation.7 Dualism implies absolute distinction between the being of God and the cosmos, such that there can be no overlap or ontological connection between them. Monism takes the opposite view, maintaining instead that God and the world are identical, allowing for no formal transcendence. This view, Stace argues, is often mistakenly associated with pantheism in a way that does not correspond to the actual position of pantheistic thinkers. Pantheism, Stace says, is the position that God and the world are simultaneously other and the same, or that “God is and is not the

Secrets of t he C o smo s

47

world.”8 This does not, according to Stace, constitute a rejection of the categories of logic per se. The articulation of the contradiction that God is and is not the world arises from the inherently contradictory and paradoxical nature of mystical experience, and in that sense, it is a lucid and rational expression appropriate to its subject matter.9 Stace’s definition of pantheism nicely captures the descriptions of the being of the cosmos found in the kabbalistic texts considered below. The kabbalists do not reject logic in their articulations of the paradox of being. On the contrary, they recognize and embrace the boundaries and limits of language and reason while employing imagery and symbolism that deliberately intensifies the paradox of the cosmos as that which is and is not identical with God. The kabbalists do not attempt to resolve this. In fact, they go to great lengths to construct complex theosophic myths that portray, in exquisite detail, just how irresolvable and paradoxical the nature of reality and the human condition is. In an interesting comment on the role that this dialectic has in the zoharic literature, Joshua Abelson notes in a study composed in 1931 that God, in the Zohar, is the great Unknowable, the Supreme Incomprehensible. God is exalted above human understanding; the depths of the Divine wisdom are beyond human penetration. . . . Here we have the doctrine of the Divine Transcendency par excellence. Nevertheless, God in the Zohar is very knowable, very fathomable. The universe as well as man’s heart reveal His infinite power and infinite love. Nay, even the human organs and limbs reflect certain static and dynamic characteristics of Deity. The world is an image of the Divine. There is constant and conscious interaction between “the above” [the celestial kingdom] and “the below” [the mundane kingdom]. Here we have the doctrine of the Divine immanence par excellence. It is the ceaseless interweaving of these two doctrines in the pages of the Zohar that supplies the book with its uncompromisingly spiritual atmosphere.10

Abelson’s remark captures a central element of the Zohar’s understanding of being and the creation of the cosmos that reflects an important trend in other late thirteenth-­and early fourteenth-­century texts. All reality is caught on the horns of the paradox that God is both united with and removed from creation. The convergence of transcendence and immanence underlies the zoharic poetic and serves as the basis for all reality. Cosmogony in these texts is thus emanative in one sense, yet also, as Wolfson has pointed out, a rupture within the Godhead, resulting from a divine self-­ limitation.11 The emergence of being from within the transcendent heights of the divine self is represented with imagery of continuous flow as well as rupture and withdrawal. The created realm is a place of divine otherness and estrangement.

48

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

Yet, at the same time, the world is also depicted as a kind of divine perfection. The full force of this paradox will be seen in the way the kabbalists articulate the process of creation as one that involves a continuous unity of created and divine being in the ineffable heights of ein sof,12 as well as an othering of the world from God through an act of divine self-­limitation. The secret of creation as an emergence within the Godhead, in keeping with the complexities of kabbalistic esotericism, “is not merely epistemological in nature; it is decidedly ontological insofar as it signifies an aspect of the divine that is most appropriately referred to in paradoxical terms as the disclosed concealment.”13 The process of creation is portrayed in a way that deliberately obfuscates the question of the reality of the universe as a realm that exists outside of God. Kabbalistic descriptions of the relationship between God and the world never escape contradictions. This does not represent a failure on the part of the kabbalists to attain their own goals in writing, but rather a deliberate strategy for constructing a way of imagining the world in relation to God. Corresponding to Jonathan Z. Smith’s nomenclature, as discussed in the introduction, the kabbalistic conception of being explored in this chapter combines “locative” discourses of order and structure, with “disjunctive” articulations of paradox and inscrutability. The cosmos according to this model is a reflection and even embodiment of the divine, yet the divine remains incomprehensible and transcendent. This construct serves as the basis for the claims regarding the theurgic impact of Jewish ritual and liturgical practices, as well as the possibility for mystical experience. The kabbalists refer to the process of creation as a great mystery because they cannot, and do not try to, resolve the tension between the notion of a completely transcendent and incomprehensible deity, and a realm of finite physical reality and human experience united with the essence of God.

creation within god The initial stages of creation take place, according to most of the texts under consideration, within the highest reaches of God. The production of the physical cosmos is contingent upon the emanation of the ten sefirot from God.14 Descriptions of creation thus often begin with descriptions of the subtle changes within the divine that lead to the emergence of the first three sefirot, Keter (Crown), Hokhmah (Wisdom), and Binah (Understanding), which in turn bring forth the rest of the sefirot, most commonly referred to as Hesed (Righteousness), Gevurah (Strength), Tifferet (Beauty), Netzah (Eternity), Hod (Magnificence), Yesod (Foundation), and Malkhut (Kinship) or Shekhinah (Divine Presence). The story of creation in these texts thus begins within God himself. Kabbalah entails the claim to a Jewish tradition revealing the mysterious “events” within the divine economy that engender the creation of the world. This narrative provides those

Secrets of t he C o smo s

49

who possess such knowledge with an invaluable guide to the secrets of the cosmos and the exercise of powerful action. That is to say, for the kabbalists the capacity to wield the highest form of power resides exclusively with those who know the role of the sefirot in the creative process. Such knowledge, according to the kabbalists, cannot be gleaned from a careful analysis of the biblical text. Only those who are privy to the kabbalistic tradition have access to these matters. In order to provide this knowledge to their readers, kabbalists during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries produced many texts dedicated to explaining the system of the sefirot. In these texts, the sefirot are presented as the key to understanding the meaning of Jewish texts and practices and the means by which one may encounter the divine. As we read in one anonymous commentary on the ten sefirot, “through these things you shall be able to apprehend knowledge of the Creator and the content of His exalted actions and the power of His wondrous deeds, through the power of the attributes that are called the ten sefirot. . . . And how shall you know that you approach the King in truth and uprightness? Through the thought of the image of the seal of the ten sefirot, through the seals of truth which intertwine to unite the tent as one.”15 In many cases these commentaries begin with descriptions of the process of emanation that gives rise to the sefirot, and consequently, the universe.16 In one version of such a discussion, the intra-­divine creative act is described in the following manner: The first [sefirah] is supernal Keter, the second is Hokhmah, the third is Binah, the fourth is Hesed, the fifth is Gevurah, the sixth is Tifferet, the seventh is Netzah, the eighth is Hod, the ninth is Yesod, the tenth is Malkhut. Before the Holy One, blessed be He, created His world, there was only Himself and His name,17 as His name was his Wisdom, and in Wisdom all things were intermixed, and all of the beings [havayot] were sealed, for the Holy One had not brought them forth from potentiality to actuality, as with a tree that has the capacity to bring forth fruit but has not yet done so. When he contemplated Hokhmah, mountains and rivers emerged forth from the root. That is to say that all of the beings flowed forth that were sealed in Hokhmah, and He brought them out into the light by means of His Binah, and for this reason Binah is called Repentance [teshuvah, or “return”], for he realized that the evil doers cannot subsist except by virtue of Hesed [mercy], and for this reason God created His world with Hesed, as it is said, “the world is founded upon Hesed” (Ps. 89:3). He created the supernal upper ones with Hesed and Gevurah, which is the attribute of harsh judgment, for the lower entities lack the power to conduct themselves by means of these. Therefore, these five [supernal] sefirot are spiritual [ruhani’ot], for he conducted

50 

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

the upper world by means of them, and the other sefirot are called physical [gufani’ot], since he conducts the lower world by means of them.18

Among the themes addressed in this rich passage is the notion that the sefirot are the result of a successive emanation from within God moving from a spiritual, “upper” realm to a more physical “lower” domain.19 The first point of the emergence of being occurs with the second sefirah, Hokhmah, which is then elaborated into a more complex form of being by means of the third, Binah. Hesed, the fourth sefirah, is the site of the balancing of divine forces and limiting of the harsh powers of the fifth, Gevurah. The overall structure of the sefirot is then described as a balancing of the upper five against the lower five. This conception of creation describes a complex process within the Godhead that precedes the production of the material world, which existed in potentia within the upper reaches of the divine before the moment of creation. The point of origin of being within the highest reaches of the world of the sefirot is frequently described in these texts as an incomprehensible secret beyond the reach of the human intellect. The first sefirah, Keter, is the source for the other nine. According to the anonymous author of a text referred to as Sod ve-­ Yesod ha-­Kadmoni, which bears the strong imprint of the Iyyun circle, “they all have one root, for they are all rooted in the supernal root that sustains them, which is Keter.”20 The highest sefirah is often referred to as the “spring” that flows unceasingly, giving life via the sefirot to the entire realm of creation. As Joseph of Hamadan’s puts it in his commentary on the ten sefirot, “the supernal, holy attribute [Keter] is called ‘spring’ and ‘source of life’ and it never ceases, for its waters are always continuous and are never interrupted or held back, since the rest of the attributes flow and receive, but this one flows and does not receive, for it is the beginning of the three [upper] attributes, and it is the spring that overpowers.”21 Gikatilla also describes Keter/ein sof as the source of the sefirot as well as all subsequent being; “Keter, which is to say that this sefirah is the crown that encircles all of the sefirot . . . for it is everything and it is the secret of the primordial one [ha-­kadmon] from whose truth all went forth, and it is that which emanates from its truth all of the sefirot, and from it all was created and all was made, and there is nothing outside of it which is not encompassed within it, and the power of this sefirah is called ‘without boundary’ [ein gevul].”22 In most discussions of Keter, the texts are emphatic that it is incomprehensible. In another anonymous commentary we find a representative formulation of this position: Supernal Keter is hidden from the conceptualization of [human] hearts, exhausting language; there is none who can know [it], not among the upper beings or the lower ones, such that it is called Nothing [ayyin]. It is the

Secrets of t he C o smo s

51

annulment of thought, subsisting in intangible nothingness. There is none who can perceive or know anything [regarding it] due to its extreme loftiness. This is a matter that can never be comprehended in any way. From this gradation the point of light comes forth and enters into being. It is the Supernal Thought.23

Keter, referred to here as “the Supernal Thought”24 and “the Nothing,”25 is the source of creation, yet unknowable.26 Tangible reality derives from the intangible divine being but in a manner that exceeds the capacity of the human mind, according to the kabbalists. Their secret tradition, they claim, provides a window into a matter otherwise inaccessible, thereby implying an incontrovertible Jewish body of knowledge regarding the configuration of the universe in relation to God.27 The kabbalistic notion of a secret tradition of creation implies not just a doctrine relating matters that cannot be derived through rational means, but also the claim that the universe originates in God in a way that cannot be grasped by the human mind. The hidden and revealed worlds converge in the creative act wherein the world is brought forth as a comprehensible, manifest reality from within the inscrutable divine essence. Embracing a discourse in which the creation of the cosmos generates a world that paradoxically manifests the divine infinity in the physical serves as an effective strategy to emphasize both that the true hidden structure of reality can only be understood through kabbalistic (and thereby, Jewish) tradition, and that, as we will see in subsequent chapters, the nature of that universe is one in which Jews enjoy, albeit in a concealed way, a unique position of theurgic empowerment. The ten sefirot therefore play an important role in the kabbalistic doctrine of creation, as they mediate the flow of divine being into the world and serve as the site for the impact of human action. As one anonymous author articulates the matter, “All of the ten sefirot were emanated from Ein Sof in order to bestow overflow and blessing to the lower world. The aspect of this that we can grasp with our intellect concerning God, may he be blessed, is called ‘sefirah.’”28 The sefirot serve as the conduit that brings divine energy into the world. The lower sefirot are also the beginning of that which can be grasped by the mind, thereby giving purchase to the kabbalistic endeavor to know and relate to God. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid describes Hokhmah as the point where being and nonbeing begin to converge, noting that “Hokhmah mediates between the foundations; it is neither true being nor non-­being. Instead, it mediates between them, for there is a boundary within the world of Hokhmah called ‘being’ [yeish], and there is a boundary in the world of Hokhmah called ‘non-­being’ [ayyin].”29 As a manifestation of the mysterious actions of the sefirotic pleroma, the material universe is a reflection of divine reality. For example, in a text known as

52 

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

the Book of Unity, an anonymous composition closely associated with the circle of Joseph of Hamadan, 30 the author states with regard to creation: Know that before it arose in thought to create the world, the primordial ether was the root, subsisting in its essence and truth; no one can know anything about its essence, but the supernal orders of the ten sefirot, which are the secret of the great and lesser names, were concealed and hidden within the depths of the Nothing [ayyin]. When it arose in thought to create the world, a sefirah spread forth from Nothing and revealed Being [yeish] through the secret of the Great Name . . . everything that exists in the created world is reflective of the ten sefirot.31

Just as the inception of the material world is derived from a primordial state within the divine, the sefirot are in turn the product of a generative process within God, emerging from a “primordial ether,”32 or avir kadmon, an idea with roots in earlier Ashkenazi sources,33 as well as the texts of the Iyyun circle,34 which in turn may derive from the poetry of Solomon ibn Gabirol and possibly even Orphic texts.35 The created world according to this line of thinking reflects the dynamics of the Godhead from which it flows. As we read in another anonymous commentary on the ten sefirot, The secret of the order in which every created thing came to be is the combination that admixes this with that and this with that, according to the order of the sefirot. This is because the attribute of Mercy is separate from that of Judgment according to one order, and it is bound to it according to it another order. So too, Hokhmah with Binah, and every attribute with one another, for they are all united in one sense, and multiple in another sense. When you consider this order in the proper manner, you will understand from it the secret of every created thing.36

While the descriptions of creation in the texts under consideration are complex and diverse, and the present discussion can only touch upon some of the more prominent themes, a claim that surfaces consistently is the notion that the world is the culmination of a creative act that begins within and remains connected to the divine. To understand the secret of the material universe is to appreciate, according to the kabbalists, the world as an extension of the sefirot. This theosophic discourse is not without its tensions. The authors often felt compelled to emphasize that the doctrine of ten sefirot must not be understood in any way that would compromise the concept of divine unity. Kabbalists do not wish to violate the basic notion of monotheism, but they also feel drawn to traditions that describe a dynamic inner divine life in which various forces and entities within God interact, thereby impacting events in the material realm. Rather than

Secrets of t he C o smo s

53

dismiss all discussion of the sefirot as an allegory or mere turn of speech, the kabbalists instead urge their readers to accept the contradiction that the doctrine of the ten sefirot reflects the mystery of divine unity. Just as the origin of creation is a secret because it exceeds the ken of the human mind, so too, the unity of God is marked in these texts as a mystery because it entails a convergence of multiplicity and infinity that the intellect cannot fathom. For example, one anonymous author argues that the sefirot are “all united in a single bond, and that bond lacks nothing. They are the unity of the oneness of the Holy One, blessed be He, which is to say, each one of them is called by His name, and they embrace one another and are entwined with one another.”37 In another anonymous text the author addresses the potential compromise of the divine unity that could result from the enumeration of different names for each of the sefirot, urging his reader to be mindful that You already know that God cannot be divided into parts, for He is one. . . . The wise masters of the Kabbalah, of blessed memory, have established names for each the ten sefirot according to that which they have received. Do not let the idea enter into your heart that since they have individual names, as we have described for you in the introduction, that they are separated [from one another], for this is called “cutting the shoots.”38 And just as it is said of fire that it has flame and coal, so too He has Hokhmah, Binah, Gedulah, Gevurah, Tifferet, and so on, but they are all from one place, and they all return to one place.39

The author returns to this idea at the very end of the treatise: “You should consider that even though we call [the sefirot] by names that imply corporeality, this is not so, for they are not corporeal. Rather, ‘the Torah speaks in human terms.’40 All of these attributes are from His essence [hem me-­atzmo], for one who says that ein sof is [encompassed] with the sefirot or remains outside the sefirot; it is all heresy. Know this.”41 Like most of the kabbalists under consideration, this author does not shy from the claim that the sefirot are divine. However, he also asserts that they are to be understood not as individuated parts of a divisible whole, but rather as aspects of a single unity. The text underscores the incomprehensibility of this mystery by asserting that it is equally impossible to understand the relationship between ein sof and the sefirot as either united or separate with the striking statement that both imply heretical thinking. The dualistic categories are rendered insufficient to capture the complexity of the Godhead. We find further evidence of this in another anonymous text; “the Lord, may He be blessed, is the Cause of Causes, for He rules over all of the sefirot, which are emanated from Him, may He be blessed, and they are the instruments of His craftsmanship, and His essence is concealed in them and He is bound within

5 4

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

them, like the flame is bound to the wick and cleaves to it. These matters are alluded to in the depth of the Kabbalah, for all ten of the gradations are encompassed and bound.”42 Only through the “depths” of kabbalistic thought, according to this author, can the mystery of the ten sefirot be appreciated in such as way that it reflects the unity of God. As entities that are “bound” with one another, the sefirot are simultaneously a dynamic multiplicity and absolute unity within God.43 In another very common short commentary on the ten sefirot, often bearing the title Kellal Ehad me-­’Inyan ha-­Kabbalah, the earliest known version of which is preserved in a Parma de Rossi manuscript dating to the year 1286,44 we encounter a typical caution regarding the sefirot: “Even though we refer [to the sefirot] as one beneath the other or one corresponding to another, be careful, for everything is united, and guard yourself, lest you ‘cut the shoots,’ separating one thing from another, for all is one.”45 The contradictions found in such discussions of the sefirot are not accidental. By regarding the emergence of the Godhead, and subsequently the material world, as a matter that cannot be understood through the normal functioning of the human mind, the kabbalists advance a bold claim to exclusively Jewish esoteric knowledge of the structure of being. This is evident in a commentary on the ten sefirot deriving from the slightly earlier Iyyun circle of kabbalists, which may have informed some of the above-­cited texts. With regard to the sefirot the text asserts: All of them are a single glory without any division or separation, except from the perspective of the actions that we perceive. God, may His name be blessed, created these sefirot for His glory; all of them are a single unity, and they are all called “soul” [neshamah], and He is called the soul of this soul. Concerning this, the masters of the Merkavah have said that the Holy One, blessed be He, is united in His attributes, and He is exalted and elevated to the point that there is no end to His exaltedness. Happy are we, and how good is our lot, and how pleasing is our good fortune, that the Holy One, blessed be He, sanctified be His name, has bequeathed to us such a secret.46

The sefirot are depicted here as expressions of the divine glory that only appear as separate entities from the perspective of humans seeking to understand divine action. However, possession of the secret—­that is, the mystery of divine unity that the sefirot entail—­is presented as the unique patrimony of the Jewish people. A classical formulation of the emanation of the sefirot at the beginning of the creative process within God is found in the zoharic literature in a comment on the meaning of the first word of the book of Genesis, “bereishit,” “in the beginning.” The Zohar’s commentary on the opening passage employs a number of striking images to express the paradox of the coming-­to-­be of the cosmos. Consider the following passage:

Secrets of t he C o smo s

55

At the beginning of the will of the King, He engraved engravings in the supernal luster, a hardened flame,47 and there went forth from the concealed of concealed, from the head of the endless [ein sof], bundled in vapor, set in a ring, not white, not black, not red, not green, no color at all. When He measured the span, He created colors to shine within. Within the flame, there went forth one flow from which colors were imbued below. Concealed with all concealment of the secret of ein sof, His light broke and did not break through its aura. It was not known at all until, from within the force of its bursting through, there shone forth a single concealed supernal point. Beyond this point, nothing is known, and because of this, it is called “beginning,” the first utterance of all.48

In this rich comment on the implications of the first word of the Torah, the Zohar generates a paradox in response to the central question, what is the nature of the relationship between the sefirot and the transcendent divine essence? The choice of language in this passage makes it impossible to say in what way the first point,49 corresponding to the Hokhmah, is connected to the infinite. On the one hand, the text states that the light of ein sof from which the supernal point derives its being “broke and did not break through its aura.” Yet, the Zohar then claims that “from within the force of its bursting through, there shone forth a single concealed supernal point.” And though the entire passage deals with the origin of the supernal point that constitutes the beginning of creation, the Zohar says that “beyond this point, nothing is known.” The text seems to go out of its way to problematize the origin of the primordial starting point of the realm of divine emanation, at once speaking and unspeaking. Also prominent in this text, as Wolfson has noted, is the image of withdrawal within the divine at an early stage in the creative process.50 Implied in this image is an act of limitation and disunity resulting from a disruptive moment in the creative process. Though this passage is rich in symbolism indicating emanation, such as the “flow from which colors were imbued below,” this symbolism is juxtaposed with the image of the breaking of the aura. Indeed, the possibility of the flow is predicated on the rupture of the aura.51 It seems that there is a vague reference to an idea similar to that of tzim-­tzum, much discussed in the sixteenth-­century Lurianic Kabbalah, in which a retraction on the part of God is necessary to allow for the possibility of the creation of the world.52 This rupture is expressed in a radically paradoxical way, however, in that it states that “His light broke and did not break through its aura.” It would be a mistake to interpret this phrase to mean that the Zohar is not actually claiming a rupture within the divine economy. The Zohar represents the process of creation as one in which the successive revelations of the divine light are at once both a rupture and withdrawal within the divine being and an emanative extension

5 6

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

of the divine self, establishing both distinction and unity between the cosmos and ein sof. Similar imagery can be found in some of the anonymous commentaries on the ten sefirot, stating that the buildup of brilliant light within Keter persisted “until it [Keter] ruptured, and through this rupture flows the power of all of the sefirot, and by the arousal of this movement, the unity is perfected.”53 Or, as we read in another text related to the literature of the Iyyun circle, before the world was created there was nothing “except the ether which cannot be grasped at all. This ether is the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, as the masters of the Merkavah have alluded, that before this world was created, the power of the Holy One, blessed be He, was not recognizable. When it arose in His thought to bring forth His actions, the ether ruptured, and thus the resplendence of the glory of the Holy One, blessed be He, was alluded to and perceived.”54 This image of rupture in the flow of divine energy during the early stages of creation reflects an ironic take on the relationship between God and the universe. The disruption within God produces a universe that is itself fraught with irresolvable tension between its divine and non-­divine status. In another zoharic passage on the origin of the cosmos from a point, or Hokhmah, Wisdom, that emerges from Keter, we encounter a more monistic articulation of the emanative process.55 In this passage, the Zohar is much more forceful with the imagery articulating the essentially divine nature of all reality. Come and See. Thought is the beginning of all, and since it is thought, it is within, concealed, and unknowable. As this thought expands further, it comes to the place where spirit dwells, and when it arrives at that place, it is called Binah [understanding], for then it is not as concealed as before. And though it is concealed, his spirit spreads out and brings forth a voice, comprised of fire, water, and spirit, and these are North, South, and East, and this voice is the principle of all other powers. This voice is the totality of the other power. And this voice articulates into speech, and this gives a word in adornment,56 since the voice is sent from the place of spirit, and it comes to speak a word, issuing true words. And when one contemplates the divine gradations—­it is thought, it is understanding, it is voice, it is the speech, and all is one. And that very thought is the beginning of all, and there is no separation, but rather, all is one, a single bond. And that thought is really [mammash] connected to the nothing [ayyin], and they are never separated. Thus it is written, “On that day the Lord will be one and His name one” (Zechariah 14:9).57

Through a mythic portrayal of creation as a divine speech act,58 this passage seeks to reinforce the connection between the lower levels of divine manifestation and the highest realms of the divine essence, referred to here as ayyin or nothing.59

Secrets of t he C o smo s

57

The beginning of the creative process is presented as a stirring of divine intellect or thought, which serves as a cipher for the second sefirah, Hokhmah. The articulation of speech is not possible until “thought” arrives at the third sefirah, Binah. From Binah there issues forth a voice that is said to comprise fire, water, and air, as well as North, South, and East. This image, taken from Sefer Yetzirah, involves a confluence of linguistic, spatial, and material symbols that is far from accidental. In one sense, this passage can be understood as referring to a process of successive emanation and revelation within the Godhead alone without any necessary connection to the creation of the terrestrial realm, since the opening assertion “thought is the beginning of all” refers to the connection between Hokhmah and Yesod. However, the fact that the Zohar goes out of its way to bring in the spatial and material imagery (which also carries a sefirotic valence) points us in a different direction. The emanative process within God cannot, on the Zohar’s account, be separated from the creation of the cosmos. On the contrary, this passage is interested in inquiring into the origin of all reality, that is to say, both the upper world of the sefirot and the lower realm of the cosmos. As Wolfson argues, from the kabbalistic perspective “one can speak of the natural world as a sign of the spiritual reality, but a sign that depends not on the analogical rift between worlds but on blurring the celestial-­terrestrial opposition.”60 It is significant that the hypostasis responsible for channeling all of the divine influx into Malkhut and the lower world has “all” as one of its names.61 There seems to be a double entendre here, where the All is in one sense a designation for an element within the Godhead, but in another sense is the place from which the being of everything in the lower world is sustained. This double meaning of the word All is intentionally formulated in the Zohar in a way that resists the ontological distinctions between God and the world.62 What is important in this context is that the genesis of the divine and terrestrial realms begins with the utterance of a word, mila, which can also be understood in this text as “thing.” The word or thing is comprised of the divine spirit, which also encompasses within itself three of the four directions of the world. The text is very forceful about precluding the possibility that there is an ontological separation between the divine essence, the beginning, and the lower gradations of voice (Tifferet), speech (Malkhut), and all (Yesod) when it emphasizes that “it is thought, it is understanding, it is voice, it is the speech, and all is one.” The passage ends with a paradoxical portrayal of the “beginning” of creation as one that connects to the Nothing, ayyin, without separation. The relationship between Keter and ein sof is a matter of a certain degree of disagreement among kabbalists in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, with some identifying Keter with ein sof entirely,63 and others qualifying the relationship as something less than completely identical.64 As one anonymous author notes in his commentary on the ten sefirot, “regarding this question

5 8

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

the kabbalists are divided, some saying that Keter is ein sof, while other say that it [ein sof] is not enumerated with the rest of the sefirot. However, according to the majority of opinions, ein sof is Keter, and it is concealed, and it is the secret of the being of the Creator, may he be blessed.”65 Influential kabbalists, such as Joseph Gikatilla, tended to identify Keter with ein sof,66 or the “nothing,” ayyin, thus more closely connecting the infinite divine essence with the sefirot and cosmos. In many discussions of creation, kabbalists are careful to associate the emergence of being from the “point” of Hokhmah with its origin above in the divine nothingness.67 Joseph of Hamadan argues, for example, that: “The Torah begins with ‘beginning’ [reishit] because it is the attribute emanated from the attribute Keter, which is called ‘nothing’ [ayyin], as I have hinted. The attribute Hokhmah is called ‘being’ [yeish] . . . which is to say that he brings the attribute Hokhmah, which is called ‘being,’ forth into actuality from the attribute Keter, which is called ‘nothing.’”68 Creation ex nihilo is understood here as the emergence of Hokhmah from Keter, since this is the first stage at which an entity that can be understood as “being” is brought forth from the nothingness of Keter, which is also, according to Hamadan, the same as ayyin, or nothing. The use of the term reishit, “beginning” in the first verse of Genesis is taken as a reference to Hokhmah as an emanation from Keter. Elsewhere in the same text Hamadan addresses this issue in the following way: This attribute is called “the primordial one” [ha-­kadmon], and this attribute is visible and invisible, corresponding to the utterance “in the beginning” (Gen. 1:1), as our rabbis of blessed memory have said, “the world was created in ten utterances. But are there not nine? ‘In the beginning’ is also an utterance, as it is said, ‘by the word of God the heavens were created, and by the breath of his mouth all of their hosts.’”69 Their intention corresponded to the attribute of Keter, visible and invisible, for it is the most concealed and hidden of all of the attributes.70

The primordiality of God, as the one who is in Hamadan’s paradoxical formulation both “visible and invisible,” is again associated with the first word of the Bible. Hamadan also connects the rabbinic comment regarding the ten versus nine utterances with which the world was created with the kabbalistic question regarding the place of Keter and ein sof in the enumeration of the sefirot, arguing here that the secret intention of the rabbinic discussion was to include Keter in the creative process, even though the term reishit, beginning, is taken as a reference to Hokhmah. Discussions such as these reflect the ways in which the kabbalists were careful to make clear to their readers that the world they describe is one in which the divine transcendence, the deus absconditus or Keter, is intimately involved in creation and connected to the fabric of being, albeit in a manner

Secrets of t he C o smo s

59

fraught with incomprehensible contradictions due to the inherent incomprehensibility of that attribute.71 The connection between the transcendence of Keter with the revealed world starting with Hokhmah is at times compared, as we have seen above, to the relationship of thought to speech. God’s hidden self is likened to human thought, the creative act is compared to the act of speaking, and the world is like that which is spoken.72 As we will see in some detail in the next chapter, the sefirot are often understood as configured in the shape of an anthropos, with the first three sefirot constituting the head. In an anonymous commentary on the sefirot, the image of the divine head associated with speech is related to creation in the following way: All of the limbs draw from it, “for man walks about as a shadow [tzelem, also ‘image’]” (Ps. 39:7) and “in the image of God he made him” (Gen. 5:1). Keter is crowned with the kingship that is upon his head. Wisdom is in the power of the brain. Binah is in the power of the tongue, and just as the tongue brings forth speech from potentiality to actuality, so too, Binah brings forth all things from potentiality to actuality, since all things were combined within Wisdom, and by means of Binah they were brought forth according to their order.73

Binah makes manifest that which is conjured in thought within the divine brain by articulating it as speech.74 Creation is thus understood as a divine utterance, whereby the world is not simply spoken into being, as would be implied by the narrative in Genesis, but actually subsists as the spoken manifestation of God’s thought. This is another kabbalistic strategy for emphasizing the interconnection between the essence of God and the created realm and connecting this idea with the biblical word bereishit, “in the beginning.” Joseph Gikatilla takes note of the fact that the creation narrative is reiterated twice in Genesis, which he understands as an intentional move to indicate something regarding the relationship between the universe and God indicated by the word bereishit. In a text entitled Sod ha-­Keruvim he argues: This is the reason for the two [passages in] scripture: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). In this verse the heavens are mentioned first. It returns and says, “Such is the story of the heavens and the earth when they were created, on the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens” (Gen. 2:4). This verse comes and mentions the earth [erez] first. These two verses are the secret of the true, perfected unity, according to the secret of overflowing and receiving, for this is a secret for those who know the nature of unity. It is like one who rectifies all of the sefirot so that he will receive overflow from all of them. . . . Happy are those who know the mysteries of God and cleave to His light.75

6 0

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

As Gikatilla notes, in the first description of creation in Genesis 1:1, the “heavens” are mentioned first, while in Genesis 2:4, the “earth” is mentioned first, and the heavens second. According to Gikatilla, the “earth” receives and the “heavens” give. Therefore, the first description of creation reflects the creative process that brings everything forth from above to below. The second reflects the state of the created world—­typified here as one in which the unity of God is expressed through the interconnectedness of the channels and the overflow of blessing through the sefirot into the world as an object of divine blessing. Passages such these establish a tension pertaining to the boundaries between God and the world. On the one hand, the authors of these texts clearly felt compelled to ask the question; what is the beginning of everything? Their responses evince both a sense of curiosity and anxiety about the existence of “everything” and its origin in God. The texts do not resolve the question by denying the existence of the cosmos or establishing a clear distinction separating it from God. There is a created world, but like the Godhead, it emanates from a point of origin in the transcendent realm. In these depictions of creation, the contradiction of a finite world emanating from an infinite deity in a manner that does not compromise divine transcendence remains unresolved. The world finds its origin in the divine infinity, to which it remains connected.76 The kabbalists are faithful to the language of creation but describe it as a paradoxical process whereby the world emerges without breaking its ontological unity with the primordial being, or nonbeing, of God. The cosmos, like God, thus becomes, in the kabbalistic imagination, a site of mystery, concealing incomprehensible secrets under its deceptive surface. Reality, it would seem, is not as it appears. But, for those fortunate ones, according to the kabbalists, to whom God has revealed the secret, the world can be appreciated as a continuous revelation. In this ironic view of reality we encounter an unambiguously triumphant view of Jewish esoteric knowledge. In Gikatilla’s words from the end of the passage cited above, “Happy are those who know the mysteries of God and cleave to his light.”

emanation and the chain of being Depictions of creation in this literature, as we have seen above, is expressed as a paradoxical transition from absolutely transcendent divine nothingness and infinity to successive levels of manifestation and revelation within the Godhead itself, leading finally to the terrestrial realm, without creating any ontological interruption between God and the world. That is to say, the world is emanated from God. This arguably Neoplatonic position is at odds with some philosophical views regarding creation ex nihilio, since the universe is not, strictly speaking, created by divine fiat from a state of pure absence of being.77 The biblical account of creation leaves this issue open to interpretation. As Alexander Altmann

Secrets of t he C o smo s

61

has argued, rabbinic accounts of creation engage both Plato’s Timaeus as well as various Gnostic writings,78 and the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is first articulated only in 2 Macc. 7: 28, and is not adopted axiomatically until later, especially in the works of Saadia Gaon in the tenth century. Altmann also points out that the doctrine of emanation can be found in Midrashic literature, in line with Hellenistic thinking, in Bereshit Rabbah, 3:4, and is adopted and expanded upon by the medieval kabbalists. 79 Gikatilla, for example, presents the process of the emanation of the world from the transcendent realm of the Godhead in a polemical vein against the philosophical concept of creation from nothing, or yeish me-­’ayin. In a comment on the emergence of the primal point, or letter yod of the Tetragramaton, Gikatilla states: But wisdom, ‘from where [me-­’ayin] can it be found?’ (Job 28:12) The interpretation is not according to those who think that bringing forth being from nothing is bringing forth something from privation [lo devar], that is to say, from absolute nothingness [me-­’afisat muhletet]. This is not so. Rather, [He] brought forth being from nothing [yesh me-­’ayin], that is to say, [He] emanated Hokhmah, which is being, from Keter which is called nothing [ayyin], that is to say, without boundary and without measure [ein gevul ve-­ein shi’ur]. This is very far from what there was before the creation of the world, which was Keter . . . and thus Hokhmah, which is the second sefirah, is suspended from nothing [ayyin], and from it [that is, nothing] it is emanated . . . for at that place, there is never any division [perud], for the yod cleaves to the crown [kotz], and that crown is the yod, and Hokhmah goes forth from nothing [me-­’ayin timtza]. The yod and the crown cleave as one, and Binah combines with them.80

Gikatilla’s observation reflects the understanding of the beginning of creation explored above. All being depends on a movement forth out of the divine nonbeing or infinity that creates a unity of being from the nothing of God to the being of the world—­a view that he regards as different in principle from the philosophical notion of God as the creator who is distinct from his creation. Creation ex nihilo for Gikatilla is the emergence of Hokhmah from Keter, rather than the creation of the cosmos from nothing. A term frequently used in kabbalistic texts to convey the close ontological relationship between God is shalshelet, or “chain,” implying an interlocking series of emanation.81 Idel has compared this idea in kabbalistic literature to the observations in Arthur Lovejoy’s seminal text on the notion of the “Great Chain of Being,”82 noting that the tensions between two of the models operative in Lovejoy’s study, “divine fecundity and plenitude,” and “divine perfection and transcendence,” are “resolved within a complex divinity” in kabbalistic texts.83

62 

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

Despite the obvious similarities between the Neoplatonic and kabbalistic notions of reality as an emanation from a transcendent divine unity, Idel duly notes that “the dynamic and hypostatic theosophy” of the Kabbalah is “a way of thinking that contrasts sharply the Neoplatonist vision of reality that stresses concepts such as continuity, mediation, gradation, concatenation and plenitude.”84 The relationship between the transcendent divine and the mythically construed realm of the sefirot is much more complex in the kabbalistic model than in the Neoplatonic, embracing a paradoxical discourse geared toward the empowerment of Jewish ritual behavior. For instance, in another discussion of the creation of the highest aspects of the Godhead, the Zohar describes the three points or crowns that, according to traditional scribal practice, are drawn on the top of the yod, the first letter of the Tetragrammaton in the Torah. These three points are represented as three points of contact that unite the light of ein sof with the Godhead.85 “This is the yod with three links, and because of this it is called a chain [shalshelet], like a chain that connects this with that, and all is one.”86 The yod under discussion in this passage is a common zoharic designation for Hokhmah, while the three points or “links” of the yod are associated with Keter. The chain, shalshelet, creates a connection between the divine essence and the universe that leans in the direction of monism—­creating a state of affairs in which, as the text says, “all is one.” The image of the chain in this passage is very telling. The implication is that the three points of the letter yod of the divine name serve not just as a conduit for the flow of power from above, but also as an ontological connection with ein sof. The chain is said to connect “this with that,” that is, ein sof with Keter, such that “all is one.” Thus, in the very same breath wherein we find expressions of multiplicity, we also find expressions of unity. The connection of all reality with ein sof through a chain of emanation that finds its ambiguous beginning in the first letter of the name of God is maintained down to the lowest levels of creation. In this zoharic passage, the paradoxical union of the finite with the infinite is characteristic of the reality of the Godhead and the universe itself. The above-­cited zoharic text is evocative of de Leon’s comment that “He, may He be blessed, brought forth the truth of His being from the aspect of the primordial Wisdom that goes forth from nothing [me-­’ayin], as it is written, ‘But wisdom, from where can it be found?’ [me-­’ayin timtza] (Job 28:12). Thus, from Wisdom, which is the secret of the first point, all of the beings [havayot] emanated forth as a chain, and they came to be according to their secrets.”87 Or, as we read in an anonymous commentary on the ten sefirot, “[Keter] is Thought, and from Keter the pillars of light emanate forth as a chain [nishtalshalu].”88 The chain of being in these texts reflects both the notion of ontological continuity between the world and God, and the idea of extension or expansion, creating a liminal space for the universe as the place that is both removed from and connected to the divine essence.

Secrets of t he C o smo s

63

A similar formulation of the shalshelet can be found in the works of other kabbalists from the latter part of the thirteenth century.89 According to Moses de Leon: “the world conducts itself in His secret, and everything is emanated forth as a chain [mishtashel ha-­kol] in His unity.”90 Or, as he formulates the matter in more detail elsewhere, Know that He brought forth the truth of His being and the secret of all of the beings from the upper world down to the lower world. And we have already told you that the secret of the upper world went forth in the emanation of the Primordial Wisdom that went forth from nothing [ayin]. . . . Thus, the ninth [sefirah] is the cause of all beginnings, and its secret is a single point, and it is the letter yod, the beginning of all beginnings, one point to emanate forth [lehishtalshel] from there as a chain of all the beings [havayot].91

The chain or shalshelet, according to de Leon, originates with Hokhmah, which in turn emanates from Keker and ayyin. In this fashion, everything is brought forth from “the truth of His being.” The chain of emanation is thus a device for articulating the connection of the upper and lower worlds, both of which are comprised within the continuum of divine being. In another formulation, de Leon associates the chain of emanation with the divine name; “He, may He be blessed, prepared the worlds in order for them to be bonded with one another, so that all of them would be one emanated chain in one fashion. And everything circles and circles until everything is bound in the secret of His name.”92 Here the notion of concentric circles is employed to convey the idea that everything is encompassed within God. This idea serves as the basis for an ontology in which everything in the material world is part of an indivisible expansion of the divine self. To cite one more forceful articulation of this in de Leon’s writing, “There is not even the smallest thing in the world that is not grasped in the links of the chain, and everything emanates as a chain in His secret and is grasped in His unity, to show that He, may He be blessed, is one and His secret is one, and all of the worlds, below and above, all of them are one secret, and there is no division of the truth of His being.”93 Another image employed by kabbalists from this period describes the interlocking relationship between the sefirot as that of the “cluster,”94 like a cluster of grapes hanging from a vine. In one short anonymous text related to the works of Asher ben David,95 often copied right after Kellal Ehad be-­’Inyan ha-­Kabbalah, the author begins by saying, I will create for you a parable regarding the matter of the sefirot, since they are bound without separation, for they are like a cluster, consisting of branches and leaves and grapes and skins, all comprised within a single tendril, and each one develops and receives blessing from one root. So too, the ten sefirot have

64 

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

a single root and are blessed from a single source, and each attribute receives from that which is above it, and thus Solomon refers to the structure; “my beloved to me is a spray of henna blooms” [eshkol ha-­kofer] (Song. 1:14).”96

The eshkol or cluster is employed here to convey the simultaneous unity and multiplicity of the sefirotic realm. Like grapes hanging from the same branch of a vine, nourished by the same root, the sefirot are described here as the interconnected facets of a single divine structure, channeling divine blessing directed toward them from the root of ein sof. Joseph of Hamadan formulates the matter in the following way, “Why is the Holy One, blessed be he, called ‘cluster’ [eshkol]? Just as the cluster has young grapes, mature grapes, and everything depends upon one thing, and it is called one cluster, so too the ten sefirot is one thing, may His name be blessed. . . . The kabbalists also refer to Him as the holy and pure chain of emanation.”97 Emanation as a chain is understood in this text as an expression of the interconnection of the sefirot with one another, as well as with their source in God. As Hamadan describes this idea in another treatise, “With regard to this attribute [Keter] everything is considered as nothing, and therefore this attribute is called ‘Nothing’ [ayyin]. It exists without being created, and it is one, never changing its color,98 and it is the beginning of the pure and holy chain of emanation, and this attribute is called ‘kozu’ and ‘ararita’ which is to say, that from there begins the light, and it is the primordial ether.”99 The highest attribute, Keter, is referred to here as the ayyin or Nothing because it is uncreated, possibly a reference to an idea similar to Gikatilla’s argument cited above that creation of the world from nothing, yeish me-­’ayin, is properly understood as the emergence of the upper sefirot from Keter. Again, the connection of the chain to the transcendent divine essence is unambiguously stated, establishing the continuity of the cosmic and the divine. Though the existence of the continuum between the material and divine realms is it taken as axiomatic, the precise nature of that connection is still regarded as incomprehensible, thus asserting the esoteric priority of kabbalistic knowledge. As Hamadan asserts with regard to the process of emanation: Thirty-­two paths of wisdom start with Hokhmah . . . and from each path [nativ] numerous channels and branches flow forth, all of which draw from Keter. And they flow with Wisdom to the interlocking chain of attributes of the supernal form. Regarding these paths it is said, “the path [nativ] no bird of prey knows” (Job 28:7). For one could have said, thirty-­two “roads [derakhim],” so why are they called “paths [netivot]”? This is to indicate that just as this “path” is only for one who is familiar with it and it is very hidden and concealed from humanity, so too the “road” is revealed to them. But, his “paths” are not known, for they are the thirty-­two paths of Hokhmah that are exceedingly concealed and hidden.100

Secrets of t he C o smo s

65

While the world has its origin in the highest reaches of the Godhead, and the kabbalists resist any attempt to place a clear demarcation between God and the world, they also regard the emanative process as one that leads incrementally to a kind of distancing from the divine, giving rise to a world that is not identical with God in a purely monistic way. In one anonymous text we read: Just as the trunk [of the body] is larger than the arm, and the arm is larger than the hand, and the hand is larger than the fingers, and each finger is larger than the next, so too you will find that various forms of Hesed are greater than one another. That is to say, from Hesed there emanates forth seventy-­two streams, which are seventy-­two names, and from each stream flows forth several [other] streams, and even though it is all one, and everything flows forth from one place, it is not all identical, for one is larger than the other. The enlightened one will understand.101

From the examples cited above, we can see that the emergence of being, as it is described in these texts, involves a convergence of opposites.102 The perfection and infinity of God is connected in these accounts of creation to the finitude and imperfection of the material world through a series of emanations that cannot be comprehended rationally. The physical cosmos is, to use Mercia Eliade’s category, a coincidentia oppositorum.103 The association of the cosmic with the divine in this way could be taken to imply a compromise of divine perfection. Nonetheless, the kabbalists often describe the emanation of the world from within the essence of God as an expression of divine unity. According to Moses de Leon, “You should know that He, may He be blessed, created all of the levels in their order . . . so that His unity be made manifest in all of them.”104 The finite and infinite realms, terrestrial being and divine nothing, are one with each other, and it is at the place of their convergence within the Godhead where reality takes shape.

worlds above and worlds below The notion of two parallel worlds, one above and one below, corresponding roughly to the world of the sefirot or Godhead, and the cosmos or realm of human reality, is a recurrent theme in the medieval kabblistic texts.105 As we read in the Zohar, for example, “All is made exactly in the pattern above, one corresponding to the other, matching each other.”106 While in the Hermetic tradition the establishment of earthly and divine corollaries serves as a basis for astral-­magical operations, the construction of this idea in kabbalistic texts depicts a universe in which Jewish ritual actions can impact the divine realm.107 The kabbalistic conception of parallel worlds above and below is evocative of Antoine Faivre’s observation that the notion of “correspondences” between a hidden realm above

6 6

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

and the revealed world below such that “the entire universe is, as it were, an enormous theatre of mirrors, an ensemble of hieroglyphs to be decoded,” is common in Western esoteric discourse.108 Such a discursive strategy establishing a complex set of interconnections between God and the physical world plays an important role in how the kabbalists construct a domain of meaningful Jewish existence. In Joseph of Hamadan’s formulation, “everything that happens below happens above.”109 Just as the process of creation is fraught with contradictions regarding the continuity and discontinuity between the divine essence and that which is emanated from it, so too the upper and lower worlds reflect the same blurred ontological boundary. Wolfson points out that “even though the medieval kabbalists continue to speak of an upper and lower realm, the vertical realm is precisely what is undermined by the mystical experience of God’s omnipresence, an experience that is best expressed in terms of pantheistic ontology.”110 Moses de Leon expresses the relationship between God and the upper and lower worlds in the following way: “He dwells above and below, and [He] fills and emanates into all of the worlds, and there is no interruption in the flow of His glory. God forbid that even a single place should be devoid of the flow of His glory, for even a thousand worlds like this one would not be able to encompass His glory.”111 That is to say, the world embodies, but does not exhaust, the divine being. As de Leon states the matter elsewhere, “When you consider the matter you will find that all of the created entities rely upon His power, and there is nothing outside of Him.”112 The lower world is dependent for its very being on the connection with the upper world, a connection that is expressed in ontological terms, such that though there are two worlds, “the two of them stand in a single gradation, and there is no distinction between them.”113 According to Gikatilla, “the entities below in the sub-­lunar world [’olam ha-­shafel] are not able to exist for even an instant if they are not supported and sustained by the supernal forces, for they are the sub-­lunar world. Guard this great principle, for it is the foundation and support for several concealed forms of wisdom.”114 The worlds above and below are described in many cases as reflecting each other and bearing each other’s image. In one anonymous text we read, “There is nothing in the world below without its corollary [dugmato] in the world above.”115 Or, taken from the opposite direction, the same text also states, “There is nothing in the world above without its similitude [dimyono] in the world below.”116 The principle of the correlation of the two worlds is often understood as a transposition, wherein one world literally occupies the place of the other, and vice versa. The system of intermixing divine and cosmic entities, often referred to as the Merkavah, the Hebrew term for “chariot” the verbal root of which, rkv, can also mean “combine,”117 is described in one anonymous text in the following way: “The Merkavah cannot exist without the upper becoming the lower or the lower becoming the upper.”118 Thus, though the world above is the ontological source for the world below, their

Secrets of t he C o smo s

67

relationship with each other is expressed as one of mutual reflection and interconnection. As Joseph of Hamadan puts it in his commentary on the ten sefirot: This intermixes with that, and this with that; this is a soul for that, and this for that, and the Holy One, blessed be He, is the soul for all, and He has still yet another soul of the soul that shines from there to all of the holy limbs of the Holy One, blessed be He and His Shekhinah. Thus, that which is above and that which is below in all of the worlds, all of it is within the Holy One, blessed be He, and He is within them, and He is all, and everything above and below is reliant upon Him, like grapes within a cluster.119

Though the notion of two worlds, above and below, is articulated here as a facet of reality, Hamadan also takes great care to emphasize both of these realms are encompassed within the divine unity. The paradoxical tensions explored above regarding the emergence of finite reality from the divine infinity are maintained here as well. That is to say, for the kabbalists the two worlds constitute a single unity. As Moses de Leon says, “He, may He be blessed, created the worlds according to His will, and adorned each of them in its order so that He, may He be blessed, might unite His glory in them, so that they would be capable of existing in His unity, and so that He would be perceived in all of them above and below.”120 Gikatilla also makes the striking comment; “Behold, I tell you that when the world was created and all of the upper and lower orders were encompassed and conjoined in the seventh, all of the orders by way of receiving and overflowing, then the whole world was made one for the one Lord, and Tifferet above flowed below to the spring of the Shekhinah, for she is in the lower entities.”121 Consider the relationship between the upper and lower worlds as it is described in the following passage from the Zohar: Come and see. When the Holy One, blessed be He, desired to create the world, He brought forth one concealed light, from which went forth all those lights that are revealed. From that light there went forth and were emanated and were made the rest of the lights, and it is the upper world. Then, this upper light emanated and fashioned an artisan, a light that does not shine, making the lower world. And since this light does not shine, it desires to be connected above, it desires to be connected below, and with the connection of that which is below, it was connected to shine by means of the connection above. This light that does not shine, by means of the connection above, brought forth all of the hosts and camps of many kinds, as it is written, “how manifold are your works, oh God” (Ps. 104:27). Everything that is on the earth, so too is it above. Even the smallest thing in this world is dependent upon a supernal thing which is appointed over it above,122 for when this

6 8

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

thing below is aroused, that which is appointed over it above also becomes aroused, because everything is united this with that.123

This text employs the by now familiar imagery of concealed and revealed light. The text states that from a concealed light, referring to Binah, there emanated the revealed lights, referring to the rest of the sefirot down to Yesod. The light that does not shine,124 referring to the Shekhinah, is the final hypostasis that serves as the cusp or point of connection between the world above and the world below. Like the lower world, the Shekhinah is derivative in that it has “no light of its own,” a common image used to describe the final sefirah. This final gradation within the Godhead is represented as a demiurge responsible for the creation of the lower world as a corollary to the upper. The liminal status of the tenth sefirah enables it to generate the physical cosmos in such a way that it remains connected to and reflective of the world above. Therefore, the text argues, when something in the lower world is “aroused,” the same is true of its correlative power in the world above. The image of interwoven divine and cosmic domains is employed to account for the claim that events in the material world impact the world above. One could hardly imagine it otherwise, given that, as the text concludes, “everything is united this with that.”

From the passages adduced above it is clear that the creative act, as depicted in the theosophic symbolism of these texts, is a dialectical emergence of otherness from within God. In the discussions of creation we find countless reiterations of the notion that being emerges from God by way of a secret or incomprehensible process of emanation through the sefirot. Such accounts are presented ostensibly to explain the emergence of being from the transcendent nonbeing of God. But, at the end of the long journey from ein sof to the physical universe, we find that the texts often end where they begin. The question of how there can be something other than the divine Nothing remains unanswerable. The world is other than God yet also united with ein sof. God withdraws Himself from Himself, in order to create a world that is, ironically, identical with Himself. The riddle of the creation of the world is never answered in these texts. Instead, the creative process is illustrated in exquisite detail as a mystery contingent upon the kabbalistic doctrine of the sefirot. The “secret” of creation is thus an assertion that Jews possess esoteric knowledge of the world and God that is categorically inaccessible to those outside of the tradition. While this claim places the precise knowledge of the manner in which ein sof generates and relates to the universe beyond the reach of the rational operation of the mind, it also asserts the superiority of Jewish cosmology. Only through the Kabbalah can one know the truth regarding the creation of the cosmos and the structure of reality. Judaism is thus envisioned as a repository for the secrets of the cosmos, just as kabbalists are the masters of those secrets.

chapter 3

I

SECRETS OF THE SELF kabbalistic anthropology and divine mystery According to a passage in Avot de R. Natan, “one man is equal to the entire work of creation.”1 A prominent position taken by Jewish thinkers and writers since the Bible is that humanity occupies a central place in the universe and is the reason for the creation and continued existence of the cosmos. In this chapter we will explore how the kabbalistic depictions of the human self relate to the paradox of the cosmos that we examined in the previous chapter. We will see that the self, according to the kabbalists, is the place where the most transcendent and infinite reaches of the Godhead merge with the plane of physical reality. The human self, as a convergence of opposites in which the divine nothing unites with the physical universe, is literally a locus coincidentia oppositorum. For the kabbalists, the Jewish self serves as a site of meaning by being the place where ein sof and the world converge through the union of soul and body. As the ideal manifestation of selfhood, Jews are described in these texts as unique and, in some ways, divine beings giving movement and voice to God’s will in the material realm. The esoteric traditions of the Kabbalah are often described as the revelation of the secret of the divinity of the Jewish self, enabling Jews to wield God’s power on earth. In the kabbalistic anthropology to be explored below, the people of Israel are imagined as more than servants of God—­they themselves manifest the divine in the world.

rabbinic precursors As Ephraim Urbach has argued, rabbinic anthropology constructs the self as a “psycho-­physical organism.”2 That is to say, the human self is composed of a body and a soul, or physical and nonphysical aspects that are combined to form the human being. The depictions of the human self found especially in the rabbinic corpus, according to Urbach, “flow from a consideration of the paradox of

69

7 0

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

Man, in whom there is, on the one hand, existence and being, and, on the other, nothingness and void.”3 Thus, selfhood according to the rabbis involves bringing together the spiritual and the physical.4 The body, as Daniel Boyarin has noted, is essential to the rabbinic understanding of the self.5 Alon Goshen Gottstein describes the difference between body and soul in rabbinic discourse as a “soft rather than hard distinction” since “soul and body form a whole rather than a polarity.”6 This is in keeping with the rabbinic attitude toward the material world more generally as one that, as Reuven Kimmelman puts it, “affirms the physical as a medium of the spiritual.”7 Kabbalistic discussions of the self as that which balances the gap between God and the world are informed by rabbinic literature. Consider the following passage from Bereshit Rabbah, 12:7: On the sixth day He came to create man. He said, “if I create him from the celestial entities, they will be more numerous than the terrestrial entities by one, and if I create him from the terrestrial entities, they will be more numerous than the celestial entities by one. Rather, I will create him from the celestial and terrestrial entities for the sake of peace.” Thus it is written, “and the Lord God formed man . . . from dust of the earth,” from the terrestrial entities. “And He breathed into his nostrils the soul of life [nishmat hayyim],” from the celestial entities.8

Here the text clearly seems to be engaging a tradition according to which God created man as a combination of the heavenly and terrestrial elements. In this sense, the human borders on the divine. Moreover, rabbinic texts are replete with anthropomorphic imagery in which God is depicted in decidedly human terms. As David Stern has pointed out, the interesting feature that emerges from the discourse regarding the human self and human form in relation to God in rabbinic literature is not so much their philosophical ideas about the distinctions between humanity and God—­a matter that they seemed not to find particularly interesting—­but rather the fact that “the only model of sufficient complexity that the rabbis possessed to portray God’s character . . . was that of the human character.”9 Before proceeding I should clarify how I am using the terms “self,” “man,” “humanity,” “human self,” and “human being.” It should be emphasized that the self that serves as the object of reflection for the kabbalists considered below is a corporate, Jewish self and not the individual. There is very little in the way of biographical information or personal details in these texts. In their descriptions of the self, the kabbalists place primary emphasis on the collective nature of male Jews, with very little apparent interest in either the unique individual or the broader category of humanity. My presentation here is informed by Elliot Wolfson’s demonstration that in the Zohar and other medieval kabbalistic

Secrets of t he Self

71

texts, following rabbinic precedent, terms such as adam, (man), “which denotes humanity in its fullest sense, applies only to Israel and not to the idolatrous nations.10 In the Babylonian Talmud, non-­Jews are excluded from a number of halakhic rulings on the basis of this philological assertion, which is supported exegetically by a gloss on the verse, “For you, my flock, flock that I attend to, are men” (Ezekiel 34:31): “You are called men, but the idolatrous are not called men.’”11 The rabbinic and kabbalistic conception of humanity and selfhood is thus one in which these terms only apply in their fullest sense to Israel. Wolfson cites numerous passages from the Zohar in which terms such as bar nash and adam clearly apply only to male Israelites.12 As he puts it, “the status of human being in its most precise sense refers to the circumcised male Jew.”13 References below to the kabbalistic discussions of men, humans, or human beings should therefore be understood to refer to male Jews. Moreover, the emphatic ethnocentrism evident in kabbalistic texts was not invented in the Middle Ages. As Wolfson shows, the portrayal of Israel as the “holy seed” in contradistinction to the “demonic” gentile other is “an elaboration of a position articulated in earlier rabbinic texts, which in turn echo an ethnocentric orientation, or symbolic bent, evident in parts of what became the scriptural canon as well as other literary sources from late Second Temple Judaism.”14 The elevation of the value of the people of Israel over other nations may even reflect an incarnational anthropology. Wolfson suggests, “we may not be far off the mark by describing the rabbinic attitude as affirming the Jewish people as the incarnation of God on earth, the full embodiment of the divine image, the physical site of God’s indwelling in the mundane.”15

imagining personhood Mircea Eliade argues in his study of the modalities of sacred symbolism that the self is a prominent locus in many forms of religious discourse for the manifestation of divine holiness. He notes that [f]or religious man, the cosmos “lives” and “speaks.” The mere life of the cosmos is proof of its sanctity since the cosmos was created by the gods and the gods show themselves to man through cosmic life. This is why, beginning at a certain stage of culture, man conceives of himself as a microcosm. He forms part of the gods’ creation; in other words, he finds within himself the same sanctity that he recognizes in the cosmos. It follows that his life is homologized to cosmic life; as a divine work, the cosmos becomes the paradigmatic image of human existence.16

Leaving aside the potentially problematic reification of the culturally constructed and historically contingent practices at work in any such discourse, Eliade’s

7 2

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

comment nonetheless is fruitful for drawing our attention to a prominent kabbalistic claim regarding the self: namely, that the individual reflects the divine and cosmic orders. In the eighth of his “Ten Aphorisms on the Kabbalah,”17 Gershom Scholem makes the following cryptic remark about the relationship between the self, the cosmos, and the divine. There is in the Kabbalah something of a transformative perspective, in which it remains doubtful whether man is better described from a magical or utopian perspective. This perspective contains all worlds, even the concealment of ein sof itself, in the place where I stand. One need not argue what is “above” and what is “below.” One must only (only!) see through the point where he himself stands. This transformative perspective is all worlds, as one of the greatest Kabbalists has said, nothing but “names recorded on the scroll of God’s essence.”18

As Scholem makes clear in this passage, this convergence of above and below occurs within the self of the kabbalist. All worlds, even ein sof, are reflected in the self. Thus, the self is both the beginning and the end of the path to God. I believe that this is Scholem’s point in the following comment: “At opposite poles, both man and God encompass within their being the entire cosmos. However, whereas God contains all by virtue of being Creator and Initiator in whom everything is rooted and all potency is hidden, man’s role is to complete this process by being the agent through whom all the powers of creation are fully activated and made manifest. What is seminally in God unfolds and develops in man.”19 Or, as he comments elsewhere, “mysticism postulates self-­knowledge, to use a Platonic term, as the surest way to God who reveals Himself in the depths of the self.”20 In his work on conceptions of embodiment and personhood in the rabbinic and kabbalistic texts, Wolfson describes the docetic nature of the imaginal body of God in Jewish sources.21 According to Wolfson, “incarnation of the divine body in Judaism relates to theophanic images that are localized in the imagination.”22 The divine body visualized in the imagination is no less real, according to rabbinic and kabbalistic sources, than a body that is visualized by the eye. This understanding of embodiment and corporeality leads one “to appreciate that the body is a complex construct of the imagination rather than a material artifact that can be measured by the parameters of three-­dimensional space. The phenomenological parameters of embodiment must be significantly expanded if we are to comprehend the enigma of incarnation, the limitless delimitation of the delimited limitlessness.”23 As he follows this line of reasoning further elsewhere, Wolfson observes that “God, world, and human are intertwined in a reciprocal mirroring, and hence the kabbalistic perspective may be termed ‘cosmotheandric,’

Secrets of t he Self

73

an adjective that conveys the ultimate indistinguishabiltiy of the three correlative elements, the triadic signposts, as it were, God-­human-­world.”24 In the kabbalistic texts explored below it will be seen that the notion that the Jewish self is the locus of divine manifestation—­or an embodiment of the infinite within the finite—­informs how kabbalists construct a discourse for imagining the self vis-­à-­vis the other. By associating this claim with ancient, esoteric traditions, the kabbalists sought to assert a particular conception of Jewish empowerment that underscores the ontological superiority of the Jewish people, especially Jewish men, and does so in a way that resonates with certain claims regarding Jews that were current in the broader social environment. As Steven Kruger observes, “Body and embodiment were especially crucial terms in medieval Jewish-­Christian interactions. . . . In Christian Polemic, we often find Jews depicted as excessively corporeal and concomitantly less spiritual than their Christian counterparts. Jewish men were thought to suffer a monthly ‘bloody flux’ that associated them, in at least some Christian writers minds, with menstruating (‘unclean’) women.”25 Resnick’s recent monograph argues persuasively that physiological conceptions of difference played an important role in how Christians conceptualized Jews as other after the twelfth century.26 With regard specifically to the thirteenth-­century Castilian context, Sara Lipton has shown that caricatures of Jewish men, as opposed to Jewish women, construct the male Jewish body as a site of the manifestation of Jewish shortcomings. In the realm of artistic imagination, as opposed to the social reality in which Jews and Christians were often indistinguishable, Jewish male images were deployed by Christian artists in a pointed critique of Judaism, depicting “a biblical or Talmudic law that is antiquated, rigid, and unforgiving.” As Lipton further notes: “In the idealized world of Christian imagery . . . [t]okens of archaic authority display the Jew’s affiliation with an obsolete law and the outmoded past. Signs of ugliness proclaim his misunderstanding of that law and consequent carnality and perfidy, even fiendishness. The male Jew’s repeated failure to see is demonstrated graphically his own exegetical and spiritual blindness and the superiority of Christian vision.”27 Furthermore, Francisco Prado-­Vilar has observed that in some cases male Jewish forms, often youths, can also serve as transitional characters, which he terms iudeus sacer, susceptible to complete transformation on the bodily level from Jew to Christian through the rite of baptism and through “the transformative bio-­theology of the Incarnation.”28 At stake in such Christian depictions of Jews is a conception of difference in which the Jewish male body is ontologically distinct, in need of rebirth, or reemergence from the womblike baptismal font in order to render it transformed.29 In the kabbalistic texts explored in this chapter, we encounter an inversion of such characterizations of Jewish men. As the point of connection between the divine and the material, the Jewish man’s body is imagined as the mediating principle that sustains the cosmos by connecting God with the physical world.

74 

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

spanning heaven and earth: reflecting the divine image in the jewish self The paradox of the convergence of divine and material being examined in the previous chapter pertains as well to the kabbalistic conception of the self. In the texts considered below, the Jewish male, like the cosmos itself, is an embodied manifestation of the limitlessness of ein sof.30 Thus, the world and the self are manifestations of God in a way that that reflects the dialectical nature of kabbalistic thinking. Kabbalistic anthropology does not embrace an uncomplicated understanding of incarnation wherein all physical manifestation, as it is embodied in the self, simply is God.31 Instead, the kabbalists develop a more complex discourse in which the cosmos and self embody the divine through an irresolvable tension that expands the limits of embodiment without retreating to the safe ground of a “figurative” resolution of the problem. As we have seen with regard to creation, the doctrine of self and identity is constructed in such a way as to confound basic questions regarding the nature of the individual in relation to God. The impossibility of rationally resolving such questions indicates something about the perceived purpose and value of imagining and describing the self in this manner. The kabbalists are not seeking to provide solutions to intellectual questions regarding human nature. Framing the Jewish self in terms of the theosophic mysteries of the divine in many ways only exacerbates the search for comprehensible answers. What the kabbalists provide for their readers is a symbolic framework and language with which to imagine Jewish empowerment. The Jewish self is figured as a mysterious, indeed unfathomable, locus of divine manifestation. As the chief embodiment of God in the realm of the physical, Jews represent the fullest culmination of the divine creative act.32 By manifesting God into the world through the souls implanted in their bodies, Jews are explicitly distinguished from all other peoples. And by serving as the site where the divine and the material come together, it is by means of Jews, and only Jews, that the fabric of the universe is held together. Following the statement in Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness,” the kabbalists embrace expressions of the correlation between the human and divine “image,”33 demut, and “likeness,” or “form,” tzelem.34 They also express the relationship as one of a shared dugma, meaning pattern or configuration. To reflect the divine in one’s person can mean a variety of things in these texts. For example, according to Moses de Leon, “man is only in the image of God when he encompasses body and form together.”35 Following the rabbinic precedent mentioned above, the close interrelationship between the body and soul is regarded as a facet of the human reflection of the divine form. As de Leon describes the matter elsewhere, “I have found in the secret of concealed words, in the words of the wise ones, cognizant ones of knowledge and

Secrets of t he Self

75

justice and the inner meaning of the holy Torah, that man exists in this world in the image provided for him from above.”36 Knowledge of the mystery of the human form, as it is represented here, entails knowledge of an important domain of mystery concealed within revelation.37 The implication that God has an anthropomorphic form is not one that the kabbalists shy from. In fact, they are unabashed in claiming that a central feature of the secret doctrine of the Kabbalah is the correlation between the human body and the Godhead. As we read in one anonymous text, “when all ten sefirot are gathered together, their form is called the form of man.”38 The sefirot were understood by the kabbalists as having correlations to the limbs of the human and divine body. Joseph of Hamadan regards the reflection of divine in the Jewish body as the principle that sustains the cosmos. As he puts it, “the People of Israel are the essence of the universe, for they allude to the pure and holy supernal form.”39 Idel observes that for many kabbalists, “spiritual experience is not a matter of transcending experience within the body, but [it] may be achieved by means of the body. . . . The isomorphism between a human and a supernal body serves as a condition for the experience of the spiritual by the corporeal.”40 One representative enumeration of the association of particular limbs with sefirot found in the anonymous Kellal Ehad me-­’Inyan ha-­Kabbalah aligns them in the following order: Keter is the head, Hokhmah is the brain and palate, Binah is the tongue, Hesed is the right arm, Gevurah is the left arm, Tifferet is the heart and trunk of the body, Netzhah is the right leg, Hod is the left leg, Yesod is the berit or phallus, and Malkhut is the bride.41 In a text attributed to David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, the highest divine realm, ein sof, contains ten additional emanations within itself that are also configured as the limbs of an anthropos. Idel has referred to this text as “the most audacious anthropomorphic symbolism known to the Jewish tradition.”42 Imagining a divine body in this way begs the question as to whether or not God is understood by the kabbalists as a material being. If God possesses a form after which the human body is fashioned, does he also have some physical substance in which that form takes shape? From what we have seen in the previous chapter, the kabbalists are adamant that the sefirot are not to be understood as material entities despite the fact that they are often spoken of in a manner that would imply physical shape and relation. The same principle seems to apply to the issue of the divine form as well. God does possess an anthropomorphic form, but without a material body. Rather, the kabbalists assert, God has an ethereal or nonphysical body. As we read in one striking articulation of this idea in Sod ve-­ Yesod ha-­Kadmoni, an anonymous commentary on the ten sefirot: The Creator is a living essence, resembling the appearance of a soul and its form in a human image, though [composed] of spiritual light,43 like spirit or air comprising form but no physical body. In this manner the Holy One,

7 6

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

blessed be He, subsists; resembling, yet not resembling. Heaven forbid, He has no [corporeal] form or image! However, it is an image that is entirely like a soul envisioned in the configuration of a body. In this manner He is envisioned through the sefirot, and one who desires to understand this should contemplate that which is subtle and essential, but not material. And since the Holy One, blessed be He, pours forth blessing into all of the sefirot, and all of the sefirot draw from His power, He is seen by means of them, and He exceeds them and is exalted beyond them such that there is no end to His loftiness. This is the meaning of “like the appearance of a man upon it from above” (Ez. 1:26), and not a material “man.”44

Using the biblical language of “form” and “image,” the author argues that God possesses a human configuration by means of a substance that, “like spirit or air,” serves as the immaterial medium through which the humanlike divine structure can be visualized.45 In an open rejection of philosophical allegory, our anonymous author asserts that while God has no material form or image, he does have an immaterial image configured as a human form and can be visualized as such.46 The point at issue here is that the nature of the substance of which the divine form is comprised is not tangible. As Wolfson has argued, the “limb-­to-­limb correspondence between divine and human, a central tenet of kabbalistic theosophy and theurgy, is based on the notion of an incorporeal corporeality,” which enables the kabbalists “both to affirm the corporeal figuration of God implicit in the esoteric texts and preserve the traditional account of God’s essential incorporeality.”47 In another comment on the nature of “spiritual fire” and “spiritual air” just one page before the above cited passage, the author defines such substances in the following way: “Spiritual fire is unlike material fire, for it comes forth from Keter and Hokhmah . . . and spiritual fire resembles spiritual air, about which we know nothing, and it cannot be understood at all.”48 The divine form is thus composed of a substance that is not only immaterial, but also inscrutable. In an apophatic move that we have encountered elsewhere in descriptions of the emergence of the sefirot from ein sof, the divine form is regarded as definitively humanlike, and at the same time entirely nonphysical and incomprehensible. The rational contradiction of the divine body as it is described here indicates that, for this author at least, the important point is that God does indeed have a form that literally corresponds to the human body, but that form is a mystery or secret, because its nature is beyond the comprehension of the human intellect. The strategy at play is clear—­the divine form is a subject that can be explicated only by means of the esoteric traditions of the Kabbalah. The parallel between the human and divine forms is thus an important issue, which kabbalists regard as one of the central secrets of their tradition.49 This stance makes sense given the fact that the secret of the divine form is understood

Secrets of t he Self

77

as the basis for the theurgic conception of Jewish ritual power. In another passage found in an anonymous text we read the following: This is [a matter] from the great traditions of the Kabbalah. Know that man has been made in the image of the supernal sefirot. This is as scripture states, “let us make man in our image, according to our likeness” (Gen. 1:26), for there are supernal powers called “hand” and “foot,” “eye” and “head” as you will find in many places in scripture, “the hand of the lord” (Ex. 9:3 and elsewhere), “And beneath his feet” (Ex. 24:10), “his head is finest gold” (Song of Songs 5:11), and many more. Man also possesses an eye and foot and other limbs, and this is as the rabbis have said, “the Torah speaks in human language,”50 for in each instance they refer to [divine] powers and not limbs, and human limbs are named in accordance with these [divine] powers, and thus, a man’s limbs and intellect are comparable to the sefirot, as I shall make clear with regard to each individual sefirah. And thus you will find that many kabbalists refer to the sefirot as the “Supernal Man” [Adam ha-­Elyon], and when the lower man sanctifies his limbs and he does not stray after transgression, then his limbs are entwined with and connected to the limbs of the Supernal Man, and he himself is called Holy . . . but if one . . . defiles his limbs, either all or some of them, it is as though he has caused a flaw in the supernal man.51

Knowledge of the divine topography, understood here as a kind of anatomy, and its correlations with the human body and actions is part of the stated aim of the “great traditions of the Kabbalah.” According to this text, anthropomorphic expressions in the Bible are not to be resolved allegorically: references to divine limbs refer to actual entities or “powers” within the Godhead. The human “eye” or “hand” is named for the divine power to which it is correlated in “Supernal Man.” The issue at stake in all of this is that if one refrains from transgressive behavior, one’s body is bound limb by limb to the divine form, leading to a sanctified state wherein the individuals body in “entwined with and connected to” the divine. Conversely, transgression causes a flaw in the form of the “Supernal Man.” The point of this passage is to make the reader aware of the consequences of their actions in relation the divine.52 The articulation of the relationship between the human and divine limbs, or between the body and the sefirot, is a strategy for conceptualizing the power of Jewish actions, for better or for worse, in relationship to God. The kabbalistic interpretation of anthropomorphic discourse in relation to God elevates the stakes for Jewish actions by emphasizing their consequences in the divine realm. The claim that Jews reflect the divine image in their bodies is a statement about the power of Jewish ritual observance to impact God and bring unity to the sefirot as well as the power Jewish transgression to disrupt the divine economy.

7 8

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

In a classic articulation of this idea in the introduction to Joseph Gikatilla’s book Sha’arei Orah,53 the relationship between the human body and the incomprehensible divine form is articulated as follows: Know that the truth of the essence of the Creator, may He be blessed, cannot be comprehended by any other than Himself, and even the heavenly angels do not know His place, much less the essence of His truth. Do you not see what the supernal angels say? “Blessed be the glory of God from His place” (Ez. 3:12), in whatever place He is. And if this is the case for the heavenly ones, for the lower ones how much more so! If this is the case, then all of the matters about which we read in the Torah, such as “hand” and “leg,” “ear” and “eye” and others like them, what do they mean? Know and believe that with regard to all of these matters, even though they refer and bear witness to his greatness and truth, there is no created being capable of knowing and contemplating the essence of that thing referred to as “hand” and “leg” and “ear” and others like them. If we are created in the image and form, do not think that “eye” [refers to] a tangible eye, or “hand” [refers to] a tangible hand, but rather, these things refer to inner, concealed matters, hidden within the truth of the being of God, may He be blessed, from which the source and overflow pours forth to all created beings by the decree of God, may He be blessed. But, the being of [the divine] “hand” is not like the being of [the human] “hand,” and their construction is not the same. . . . Know and understand that there does not exist between us and Him any similarity with respect to essence and construction. Rather, the meaning of the forms of our limbs is that they are fashioned in the manner of symbols, concealed supernal matters that knowledge cannot know—­it can only allude. . . . If a man merits to purify one of his limbs, that limb will come to serve as a throne for the inner, heavenly matter referred to by the name of that limb. 54

As we have seen in other passages cited above, and for Gikatilla as well, the human and divine forms genuinely correspond to each other but not in a physical or tangible way. The human form, according to Gikatilla, reflects the divine,55 but in a mysterious way, like a symbol that manifests “concealed supernal matters that knowledge cannot know.” The assertion of Jewish power begins with the secret of Jewish bodies in relation to God. Anthropomorphic expressions scattered throughout the Bible are taken as hints at the kabbalistic notion that the limbs of the human body correlate to the sefirot and that Jewish actions are thereby meaningful, capable of rendering one’s limbs a “throne” for their correlative divine powers. In the paradoxical worldview advanced in kabbalistic discourse regarding the mystery of the divine form, Jews are capable of establishing divine unity and binding themselves to God because their bodies manifest the incomprehensible divine configuration.56

Secrets of t he Self

79

In keeping with this notion, kabbalists often refer to the creation of humanity as a crucial step in the formation and stabilization of the cosmos. Moses de Leon, for example, notes that “When He, may He be blessed, set up His world and desired to establish it, He created man, who is the cause of the establishment of the world, and he is its sustenance.”57 The anonymous of author of the Sefer ha-­ Yihud describes the creation of man, adam, in relation to the generation of the universe, as well as the Godhead, in the following way: Until the form of man appeared below, the culmination of the creation of the ten sefirot above was not complete, as well as the rest of the created beings, and thus it is written, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness” (Gen. 1:26), and as it is written, “upon the image of the throne, the image of the likeness of a man” (Ezek. 1:26). . . . The upper and lower chariots always require the form of man for their continued subsistence, since man below was created with forms resembling those of the beginning of creation, which are works of truth. Man below adds power and emanation and augmentation of overflow and blessing to the “Supernal Man,” since everything is drawn after him. . . . When man below causes a flaw in one of his limbs, when that limb is defiled below, it is as though he removes that limb above. This removal [kitzutz] is in the sense that the [divine] limb is gathered into the depths of the being that it is called Nothing [ayyin], and it is as though it is missing above.58

The theurgic power of human actions in relation to God is expressed in this text as one aspect of the place occupied by the human form in the broader creative process. As the author states, “The upper and lower chariots always require the form of man for their continued subsistence,” an unequivocal assertion of the importance of the physical form of the self in sustaining the cosmic order. Moreover, the creation of the sefirot, according to this passage, was itself not complete in the absence of the human form in the material world. The cosmic and divine orders rely upon the human. As a result, human actions have both cosmic and divine consequences, impacting the flow of blessing into the world and even determining the state of the divine “limbs” in the Supernal Man. The mysteries of God and the world are thus concealed within the self. Such is the import of the statement by Joseph of Hamadan, a kabbalist closely related to the Sefer ha-­Yihud, in his description of the first commandment, the imperative “to know God.” According to Hamadan, “the reason for this commandment according to the path of the Kabbalah is that one should know the configuration of the body, of which it is said, ‘And God created man in his image’ (Gen. 1:27), and that he should understand that the chariot and sefirot are in the configuration of the body, and that one should bind them [together], for they constitute a single form.”59 The kabbalistic understanding of the first commandment thus

8 0

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

enjoins one to know that the form of the body reflects the “chariot and sefirot” and that one must draw these forms together since they are in fact constituents of a unity or a “single form.” To know God is not, as Maimonides would claim, to understand the rational demonstrations of the necessity for the universe to have an unmoved cause of all motion.60 Knowledge of God entails an awareness of the theosophic secrets of the Kabbalah that map the sefirot onto the human body, and vice versa. This conception of the self is related by some kabbalists to the commandment to procreate children, since by generating new selves that bear the divine form, one perpetuates the universe and sustains the divine unity. Hamadan argues that a Jewish man is commanded to father children in order to . . . sustain the image of the pure and holy emanative chain, and it is as though he assists the Holy One, blessed be He, with the work of creation, and as though he builds an entire separate world. Thus, when a man departs from this world and he leaves children after him, the Holy One, blessed be He, says to the soul, you are worthy to sit with me, and you are my collaborator; just as I created worlds, so too you created worlds, and moreover, you sustained the image of the emanative chain. He is immediately escorted into the Garden of Eden and he delights there.61

Engendering new Jewish selves is a creative act analogous to the divine creation of the cosmos. According to this text, the shalshelet or chain of emanation is sustained by the reproductive act,62 and for that reason procreation merits reward in the world to come, since a man who leaves children after his death is like God—­having created worlds.63 Hamadan connects this understanding of the individual to the prohibition against murder in a different passage where he states, “‘And the Tree of Life in the center of the garden’ (Gen. 2:9), corresponding to Tifferet, which is the central pillar, and from there the souls of each individual in Israel are created. When a man is created in the world, a branch is created in the Tree of Life, and when he departs from the world, the branch withers. And if, heaven forbid, one murders an individual [from among the] people of Israel, it is as though he cuts a branch from the tree of life.”64 According to Hamadan’s image, the tree of life that grows in the divine realm is the product of the birth of Jews in the physical world. Likewise, when a Jew is killed, the branch of the Tree of Life that corresponds to that individual is destroyed.65 The Godhead is thus a reflection of the state, including the bodily state, of the Jewish people. The ethnocentrism of this doctrine is anything but subtle—­ the heavens and earth, sefirot and the cosmos are reliant upon the people of Israel. Jews, according to the kabbalists, are the linchpins of being. According to the kabbalistic mythos, drawing upon midrashic and aggadic themes, the entire universe exists only for the sake of the people of Israel.

Secrets of t he Self

81

Moreover, the physical cosmos, the dimensions of space, and the four elements are all said to be embodied in the self of the Jewish male in order to maintain their connection with the being of God. As we saw in the previous chapter, the kabbalists embrace a paradoxical ontology in which God is both identical to and other than the world. This connection is maintained only through the mediation of the human self that embodies, and thereby unites, the upper and lower worlds. The following comment by Moses de Leon nicely captures this idea: You should know that the Holy One, blessed be He, created man with wisdom and made him an admixture of all of the spiritual things above and all of the physical things below, and he is the secret of the pattern of God [sod dugmat elohim], in that he is in the configuration of above and below, and they are all in man in a concealed manner, and they are known to the finders of favor. . . . We find that man is in the secret of the concealed and the revealed. Revealed from the secret of this world, and concealed from the secret of the world above, and therefore man encompasses all of the worlds.66

Man, adam, is thus the unique entity in the world that contains all being. Man has both a revealed and concealed element in that he contains the lower and upper worlds within himself. As de Leon articulates this idea in Sefer Seqel ha-­ Qodesh, “The sefirot are ten in the secret of His being, may He be blessed. And the ten are the six directions united in their unification in the secret of the adornment of man.”67 The kabbalistic conception of the self can be understood as a Jewish doctrine of incarnation68 wherein the convergence of body and soul in the human self is in fact a convergence of God and the cosmos. The paradoxical tension between God and the universe comes into sharp relief in the depictions of the self. Regarding the role of the human self in maintaining the dialectical bond between God and the cosmos, Moses de Leon says the following: He, may he be blessed, created the world according to His will, in order that it should display the divine pattern. The worlds emanate forth in a chain [shashelet] so that He, may He be blessed, will be united in the secret of His unity above and below, and so that there will be no interruption of His unity and rule. And He created man to rule this world, to establish and support it, by means of the power of the secret of His divinity which devolves upon him from above. Man has been established to be upright [yashar] before God, as it is said, “the Lord has made man upright” (Eccl. 7:29), and commanded him to conduct himself in this world in accordance with the supernal pattern. And He has placed His Torah in their hearts, to act in accordance with the secret of divinity, to stand before Him and serve Him. It is all as we have stated, and the worlds emanate forth in a single chain as we have said.69

82 

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

The contiguity of divine unity that extends into the material world is mediated by the Jewish selves who “establish and support” the cosmos by embodying the “secret of His divinity” and by observing the Torah that God has placed in their hearts so that they can behave “in accordance with the secret of divinity.”70 The emanation of the world “as a single chain” is thus understood as contingent upon the physical observance of the Torah by Jewish individuals. In the zoharic literature we find similar associations between the creation of man in the divine image and the notion that the human body serves as the connection between the “world above” and the “world below.” According to this view, the world literally cannot exist without man to serve as the point where above and below converge. As we read in one passage from the Zohar: Rabbi Isaac and Rabbi Yehudah were sitting one night studying Torah. Rabbi Isaac said to Rabbi Yehudah, thus it is taught, that when the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world, He created the lower world corresponding to the upper world, and everything is this according to that, and His glory is above and below. Rabbi Yehudah said, thus it is indeed, and He created man over all, as it is written, “I have created the world, and I have created man upon it” (Isaiah 45:12), “I have created the world” indeed, and for what reason [does it say] “I have created the world”? Because “I have created man upon it,” for he sustains the world, in order for everything to exist in a single perfection.71

In keeping with the discussions of creation examined in the previous chapter, this passage explores the question of how the correlation between above and below is maintained. The passage from Isaiah is employed as a device for asserting the role of man in sustaining the contiguity or “perfection” of the world by sustaining the emanation of the divine glory into the lower world. In another discussion of adam found in the Zohar, we read: How foolish are those people who do not know and do regard what the world sustains itself upon, for when the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world, He created man in His image, and He adorned him with His adornments so that he would occupy himself with the Torah and walk in his ways. For when He created man, He prepared him from the dust of the lower Temple, and the four directions of the world are combined in that place which is called Temple. And these four directions of the world combined with the four aspects that are the elements of the lower world: fire, air, water, and earth. And these four aspects were combined with the four directions of the world and the Holy One, blessed be He, prepared from it a single body arrayed in supernal adornments. This body was composed of two worlds: this lower world and the world above.72

Secrets of t he Self

83

According to the declaration at the beginning of this passage, the purpose of this statement is to explain “what the world sustains itself upon” and then elaborates in detail that man was adorned with divine adornments at the time of the creation of the world. This adornment of man was the essential step necessary for the cosmic order to come into being and be sustained over time. The text then builds upon the midrashic statement that Adam, the first man, was created from the dust of the Temple,73 which the text interprets as meaning that the first man was created from the very center of the universe where the four directions of the world are integrated. Thus, the dimensions of space are encapsulated within the first man, and this microcosmic dimension becomes the characteristic of the human self that sustains the universe.74 Moreover, the four directions of space parallel the four elements. By combining the four directions of space with the four elements, the adam, man, is said to be “above and below,” that is, the integrating link connecting the God with the universe.75 The association of the four elements with the chain of emanation is not uncommon in these texts. For example, in Zohar 2:24b the text argues that the four elements are also themselves essentially one unity: “Come and see. Fire, Air, Water, Earth. All of them are united this in that, and connected this with that, and there is no separation.” Moses de Leon makes a similar claim: “These four elements are interconnected. All things and all beings go forth from within them, and each element is grasped by the other and cleaves within it, and the elements bring forth the being of the other, and from the flow of the bringing forth of its being, the other comes to be.”76 The self thus becomes more than simply a link in the emanative chain. By combining the configuration of the divine form, as well as the cosmic structure, Jewish individuals reflect the totality of the Godhead and the universe in themselves. Echoing some rabbinic discussions of the correlation between the human self and the cosmos, as well as themes current in medieval Christian thinking, kabbalists embrace the notion that the Jewish self comprises a totality.77 In another passage that draws upon the image of the creation of the first man from the dust of the Temple mount, we can see how construction of the self relates to the integration of the upper and lower realms. Come and see. When the Holy One, blessed be He, created man, He took his dust from the place of the Temple, and He built his body from the four sides of the world, for all of them gave him strength. Then, He endowed him with the spirit of life, as it is said, “and He breathed into his nostrils a living soul” (Gen. 2:7). Then, he stood and realized that he is [composed] of above and below, and therefore he cleaves to and knows the supernal Wisdom. In this manner all men in the world are integrated above and below, and all those who know how to become sanctified in this world as is appropriate, when

84 

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

they give birth to a son, they draw down upon him a holy spirit from the place where all holy things come forth, and these are called the sons of the Holy One, blessed be He, since the body is made in holiness as is appropriate, so too they give him a spirit from a supernal holy place as is appropriate.78

Here again we see the convergence of the images of the individual who encompasses the dimensions of space and the dust of the Temple, which is to say, the cosmos itself, and the individual who contains something of the emanated divine substance, expressed here in terms of the “spirit of life” that is breathed into Adam’s nostrils. But, the integration of the divine and the world in the self is not in and of itself enough to create the ontological continuity necessary to sustain the cosmic reality. It is incumbent upon the individual to contemplate, in accordance one might say with the Delphic maxim,79 the mystery of one’s own being and to come to understand that the Jewish self incorporates “above and below.” This passage claims that the contemplation of this element of the self leads to adherence to or knowledge of the supernal Wisdom, or the second sefirah, Hokhmah. From this level of mystical integration, one is then capable of engaging in proper intercourse in order to draw down the divine substance into another self, the son, and thereby perpetuate the cycle of Jewish reproduction necessary for the maintenance of the universe. Thus, the being of the world is entirely contingent on Jewish contemplation of the theosophic secrets of the Kabbalah, especially those that pertain to the nature of the self. By knowing the at once cosmic and divine dimensions of the self, Jewish men enable the perpetuation of the world, and the manifestation of God within it, through the propagation of Jewish children, or “sons of the Holy One,” with souls from a “supernal holy place.” One concept often associated with the notion that the world above and the world below culminate in this self is the idea that the individual is a microcosm, or olam katan.80 This idea is nicely captured in the following passage from the Zohar: “When the Holy One, blessed be He, created man, He arranged within him all of the images of the supernal mysteries of the world above, and all images of the lower mysteries of the world below, and all of them were inscribed in man, who subsists in the image of God.”81 The self encompasses all of the upper and lower mysteries, which qualifies it as being “in the image of God.” Precursors to the kabbalistic idea of the self as a microcosm can be found in rabbinic literature, such as the comment that “the Tabernacle is equal to the entire world, and it is equal to the creation of man, who is a small world [olam katan]”82 or “all that the Holy One blessed be He created on earth He created in Man.”83 We also find a discussion of the creation of Adam in tractate Sanhedrin in which it is stated, “Rabbi Meir used to say, the dust of the first man was gathered from the entire world.” In the continuation of the passage we also find two versions of the

Secrets of t he Self

85

tradition that Adam filled the entire cosmos at the time of his creation; “Rabbi Judah said in the name of Rav, the first man [extended] from one end of the world to the other, as it is said ‘[For you shall enquire into the first days that were before you,] from the day that the Lord created Adam on the earth, from one end of the heavens to the other . . .’ (Deut. 4:32). Once he transgressed, the Holy One, blessed be He, placed His hand upon him and diminished him, as it is said, ‘Before and behind you form me, you place your hand upon me’ (Psalms 139:5).” The same tradition, citing the same verses from Deuteronomy and Psalms, is then related in the name of Rabbi Eleazar, with the slight variation that “the first man [extended] from the earth up to the firmament.”84 The kabbalistic conception of the self reflects a similar anthropology, only one that is informed by a more complex and explicit theosophy in which the constituent elements of the world above and the world below have been more clearly articulated. For the kabbalists, the self must comprise everything above and below in order to serve as the point of integration between the divine and the material. As Moses de Leon puts it, “man is in the secret of the supernal, true configuration, more than any other creature below because he is himself a world, and thus he is called a microcosm [olam katan].”85 Or, as de Leon articulates this image elsewhere, “You should know that He, may he be blessed, created man in a divine configuration, and established him with a supernal form, in order that he will be able to know and recognize the creator, and he is the culmination of the terrestrial realm, such that he is the image of the upper and lower [worlds]. And thus He, may He be blessed, made him a world unto himself.”86 In other words, the world is able to exist, according to the kabbalists, only because Jewish men encompass within themselves images of all divine and earthly mysteries. As one particularly poetic passage in the Zohar states the matter in a gloss on Ezekiel’s chariot vision: “And upon the image of the throne was the image like the appearance of a man upon it from above” (Ezek. 1:26). “Like the appearance of a man,” which encompasses all images. “Like the appearance of a man,” which encompasses all names. “Like the appearance of a man,” in which is concealed all worlds above and below. “Like the appearance of a man,” encompassing all mysteries that were spoken and adorned before the world was created, even though they did not exist.87

israel and the divine soul In the texts adduced above, Jewish selfhood involves a convergence of the physical and the spiritual by virtue of which the world is able to sustain its connection with God. In addition, the kabbalists develop a fairly complex discussion

8 6

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

of the soul as an entity that emanates directly from the sefirot.88 For the kabbalists under discussion, the soul is divine.89 This idea, which first appears in the Sefer ha-­Bahir, is also articulated by important representatives of the early Kabbalah, including Nahmanides and Todros Abulafia.90 This feature of the kabbalistic conception of the self is one of the most important innovations introduced into medieval Jewish discourse, given that, as Alon Goshen-­Gottstein points out, “Nowhere in rabbinic literature is the soul regarded as divine.”91 An examination of the discussion of the soul will give us a better understanding of lengths to which the kabbalists were willing to go in order to express the connectedness, and even the identification, of the Jewish self with the divine, and the subsequent role designated for Jews in sustaining the world. Following rabbinic precedent, some kabbalists describe the soul as comprised of three basic parts: the nefesh, ruah, and neshamah.92 These aspects of the soul are interconnected with one another such that the highest level of the self, the neshamah, is one with ein sof, and with the other two parts of the soul and the body.93 As Moses de Leon puts it, there is much benefit to be gained from an investigation into the nature of the soul because “her secrets are in the manner of the Creator who created her.”94 He also states that the three levels of the soul “come to be and are created from the secret of the being and the substance of the Creator, may He be blessed and praised.”95 De Leon describes the cleaving of the soul to God as the consequence of the bond of love established between them when the soul was created from the divine.96 A strong articulation of the divinity of the Jewish soul can be found in an anonymous text in which the author asserts that “since the soul is emanated from the first light, it cleaves to its creator and is called Binah. Therefore, even the Holy One, blessed be He, is in the soul . . . thus it is written, ‘For the Lord your God is within you [be-­kirbekh], the great and awesome God’ (Deut. 7:21). ‘Within you,’ really. The wise one will comprehend.”97 The soul, in its various aspects, is the locus of the divine being that Jews manifest in the world.98 In other words, by virtue of their divine soul, Jewish men, often referred to as the “righteous ones,” are able to convey divine energy into the world. Moreover, by binding the three aspects of the soul together, Jews merit the return to God at the moment of death. Regarding the uncreated nature of the neshamah, we read in the anonymous Sefer ha-­Mafteah that it “is not a created thing . . . and one can, by means of good deeds, connect the nefesh and the ruah to the pure neshamah, and they can become one thing, and they proceed to one place, and this is the difference between death by a kiss and death by the hands of an angel.”99 To die by a kiss,100 that is, to experience the return of the soul to its divine source, is the blissful reward for the righteous who unify their souls through the performance of commandments. In the following passage the Zohar presents a more complex articulation of the nature of the soul and its connection with the divine essence.101 Here the

Secrets of t he Self

87

neshamah is presented as having four levels that are all united with each other. Describing the soul in this complex manner establishes the identity between the most transcendent and ineffable realms of the divine and the core of the Jewish self. It is especially clear that the “souls of the righteous,” or Jewish males, are engendered from within the Godhead. Come and see. There are three souls, ascending by certain upper gradations, and since these are three, they are four. One is the supernal soul that is not grasped, and the supreme royal treasurer is not aware of it,102 much less below. This is the soul of all souls, and it is concealed and never revealed, unknowable, and everything depends upon it. And it wraps itself within the splendor of the precious gem, within the brightness, and pearls suspend from it drop by drop, and they are all connected as one, like the joints of the limbs of a single body. And He enters into them and reveals His works through them. They and He are one; there is no separation between them. This supernal soul is the Concealed of All. There is another female soul, concealed within her powers, and she is a soul for them, and from them the body is united, to display action through them to the whole world, like the body which is an instrument for the soul to perform action. And these are like those concealed joints above. Another soul is the souls of the righteous below, for the souls of the righteous come from those souls above, from the soul of the feminine and the soul of the masculine. And because of this, the souls of the righteous are superior to all of the forces and camps above.103

This passage from the Zohar provides us with a more complete picture of how the text represents the neshamah and its relationship to God. Here, there are four levels of the soul, or participants in bringing forth the souls of the righteous, that is, the neshamah of Jewish men. The first is described in very striking language that closely resembles zoharic descriptions of ein sof. This highest level, the “supernal soul,” or “soul of all souls,”104 is not “grasped,” “known,” or “revealed.” It is utterly transcendent and incomprehensible, yet we are told that “everything is dependent upon it.” This level is the source of all overflow and being in the cosmos. The innermost reaches of the human self, the soul of the soul, is the soul of all souls, that is to say, the ultimate source of all of the sefirot and the universe. In other words, according to the Zohar, the core of the human self is the core of the divine self.105 It is the infinite nonbeing that is the grounding for all being, expressed as that which is beyond all thought. This point of convergence of the human self and the divine self, which “is concealed and never revealed, and it is not known,” is then described as enshrouding itself in light in order to conceal, and thereby reveal, itself. This language is identical to many of the descriptions of divine creative activity that we saw in the

8 8

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

previous chapter. Playing on Psalms 104:2 “Who enshrouds Himself with light like a garment, who stretches forth the heaven like a curtain,” the zoharic text draws upon the midrashic image of creation as an act wherein God enshrouds himself in light.106 Through this act of concealment and self-­limitation, the soul of all souls emanates forth the luminous source of the Godhead, giving rise to the ten sefirot, represented here as a string of pearls, literally an adornment of the concealed divine essence. In order to prevent the misunderstanding that these emanations adorning the divine are ontologically separate from God, the passage states, “they and He are one; there is no separation between them.” Then, once the realm of the sefirot is emanated, we are told that “the souls of the righteous come from those souls above, from the soul of the feminine and the soul of the masculine.” Thus, the core of the human self, which is to say, of course, those human selves that are among the righteous males of Israel, especially those learned in the Kabbalah and the mystical significance of the performance of the commandments, shares its identity with the core of the divine self. The connection is carefully crafted in this passage as one that is established through a process of emanation, employing the imagery of the coupling of male and female aspects of the divine economy.107 The main thrust of the passage is an exploration of the connection between the world and God that is achieved in the human self, especially the soul. The passage takes this discussion further by parsing out the way that the soul itself relates to the divine essence, and it does so, as we might expect, using the sefirotic symbolism of the Kabbalah. It seems that the other levels of the self, the nefesh and ruah, are not significant in this passage, since it is only the soul, and thus only the males of Israel, that connects directly to the highest levels of God. As the text itself concludes, “because of this, the souls of the righteous are superior to all of the forces and camps above.” Gikatilla has an interesting discussion of the soul that is instructive on this point. In one very straightforward statement he asserts that “the nefesh is bound within the ruah, and the ruah is bound within the neshamah, and the neshamah is in the sefirah of Binah.”108 Here it would seem that, following Nahmanides, the soul is drawn from (and also bound to) Binah,109 which, while granting it a very high designation within the levels of the divine self, still keeps it at some distance from Keter/ein sof. However, in the continuation of this discussion, Gikatilla goes on to say that “you need to know and consider that we have already made clear to you above in this chapter that the soul cleaves within the sefirah of ‘praise’ [Binah], and the spirit in Tifferet, and the ruah in the sefirah of Malkhut. . . . It is already known to the kabbalists that the name YH is an allusion to the three highest sefirot, and thus the soul hinges upon them.”110 Gikatilla is emphasizing to the reader that the association of the soul with the sefirah of Binah brings with it the implication of an identity between the soul and the limitlessness of Keter/ ein sof.111 Gikatilla makes precisely this point a few pages latter when he says,

Secrets of t he Self

89

“Know that Hokhmah is never separated from Binah because the two of them are bound in the sefirah of Keter, which is the world of mercy, the world in which there is no sadness and no trembling and no separation, but only illumination and splendor and might and joy. Because these two sefirot, Hokhmah and Binah, are always united, the name YH never changes.” Of the “world of mercy,” a cognomen for the limitless heights of the divine being in the convergence of ein sof and Keter, we are told, “the world of mercy has no end or limit or boundary or measure.” And, Gikatilla also reminds the reader at the end of the chapter that “in the end [sof davar]: thought [Hokhmah] is never separated from Keter.”112 Or, as we read in another text, “God alone knows the obscured paradoxes [sitrei ha-­ ta’alumot] in the secret of Hokhmah and Binah that cleave within the supernal Keter.”113 What we are left with is a doctrine of the soul in which, by virtue of being emanated from Binah, along with the entire divine self and the cosmos, the soul is ultimately inextricably bound to the limitless infinity and transcendence of God.114 In a discussion of the relationship of the people of Israel to the patriarch Jacob, Gikatilla explicitly asserts the association of the Jewish self with the highest realms of the Godhead. According to Gikatilla, “Jacob [is configured] according to the pure form of Adam before he sinned. Therefore, the people of Israel are called ‘first fruits’115 of the Lord, may he be blessed, and they are called the first born, for they are the initiation of creation.”116 Gikatilla goes on to argue that, while Abraham and Isaac each had a degree of impurity within them, from which they generated Ishmael and Esau, representing Islam and Christianity respectively, the people of Israel are the pure seed of Jacob. For this reason, according to Gikatilla: Jacob, who occupies the center, he alone ascends to Keter, to ein sof, for he is the inheritance that has no distress.117 The rule of the all of the heavenly princes [sarim] of the foreign peoples remains below the inheritance of Jacob. This great secret is the meaning of that which the prophet said, “Then you shall delight upon the Lord your God, I shall set you astride the heights of the earth, and let you enjoy the heritage of your father Jacob” (Isa. 58:14). The meaning of this verse is as follows: In the future, you, the people of Israel, will inherit the supernal Eden, which is Binah, and from there and above, which is the place with no distress, called “byways” [rehovot]. “And I shall set you astride the heights of the earth,” this refers to the princes of the foreign peoples, who ascend to the level of “the heights of the earth,” to the level of Gedulah [Hesed] and Gevurah [Din], which are Abraham and Isaac. And you shall be set astride them; for you will ascend above gedulah and gevurah to Binah, to cleave to Keter. “And I shall let you enjoy the heritage of your father Jacob.” The heritage of Jacob is unlike that of Abraham

9 0

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

and Isaac, for the heritage of Jacob ascends above all of the heavenly princes as we have stated, and it is a heritage without distress.118

At issue in this passage is the question of ascending to one’s source within the Godhead, understood in terms of the patriarch from which various peoples descend. One might think that, as descendants of the patriarch Jacob, associated with the sixth sefirahh, Tifferet, the people of Israel return to a lower level of the Godhead when they ascend to their source above when compared with Ishmael and Esau, who descend from Abraham and Isaac. Gikatilla argues in effect that these “foreign nations,” referring to Christian and Muslim peoples, do have a place within the divine economy, but one that is decidedly inferior to the people of Israel,119 who as descendants of Jacob are able to ascend to Binah, and from there to Keter and ein sof. In an unabashedly triumphalist interpretation of the verse from Isaiah, Gikatilla argues that the people of Israel shall be “set astride” the foreign peoples as they ascend to the very heights of the divine, to their ultimate point of origin in Keter/ein sof. As Gikatilla states a few pages before the above-­cited comment, “The people of Israel are encompassed within the Central Pillar (that is, Tifferet), as I have indicated, and just as the Central Pillar ascends to ein sof, so too, the people of Israel who cleave to it ascend to ein sof.”120 By choosing to represent the unity of the Jewish self and the divine essence through such a convoluted path, the kabbalists reveal something central to their conception of the world and the self in their relation to God. On the one hand, they reject monism, since it would be pointless to continue to discuss the mystery of the self and the world if it were in fact true, in an unqualified way, that all reality is simply the divine nothing, or ein sof. Such a position would be tantamount to saying either that complete redemption has arrived and everything has returned to its source in God, or that creation has never happened. Nonetheless, the kabbalists are intent on maintaining that the world and the self must have an ontological connection with the divine since they reject the possibility that anything can exist in complete separation from God, that is to say, all being derives its essence from God through an emanative process that reaches the terrestrial realm through the mediation of the soul, the core of the human self. We are therefore left with the image of the Jewish self as the singular point of connection between the upper and lower realms, embodying a soul that derives from a realm that is “concealed and never revealed.” A discussion of the point of connection between the soul and ein sof is found in the following passage from the Zohar. Ruah ascends to be crowned within the supernal soul above. The nefesh is bound within the ruah and is illuminated from it like the moon when it is illuminated by the sun. The ruah is bound within the neshamah, and the

Secrets of t he Self

91

neshamah is bound within the End of Thought, which is the mystery of the supernal soul. The nefesh is bound within the supernal ruah, and the ruah is bound within the supernal neshamah, and the soul is bound in ein sof, and thus, it is the comfort of all and the bond of all above and below, all in one mystery and one manner.121

Here again the Zohar makes clear that the completed human self, that is, one that is properly crowned or adorned with a soul, is the “connection of all above and below.” Like other passages we have seen, this one presents the interrelationship between the various parts of the self as one in which the levels of the self, nefesh, ruah, and neshamah, are part of a continuum culminating in the divine self. However, it is significant that the most central part of the human individual is the soul, which is explicitly identified with ein sof and the “End of Thought,” a reference to Keter. The human self is identified not only with an emanated aspect of the divine self, but also with the mysterious origin of all emanation in the transcendent realm beyond the Godhead. It is this identity, or shared core, between the Jewish self and God, according to the kabbalistic model operative in this text, that makes the universe a reality.

gods among men: jewish selves and gentile others In keeping with statements found throughout rabbinic literature, the kabbalists are bold in their assertions that the community of Israel is the heart of all being in the universe and that they occupy a superior position in the world to that of their gentile neighbors.122 Consider the following comment from the Babylonian Talmud, cited in the Zohar: “‘For I have spread you forth as the four directions of the heavens’ (Zach. 2:10). Just as it is impossible for the world [to exist] without the four directions, so too it is impossible for the world [to exist] without Israel.”123 It is important to note that this text does more than merely assert that the world exists for the sake of Israel. Here the argument is that the universe itself cannot exist, or even be imagined, in the absence of Israel, just as one cannot conceive of the universe in the absence of the dimensions of space. By constructing a discourse in which the very substance of the being of the world is contingent on the people of Israel, these texts reflect a strategy for reinforcing Jewish identity and power. The entire divine and cosmic structure, the kabbalists argue, could not exist in the absence of the Jewish people because they alone bear the divine image. Moreover, only Jews are endowed with a neshamah whereby they manifest God in the world.124 Given that these texts were composed in a Christian context, it is interesting that they embrace an argument for Jewish superiority that bears a striking resemblance to the idea of incarnation.125 Rather than reject the very notion of the manifestation of the divine within the human

9 2

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

body as an absurd offence to reason, as was common among some Jewish philosophers, the kabbalists instead embrace the discourse of incarnation in certain ways. But for them, the manifestation of the divine in the human occurs in the bodies of all Jewish men, rather than the single body of Christ.126 In the kabbalistic worldview, Jews are the sacred, unrecognized emissaries of God in the world, bearing the burdens of humanity by sustaining the cosmic order and the balance of the worlds above and below. In an inversion of a Christian ideal, the kabbalists construct a discourse in which every Jewish man, rather than Christ, serves as the bridge to God, secretly channeling divine blessing into the cosmos for the benefit of an unjust, unworthy world. In the words of Joseph of Hamadan, “Israel is the nation from which all of the seventy nations draw sustenance. From there they derive blessing, and they are the source of overflow; by their merit [the other nations] are nourished.”127 In an anonymous commentary on the sefirot we find an articulation of the idea that reflecting the divine image is the unique portion of Israel. With regard to the central attribute, Tifferet, the texts related that this sefirah is the secret of the supernal man upon the image of the throne, the glorious king who is hidden within, and it is called truth . . . a seal within a seal, the form and seal whose seal is the truth of the Holy One, blessed be He; “Whom did he consult, and who taught him, guided him in the way of the right, who guided him in knowledge and showed him the path of understanding?” (Isa. 40:14). The true seed shall inherit it, and Jacob our father, peace be upon him, took this attribute as his portion for an inheritance.128

The inheritance of the “true seed” that descends from Jacob is the form or “seal” of God. Tifferet is commonly associated with Jacob in medieval Kabbalah. The author of this text understands this to imply that the descendents of Jacob—­that is, Jews—­are the unique inheritors of the divine image, reflecting the form of the “supernal man” and the “glorious king” bequeathed to them by their father. Jewish lineage is interpreted through the theosophy of the sefirot as an inheritance of the “truth” of the divine form from Jacob. The veracity of the Jewish tradition is thus affirmed as the embodiment of God in Jewish bodies through the generations. The role of Jewish reproduction in perpetuating the divine image in the world was discussed above in a zoharic description of the creation of man from the dust of the Temple, thereby enabling the procreation of holy sons by Jewish men. Charles Mopsik argues that, for the medieval kabbalists, building on motifs in biblical and rabbinic literature, “procreation is nothing other than a continuation of cosmogenesis.”129 We can see this idea at play in another passage from the Zohar in which the centrality of the Jewish people, the Jewish tradition, and

Secrets of t he Self

93

the production of Jewish descendents in the creative process is emphasized. Playing off the rabbinic dictum that creation itself was incomplete and conditional until the people of Israel accepted the Torah,130 the Zohar connects this idea with the image also found in rabbinic literature that, since the time of creation, God occupies himself with matching couples. Rabbi Elazar said, “When the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world, it was conditional, ‘for when Israel comes, if they will accept the Torah, fine, and if not, I will return everything to chaos.’131 And the world was not established until Israel stood on Mt. Sinai and received the Torah, and thus the world was established. And from that day forward, the Holy One, blessed be He, creates worlds. And what are these worlds? Human couples. For from that time forward, the Holy One brings couples together, saying, “this the daughter of so-­and-­so for that so-­and-­so,”132 and these are the worlds that He creates.133

Here the priority of Israel in the created realm is made explicit. It is significant that the continued creative activity of God in the terrestrial realm is described as creating “worlds,” which the text designates as the arrangement of (Jewish) couples. The implication is clearly that the procreation of Jewish human beings by means of Jewish marriages is the process whereby new worlds, that is, new Jewish selves, are created.134 According to this passage, the constellation of the sefirot and the cosmos encapsulated in the microcosm of the Jewish self is sustained by the continuation of the people who accepted the Torah at Sinai. Triumphalist declarations of Jewish priority such as these endow Jewish religious praxis, and the continuation of the Jewish tradition through the procreation of future generations of Jews, with heroic significance. Building on the Augustinian formulation of the supersession of Jewish legitimacy and the doctrine of the Jew as witness through history to the truth of Christianity and the folly of rejecting Christ,135 Alfonso X also writes in his Sieta Partidas that “the reason the Church, emperors, kings, and other princes permitted the Jews to reside among Christians is this: that they might live forever as in captivity and serve as a reminder to mankind that that they are descended from those who crucified Our Lord Jesus Christ.”136 Kabbalistic discourse concerning the centrality of Jews constitutes a rejection and inversion of such Christian depictions of Jewishness. The kabbalists were of course aware of the fact that the place that they assign to Jews in the cosmic order would not be obvious to the outside observer. Kabbalistic texts expend considerable energy accounting for Jewish vulnerability and describing the invisible and secret, yet powerful, mechanisms within the Godhead that serve to protect Jews when they are righteous and observe the commandments. In an anonymous text discussing how Israel strengthens

9 4

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

the green strand from Hesed when it performs positive commandments, the author observes, “Our rabbis have said, ‘Esther was green, for a strand of Hesed poured forth upon her.’137 From this strand, the entire world is blessed, and with this strand the people of Israel ascend to greater heights than all other peoples.”138 In discussions of colors in their relation to the sefirot, green is often associated with the sefirah of Hesed and the life-­force attribute of divine mercy.139 The power of divine protection to extend to the Jewish people in circumstances that seem dire, and in a manner in which the divine intervention is not clearly recognized as such, is understood by this kabbalist as the implicit meaning of the rabbinic tradition that Esther was green. Just as the story of Esther in rabbinic discourse is regarded as a demonstration of God’s capacity to protect the Jews through covert means, this kabbalist renders that idea theosophically, associating the green color of Esther with the channel of divine mercy that extends from Hesed to the Jews, elevating them to “greater heights than all other peoples.” An even more polemically charged articulation of this idea is found in another anonymous commentary on the sefirot, where the strand extending from Hesed, via Netzah and Malkhut, is described as follows: “upon this strand, Israel ascends to a lofty gradation, and the other peoples are cast downward. This is the secret of ‘Esther was green, for a strand of Hesed poured forth upon her,’140 and the wise one will understand.”141 Here the covert power of divine mercy simultaneously elevates Jews and denigrates gentiles. In some cases, the protection of Israel is encoded into the theosophic structure and the process of creation. As we read in an anonymous text: When the Holy One, blessed be He, created his world, he created it in six days . . . and the seventh is alluded to by the final heh in the [divine] name. Those seven days are called the seven sefirot that receive from the three upper sefirot, which are Keter, Hokhmah, and Binah. When He wanted to establish the lower world, He connected it to the upper world, “to bind the tent together as one” (Ex. 36:18), and His name, may He be blessed, is united above and below. He created on the earth below seven righteous men corresponding to the seven days above.142

The seven sefirot from Hesed to Malkhut correspond to the seven days of creation, as well as seven righteous men of Israel: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and David. In further elaboration of the role these men play in the relationship between God and the Jewish people, the text states, “These righteous men create peace between Israel and their father in heaven. Happy is the holy nation that has protectors such as these. The reason we only say during our prayers, ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob’ is because they represent all seven of the righteous men who stand on guard for Israel.”143 The liturgical convention to refer to God by the names of the Patriarchs is interpreted in this

Secrets of t he Self

95

text as a shorthand reference to the seven righteous men, who correspond to the seven lower sefirot. These men are the “protectors” of Israel, guarding them in this world and representing them in the world above. The structure the Godhead and the means by which the cosmos was created is thus understood as part of a deliberate divine strategy for the protection of Israel, providing that they perform the appropriate acts of worship. This text is arguing in essence that divine protection is well within reach for the Jewish people—­God created the universe with this specifically in mind. It is up to the Jewish people to activate the secret mechanism put in place for their benefit. In one of Moses de Leon’s Hebrew writings we find a very explicit discussion of the role that Israelite souls play in bringing about cosmic perfection. The question is raised as to why God would choose to take the souls of the righteous and place them into bodies in the lower world. “Is it a kind of game that God plays with the righteous?” the enquirer asks, with no small amount of irony. The existence of the righteous with their pure neshamot in an imperfect world poses a serious theological question. De Leon’s response is that the souls of the righteous are on a very high and elevated level when they serve [God] in this world, so that it will be pure and cleansed and refined. They serve as emissaries in this world, because to this day it is in a state of deterioration and absolute detraction and loss, and upon the souls of the righteous the world is perfected and returned to its original primordiality [kadmut ha-­rishon], because it was destroyed by the primordial snake. But when that snake will pass from this world, and the Holy One, blessed be He, will retract from His anger with His people, and He will be adorned to return to His primordiality by the souls of the righteous, because of this the world will return to its primordiality. And all of the righteous whose level is great before God, such as Moses, Aaron, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the rest of the righteous, all of them will be necessary to return the world to its first adornment before Adam sinned. Then, all of the worlds will be perfected, and His unity will rule in their unification, above and below, in one secret.144

The souls of the righteous thus have a very important function to play, in that it is through them that the divine unity is perfected and the cosmos is redeemed. The righteous souls of Israel, as well as the Jewish people as a whole, or the “rest of the righteous,” are brought into this world because, as the emissaries of God, they must be present in the world in order to “return the world to its first adornment before Adam sinned.” In another discussion of the relationship of the people of Israel to God, the anonymous author of the Sefer ha-­Mafteah describes the difference between gentiles and Israelites in the following manner:

9 6

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

When Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, said, [when the people ask] “what is his name, what shall I say to them,” He responded, “Ehiyeh sent me to you” (Ex. 3:14), to demonstrate that Israel is not entrusted to an angel or heavenly prince, like the rest of the peoples of the world, for each year the heavenly princes return to their sheath, and all of the actions of the peoples of the world are as though they were not. . . . But Israel has no heavenly prince ruling over them, for they have only been entrusted to the First Cause [ha-­siba ha-­rishonah], and this is what he [Moses] assured them when he said “Ehiyeh sent me to you.”145

Unlike the gentiles who are ruled by forces originating from outside of the Godhead, referred to here as sarim, or “heavenly princes,” the Jewish people are directly ruled by the most hidden aspect of the divine, Ehiyeh or the First Cause, a reference to Keter/ein sof. Since the rulers of the gentiles are ephemeral, “returning to their sheath” each year, the actions of the gentiles are inconsequential, “as though they were not.” Again we see a comparison between Jews and Gentiles in which the relationship between Israel and God is closer, and the power or actions of the gentiles is dismissed as a passing phenomenon. The close relationship between God and Israel, which at times is described in terms that bear an affinity to the Christian doctrine of incarnation, is also occasionally described in terms of sonship.146 Kabbalists often refer to Jews as the sons of the sixth sefirah, Tifferet, the Groom or the Holy One, blessed be He, and the tenth sefirah, Malkhut, also referred to as the Bride or the Community of Israel. As Joseph of Hamadan puts is, “It is written, ‘you are sons to the Lord your God’ (Deut. 14:1), ‘sons’ truly! [mammash], to the Groom, who is the King, Lord of Hosts, and the Bride, the Community of Israel.”147 On the question of why God multiplied commandments for Israel, Hamadan argues, “the reason is that the souls of Israel are hewn from the throne of glory, and we are sons to Him, as it is said, ‘you are sons to the Lord your God’ (Deut. 14:1), ‘sons’ truly!”148 This of course begs the question, if Jews are the sons of God, and if they are closer to God than all other nations, why are they dispersed and powerless, and why do they suffer at the hands of the more powerful gentile nations? To this Hamadan offers the following response: With regard to the souls of Israel, which is the nation close to the Holy One, blessed be He, of whom it is said, “Israel, the people close to him” (Ps. 148:14), he mourns over them149 and purifies them and causes them to cleave to their Creator, and he descends to an impure land to receive their souls so that the damaging spirits will not hold sway over them . . . but with regard to gentiles, who are the foreign peoples of the world, he does not render impure and he does not mourn over them, rather, he destroys them.150

Secrets of t he Self

97

The suffering of the people of Israel in exile is described here as a temporary necessity in order to purify their souls and prepare them for the redemptive moment in which God will descend into the “impure lands” of the gentiles and redeem his holy people. Gentiles do not suffer as Israel does, according to Hamadan, because there is no need for them to be purified, since their destiny is destruction. Moreover, building on the rabbinic image, God mourns over the fate of the people of Israel. The suffering he inflicts upon them is done out of love in anticipation of their full return to God. In this respect Hamadan identifies the suffering of Israel as a sign that they have been granted the Torah, which entails the opposites of purity and impurity: Foreign peoples have no sanctity in them whatsoever, and they have no flame in their souls that consumes the impurity; rather, they draw it to themselves, and thus they eat impure foods in order to draw the impurity to themselves. . . . Happy are we and fortunate is our lot that God, may he be blessed, desires us and gave us his Torah and granted us impurity and purity, for it is the perfection of the world. It is impossible to have one without the other. This is the secret of judgment and mercy, the good inclination and the evil inclination, and impurity truly is what purifies Israel.151

Hamadan argues that in the absence of law, and the categories of the forbidden and permitted, there can be no sanctity and purity. Hamadan thus describes the Jews as the only people who possess a divine flame in their souls that consumes their impurity, unlike gentiles, who draw impurity to themselves by partaking of that which is forbidden by Jewish law.152 The polarities of pure and impure, permitted and forbidden as mandated in the Torah are, according to Hamadan, part of the “perfection of the world” that enables the balancing of powers within the Godhead. Judgment, or the sefirah referred to as Din or Gevurah, purifies Israel by consuming their impurity, rendering them fit to commune with God more closely than any other people. For those who lack such polarities—­and here I believe Hamadan is referring specifically to Christians who have abandoned the literal reading of such prohibitions as food regulations in the Torah153—­there is no path to purification. For them, there is only unmitigated impurity. Therefore, Hamadan implies, gentiles are strong in this world because there is no need for them to be judged and punished, and thereby purified, by God. Hamadan states this more explicitly in his Sefer Tashak: “The foreign peoples are powerful in this world, and they take delight in it without any affliction. In the end they shall have no pleasant fruit, for they are destined for gehenom. But we, the people of Israel, dwell in the shadow of the apple, in the shadow of the Holy One, blessed be he, and we are imperiled in this world. But in the end, how beautiful shall his blossom be, and how pleasant and sweet his fruits in the world to come.”154 As the

9 8

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

people who “dwell in the shadow” of God—­that is, who bear the divine image—­ Jews relate to the world differently than gentiles. Though they cannot enjoy unlimited delight in this world, they are destined to partake of the “fruits,” a reference to the Shekhinah in the world to come, while the gentile nations are sent to perdition. A similar constellation of ideas regarding the differences between Jews and non-­Jews is related in the Midrash ha-­Ne’elam stratum of the zoharic literature. Focusing specifically on the question of the soul as the key distinguishing feature of the Jewish people, the text states: Our rabbis taught, every day a herald proclaims: Awake, sons of the supernal Holy One, and perform the service of your Master, who distinguished you from the other peoples and placed in you a holy neshamah hewn from his throne of Glory. Rabbi Yuda said, where then does the soul of the other peoples come from? Rabbi Elazar met him. He said to him: Come and see what is written, “He breathed into his nostrils the soul of life [nishmat hayyim]” (Gen. 2:7). This is the Holy neshamah hewn from the supernal King’s Throne of Glory. What then is written of him? “And man became a living soul [nefesh hayyah]” (Gen. 2:7). Rabbi Elazar said, this is the faculty that is given to animals, to beasts, and to fish, which is created from the earth. . . . Rabbi Isaac said, the Torah grieves over Adam, and says, “The Holy One, blessed be He, created man and gave him a holy neshamah, so that he might have life in the world to come. But because of his sin, he has reverted to the nefesh hayyah, which was hewn from the earth for animals and beasts. . . .” Rabbi Yohanan said, “The Holy One, blessed be He, said, ‘when I created you, Adam, I made you superior to all of my other creatures, and I breathed into you the nishmat hayyim, the soul of life, which gives life to those who posses it and was hewn from my Throne. But you have reverted to the nefesh hayyah, the animal soul, that I created from the earth for the animals. Henceforth, whoever studies my Torah and observes it will receive from me the neshamah that is hewn from My Throne and gives life to those who possess it. Whoever does not study my Torah will have a portion in the nefesh hayyah that they will have chosen, and they will perish with it.’”155

The text urges the reader to recognize themselves as “sons of the supernal Holy One” endowed with a unique soul deriving from the divine, by virtue of which they are distinguished from all other peoples. Non-­Jews, possess only a nefesh hayyah, “living soul” or “animal soul,” created from the earth rather than the Godhead. That is to say, according to this text, and in keeping with other texts cited above, non-­Jews are like animals, and Jews are like God.156 The reversion to an animal state is described as the result of Adam’s transgression—­an idea that resonates strongly with Christian ideas of original sin and the “fall of man.” Jews,

Secrets of t he Self

99

however, acquire their holy soul or neshamah by virtue of the Torah.157 It is thus the revelatory inheritance of the Jewish people that enables them to merit their divine souls. By dint of the Torah, Jews with their holy neshamah are like Adam before his sin in the Garden of Eden, while gentiles, with their nefesh hayyah, occupy a categorically different, postlapsarian state. The countertheological implications of these images are clear: Jews, rather than Christ, are the servants of God, the sons who suffer in this world for the benefit of all. The redemptive motif is similarly reversed—­by connecting the divine with the cosmos through the souls they bear in their bodies, and by physically observing the commandments, Jews earn eternal reward in the world to come, while gentiles are destined for destruction after enjoying temporal power in this world.

chapter 4

I

JEWISH BODIES AND DIVINE POWER theurgy and jewish law As we have seen, medieval Kabbalah embraces a dynamic conception of the divine. Classical kabbalistic theosophy consists of a complex interweaving of symbolic associations between the ten sefirot and Hebrew words, biblical names and terminology, letters, colors, directions, heavenly bodies, and the human anatomy. Kabbalists also embrace the idea, referred to by scholars as “theurgy,” that human actions can influence the divine.1 According to the kabbalistic worldview, Jews who properly perform the mandates of Jewish law reinforce the harmony and contiguity of the sefirotic system.2 Those Jews who commit transgressions cause disharmony in the Godhead and interrupt the divine shefa or overflow as it passes through the sefirot and into the world.3 Knowledge of the sefirotic structure and its relation to Jewish religious praxis is regarded as a central feature of the kabbalistic system.4 This theurgic conception of Jewish ritual and law is how kabbalists understand the meaning and relevance of Judaism and the central position, however concealed, that Jews occupy in the cosmos. As Joseph of Hamadan declares, “By the merit of Israel’s observance of the Torah, the world is sustained.”5 Or, as we read in an anonymous text, “The Masters of the Merkavah have said that God is present equally among the ten ineffable sefirot, so that they are all equally able to pour forth blessing or withhold it. How so? When the People of Israel perform the will of God, ‘even the left is transformed into the right.’”6 Such triumphalist assertions of the impact of Jewish religious behaviors upon the divine realm abound in the kabbalistic texts. As we saw in the first chapter, it is through claims to being carriers of powerful esoteric knowledge of God that these texts seek to depict the superiority of Israel over other nations. By knowing the divine structure through a secret revelatory tradition, Jews are empowered to influence the sefirot through their actions,7 since they know the

100

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

101

relationships and homologies between the supernal and the terrestrial. Given the centrality of nomian practice in rabbinic Judaism, it makes sense that the meaning of the commandments would be a primary area of interest for kabbalists. Gershom Scholem observed that “the Kabbalists lived in the world of the Law, of the Halakha, and were passionately devoted to it, but in their hands the demythicized Law became the vehicle of a new mythical consciousness.”8 This “mythic” transformation of the law entails the reconceptualization of Jewish religious praxis as a theurgical operation with the primary function of impacting the divine and sustaining the cosmos. In one anonymous text, for example, we read, “when a man sins, he impedes the source that comes forth from ein sof to the rest of the sefirot.”9 This dynamic conception of the ten sefirot as subject in their functioning to the actions that Jews perform, or neglect to perform, accords tremendous power to Judaism in the minds of the kabbalists and their readers. At the same time, the kabbalistic system also provides a conceptual framework that accounts for the realities of medieval Jewish experience in that the misfortunes of the Jewish people can be attributed to the impediment of divine overflow that results from Jewish transgression, while faithful practice of Jewish law and the study of Jewish texts through the lens of the kabbalistic code will in principle bring blessing to the people of Israel by reinforcing the interconnections between the sefirot. As we read in one anonymous text, citing a statement found in several places in rabbinic literature,10 “At the time when Israel performs the will of their Lord, they augment the power of the supernal greatness, as it is written, ‘And now, magnify the power of the Lord [adonai]’ (Num. 14:17). When they do not perform the will of the Lord, they diminish the supernal power, as it is written, ‘You have neglected the rock that begot you.’”11 The author relates this idea to the weakening of the overflow from Hokhmah and Keter due to the exile of the Jewish people from the land of Israel and the destruction of the Temple. By imagining Jewish religious praxis in this way in relation to divine power, kabbalists construct a worldview in which the contingencies of Jewish history are subject primarily to Jewish actions, which influence the divine realm.12 God Himself, according to the kabbalists, is reliant upon Jews to enable Him to act on their behalf. The agency accorded by kabbalists to Jewish action thus involves the possibility of both positive or negative outcomes, when Jews act in either accordance with or opposition to the covenantal requirements of the law. According to Joseph of Hamadan, “Everything depends upon the merits of Israel, the holy people. If Israel is meritorious, they draw from the right arm, and of they are not meritorious, they draw from of the left side.”13 To empower the right side of the divine is understood by the kabbalists as giving strength to the attribute of divine mercy, or Hesed, the fourth sefirah, which is also associated with the right arm of God. Transgression has the opposite effect, empowering the left arm

1 02 

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

of the divine—­the fifth sefirah, commonly referred to as Gevurah (strength) or Din (judgment). One anonymous text describes this as follows: “For the Sages have said that evil doers transform the attribute of mercy to judgment, and the righteous, judgment to mercy,14 and this is the fifth attribute. When it performs its function with force of power, it is called Gevurah, and what defense can one bring before it?”15 Anxiety regarding the potentially devastating effects of the empowerment of Gevurah is evident in another anonymous text in which it is argued that God “has not judged the world with this attribute other than during the time of the generation of the flood, which destroyed the entire world. During the destruction of the holy Temple, He would have judged the world with this attribute were it not for the prayers for mercy of the righteous and pious ones, in which case the remnant of Israel would have been lost from the world, [and thus] He judged the world with the lower attribute of weakened judgment [din ha-­ rafah].” The author goes on to argue that “when Israel does not perform the will of God, she [Malkhut] draws from Gevurah and judges the world with weakened judgment, something that the world is able to bear.”16 The final sefirah, Malkhut or Shekhinah, tempers the effects of the left side, partially shielding the people of Israel from the full force of divine retribution. A similar argument can be found in another anonymous text wherein the author argues that “the tenth attribute is Shekhinah, and it is the attribute with which He governs Israel, and it is weakened judgment [din ha-­rafah].”17 The negative, though partially mitigated, effects of Jewish transgression are conceived in these passages as having a direct influence upon the inner aspects of the divine self. Such a conception of the power of Jewish conduct at once accords tremendous significance to all forms of Jewish behavior, while also providing a mechanism to explain the realities of Jewish historical experience. That is to say, for the kabbalists in question, Jewish power is exercised by means of a secret connection to the Godhead, which in turn impacts the world. Jews are thus masters of their own fate through the theurgic power of their religious praxis. Some kabbalistic texts are quite forthright with regard to their concerns regarding the lax behavior of their fellow Jews,18 and their hopes that spreading awareness of the theurgic power of Jewish law will help remedy Jewish religious apathy. In an anonymous text, the author laments the trend that he observes among his fellow Jews who neglect prayer because they have come to regard it as worthless and ineffective. The author urges his readers not to follow such a path, but rather to recognize that “the prayers that come forth from a man’s mouth ascend to the place of the emanation of souls. And if it is pure and unblemished, free from impure thoughts, it shall go in peace.”19 The text then, interestingly, illustrates this conception of prayer, and the practice of Judaism more broadly, in the following manner: This matter can be compared to a house filled with silver and gold and many kinds of food and drink and treasuries with keys,20 and before them

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

103

lay scorpions and pits, trenches and caves, and there is a single good path by which one may be saved from all of these evils. When a man arrives who wishes to obtain silver, gold, food, drink or other things, if he knows the location of these treasures, and he knows the pathway leading to them, he shall obtain everything he desires, “he shall enter in peace and depart,”21 and he shall find that which he seeks. But if he does not know the pathway leading to the treasures, he shall grope in the dark like one who is blind and fall victim to the creatures and pits. Afterward he will tell everyone he sees that this particular house contains nothing of value, only evil things. . . . This place is the Lord, may he be blessed, in whom everything is encompassed, and who possesses treasuries of silver, gold and life, as it is written, “I endow those who love me with substance, I fill their treasuries” (Prov. 8:21). And see, a man’s transgressions and the machinations of his heart, they are the trenches and caves.22

Knowledge of the divine realm in accordance with the kabbalistic tradition is understood in this passage as a map that renders the practice of prayer and halakhic ritual observance effective.23 Ignorance of the secret theosophical traditions of the Kabbalah, the correspondences between Jewish ritual and the esoteric attributes of the Godhead, and the theurgic power of Jewish law, most notably, prayer, results in a kind of religious malaise, leading those Jews who are not aware of the theurgic significance of their actions to declare, according to the author, “for what reason should I multiply prayer and supplications, ‘And when I cry and plead, he shuts out my prayer,’ (Lam. 3:8).”24 This section of the text indicates that its author regarded Kabbalah as a strategy to help Jews navigate the contradiction between the idea of being the chosen people with a covenantal relationship with God consisting of many practical laws and the complex realities of medieval Jewish life that left at least some with the perception that the practice of Judaism brought no perceivable benefit. To such concerns, the author responds, “one who chooses the good path shall attain that which he desires. And not only shall he obtain his desire, but the Holy One, blessed be He, shall desire him and be glorified through him, as it is written, ‘You are my servant Israel, in whom I glory’ (Isa. 49:3).”25 The text describes this “good path” available to Jews who are privy to the kabbalistic tradition as a unique inheritance of the Jewish people, and a sign of their special relationship with God and the unparalleled power of their prayers on the divine, rather than terrestrial level. As we read elsewhere in the text, only the people of Israel are associated with the sixth sefirah, referred to as Tifferet, and therefore, “the wise one will consider that prayers ascend to Keter [the uppermost sefirah] by way of Tifferet, and therefore no other nation or people are able to ascend to that point except Israel.”26 By revealing the secret map that unveils the concealed impact of Jewish actions on high, kabbalistic discourse sought to empower Jews and Jewish

1 04 

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

religious praxis. The above-­cited anonymous author’s concern with Jewish religious laxity is reminiscent of the introduction to David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid’s commentary on the liturgy in which he criticizes those Jews who abandon the Jewish law and declare, “What benefit is it to us to occupy ourselves with the Torah? It is better for us to pursue worldly matters, to eat and drink, to amass gold and silver, and to pursue physical pleasures.”27 Many kabbalists from this period indicate their sense that Jews, for a variety of reasons ranging from the spread of rationalism to the religious despair born of witnessing Jewish historical decline, were abandoning Judaism.28 Kabbalah, they believed, could provide a mechanism for reinvigorating Jewish religious commitment by imagining Jews as theurgically empowered masters of a secret tradition. Kabbalah is portrayed as a guide, or map, to the storehouses of divine riches held in keeping for Jews who possess the secret knowledge that provides access to them.29 As Jonathan Z. Smith has observed, “maps are structures of transformation, not structures of reproduction.”30 The kabbalistic schematic of the divine realm presents an alternative for how Jews can view the world and their place in it. That is to say, the kabbalistic map provides a strategy for imagining Jewish prayer as a secretly transmitted key to the “storehouses” of divine power. The tension between this view and the realities faced by Jews living in medieval Iberia is obvious, and it is this difference that constitutes a central feature of kabbalistic theurgy—­an opportunity for transformation, for expressing conceptions of Jewish power in a manner better suited to the predicament of medieval Jewish life. The outcomes of the observance of the law are thus not material wealth and well-­being,31 but rather an incomprehensible spiritual reward. As we read in another anonymous composition, “The enlightened one will succeed in all of his paths, for divine providence watches over him in all matters as is appropriate for him. . . . But, one must believe with complete faith that the Lord, may He be blessed, rewards those who do His will, though the nature of that recompense cannot be grasped in this world. Similarly, the Lord punishes those who abandon His will, though the nature of that punishment cannot be comprehended.”32 Kabbalah is presented here as a remedy for Jews who question the purpose of practicing Judaism. The meaning of divine providence, reward and punishment, and the impact of Jewish religious praxis, is transferred from the earthly to the divine plane, creating new possibilities for imaging the relevance and power of Judaism. Kabbalah is presented as a tradition that provides Jews with access to divine rather than earthly rewards.

theurgy as countertheology The secret power of Jewish ritual in relation to the incomprehensible inner life of God that the kabbalists claim as the unique patrimony of the Jewish people

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

10 5

can be understood at least in part as a response to Christianity, as well as Christian anti-­Jewish argumentation. While Jews living in late thirteenth-­and early fourteenth-­century Spain may not have been reading Christian polemical tracts, the main sentiments were undoubtedly well understood, such as Peter the Venerable’s admonition to the Jews, “Open your eyes at last, open your ears, and be ashamed that you are clearly the only blind people in the world, the only deaf people to remain.”33 Raymond Martini, writing in the 1270s, asserts in his famous anti-­Jewish tract, Pugio Fidei,34 that “it is sufficiently evident how immense is the stupidity, how great the madness, how enormous the folly of the Jews, who do not cease to practice circumcision, the Sabbath, and other rituals which God took away from them and the devil restored.”35 The image of Jews as a people blind to the inner meaning of their own scriptures, as humiliated wanderers who hold fast to an outmoded, overly literal, carnal, and superseded law, and thus must collectively suffer for rejecting Christ is inverted in the symbolic thinking of the Kabbalah, wherein the cosmos is sustained by the bodies of Jews performing the mandates of halakha.36 In kabbalisitic texts, theurgic discourse provides a way for imagining Jewish power that counters Christian claims regarding Jewish weakness yet remains consistent with the realities of Jewish experience. In a statement on the power of Jewish prayer, for example, Joseph of Hamadan argues that, The supernal entities are blessed through the actions of the terrestrial entities, and thus the great and awesome Name is blessed and augmented with overflow [shefa] and increase from the depths of Nothingness [ayyin], such that it is enriched and elevated through the agency of he who worships through love, and this is the secret of, “and He said to me, ‘You are my servant Israel in whom I am glorified” (Isa. 49:3), in whom I am glorified, truly [mamash]. I receive increase and additional overflow from the source of blessing, until we find, through the agency of the Jew who worships through love, blessings above and below.37

In this passage we encounter a bold assertion of the power of Jewish liturgical prayer to reinforce the unity of the divine and the being of the cosmos. Such claims, coupled with the inherent politics of declarations of esoteric knowledge, constitute, I believe, a deliberate countertheology to Christianity. Jews, as the unique people in whom God is glorified according to the kabbalists, are empowered in the divine rather than the earthly realm. This idea serves as the basis for the kabbalistic depiction of Judaism as the most powerful religious tradition in spite of its lack of political agency. In comparing the place of the Jewish people relative to other nations, the Zohar states, “Happy are Israel, more than all other people, for the Holy One, blessed be He, desires them and is jealous of them and is glorified by them, for the world was created only for their sake, in order

1 0 6

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

that they might occupy themselves with the Torah to unite this with that. And Israel below in this world is the sustenance of all, and the sustenance of all other peoples. When is this? When they perform the will of their Lord.”38 Echoing a claim made in countless places in late thirteenth-­century Castilian kabbalistic texts, the cosmos itself was only created for the sake of the people of Israel to be able to engage in the practice of the law. The implications of Jewish ritual include the “sustenance of all other peoples.” The material power of non-­Jews is attributed here to Jewish actions, which, though unrecognized as such, serve as the secret conduit that directs divine overflow into the world to the benefit of gentiles. Implicit in many of the kabbalistic discussions of the power of the commandments is the assertion that the physical performance of the law enables Jews to fulfill a special role in the universe that Christians do not, since the latter have abandoned the bodily performance of biblical mandates. As we read in an anonymous commentary on the sefirot: There is no benefit without tilling the field, as it is written, “as surely as I have established my covenant with day and night, the laws of heaven and earth” (Jer. 33:25), this is the great benefit for our souls, the passionate love of the heart that we have seen, to be the ones who fulfill God’s Torah and covenant, “to perform all of My commandments” (based on Deut. 5:26), to bestow goodness upon us, and to unite Him in this name, to sustain His creation through it, for us and for Him, as it is said, “half for the Lord and half for yourselves.”39

This passage underscores the privilege Jews enjoy as “ones who fulfill God’s Torah and covenant,” thereby serving as partners with God to “sustain his creation.” Playing on the verse from Jeremiah 33:36, the context of which emphasizes the endurance of the covenant of David and the promise to “restore their fortunes and take them back in love,” the author argues that only by “tilling the field”—­that is, by drawing divine overflow and blessing into the Shekhinah through the performance of the commandments—­can one derive “benefit.”40 The outcome of such action is the unity of God and the perpetuation of being. The somatic performance of the commandments by the people of Israel is thus a way of tending or nourishing the worlds above and below. As Joel Hecker has argued, the kabbalists understand the body as “a site of religious experience,” reflecting a conception of the body as a “psychosomatic unity in which spiritual experiences are located in the body, not only metaphorically, but also actually.”41 The covenant, which this text asserts remains the unbroken patrimony of the Jewish people, is a partnership with God in which Jews are empowered to work for the benefit of both God and themselves through the physical performance of the commandments. In some descriptions of the power of the commandments, elaborate connections are made between the outcomes of the observance of the law and the secret

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

107

structure of the cosmic and divine worlds. For the kabbalists, halakhic praxis becomes the primary mechanism for sustaining the proper order of reality. Jewish power and agency is imagined in a manner that grants a central role to the halakhic system in the maintenance of the original divine plan for creation. In one passage from an unpublished version of Joseph Gikatilla’s commentary on various commandments we read: Know that the Lord, may He be blessed, created all things; the inner, pure beings, and the outer, impure beings. And know that all created things are good, and there is nothing that is evil when it occupies the appropriate place and configuration prepared for it by the Lord, may He be blessed. This is in accordance with what it written, “And God saw all that He made, and found it very good” (Gen. 1:31), and as it is written, “He brings everything to be precisely at its time” (Eccl. 3:11). That is to say, all things that the Lord, may He be blessed, created, be they internal or external, be they pure or impure, they are all good, and they all serve a purpose in the world when they occupy their appointed place and each performs the appropriate function. But, if the external entities are brought inside, or if the internal entities are taken out, all of the orders would be destroyed and impurities would be revealed because of it. Destruction of the world and the annulment of actions would occur, because the internal entities that went outside would be unable to perform their actions, for they were only created in order to perform the actions that are appropriate for them when they are within. So too for the external ones that are brought within; they would not be able to perform the action that is appropriate for them when they are outside. Thus, the entire world would be inverted, and all of the channels destroyed, and all of the flow would be rendered worthless. Therefore, it is fitting to preserve the configurations according to their proper location; the inner ones within, and the external ones without. Everyone who inverts an aspect of the configuration commits destruction. The one who understands these secrets will comprehend the meaning of, “you shall observe my statutes” (Lev. 19:19), keeping the inner entities within and the external entities without, such that not one of them departs or transgresses beyond its boundary. Thus it is written, “An order [hok] has been established, it shall not change” (Ps. 148:6).42

Good and evil, as described in the passage, is a function of placement rather than essence. There is nothing, according to Gikatilla, that is inherently good or bad. Evil arises when aspects of the divine are moved from their designated location, transgressing the boundaries of the “inner” and “outer,” or the pure and impure. It is worth noting, however, that even the outer, impure entities have a function, and they are “good” despite, or perhaps even because of, their impurity, as long

1 0 8

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

as they are in the place God intended at the time of creation. Human actions are what move things from one domain to another, potentially bringing destruction to the world through an inversion of the proper order. According to Gikatilla, this understanding of the cause of good and evil is the secret that explains the purpose of the commandments. To observe the divine statutes is to engage in the behavior that sustains the proper order of the cosmos, preventing the emergence of evil that can result from the interruption of the channels between the sefirot. A similar point is made in another text by Gikatilla where he argues that, “since man encompasses all things above and below, God, may He be blessed, has granted him the capacity to enter and exit the holy precinct, to bring in and to take out. But, He has commanded him and warned him not to bring impure things within, or pure things without. . . . Thus you can understand man’s power through the performance of the commandments or transgression.”43 The mandates of Jewish law, according to this model, serve a vital role in the world. The proper configuration of being, and even the existence of the cosmos itself, is dependent upon halakhic practice. In another unpublished text by Gikatilla entitled Sod ha-­Keruvim,44 the author relates a parable in which the theurgic power of the performance of the commandments is depicted as the means by which Jews water the divine “garden,” thereby sustaining the world. As the true servants of God and rightful inheritors of the covenant of Abraham, Jews are the emissaries of the divine on earth and act on God’s behalf,45 wielding divine power by practicing the mandates of Jewish law. Because Abraham kept the charge of the Lord, he drew forth blessings by way of the channels and conduits from Eden, which is Keter, to the “garden,” which is Malkhut. Then, all of the worlds were nourished by blessings, and they were sustained by the overflow that gives forth blessings upon the sefirot, for when the “garden” is full, all worlds are blessed. If, heaven forbid, the waters in the supernal garden are withheld because of the presence of evil people in the world who break the channels, then the water does not flow to the garden, thus resulting in the presence of destruction in the world. When unification is generated by way of truth, then all worlds above and below are blessed. And thus, Abraham, because he united the name of our Creator, may He be blessed, all of the worlds were blessed and sustained by him, and this is the secret of, “and he kept my charge, [my commandments, my laws, my teachings]” (Gen. 26:5), everything that was necessary to observe and perform in order to sustain all of the worlds and support them by means of the unification that Abraham united; all of the worlds were sustained and united. And thus, “He kept my charge;” my charge, truly! This can be compared to a king who had a task to perform, and one of his faithful servants rose and said, “My lord the king, do not weary yourself! I shall perform this

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

10 9

deed in your place, in order to complete your work, for I know how to do it appropriately.” This is the secret of, “He kept my charge.” If you understand and know this well in your heart, and you consider the secret meaning of that which is stated in the Torah, “you shall keep my charge” (Lev. 18:30), this is the secret of that which is said, “the righteous man is the foundation of the world” (Prov. 10:25). All that which we have said regarding a man’s knowing how to unite the true secret, uniting the branches with the root and watering the furrows of the garden, then all of the worlds are blessed and sustained by him, and he keeps the charge of God, may he be blessed, and this [is the meaning of], ‘the righteous man is the foundation of the world.’”46

The actions of Abraham, like those of the “righteous man” or tzaddik, draw divine energy down from Keter into Malkhut, represented here as the garden watered by the river that flows from Eden in Genesis 2:10.47 This passage presents an example of what Jonathan Garb describes as the “hydraulic” model of power, in which the theurgic act is described in terms of the flow of divine power in a manner analogous to water.48 By tending the garden, the lowest sefirah, Abraham, as well as those who come after him and qualify as “righteous” men, sustain the world. Such activity in fact counteracts the destructive force of “evil men” who interrupt the flow of blessing into the cosmos. The repeated emphasis on the phrasing of Genesis 26:5 in which Abraham is said to have kept the divine “charge,” refers to the importance of the performance of the commandments in perpetuating the emanative flow between the sefirot, thereby sustaining the world. Gikatilla then compares the matter to that of a servant who willingly volunteers to perform a task on behalf of the king—­literally in the king’s place. Another usage of the same term, mishmar, “charge,” is then cited from Leviticus 18:30, only in this case it refers to the divine command to the entire people of Israel. Like Abraham, the people of Israel, according to Gikatilla, are the “righteous ones” who unite the sefirot by keeping the divine “charge” and observing the commandments. The polemical implication of the passage is that only Jews are the true heirs of Abraham—­a point of considerable contention between Jews and Christians—­ because they observe the law, acting in the place of God as virtuous servants. The embodied practice of halakha by Jews is imagined here as the driving force behind the unity of the Godhead and the flow of blessing into the world. When the “righteous” men of Israel perform the commandments, they act in God’s stead, carrying on the legacy of Abraham by standing in God’s place, bringing unity to the Godhead and sustenance to the world. Such is the implication of a comment by Joseph of Hamadan, “‘[If you follow my laws] and faithfully observe my commandments’ (Lev. 26:3), my commandments that I perform, truly! Therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us to perform all of the commandments since they are His actual paths, may He be blessed.”49 Similarly,

1 1 0

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

David ben Yehudah he-­Hasid says that Talmudic statements such as the claim that God wears tefillin reflect the fact that “the Holy One, blessed be He, performs the commandments of supernal Keter and the Cause of Causes. Of this it is written, ‘If you follow my laws and faithfully observe My commandments’ (Lev. 26:3), truly.”50 By fulfilling the mandates of the rabbinic tradition, Jews serve in the place of God, engaging in divine actions. Just as the kabbalists envision the Jewish individual as the exclusive locus for the manifestation of the divine soul, Jewish actions are likewise privileged as the “actual paths” of God himself. This point is underscored by Moses de Leon in an interpretation of Jacob’s relationship to Esau. These two brothers from Genesis were commonly understood as symbols of Jews and Christians,51 and de Leon reflects their rivalry as a conflict between the evil and ignorance of Esau with the righteousness of Jacob who, even more than his fathers, knew the secrets of the Kabbalah and the actions he must perform for the sake of divine unity and cosmic well-­being. According to de Leon, it was necessary for Jacob to trick Isaac and steal the birthright from Esau since otherwise the divine powers of Hesed (Abraham) and Gevura (Isaac) would not have found their proper balance in Tifferet (Jacob). Therefore, as de Leon puts it, Jacob recognized what he must do: Once he perceived his father’s love for his brother Esau, and the evil of his brother Esau, he knew the truth and essence, and endeavored to work in the service of his Creator through those very actions that he performed in relation to him. Jacob did not do this for his own sake, but only to serve his Creator, truly! Through those very actions, he gathered his portion of faith, by way of faith and righteousness. You should know that the patriarchs received the essence of the true wisdom, and they were aware of the proper Kabbalah and true knowledge—­Jacob more than all of them. Therefore, he sought with all of his capacity to serve his Creator, through those very actions, and the secret of the matters of this world, everything depends upon action to sustain it, in accordance with the secret of the supernal pattern.52

Jacob’s trickery as described in Genesis, whereby he fools his father Isaac in order to steal the blessing designated for his brother Esau, is regarded by de Leon as a necessary step taken in the service of God himself.53 Due to his superior knowledge of kabbalistic secrets, according to de Leon, Jacob recognized that the Godhead would be thrown out of balance had he allowed Esau to assume the role of the firstborn. Therefore Jacob took action, but his behavior was based upon a “supernal pattern,” that is, his knowledge of the intended proper configuration of the sefirot. The implication of this interpretation is that Jacob’s service of God entails physical actions that, however unlikely they may seem, serve to align the

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

111

sefirot. De Leon is arguing here that, like their forefather Jacob, Jewish actions and halakhic observance are heroic steps that must be taken for the sake of divine unity. This theurgic conception of Judaism is also employed by the kabbalists as a way of understanding the meaning of the galut, or exile of the Jewish people from the land of Israel and the destruction of the Temple. The full resolution of the task of bringing complete unity to the sefirot and ultimately returning them to their source in God is deferred by most kabbalists until the messianic redemption. As Seth Brody notes, in the pre-­redemptive state, “[t]he kabbalist is striving to create a unity that remains in a state of process and has yet to reach its final culmination.”54 Until then, Jews are left with the traditions of the Kabbalah and the contemplation of the mysteries of the divine name as the keys for sustaining the cosmic order, while working toward the complete reunification of the Godhead. In some of the commentaries on the ten sefirot, discussion of this question is found in the description of the tenth sefirah. In one version found in an anonymous text, the author describes post-­exilic reality as follows: When Israel dwelt in Jerusalem with the Temple and all of its vessels, everything below was united, and thus all of the sefirot above were united, and blessing flowed into the world. When the terrestrial Jerusalem was destroyed, the bond was torn asunder and the Shekhinah dwelt in exile with the people of Israel, but the blessing that flows from above was not [completely] interrupted. Thus there remains for Israel a lesser Temple [mikdash me’at]55 in exile, and therefore “there has not been a single day without evil decrees since the day the Temple was destroyed.”56 But, all who unite the branches with their roots as a single root, and elevate all of the sefirot in a single, continuous and subsisting bundle, then, he cleaves to the Great Name. The sefirot are destined to return to the origin of their being when the Temple is renewed, be it speedily in our days.57

The messianic import of this passage stands in striking contrast to the depiction of Jews in some forms of Christian discourse. Far from being a people who have missed the moment of redemption by rejecting the message of Christ, the author of this text imagines Jews as the sole inheritors of the secret to salvation. Through their unification of the ten sefirot, Jews can cleave to the name of God,58 acquire eternal life, initiate the onset of the messianic age, and cause the full reintegration of the sefirot into the “origin of their being.” The practice of Jewish law understood according to the theurgical model of the Kabbalah serves as the mikdash me’at,59 or “lesser Temple” that Jews carry with them in exile.60 The mysteries of God revealed in the Jewish esoteric tradition enable Jews to continue to serve, albeit in a qualified manner, the same role as the priests

1 1 2

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

in Jerusalem, possessing exclusive access to the inner sanctum of the Temple above, despite the destruction of the earthly Temple.61 As Jonathan Z. Smith has observed, sacred locations, such as the Temple, have, in various ways in the religious imagination of both Judaism and Christianity, become “independent structures of thought, creativity, and human action for which the events of 70 or 135, or 614 or 1244 were, strictly speaking, irrelevant.”62 In the kabbalistic image cited above, the Temple is both a signifier of the future fulfillment of messianic redemption, and a site for the present operation of Jewish theurgic power. In both senses, the text asserts the primacy of Jewish access to the sacred locus. In another version of this text possibly deriving from the Provencal-­Geronese kabbalistic school earlier in the thirteenth century, the name of God and the “lesser Temple” are described as the means by which “the righteous men and the pious ones and the men of renown, who contemplate and unite the great Name, may He be blessed, and who take hold of the fire in the chamber that burns in their hearts, through the pure thought, they unite all of the sefirot and bind this to that, until they draw forth from the flame that has no end to its exaltedness, and thus the order is perfected by means of Israel.”63 The destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jews from their land does not, according to these kabbalists, entail the cessation of Jewish power. As Maurizio Mottolese has observed, a central strategy of the medieval kabbalistic reinterpretation of Temple rituals “was that of building a systematic analogical discourse in order to endow images and precepts, actors and practices of the ancient worship with new meaning.”64 The “righteous men and pious ones”—­that is, observant Jewish men—­can according to the kabbalists still fulfill the object of Temple worship by bringing about the unification of the sefirot, thereby working toward the full restitution of the cosmic-­divine order. The redemptive implication of the unification of the Godhead by the actions of the Jewish people is underscored more clearly in another version of this text: When Israel was in Jerusalem with the Temple and all of its vessels, and everything was united to his right hand with all of the sefirot above, blessing flowed below. When Jerusalem below was destroyed, the lower bundle was torn asunder, for if there is no priest there, the bundle is torn asunder, and the supernal Jerusalem was separated, and the Shekhinah was cast into exile with Israel and the blessing that flowed from the “fine oil” (II Kings 20:13; Isa. 39:2), was interrupted, and therefore our Sages say that “there has not been a single day without evil decrees since the day the Temple was destroyed.”65 This relates to the secret that all who cleave to the Lord by means of the cleaving of thought to the ten sefirot, then, “you who cleave to the Lord your God, you are all living this day” (Deut. 4:4), and this is the secret meaning of the unity [recited during the shema prayer] morning and evening, “to

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

113

recount your righteousness in the morning, and your faithfulness at night” (Ps. 92:3). All who unite the branches with the root and elevate the sefirot in a single subsisting bundle cleave to the Lord, may He be praised. And these sefirot are destined to return to the source of their being when the Temple is rebuilt and perfected, and the throne is perfected. All who unite these sefirot sanctify God in his holiness, and all who separate one of them, of him it is said, “a whisperer separates friends” (Prov. 16:28).66

Uniting the sefirot is the sacred task entrusted to Jews. The unity of God is not a theological proposition that Jews must believe—­it is an ideal state that Jews must create and sustain. Despite the fact that the conditions of exile entail daily “evil decrees,” according to the rabbinic dictum, knowledge of the theosophic secrets related in the Kabbalah enables Jews to work towards the goal of redemption through the practice of rabbinic law and “cleaving of thought to the ten sefirot.”67 In the Iggeret ha-­Kodesh,68 the author argues that “at times, a man performs commandments69 and he rectifies all of the channels from the first emanation until the end of all of [the entities] that receive. Such an individual is called righteous, foundation of the world.”70 In Joseph of Hamadan’s words, “Whenever Israel observes the Torah and commandments, they bring about the unity of God, may He be blessed, for the Groom, who is the King, Lord of Hosts, comes to unite with the Bride and pour forth the ‘fine oil’ (II Kings 20:13; Isa. 39:2) upon her.”71 By imagining Jews in this role, Kabbalah provides a forceful counter-­theology that serves as a form of cultural resistance to Christianity.

cleaving to god: jewish agency and divine unity One of the ways that the superior status and theurgic capacity of the Jewish people is marked in these texts is through the notion that the people of Israel “cleave” to and “unite” with God. Devekut,72 meaning “cleaving” or “adhering,” carries a diverse range of implications in rabbinic texts as well as kabbalistic literature beginning in the early thirteenth century.73 Cleaving to or uniting with God is often taken as the hallmark of a mystical religious doctrine. There is a sizable body of literature on mystical experience in general and on the question of the status of mystical experience in Judaism in particular, a full assessment of which is beyond the scope of the present discussion. Much of the debate regarding the status of mystical experience in kabbalistic literature has revolved around the issue of unio mystica,74 or union with God.75 Scholem’s views on this issue are complex, and as Wolfson has noted, “with respect to this central issue, as in some other cases, Scholem was genuinely ambivalent, contradictory, or dialectical.”76 Several times Scholem asserts categorically that kabbalistic devekut “is not union, because union with God is denied man even in that mystical upsurge of

1 1 4

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

the soul, according to Kabbalistic theology. But it comes as near to union as a mystical interpretation of Judaism would allow.”77 Elsewhere he comments even more forcefully that “Jewish mysticism as such does not exist at all in the sense of direct, unmediated union with the Godhead. There is no such thing within the framework of the Jewish tradition, as such a union requires a level of daring which seems impossible within the context of the concepts traditionally accepted by one who calls himself a Jew.”78 In another formulation of this question, Scholem takes a different approach, arguing that the distinction between “union” and “communion” is not “of such far reaching importance as is often claimed . . . particularly with regard to the impact of mysticism on society.”79 In keeping with the approach to kabbalistic texts outlined in the introduction, I would suggest that the mystical experiences of kabbalists from the thirteenth century are beyond the reach of critical inquiry. My interest in what follows is with discursive constructs rather than experiential states. Based on the texts explored in the preceding chapters regarding the conception of the self and the cosmos in relation to the dynamics of the ten sefirot that comprise the Godhead, I would argue that it is not possible to identify any clear demarcation within this discourse between God, the world, and the Jewish individual. All three are loci on the same web, relating to one another in a dialectical tension of identity and difference. The claim of mystical union is therefore neither fully present nor fully absent in these texts, since the individual is construed as simultaneously one with and other than God. These paradoxes nonetheless serve the kabbalists’ purposes, in that the delineation of a systematic ontology, anthropology, or typology of mystical encounter is not the primary goal. The discursive strategies employed indicate a much greater interest in constructing a framework for asserting the meaning and power of Jewish religious praxis and the centrality and importance of the people of Israel. The discussions of cleaving to or uniting with God are embedded in descriptions of the theurgic power of Jewish actions and the special status of the Jewish people. In what follows, consideration is giving to the specific question of how devekut serves as a strategy for underscoring a particular approach to the question of Jewish agency. As Wolfson points out, “the theurgic task presupposes the unification of the individual and the potencies that collectively constitute the name YHWH.”80 The blurred boundary between the divine and the people of Israel supports the kabbalists’ claims regarding the unique access Jews enjoy to God, and how this enables them to impact the sefirot and nourish the cosmos when they perform the commandments.81 Cleaving to God, uniting the sefirot, and sustaining the world are all interrelated facets of the same phenomenon. As Tishby puts it, “the ultimate goal of devekut is the restoration of the whole of existence, both divine and non-­divine, to its source in En-­Sof.”82 Brody has aptly pointed out that “[a]s a modality of being, devekut both transforms and is transforming.

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

115

Cosmic harmony, in all of its manifold dimensions, relies upon the kabbalistic adept’s assimilation to his source.”83 Or, as Wolfson has puts it, “ecstasy and theurgy can be seen as two manifestations of the same phenomenon.”84 Such a concurrence of “cleaving” to God and enacting theurgic operation can be seen, for example, in the following passage from the Zohar: “Meritorious are Israel, who cleave to the Holy One, blessed be He, and when they cleave to the Holy One, blessed be He, everything cleaves as one, this with that.”85 Or, according to Joseph Gikatilla, when one cleaves to God, “all of the sefirot are blessed by him, and he is blessed by the sefirot.”86 To cleave to God is to enjoy divine favor and wield divine power. Cleaving to God is often depicted as dependent upon knowledge of kabbalistic theosophy in the sense that an awareness of the structure of the Godhead is necessary for the theurgic manipulation of the sefirot. To take one example from an anonymous text: “Everyone who unites with the Holy One, blessed be He, by means of these sefirot, which are like branches and roots drawn together in a single, united, subsisting bundle, he then cleaves to the great Lord, and he will be sanctified in holiness, and he shall inherit a portion in the world to come. Everyone who separates one of [the sefirot] apart, of him it is said, ‘a whisperer separates friends’ (Prov. 16:28), and he is called ‘one who cuts the shoots.’87 . . . This is the wisdom that was given at Sinai.”88 Cleaving to God in this passage is the result of uniting the sefirot. Comparing the sefirot to the branches of a tree, and the theurgic manipulation of them as restoring the continuity between the branches and the root, the author argues that bringing such unity to the sefirot enables that individual to cleave to God and thus to be sanctified and granted a portion in the afterlife. The importance of the theurigc unification of the sefirot is emphasized, citing the phrase from tractate Hagiga, that one who cuts the “shoots” or “plantings” is one who causes disunion between the sefirot. While the “cutting of the shoots” can be taken to imply the theological heresy of belief in multiple independent divine powers, in this passage and many others like it from the kabbalistic texts from this period, greater emphasis is placed on actions rather than theological beliefs. By describing the cutting of the shoots as the introduction of discontinuity between the sefirot, the kabbalists constructed a model for understanding the impact of Jewish behavior in that the unity of God is at stake in the practice of Jewish law. Recognizing the power of Jewish actions in relation to the Godhead is explicitly identified by this text as an important element of the esoteric tradition in that this doctrine is associated with the secrets revealed at Sinai. The inner meaning of the commandments, as it is presented in these texts, involves truths regarding Jewish power as much as divine mystery. By elaborating upon the outcomes of Jewish observance or transgression of the law, the kabbalists provide a shared discourse for imagining the far-­reaching implications of Jewish actions. In another anonymous commentary on the ten

1 1 6

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

sefirot, the author associates the destruction of the cosmos with causing disunity among the sefirot: “All who unite the ten sefirot, then, the Lord, may He be exalted and glorified, is sanctified in His holiness. All who would separate one of them, of him it is said, ‘a whisperer separates friends’ (Prov. 16:28). One who ‘cuts the shoots’ causes separation between the sefirot, and he destroys and annihilates the world.”89 Cleaving to God in a way that emphasizes the unique status of the people of Israel is also at times associated with the notion of cleaving to the divine name and the Torah.90 Kabbalists frequently claim, drawing upon earlier sources, that God is identical with his name and that the Torah is in effect the name of God, meaning that the hidden level of meaning in the Torah entails the secret of the divine form and self.91 In Isaac ibn Sahula’s words, “His name and His being are one thing, and knowledge of His name is knowledge of His being.”92 Or, as one anonymous commentary on the ten sefirot formulates it, “His name is His essence.”93 While this notion, like many kabbalistic ideas, has roots in earlier sources, the emphasis that it receives and the particular discursive construction generated with it represents a novel move on the part of the kabbalists. Todoros Abulafia articulates this idea in the following manner: “See and understand that He is His name and his name is He . . . and the name of the Holy One, blessed be he, is the twenty-­two letters of the written Torah.”94 The Zohar states, to cite but one example, “Rabbi El’azar taught . . . ‘[T]he whole Torah is one name, a holy name, literally! Happy is the share of one who attains it! Whoever attains the Torah attains the name of the blessed Holy One, really!’ Rabbi Yeisa taught, ‘He attains the blessed Holy One Himself, for He and His name are one.’”95 David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid similarly states that “the Torah and the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, are one, for His great name is encompassed within the Torah, and the Torah is encompassed within His name, and He and His Torah are one.”96 Jews, according to the kabbalists, enjoy the unique distinction of receiving the Torah, which in turn entails the capacity to unite with God via his name. Through the association the people of Israel with the capacity to connect with the divine name in this manner, the kabbalists assert the sanctity and superiority of the people of Israel. By reconceptualizing the divine name and the Torah as manifestations of God, the meaning of Jewish experience and the value of Jews themselves are recast through the kabbalistic lens. Since Jews cleave to the divine name, God does not abandon them even under the conditions of exile, as the secrets of God’s name and Torah are carried with them. Such is the import of the following passage from the Zohar: Meritorious is the lot of Israel, for the Holy One, blessed be He, speaks with them. Of them it is written, “For God will never forsake His people [for the

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

117

sake of His name . . .] (1 Sam. 12:22).’ Why will God not forsake His people? For the sake of His great name, for this cleaves in that, and because of this, the Holy One, blessed be He will not forsake them, for in every place that they dwell, the Holy One, blessed be He, is with them, as it has been established. May the wise ones understand this.97

The associations between the divine name and the Torah, and the claim that Israel is granted unique access to God by means of them, are employed here to assert the continued relevance of the covenant. Liebes has argued persuasively that the formula “Meritorious is the lot of Israel [zakain innun Yisrael] in Zoharic Aramaic is a polemical reformulation of Matthew 5:5, deployed in a number of contexts to assert the supremacy of Israel.”98 Israel, as the people of God and the ones to whom he “speaks” or reveals himself, cleave to the Name and thereby manifest the divine within themselves. In another passage from the zoharic corpus we find an example of the blurred boundary between God and Israel associated with the image of cleaving: Come and see. Meritorious is the lot of Israel, for the Holy One, blessed be He, arouses them to cleave to Him, and to be a portion for Him, and for them to be His portion, as it is written, “and in Him [bo] you shall cleave” (Deut. 13:5), and it is written, “and you who cleave in the Lord [badonai] your God . . .” (Deut. 4:4), in God, really! And it is written, “for God has chosen Jacob . . .” (Ps. 135:4), and it is written, “For God’s portion is His people, Jacob is the lot of His inheritance” (Deut. 32:9), for He brought them forth from holy seed to be His portion, and because of this He gave them the holy supernal Torah that was sequestered two thousand years before the world was created, as it has been said. And because of His mercy, He gave it to Israel to follow after it and to cleave to it. Come and see. All of the supernal ministers and all of the chariots are all united with each other, gradations in gradations, those above and those below, and thus it has been established, as it is written, “this is the great sea” (Ps. 104:25), and the holy life-­force is upon it, and all of the legions and camps are gathered under her hand, and they move according to her [the Torah’s] command, on her word they move, and on her word they rest, when she moves, they all move, because they are all united in her.99

The text makes a strong assertion regarding the cleaving of Israel to the divine through an interpretation of the letter bet in the word badonai in Deuteronomy 4:4. The people of Israel, as the inheritors of the Torah, cleave in God “really” by cleaving to the Torah, which in turn encompasses the emanated chain of entities above and below. Remaining faithful to the Torah, or the mandates of the rabbinic tradition, is described in texts like these as binding the Jewish self to the

1 1 8

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

divine. According to the internal logic of this discursive construct, the Torah, like the divine name, is coeval with God, and the people of Israel share in the divine being by “cleaving” to the Torah.

sacred form, divine power: jewish bodies in the image of god The capacity of the people of Israel to unite the sefirot through the performance of the commandments is in many texts attributed to the unique manner in which the Jewish individual reflects the image of God. As Matt notes, for many kabbalists from this period, by “enacting the mitzwot, the human microcosm links up with his divine archetype, in whose image he has been created.”100 That is to say, the power of Jewish action is a function of the correlation between the divine image and the Jewish self.101 The figuration of the divine in human form within the faculty of the imagination, according to Wolfson, “allowed the mystics to appropriate traditions regarding God’s manifest form without compromising the basic Jewish antinomy to idolatry based on the belief that God is formless and imageless. . . . This insight is essential if we wish to appreciate the anthropomorphic speculations and the visions of the medieval Jewish mystics.”102 By manifesting the immaterial form of God in their bodies, Jews are able, according to many kabbalistic texts, to exercise power upon the sefirot through the performance of the commandments, rectifying the Godhead and uniting the divine name. In one particularly rich passage from the Sefer ha-­Yihud we read: Know that, since we have the power in our hands to rectify the upper and lower entities, and we can sanctify the name of heaven above and fill that which is lacking, or, heaven forbid, we can bring about a flaw in the sanctities of the heavens, we should be mindful and careful, since we know how far-­reaching the power of our impurity or our purity is, and [we should] examine the path through which to cleave to the Tetragrammaton, as it is said, “and to him shall you cleave” (Deut. 10:20). When a man prepares his limbs below and purifies them, and [thereby] subsists in the proper intention of creation, then he adds power to the correlating power above, and he is one who cleaves to the Lord, may He be blessed, cleaving truly [mammash], and this is as it is written, “like the appearance of man upon it from above” (Ezek. 1:26), truly it is like the appearance of a man. Thus also it is written in Bereshit Rabbah,103 “ascending and descending upon it” (Gen. 28:12). What does it mean, “ascending and descending?” They ascend and gaze upon the upper image, truly, and they descend and gaze upon the lower image, truly. That is to say, the patriarchs truly purified their hearts and assembled their thoughts, and they established all of their limbs, each according to their own configuration, in order to become a perfect man. This is as it is said, “the

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

119

patriarchs are the chariot,”104 truly! Enquire and you shall find that limb grasps limb . . . consider that the [human] limb grasps that which is upon the divine image. . . . Now that we have explained to you that we possess the power to impact the ten sefirot though the arrangement of pure thoughts, and that all is according to the deeds that the Lord, may he be blessed, has given us, out of his great love for his beloved sons, men of his faith, members of his covenant—­the secret of his form, truly! From the configuration of the supernal chariot, which is the secret of ten, he gave us the secret of the Ten Commandments, upon which the ten utterances105 with which the world was created rely, which are in the pattern of the ten sefirot.106

The power to “rectify the upper and lower entities,” and cleaving to the divine name, requires an awareness of the correlation between the human and divine form. When one’s limbs are “purified” and one performs commandments with them, then, the author argues, they add power to the corresponding limbs of God.107 Such an individual cleaves to God “truly,” mamash. Augmenting the divine powers, cleaving to God, and recognizing the homology between the human body and the divine image are all aspects of the theurgic act. In an interpretation of Genesis 28:12, possibly drawing upon a passage from Bereshit Rabbah, the process by which the patriarchs become the divine chariot is described as one in which, like the angels ascending and descending upon the ladder in Jacob’s vision, they ascend above and behold the divine form and then descend below and recognize the divine image in the form of their own bodies.108 Knowledge of the sefirot and their associations with human limbs is thus a central feature of the theurgic act, such that “limb grasps limb.”109 That is to say, awareness of the contents of kabbalistic discourse and the effects of one’s actions in the world above is a valuable tool for optimizing the power of one’s purity and minimizing the deleterious effects of transgression. One must combine, according to this author, the “arrangement of pure thoughts” with the performance of “deed” or commandments that God has given to the Jewish people. Through esoteric knowledge of the divine form, or the supernal chariot, Jews are able to wield their power effectively to “sanctify the name of heaven above and fill that which is lacking.” The relationship between the secret of the divine form conveyed in kabbalistic theosophy and the commandments is underscored by this author by equating the Ten Commandments and the ten “utterances” with which the world was created with the ten sefirot. This point, possibly echoing a comment found in Sefer ha-­Bahir,110 is also made in a number of anonymous texts that state, “The revelation at Sinai was performed by means of the ten sefirot. The ten utterances were created by them, for each sefirah created [one].”111 We find the same point elsewhere in the Zohar; “Ten utterances in the act of creation, and ten utterances in the giving of the Torah—­what does this show? Since the world

1 2 0

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

was only created for the sake of the Torah, whenever the people of Israel occupy themselves with the Torah, the world is sustained.”112 The identification of the commandments and the sefirot reflects the idea that the mitzvoth and Torah themselves correlate with the limbs of the divine body.113 The people of Israel are therefore designated to perform the commandments because they alone reflect the divine form. The association of the halakhic practices with the divine limbs enables Jews to bring unity to the divine form and augment the power of God, or, as we read in the following passage from the Zohar, to transgress the divine body: It is taught that all of the commandments of the Torah are united in the body of the King, some of them in the head of the King, some of them in the torso, some of them if the hands of the King, and some of them in His legs, and there are none that leave the body of the King. Because of this, one who transgresses one of the commandments of the Torah is like one who has transgressed the body of the King, as it says “and they shall go out and gaze upon the bodies of those who have transgressed against Me [bi]” (Isa. 66:24). In Me [bi] really!114

The coherence of the divine form is at stake in the performance of the commandments since the mitzvoth themselves are constitutive of the limbs of God’s body.115 By relating the mandates of the law to the divine form, Jewish religious praxis takes on elevated consequences in that the performance of Jewish law becomes the mechanism for sustaining divine unity and adding to divine power. As Joseph of Hamadan puts it, “If a man performs a commandment with his eyes, he gives strength to Hokhmah and Binah, which are the eyes of the supernal form. If [he performs a commandment] with his arms, he gives power to Hesed and Gevurah, which are the arms of the supernal form.”116 Knowledge of the Torah and performance of the commandments takes on new meaning in the kabbalistic conception of Judaism, in that the Torah, like the Jewish self, bears the divine form and therefore serves as a means for binding the self to God. Joseph of Hamadan argues that “it is as though the Torah is the shadow of the Holy One, blessed be He. Happy is the portion of the one who knows how to intend limb to limb, and form to form in the holy chain [of emanation], blessed be His name. Since the Torah is His form, may He be blessed, He commanded us to study Torah in order to know the image of the supernal form.”117 By learning how to “intend limb to limb” from the Torah, one can augment supernal powers and fulfill the true object of the commandments. Knowledge of the Kabbalah and the structure of the sefirot is the key, according to Hamadan, for generating a theurgic outcome from the actions of

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

12 1

one’s limbs.118 This is, of course, exclusively the domain of the Jewish people, as he notes elsewhere: Every man from among the people of Israel who observes a commandment with the eye of the intellect in the brain, by understanding the Torah correctly with the eye of the intellect, he merits to give power, as it were, to supernal Keter, adding strength and power and resplendence to the supernal Keter, which is the brain of the pure and holy supernal form. Therefore our rabbis have said, limb grasps limb of the supernal form,119 and thus man has been made in the divine image, in order to grasp the supernal form. . . . Thus the Holy One, blessed be He, gave Israel 613 commandments, 248 of which are positive, corresponding to the 248 human limbs,120 which correspond to the . . . 248 kinds of light that come forth from the supernal form.121

The capacity to “grasp the supernal form” is a consequence, according to Hamadan, of the fact that Jews are “made in the divine image.” Therefore, when one properly understands the Torah and performs the commandments, according to the example given above, one enhances the power of Keter, since the brain corresponds to that sefirah. The correspondences between the world above and the world below, the divine and the earthly, are inscribed upon the bodies of Jewish men, enabling them to act upon God. The image of cleaving to the divine body is also employed as a strategy for underscoring the unique status of the people of Israel. As we read in the Zohar, cleaving to the body of God designates Israel as a righteous people with a portion in the world to come: Rabbi Hiyya opened and said, “for all of your people are righteous, they shall inherit the land forever” (Isa. 60:21). Israel is more meritorious than all of the idolatrous nations, for the Holy One, blessed be He, called them righteous, to bequeath to them an eternal inheritance in the world to come, to delight in that world, as it is written, “then you shall delight upon [’al] God” (Isa. 58:14). Why does it say this? Because they cleave to the body of the king, as it is written, “and you who cleave to the Lord your God, you are all living this day” (Deut. 4:4).122

The claim that Israel cleaves to the “body of the king” is an assertion of the election of Israel in a distinctly kabbalistic manner. To delight “upon” God is to cleave to the sefirot, the attributes of the divine form. Such an act, as we have seen elsewhere, brings unity to the Godhead, but as is emphasized here, cleaving to God sanctifies Israel and establishes their superiority over “idolatrous nations” who cannot relate to the divine in this way because they do not embody the divine form and they lack knowledge of the sefirot. In some passages in the Zohar, the

1 2 2

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

cleaving of the people of Israel to God reaffirms the shared resemblance between the Jews and the divine form. Consider the following comment at the culmination of the Sava de-­Mishpatim section: Rabbi Hiyya opened and said, “Place me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm” (Song 8:6). “Place me as a seal”—­when the Community of Israel cleaves to her husband, she says, “place me as a seal,” for it is the nature of a seal that once it cleaves to a certain place, the entire image remains there. Even though that seal might go here or there and not remain in that place, and even when it is removed from it, the entire image remains there, retained. So too, the Community of Israel said [to God], once I have cleaved to you, all of my image will be engraved in you, for even though I may go here or there, you will find my image in you and you will remember me. “And as a seal upon your arm,” as it is written “His left arm under my head, His right arm embracing me” (Song 8:6), here too my image will be engraved. Thus I will cleave to you forever and I will not depart from you.123

The cleaving of the “Community of Israel,” a reference both to the Shekhinah, the tenth sefirah, and the people of Israel, to God, is compared to the placing of a seal whereby an image is impressed. The use of the image of the seal to describe the close relationship or bond between the Jewish people and God implies that Jews serve as the royal sign of God in the world.124 Though they depart from God, they are still with him, representing him in the lower world just as he bears their image in the world above. The dialectic of identity and difference between God and the Jewish self is employed in this description of devekut to connote the exceptional status of the people of Israel. Because of the image they share with God, the Jewish people bring unity to the Godhead and sustenance to the world through their religious praxis. To those who criticize the halakhic system as overly literal, carnal, and obsolete, the kabbalists respond with an elaborate esoteric system according to which the practice of Judaism, by Jews, is divine power on earth.

performing divine power: kabbalistic interpretations of commandments The theurgic conception of the performance of Jewish law described above serves as the template for the production of one of the main areas of kabbalistic discourse in the Middle Ages—­ta’amei ha-­mitzvot,125 or explications of the meaning of the commandments. As Wolfson has observed, “The [fact that the] kabbalists went to such great lengths to emphasize the divine status of the mizwot and the necessity of their performance . . . [is] intelligible only if we understand well

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

12 3

the Christian environment which shaped the Jewish experience of the time.”126 Some kabbalists dedicate entire books to giving kabbalistic renderings for each of the commandments. In other cases, shorter groupings of kabbalistic interpretations of the law are offered as sodot or “secrets” of the commandments. Medieval Castilian kabbalists tended not to create elaborate legal arguments in favor of or against particular positions regarding methods for arriving at decisions pertaining the practice of the law nor did they tend to create innovative rituals on the basis of kabbalistic symbolism.127 In most cases, they treat the parameters of the performance of the law as a given. The kabbalistic hermeneutic of the law instead transforms the commandments from within,128 generating detailed and complex descriptions of the correlations of the law with the sefirot and the different kinds of influence the performance of the law can have on the divine realm.129 As Joseph of Hamadan puts it, “man was only created in order to recognize his creator and observe his commandments and to comprehend their purpose, and thereby he will know how to cleave to the Shekhinah and worship his creator with a perfect heart.”130 The Sabbath, as a central feature of Jewish life, is the subject of many kabbalistic renderings.131 While the particulars of the interpretations vary, one important tendency remains consistent—­the Sabbath is much more than a simple statutory requirement of the covenant: when Jews observe the Sabbath, they sustain the cosmos and secure their own place in the world to come. Joseph Gikatilla, for example, argues that the three statutory meals of the Sabbath have specific theurgical powers to align the sefirot with one another: “Know that when one takes pleasure on the Sabbath in the three meals, it is the secret of the unification of the sefirot. How so? The evening meal of the Sabbath draws the sefirah of Malkhut toward Yesod. The daytime meal is the meal of Tifferet, and the third meal is the meal of the binding of Tifferet in Binah in the secret of the supernal Keter; it is a time of favor.”132 The Sabbath rituals, according to this model, enable the upward movement of the sefirot toward their source. As we read in one anonymous text, “Every emanated thing returns to that from which it originated. Thus, on the Sabbath [souls] return to the Source of Life.”133 Elsewhere Gikatilla offers a more elaborate interpretation of the Sabbath, arguing that the observance of the Sabbath accords access to the “world to come,”134 or the sefirah of Binah. Know that the Sabbath is the gateway through which one enters the world to come, which is called the Great Sabbath [Shabbat ha-­Gadol]. If one does not observe the Sabbath in this world, he has no gateway through which to enter the world to come, because the Sabbath and the world to come are both called Sabbath. This is the secret of, “and so too my Sabbaths you shall observe” (Lev. 19:30). This [refers to] the secret of two types of unification; “My Sabbaths,” the secret of Malkhut below, and Yesod and Binah above, as though to say, if you

1 2 4

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

observe the Sabbath that I have given to you, you shall merit the Sabbath that is sequestered above, “no eye has seen, oh God, but you” (Isa. 64:3).135

Observing the Sabbath in the world below provides access to Binah, or the world to come, in the divine realm. Gikatilla emphasizes this point on the following page when he asserts, “Behold, I convey to you a key with regard to the Sabbath; this world, and the world to come. Know that Binah is the secret of the world to come, and by means of the Sabbath we enter into Binah and are bound to it.”136 The “two types of unification” secretly indicated by the word “My Sabbaths” in Leviticus 19:30 implies, according to Gikatilla, a dual reference to the final sefirah, Malkhut, and the connection of Yesod with Binah above. According to a fairly common way of numbering the sefirot, the seven sefirot below Binah are correlated with the days of the week, the seventh therefore corresponding with Malkhut. But, when counting the sefirot from below to above, as Gikatilla tends to do in his writings, the seven sefirot from Yesod to Binah constitute a supernal week, with these two sefirot correlating with one another as the “lower” and “upper” Sabbaths. As Gikatilla puts it in one version of his Sodot, “All who observe the Sabbath enter into Binah and are bound to her. . . . From Yesod, which is the lower Sabbath, one ascends to Binah, which is the upper Sabbath, and one who observes the Sabbath according to its statutes merits the world to come.”137 De Leon similarly states that one who properly observes the Sabbath “merits that his soul be bound to its root and never depart from it. Thus our Rabbis of blessed memory have said, ‘the Sabbath is an evocation of the world to come.’”138 By imagining the Sabbath in this way, the customs and halakhic requirements for observing the day remain unchanged, while the stakes of the task are radically elevated. Access to the afterlife is made contingent upon the proper observance of the Sabbath. Moreover, the return of the sefirot to their source in Binah is enabled through the observance of the Sabbath since receiving and blessing the lower sefirot is often designated as the role of Binah. In one anonymous text the author argues that Binah “is called Repentance [teshuvah] because all of the sefirot return [shavu] to it, and from it they arise and unite unto infinity.”139 Because of this relationship with these sefirot, Jewish observance of the Sabbath takes on a new ontology, serving as a source of divine sustenance with an important role in both the cosmic and divine orders. As Gikatilla notes, “The Sabbath is the root of the week, and by virtue of the Sabbath all six days of the week are blessed.”140 Joseph of Hamadan argues that, “The Sabbath is the center point from which the world was constructed, and it is the beginning of the root.”141 The special ontological status of the Sabbath is emphasized in an intriguing comment found in the anonymous Sefer ha-­Mafteah: God is unique in His world. Since He is singular, He created a singular work, and this is the Sabbath, for she is a singular and glorious queen possessing

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

12 5

six radii [kitzvot], and she is the inner point, like so.142 . . . By means of demonstration, every point possesses six radii, and so it has been explained in the Book of Euclid. The point sustains the radii, and the radii are the empty space for the point—­they are partnered in couples, but the Sabbath has no partner, therefore it is singular. . . . The point is impossible without the radii, and they are emanated from Binah, and therefore the Sabbath subsists in the power of Binah, and is called the perfected Sabbath.143

The singularity of the Sabbath is correlated in this passage with the fact that the seven sefirot emanated from Binah are broken down into three pairs, while the Shekhinah, as the seventh, has no partner. This elevated status of the Sabbath is “demonstrated” by the author through an obscure reference to a “Book of Euclid”144 to the effect that each point in space implies six radii, corresponding to the six sefirot between Shekhinah and Binah. The purpose, according to this text, for the emanation of the six sefirot below Binah is to create the “space” for the Sabbath to dwell. The Sabbath, as the “singular work” and the uncoupled day, is thus unique, reflecting the singularity and unity of God. A similar argument is advanced in the Sodot of Moses de Leon, where he provides an extensive kabbalistic interpretation of the meaning of the Sabbath. Like the anonymous author of Sefer ha-­Mafteah, de Leon underscores the correlation between God and the Sabbath. Know and believe that the Sabbath is the subtle entity emanated from the power of the Lord, may He be blessed, and it is the innermost, and the supernal light that cleaves to it is the most primordial of all created things; it is impossible to contemplate its being. Since He alone, may He be blessed, is singular, He emanated forth the sefirah that is called Sabbath, and when it was emanated, six [other] sefirot, united together, came to be from the truth of its being. Demonstration of this kabbalistic matter from nature [can be inferred] since there is no point without a seventh, as it is said, “six wings for each one” (Isa. 6:2). Since the Sabbath is first, being called “first” in accordance with its essence, it is accompanied by six radii [kitzvot] which are above, below, and the four directions . . . and since He, may He be blessed, emanated a singular and perfected sefirah, and adorned it with a perfected adornment, He fashioned it in the image of a pool that flows to all of the furrows of the garden. Therefore it is said, “And the Lord blessed the seventh day” (Gen. 2:3), since, when the central line is blessed, then the six radii are blessed with it, as branches receive sustenance from the root.145

As the singular point that draws from the six sefirot above it, the Sabbath is a “subtle entity” which serves as a site for the cleaving of “supernal light” that is, according to de Leon, “the most primordial of all created things.” According to

1 2 6

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

this conception of the Sabbath, the seventh day is understood to refer to an ineffable aspect of the divine, such that “it is impossible to contemplate its being.” De Leon then describes the unique position of the Sabbath in relation to the “radii” above it in terms bearing a strong similarity to Sefer ha-­Mafteah. However, he continues with a more precise articulation of the theurgic capacity of the Sabbath day. Citing Genesis 2:3, de Leon argues that the blessing of the Sabbath implies the blessing of all of the sefirot below Binah, thereby bringing sustenance into the sefirot, which in turn enables the Sabbath, which functions like a pool or cistern, to water the “furrows” of the garden.146 The Sabbath is thus transformed into a central aspect of the Godhead, and the observance of the laws of the Sabbath becomes a method of bringing divine blessing into the world. Elliot Ginsburg has noted that, for the medieval kabbalists, Sabbath observance “enables the devotee to participate fully in the ongoing mysteries suffusing heaven and earth.”147 As de Leon puts it elsewhere in the same text, the Sabbath receives overflow from the supernal point, and from there all matters flow forth according to their secret, to the end of thought, which is the final point, secret of the holy covenant. [The Sabbath] subsists amongst its fellows, in the secret of the central point within the hollow space of a circle—­it is the initiation of the structure, according to the secret of the circle, for the circle cannot rotate except by means of a central point in the hollow of the circle, and by means of that point everything is constructed according to its design . . . from there the branches spread forth below to all sides, and [the Sabbath] is the point that is called, “the first hallah of the world,” which is [also] called a holy offering to the Lord, as it is said, “the first yield of your baking, you shall set aside a loaf as a gift” (Num. 15:20).148

Just as the hallah or first yield of dough is to be set aside as a special gift offering, the Sabbath, according to de Leon, is a day that is singled out for God, corresponding to the center point in the lower seven sefirot. In several places in rabbinic literature Adam is referred to as “the hallah of the world,”149 since he is the first yield of the divine creative act of fashioning man from the earth. As the sign or “secret of the holy covenant” in this world, the Sabbath rest corresponds to the aspect of the divine that is set aside as a unique “offering,” and which, like the center point of a wheel, anchors the other six sefirot and enables them to function. It is from this point, according to de Leon, that the “branches spread forth to all sides,” enabling the flow from the “supernal point,” or Hokhmah, down to Yesod and Malkhut. Sabbath observance and the consumption of hallah bread at the Sabbath meals thus reflects the secret of a supernal pattern, enabling the flow of blessing into the world by virtue of its correlation with the sefirotic structure known only to the kabbalists.

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

12 7

Another example of a theurgical rendering of a halakhic precept is the meaning attributed to the practice of the pidyon ha-­ben, or redemption of the firstborn sons on the thirty-­first day of life. The ritual, in which the father makes a symbolic payment of silver to a kohen, or priest, in order to obviate the requirement to dedicate the firstborn son to service in the Temple, stems from the divine declaration in Exodus 13:2 in which, immediately after the tenth plague, God states, “Consecrate to me every firstborn; man and beast, the first issue of every womb among the Israelites is Mine.” The text goes on to state that “you must redeem every firstborn male among your children” (Ex. 13:13)150 in commemoration of slaying of the firstborn Egyptian males. In an anonymous commentary on the sefirot the author comments in the discussion of the second sefirah, Hokhmah, that: the Torah is called “first born” as our Rabbis have said, “the Torah preceded the world by two thousand years,”151 and thus it is the first born among all things that were created. Therefore, the Torah commands, “every first born you shall redeem.”152 This is an allusion to a supernal matter. It is to teach that Wisdom [Hokhmah] is emanated from the “priest” which is Keter. In honor of the supernal pattern, you shall redeem the terrestrial [first born] from the priest. If you perform this commandment, blessing and overflow will descend upon the “first born,” and from there to the entire world.153

The performance of the ritual redemption of the firstborn is, according to this passage, more than a mere imitation or symbolic representation of the structure of the Godhead. The enactment of this commandment, according to the text, literally causes blessing to flow into the “firstborn” of the sefirot, a reference to Hokhmah, from Keter, the “priest” of the Godhead. This act will in turn bring divine energy “to the entire world.” Again we see that the implications of Jewish ritual observance are augmented in the kabbalistic schema with theurgical power, aligning sefirot with one another in order to sustain the cosmos. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid provides an interesting commentary on the commandment to honor one’s parents (Ex. 20:12), and the commandment known as shiluah ha-­ken, prohibiting the taking of eggs or chicks from a birds nest without first sending away the mother (Deut. 22:6–­7). He begins by citing the rabbinic statement that “the Holy One, blessed be He, did not reveal the reward for the commandments except for two; the most stringent and the most lenient,”154 the most stringent being the commandment to honor one’s father and mother, and the most lenient referring to shiluah ha-­ken. Despite this difference, both commandments are specifically stated in the Torah to have the same reward, namely, the lengthening of one’s life. According to he-­Hasid, honoring one’s father and mother alludes to “the supernal father, the supernal Keter, and the

1 2 8

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

mother, who is ‘the joyous mother of children’ (Ps. 113:9), the mother below. Thus, all of the commandments depend upon the ‘mother’ and ‘father.’ . . . One who honors [his] father and mother below, merits ‘the world that is entirely lengthened.’”155 With regard to shiluah ha-­ken, he-­Hasid notes that “the nest alludes to the Queen [matronita] who is called the nest of the supernal birds, which are the holy souls.”156 Thus, kabbalistically understood, honoring one’s parents is the “stringent” commandment since it refers to the two highest sefirot, while shiluah ha-­ken is the most “lenient” commandment since it refers to the lowest sefirah, the Queen or Shekhinah. He-­Hasid concludes that the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed the reward of these two commandments, which are the beginning and end, to the people of Israel in order to make known to them that these two commandments carry the same reward; that which is in one is in the other, since all of the supernal entities are envisioned by means of her [the Shekhinah]. Anyone who does not think like this has no share in the God of Israel and His Torah, and it would have been better for him had he never been created, and he is called “a whisperer who separates friends” (Prov. 16:28). Understand this well, a hint to the wise.157

While the most stringent commandment serves as a “beginning” by uniting Keter with Binah, and the other is the “end,” in that it unites Shekhinah with the sefirot above it, they carry the same reward since both are equally necessary for establishing the unity of the Godhead. The importance of the various commandments, according to this view, cannot be assessed on the basis of their apparent legal weight. Every commandment, according to he-­Hasid, from the most stringent to the most lenient, carries secret theurgic power, and only by performing all of the commandments can their true aim be attained, namely, the proper alignment of the sefirot. He-­Hasid goes so far as to argue that one who does not view the commandments in this manner “has no share in the God of Israel and his Torah,” meaning that one cannot really observe the commandments at all if they are ignorant of Kabbalah and lack an appreciation of the theurgic function of the commandments in the divine realm. The performance of the commandments can also serve as a method for harnessing divine power in order to protect oneself from evil forces. In a comment on the meaning of the commandment to affix a mezuzah, a box containing a small parchment scroll inscribed with Deuteronomy 6:4–­9 and 11:13–­21, to the doorposts of one’s home, Joseph Gikatilla argues that God, may He be blessed, out of His great love for Israel, gave them these two passages, which are the “Hear”158 and “If you obey,”159 and the secret of the two sefirot called Gedulah and Gevurah—­and surrounding Gedulah and Gevurah are the external powers. In order to protect Israel from the external

J ewish B odies and Divine P ower 

129

powers that surround Gedulah and Gevurah, which are called the mezuzot of the supernal palace, He commanded Israel to place a mezuzah on the doorways of their houses so that the external powers will have no permission to enter the houses of Israel, and so that they will not harm them.160

The mezuzah correlates with the fourth and fifth sefirot, which themselves, according to Gikatilla, serve to protect the “divine palace” from “external forces” that could have a damaging influence. Therefore, when Jews fulfill the commandment to place a mezuzah on the doorways of their homes, they channel the power of the sefirot in a manner that has a talismanic effect that is similar, according to Gikatilla, to the protective power of the blood of the paschal lamb that was placed on the doorposts of the Israelite homes on the night of the tenth plague in Egypt.161 Gikatilla adds that “When one departs from the doorway of one’s home, those holy and pure hosts that cleave to the two passages . . . all of them accompany the man who has mezuzot on the doorways of his house. When he departs from the doorway of his home, they protect him from the damaging spirits and all of the external forces of impurity until he returns to his home.”162 The protective forces, or the “holy and pure hosts” that accompany the fourth and fifth sefirot, become the constant companions, according to Gikatilla, of one who observes the commandment of the mezuzah. By accessing the holy powers of the sefirot through the theurgic efficacy of the law, Jews are protected from evil forces even when the venture out into profane territory. Such a claim is a strong articulation of the capacity of halakha to endow Jews with divine power, which constitutes a forceful discursive assertion of the legitimacy and relevance of Jewish ritual observance.

chapter 5

I

PRAYER ABOVE AND BELOW kabbalistic constructions of the power of jewish worship Of the many facets of Jewish law, the requirements of prayer are among the most prominent in terms of their impact on daily experience. Halakha requires that men pray three times per day. Where possible, men are to conduct their prayers in a minyan, or quorum of ten males at least thirteen years of age. As a communal ritual, prayer in the Middle Ages involved a shared public manifestation of Jewish identity. As they gathered for the required shaharit (morning), minha (afternoon), and ma’ariv (evening) services, Jewish men in medieval Iberia, by force of Jewish legal requirement, openly performed their commitment to the rabbinic tradition and, by implication, professed their conviction that God in some form responds to the requests invoked in traditional liturgy. But, as we have already seen in previous chapters, what it means for Jewish legal practices to have power and relevance in a context in which Jews are anxious regarding historical decline and political insecurity was a pressing question that informed the manner in which kabbalists articulated their particular way of understanding the power of Jewish law. Given that the interpretation of prayer was a significant interest, this issue will be explored in some detail in this chapter. The reimagining of rabbinic Jewish life comes prominently to the fore in kabbalistic discussions of the meaning of prayer. The Jew who prays serves, in the discursive constructions of the texts explored below, as a theurgical priest, infusing divine blessing and efflux into the world by bringing unity to the sefirotic order. As Moses de Leon puts it, “when a man endeavors below to arrange his worship and perform the commandments, [he] sustains the worlds and stands them in their order.”1 In the words of Joseph of Hamadan, “Since the prayers of the people of Israel are the root of the world and the sustenance for all worlds, the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us to pray to Him in order to make known to the entire world that He, may He be blessed, created everything and bears everything and that everything

130

Pr ayer Ab ove a nd Bel ow

13 1

draws from Him. . . . By virtue of the merit of the prayers of Israel, blessing and life descend to the world.”2 According to Hamadan, prayer enables Jews to “make known to the entire world” that God sustains the cosmos. Implicit in this comment is an awareness of the public function of the Jewish liturgical act. At the same time, Hamadan states that the prayers of Israel cause “blessing and life” to enter the world from God, underscoring the primacy of Jewish agency over other peoples. Joseph Gikatilla makes a similar argument regarding the impact of Jewish prayer rituals on the Godhead and the subsequent benefit such actions have for the material realm: Consider and know how deep the power of prayer is, and from which place it begins and to which it emanates forth as a chain. By means of prayer, properly performed, all of the sefirot are united, and the overflow pours forth from above to below, and the upper and lower entities are blessed by he who prays. His prayer is received, and he is beloved above and adored below. He obtains what he needs, and all of the desires of his heart are brought about, since he is beloved more than all of the sefirot. Of such a man it is written, “The Lord is near to all who call Him, to all who call Him with sincerity” (Ps. 145:18), and as it is said, “Then, when you call, God will answer” (Isa. 58:9), and as it is said, “may He grant you according to the desire of your heart, and fulfill your every plan” (Ps. 20:5).3

The Jewish man who prays, according to Gikatilla, not only unites the sefirot and brings blessing into the world, but he also becomes more beloved than even the sefirot themselves. For such an individual, all of his wishes and needs are fulfilled by God. The implications for Jewish agency in this passage are clear—­despite the difficulties of exile and the apparent superiority of gentile power, pious Jews who properly observe the halakhic requirements of prayer wield divine power and curry divine favor. As Gikatilla notes, one must be aware of “how deep the power of prayer is” and bear in mind “from which place it begins” as it emanates forth. Prayer draws from the furthest reaches of the divine,4 and Jews who practice it properly manifest unmatched spiritual and sacred power. In this connection David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid states in his commentary on the siddur that knowledge of the secret meaning of Jewish liturgy is essential for the efficacy of prayer. “One must contemplate [the meaning] of one’s prayer in order to understand it and know what he is saying, so that he will understand the secret of prayer, and to which aspect he alludes among the hidden matters. Then, his prayer will be received before the Holy One, blessed be He, as it is written, ‘for he knows My name, when he calls on Me, I will answer him’ (Ps. 91:14–­15). For if he knows My great name and its secrets, if he calls me, I will answer him, and if not, I will not answer him.”5 Knowledge of Kabbalah, according to he-­Hasid,

132 

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

is necessary for the efficacy of prayer since it is only by means of the knowledge of the “secret” of prayer and the “hidden matters,” or sefirotic allusions concealed within the liturgy, that one’s prayers can be answered. Conversely, ignorance of Kabbalah causes one’s prayers to be invalidated. According to he-­Hasid, if the leader of the prayers does not comprehend the esoteric meaning of his words, “and he does not grasp the root of the prayer and its secret and hidden allusion, and he does not understand that which goes forth from his mouth . . . woe to the community who relies upon him.” Because the leader of the prayers is not aware of the kabbalistic import of his words, he-­Hasid warns that such an individual causes the community’s prayers “to be annulled, and they do not ascend to their proper place.”6 Sharing the secret meaning of prayer is thus an urgent necessity, according to he-­Hasid, since ignorance of these matters carries grave consequences.

fire in their hearts: theurgy of prayer and temple worship In the Babylonian Talmud, Berachot 26b, the rabbis debate the origin of the morning, afternoon, and evening prayers. Some of the rabbis relate the tradition that the daily prayers were instituted by the practices of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob mentioned in Genesis 19:27, 24:63, and 28:11. Others note the opinion that the daily prayer services were instituted to correspond to the daily sacrifices, while still others say that both teachings are correct. However, after the destruction of the Temple it is generally agreed that prayer serves in place of the sacrifices,7 as it says in b. Berachot 26a, “prayer takes the place of sacrifice.”8 This opinion is adopted in the Zohar: “prayer now takes the place of sacrifice, and man must offer praises to his Master, as is appropriate.”9 In many cases, elements of Temple worship, such as animal sacrifice and incense offerings, are incorporated into kabbalistic discussions of prayer, rendering it as a form of ritual praxis wherein the self is “offered up” to God in order to maintain divine unity and sustain the cosmic order. The understanding of prayer to be analyzed below was formulated in the context of broader debates regarding the purpose of sacrifice and prayer.10 I will mention here a few of the main points of this debate, in particular focusing on the controversy surrounding Maimonides’s opinion on the nature of sacrifice as expressed in the Guide of the Perplexed. In a comment that went on to serve as one of the points at issue in the debate over Maimonides and the place of the philosophical speculation in Judaism,11 he asserts that the sacrifices are essentially a vestige of idolatrous practices that God allowed the Israelites to continue as a concession. At the time of the revelation on Mount Sinai, the Israelites were still very attached to such forms of worship, and thus, God, as a “gracious ruse,” did not prohibit animal sacrifice when he gave the Torah at Sinai. Instead, as Maimonides puts it,

Pr ayer Ab ove a nd Bel ow

13 3

He, may He be exalted, suffered the above-­mentioned kinds of worship to remain, but transferred them from created or imaginary and unreal things to His own name, may He be exalted, commanding us to practice them with regard to Him. . . . Through this divine ruse it came about that the memory of idolatry was effaced and that the grandest and true foundation of our belief—­namely, the existence and oneness of the deity—­was firmly established, while at the same time the souls had no feeling of repugnance and were not repelled because of the abolition of modes of worship to which they were accustomed and than which no other mode of worship was known at that time.12

Maimonides’s conception of the sacrifices is consistent with his overall understanding of the commandments as a means for instilling correct opinions regarding philosophical matters, habituating people to proper moral conduct or serving the greater political good of society. As he puts it, “all [of the commandments] are bound up with three things: opinions, moral qualities, and political civil actions.”13 Many took great offence to this position, the kabbalists among them.14 Ironically, Thomas Aquinas adopted Maimonides’s approach to the meaning of the sacrifices in his discussion of the meaning of the “superseded” Mosaic law.15 In the debate that ensued, the question of seeking after the reasons for the commandments became prominent, and the kabbalists developed their own ideas about the nature of sacrifice.16 By embracing the idea of animal sacrifice as a ritual that, despite its suspension due to the destruction of the Temple, serves as a model for articulating Jewish theurgical power and mystical encounter, kabbalists may also have been constructing an alternative to the negative depiction of this form of worship in Christian discourse. In some early thirteenth-­century Bible moralise, Sara Lipton notes the marked contrast in the depictions of Christian sacrament and Jewish animal sacrifice, wherein “the Christian sacrament appears elevated, open, and clean,” as opposed to “the Jewish ritual [which] appears hunched, closed, and bloody.”17 According to kabbalistic tradition going back to the Bahir, sacrifices or korbanot have the theurgic power to draw the sefirot to each other, and collectively to their source in ein sof.18 As the Bahir puts it, “Why is [sacrifice] called korban? Because it draws [mekarev] the holy powers near together.” This view is evocative of the rabbinic opinion expressed in b. Ta’anit 27b attributed to R. Jacob bar Aha that “in the absence of the sacrifices [ma’amadot], neither heaven nor earth could continue to exist.”19 Azriel of Gerona perhaps puts the matter most explicitly when he states that one who brings a sacrifice “brings the lower will close to the upper will by means of the offering. This is the meaning of ‘the soul that brings an offering . . . (Lev. 2:1).’ Scripture regards that soul as if it had offered itself.”20 Joseph of Hamadan, commenting on the passage in b. Berachot 15a that one who

13 4

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

wears tefillin or phylacteries is equivalent to one who has built an altar and offered a sacrifice, argues that “when a man is pure, he is an altar, and the tefillin are the sacrifice [korban] since they draw him close [makrivin] to the worship of the Creator, may He be blessed, and he is a holy site when the Shekhinah dwells there, and therefore he is called a sacrifice.”21 In these examples, sacrifice, self-­sacrifice, and prayer converge.22 In a more overtly theurigcal articulation of this idea, Hamadan describes the sacrificial offerings in the following way: “The sacrifice [korban] draws together [mekarev] and binds the holy and pure chain of emanation, and the overflow moves through the holy and pure channels, from attribute to attribute, and it is the secret of the spine of the supernal form, until the overflow reaches the attribute of the Righteous One, which pours forth the good oil onto the Bride, the Community of Israel, and unites the Bridegroom and the Bride, and the chain is bound and made one.”23 The function of the sacrifices, which are equivalent to the daily prayer services, is both to draw one’s soul near to the Godhead, as well as to cause the sefirot composing the divine form to bind to one another and pour forth blessing into the world.24 According to David ben Yehudah he-­Hasid, when the priest in the Temple in Jerusalem would offer sacrifices, “everything grasps and is bound this in that, and everything is blessed as one; by means of the priest, the supernal and lower entities are blessed.”25 Elsewhere he makes a similar argument, stating that “when [the people of Israel] bring sacrifices and cause the divine attributes to cleave to one another, then, the priests grant sovereignty to the Community of Israel [kenesset yisrael], who is the Queen [matronita], and they bring her in before the King, Lord of Hosts. Then, she is called Queen [malka] and ruler, because all of the goodness of the worlds is in her hands.”26 By drawing the sefirot together through the offering of sacrifices, the priests cause the Shekhinah, the final sefirah, to be endowed with “goodness” or efflux from above. This act in fact transforms the Shekhinah from matronita to malka, an empowered Queen with the capacity to nourish the lower world by supplying it with the divine overflow that she receives from the King. Such theurgic transvaluation of sacrifice is as also a feature of zoharic discussions of sacrifice and prayer. As we read in one passage, “through the mystery of the sacrificial offering, as it ascends, all [of the sefirot] are bound together and illuminate one another. Then they all engage in ascent, and thought is crowned in ein sof.”27 Joseph Gikatilla describes a similar relationship between the sacrificial rituals of the Temple and the rabbinically instituted daily prayer services: “Prayers occupy the place of the sacrifices. You are already aware that the secret of the sacrifices is the secret of the drawing near of the sefirot [to one another] and the order of the gradations and the rectification of the channels. Therefore, they are called sacrifices [korbanot], from the word ‘drawing near’ [kiruv]. Thus, prayers occupy the place of the sacrifices, though the sacrifices draw the

Pr ayer Ab ove a nd Bel ow

135

gradations near to one another by means of action, and prayer by means of speech.”28 Prayer, according to this conception, serves in place of the sacrifices in the Temple because both are designed to accomplish the theurgic goal of uniting the sefirot. By attributing an equivalent degree of power to liturgical practice as Temple worship, the observance of prayer rituals by Jews is elevated in the kabbalistic perspective to the point that, despite the destruction of the Temple, there need not be a diminution of Jewish power. The cosmic and divine implications of the “action” of Temple sacrifice can be accomplished, according to Gikatilla, through the “speech” of Jews during prayer. Such a doctrine attenuates the negative implications of exile, insofar as Jews retain the same theurgic role by different means. As noted in the previous chapter, numerous anonymous manuscripts describe the performance of the commandments and the contemplation of the divine name as the “lesser” sanctuary that Jews carry with them in exile. Citing the rabbinic tradition that “there has not been a single day without evil decrees since the day the Temple was destroyed,”29 these texts argue that by cleaving to the ten sefirot,30 Jews can repair at least some of the damage to the Godhead caused by the destruction of the Temple. In some versions of this passage, the “pious men” who know how to properly contemplate the divine name are described as those who take hold of the fire in the chamber that burns in their hearts, through the pure thought, they unite all of the sefirot and bind this to that, until they draw forth from the flame that has no end to its exaltedness, and thus the order is perfected by means of Israel. This is the secret that all of Israel cleave to the name, may He be blessed. Through the cleaving of thought in the ten sefirot, then, “you who cleave [the Lord your God, you are all living this day]” (Deut. 4:4). This is the secret of the unification [of the Shema prayer] evening and morning.31

The fires of the Temple sacrifices continue to burn, according to this passage, through the contemplative and liturgical practices observed by Jews in the exile. The secret of the recitation of the Shema morning and evening, “Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4), is that, like the sacrifices, the performance of this ritual binds Israel to God and unites the sefirot, bringing blessing into the world. Other “fires” from the Temple ritual are also recast in a kabbalistic light. The configuration of the menorah, the seven-­branched candelabra that stood in the Temple, is regarded in one anonymous text as a representation of the Godhead, secretly alluding to the structure and function of the ten sefirot. The author associates the seven lower sefirot with the seven branches of the menorah, while the oil represents the three upper sefirot. The first three sefirot “are the soul of

13 6 

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

the seven [lower sefirot]; the seven branches of the menorah allude to the seven [lower] sefirot, and the oil and light alludes to the first three sefirot.”32 The light that shone in the Temple is transfigured in this text as the illumination that derives from Keter, Hokhmah, and Binah. By attributing a theosophic meaning to the accoutrements of the Temple, kabbalists construct a strategy for coping with the destruction of Jerusalem and exile of the Jewish people. Prayer comes to serve as an alternative means of attaining access to the divine world. The burning of the incense offering is another fire ritual from the Temple that is reinterpreted by kabbalists as a theurgic rite analogous to prayer. In the following passage from the Zohar we find a description of the incense offering as a ritual that unites the sefirot into a contiguous unity: “These ten names by which the Holy One, blessed be He, is called, are connected to one another in a perfect unity. And they are holy crowns of the King by which He is known, and they are His name, and He is they. And when they are all connected as one on the scent of the incense, then the incense [ketoret] is called the bond [kishura] that binds as one. Meritorious is the lot of the righteous who know the paths of the Torah and know how to declare the Glory of their Master. Of them it is written, ‘and they shall come and see my glory’ (Isaiah 66:18).”33 As Tishby points out, the Zohar makes a play on the Hebrew word for incense, ketoret, and the Aramaic word “to bind,” ketar.34 Thus, the incense offering becomes the human action by means of which the sefirot are bound with one another in a single unity. The one who knows the “paths of the Torah” or the kabbalistic secrets, knows how to “declare the Glory of his Master,” equated here with the offering of the incense. That is to say, Jews who are fortunate to be privy to kabbalistic secrets are able to unite the ten aspects of the divine as one. This point is made more clearly in the following passage concerning the incense offering and its relationship to other forms of worship. The incense offering is beloved, for it is dear and beloved before the Holy One, blessed be He, more than all [other] forms of service and worship in the world. And even though prayer is the highest form of all, the offering of the incense is dear and precious before the Holy One, blessed be He. Come and see. What is the difference between prayer and the offering of the incense? Prayer has been established in place of the sacrifices that Israel used to offer, and of all of the sacrifices that Israel performed, none of these are valued as much as the incense offering. And moreover, what is the difference between the two? Prayer is the adornment to adorn that which is necessary. Incense does more, adorning and binding bonds, and making more light than all. Why is this? For it removes filth and it purifies the mishkan, and everything shines and is adorned and is bound as one. For this reason we must place the offering of the incense before prayer each

Pr ayer Ab ove a nd Bel ow

13 7

and every day to remove filth from the world, for it is the adornment of all, in the manner of that precious sacrifice in which the Holy One, blessed be He, is aroused. . . . Once everything is bound in this bond, all is crowned in the mystery of ein sof, and the mystery of the name shines and is crowned from every direction, and all of the worlds delight, and the lights shine, and sustenance and blessings are found in all of the worlds, all through the mystery of incense.35

Reflecting the tradition whereby the ingredients for the ketoret, or incense, that was offered in the Temple, is recited twice each day,36 this zoharic text constructs an account of the incense ritual that finds meaning in its placement at the initiation of the main prayer service. The purpose of the incense offering, according to this passage, is to provide atonement for sins and to remove impurities from the Tabernacle, which functions here as a symbol for Malkhut. The recitation of the ketoret offering is a preliminary measure that allows the songs and praises of prayer to ascend up to the heights of the Godhead. The text goes so far as to describe this reading of the incense recipe as a daily ritual whereby one removes “filth from the world,” arouses the Holy One, blessed be He, and causes the sefirot to be “bound” and “crowned in the mystery of ein sof.” The incense offering, described as the most beloved of all of the sacrifices, in some important respects is regarded by the zoharic authorship as continuing uninterrupted, despite the destruction of the physical Temple in Jerusalem, since the recitation of the incense offering in Jewish liturgy achieves the same end. By dint of this act, Jews bind the sefirot together and draw them to ein sof, while removing impurity from the world so that, during the prayers that follow, divine efflux can descend.

mysteries of prayer With this connection between Temple worship and prayer in mind, we can shift our focus to comments on the power of liturgical prayer. Like the sacrificial rituals, prayer affords Jews access to divine power with which they are able to rectify the upper and lower worlds despite the conditions of exile. In this view, Jewish prayers emphatically do not go unanswered, though the outcomes of these rituals, the kabbalists would argue, are not easily discernable for one who is not well versed in Jewish esoteric lore. Jewish prayers ascend above to the heights of the Godhead, influencing the divine realm and sustaining the world. In one typical representation of this idea, the Zohar states, “The prayer of man is a labor of the spirit, and it subsists in the supernal mysteries, and people do not know that the prayer of man punctures auras, punctures firmaments, opens gates and ascends above.”37 Or as Joseph Gikatilla puts it, during prayer “it is appropriate [for a man] to ascend his intention above, above,

13 8

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

within the World to Come [that is, Binah] up to Keter, which is eheyeh, which is ein sof.”38 As Gikatilla puts the matter, prayer rises from sefirah to sefirah until it arrives at desire [ratzon], which cleaves in Keter . . . and when the prayer arrives at the place of desire, all of the gates above and below are opened before him, and there is no impediment or obstacle to his entreaty, for he is in the world of mercy . . . and he is able to perform signs and wonders, because it is as though at that moment the world was created . . . and thus you can understand the secret of the prayer of the righteous who prayed and derived all of their needs by means of miracles and wonders, because they entered into the world of mercy in their prayer, which is the place from which the world is renewed.39

Prayer is efficacious when it penetrates above to the sefirah of Keter, the realm of “desire” and divine mercy. Moreover, signs and miracles can be performed, according to Gikatilla, by one whose prayers ascend to this point, since “it is as though at that moment the world was created.” By returning to the primordial origin of being, prayer can literally reorient reality by drawing from the primordial font of divine power. Such descriptions of the efficacy and power of prayer are reminiscent of the Zohar’s description of the early stages of creation and the movement from the concealment of ein sof to the manifestation of the supernal point. In a zoharic passage cited in the chapter 2, the movement from divine infinity to the emanation of the Godhead is described in the following way: “Concealed with all concealment of the secret of ein sof, His light broke and did not break through its aura. It was not known at all until, from within the force of its bursting through, there shone forth a single concealed supernal point.”40 In prayer, this process happens in reverse, in that prayer penetrates into the Godhead, following in reverse the course of the light of ein sof into the world. The ascent to ein sof as the reverse process of creation is particularly clear in the following passage: “Come and see. Everything transpires in the mystery of faith, to be sustained this in that, so that one who must, ascends to ein sof. Rabbi Shimon said, I raise my hands above in prayer,41 for when desire enters above, above, it subsists on that desire that is not known, and is not grasped at all, ever; the most concealed head above. And that head brings forth that which it brings forth, and it is not known, and it enlightens what it enlightens, all in concealment.”42 By means of prayer, Jews are able to bring everything up to its source in ein sof. Through the agency of human desire or intention, re’uta,43 that ascends, we are told that everything subsists by means of that “desire that is not known,” a reference to Keter/ein sof. The statement that the desire that is not known is also the “most concealed head above” is very reminiscent of the passage from the Idra Zuta, that the first of the three heads of the

Pr ayer Ab ove a nd Bel ow

13 9

Ancient of Days is the “concealed of all concealed, the head of all heads, the head that is not a head.”44 By raising everything to ein sof by means of human desire during prayer and by the raising of the hands above, the entities in the world above are illuminated. The liturgical elevation of the hands by the priests during prayer, and the tradition of separating the fingers into three groupings, was, as Irven Resnick has shown,45 a practice that Petrus Alfonsi described as a clear allusion to the doctrine of the Trinity in rabbinic ritual. Possibly in response to such claims, kabbalists represent the elevation of the hands as an act that unites of the ten sefirot by means of the ten fingers. According to the anonymous Sefer ha-­Mafteah, “When the high priest would raise his hands upward, he would concentrate on the world of mercy. In truth, the priest would direct his intention to all ten of the sefirot, to draw overflow upon the sefirot.”46 In a passage from the Zohar, the effects of prayer on the self, the cosmos, and the Godhead are presented as four successive adornments: “Prayer is the adornment of adornments that are adorned as one, and they are four. The first adornment is the adornment of oneself to be perfected. The second adornment is the adornment of this world. The third adornment is the adornment of the world above with all of its heavenly hosts. The fourth adornment is the holy name, in the mystery of the holy chariots, and in the mystery of all the worlds above and below.”47 Prayer as a process of “adornment,” also understood as perfection or completion, starts with the self and continues through the world and the Godhead. Scholem has noted in connection to this passage that the one who prays “not only acknowledges the greatness of Creation and the Creator; he also puts order in Creation and brings about something which is necessary to its perfect unity and which without his act would remain latent.”48 As was mentioned in chapter 3, the “completed self” is the ultimate union of the soul with ein sof. In this passage, prayer is geared toward such self-­completion, which in turn causes the perfection of the sefirot and reinforces the unity of above and below. The enactment of the traditional rites of Jewish worship thus carries far-­reaching implications; prayer confers perfection while completing the divine act of creation and unifying the sefirot.

dying for god: images of ecstatic death In a number of discussions of prayer, worship is described as a ritualized form of religious practice designed to enable devekut, or cleaving to God, in a manner that involves giving up one’s soul in a temporary moment of death.49 The following passage from the Zohar follows the declaration that beyond the realm of the heavens “there is no wise one who can know or cleave with his wisdom at all, except for one slight gleam.” This would seem to preclude the possibility of any sort of meaningful devekut with this very recondite aspect of the divine being. However, the text continues:

1 40

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

Meritorious is the lot of one who has entered and exited,50 and knows how to gaze into the mysteries of his Master and to cleave to Him. With these mysteries a man can cleave to his Master and know the entirety of Wisdom in the upper mystery. When he worships his Master in prayer and desire and intention of the heart, his desire cleaves like a flame to a coal, to unite the lower firmaments of the side of holiness, to crown them in one lower name, and from there and beyond to unite the upper, inner firmaments so that everything will be one in that supernal firmament presiding over them. While his mouth and lips whisper, his heart intends and his desire ascends above, above, to unite everything in the mystery of mysteries, for there come to rest all desires and thoughts in the mystery that exists in ein sof. One should concentrate upon this in each and every prayer, each and every day, crowning all of one’s days in the mystery of the supernal days by means of one’s prayer. At night, one should focus one’s intention on passing from this world and his soul leaving him, returning it to the master of all. Each night a mystery of mysteries is made known to the wise of heart.51

Revisiting the familiar image from Sefer Yetzirah of the flame and the coal,52 the intentions and desires of prayer causes a state of union of the lower firmaments with the upper firmaments—that is, between the lower and upper sefirot—­ through the cleaving of the soul to its Master. This union of the lower and upper firmaments causes all of the sefirot to be bound in the “supernal firmament,” referring to Binah. Through this act of contemplation that occurs during prayer, everything ascends to the “mystery of mysteries,” the furthest reaches of the divine infinity, the place where thoughts and desires properly belong in the mystery of ein sof. The typology of prayer presented in this passage incorporates devekut as the cleaving to the Master that brings about the elevation of both the soul and the cosmic realm. Moreover, the thoughts and desires of prayer cause the perfection or completion of the divine realm as well, uniting the “firmaments” with their source in ein sof. This takes prayer well beyond the level of petition and praise, transforming it into a theurgical practice in which the ascent of the desire of the supplicant cause the devekut of the soul with ein sof, and the union of the cosmos and the sefirot with their source in infinity. We have seen above how this act can serve to maintain the paradoxical connection of the cosmos and God. Here, however, a different element is introduced. The cleaving of the soul during prayer that elevates everything to the supernal mystery of mysteries must be performed daily to cause the kabbalist’s days to be crowned in “the mystery of the supernal days.” This implies a symmetry between the life processes of the mystic and God, since the sefirot, especially the lower seven, are sometimes referred to as days. Through prayer, the quotidian rhythm of

Pr ayer Ab ove a nd Bel ow

141

life is imbued with meaning and power, performing important deeds in the divine realm. The daily prayer rituals of Jewish life become the mechanism whereby the interconnection between God and the cosmos is maintained and revitalized. The last line of this passage reconfirms the important role of mystical annihilation by incorporating the image of ecstatic death. According to Talmudic tradition, “sleep is one sixtieth of death.”53 Prayer, like sleep, is a time when the soul can be separated from the body, and the text states that “at night, he should pour forth his desire, and he will pass from this world, and his soul will leave him and return to the master of all.” The return to the origin, the reversal of the process of creation, results in a mystical death that is ultimately life affirming. However, this life affirmation involves the emphasis upon and maintenance of the unification of everything in the nothingness of the depths of the divine self. Once again we see that the dialectical tensions of the Zohar’s cosmology and anthropology play out in a striking manner in the articulation of prayer as a contemplative act. Prayer gives life to the self and being to the cosmos by binding the sefirot to the infinity of God by means of a human act comparable to death. Moses de Leon argues that for one who truly loves God, it is necessary to offer oneself in a gesture of death.54 Similar in principle to the images of self-­sacrifice described above, love of God is associated with a willingness to give oneself over to death: “For a man who loves his creator, when he arrives as the recitation of the shema, in the verse, ‘and you shall love,’ he should intend his mind and thoughts to the love of his creator as though he is giving his soul to Him in love and with a perfect heart, and he should receive death upon himself. It is an obligation for every man to resolve upon this every day.”55 The Zohar advances a similar idea in a comment on the nefilat apa’im,56 or “bowing of the faces” prayer in the morning liturgy which comes toward the end of the service and focuses primarily on asking forgiveness for transgressions; the Zohar states that at such a time, “man, the image that encompasses all other images, humbles himself and falls on his face, and imparts himself and his spirit to the supernal man, which subsists upon these images, which encompasses all images, to arouse him upon himself as is appropriate, and thus, ‘to you, God, I offer my spirit’ (Ps. 25:1).”57 Implied in this passage is the mystic death of the one who prays, an “offering up” of one’s life as the culmination of the morning service. Drawing upon the idea of the homology between the human form and the sefirot, the Jewish self as the image that “encompasses all images” is able to impart his soul to the “supernal man” by means of this gesture. The self-­effacement of the individual engaged in mystical prayer is also in some cases described as the effacement of the cosmos. Consider the following zoharic passage on prayer and death:

1 4 2

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

Come and see. Once a man performs his worship in this manner, in performance and utterance, and he binds the bond of unification, it is by his actions that the upper and lower entities are blessed. Thus, a man must regard himself after he completes the amidah prayer as though he has died from the world, for he is separated from the tree of life, and he gathers his legs into the tree of death, which repays him his charge. . . . And thus, he gives himself to death, truly, and imparts his spirit to this place. This is not a trust [of the soul] as at night, but rather like one who has truly departed from the world. This adornment requires the intention of the heart, and then, the Holy One, Blessed be He, has mercy on him and forgives and absolves his transgressions. Meritorious is the man who knows how to worship his Master with desire and intention of the heart.58

The passage begins by reasserting the nature of prayer as that which connects connections of unification, which “causes the upper and lower entities to be blessed.” The text goes on to conclude from this that such persons must regard themselves as though they have “passed from the world,” in order to be absolved of sin. The Zohar is very clear here that this is not mere rhetoric. The text asserts that “this is not a trust [of the soul] as at night, but rather like one who has truly departed from the world.” After the one who prays has given himself over to death, God forgives his sins and returns his life to him. In this instance, the notion of uniting the sefirot through prayer entails the return of the self to God in a manner that is regarded as comparable to death, implying that Jewish worship not only grants access to the highest reaches of the divine, but also enables the adept to navigate across the boundary between life and death. Such a move may also imply a countertheological element as well—­just as every male Jew is an incarnation of the divine form, so too, each day Jewish men experience a form of resurrection.

prayer and the world above As has been shown above, the kabbalistic texts in question are forthright in their embrace of the notion that Jewish prayers have an impact upon even the most recondite aspects of the divine self. Through prayer, the highest sefirah, Keter, is bound to the other sefirot, connecting it ultimately to the world below, thereby enabling the flow of divine energy and blessing into physical reality. Such claims do not imply the rational comprehensibility of the upper reaches of the divine, which in some commentaries on the sefirot is regarded as so transcendent that “one cannot say either ‘being’ or ‘non-­being’ with regard to it, since it is concealed even from the angels, much less from us.”59 Rather, descriptions of the influence of Jewish worship upon the highest levels of the Godhead imply a

Pr ayer Ab ove a nd Bel ow

143

gesture of Jewish power, in that such actions manipulate aspects of the divine that are inherently incomprehensible and thus can only be known through kabbalistic tradition. Such is the import of one passage from an anonymous text in which the word tefillah, prayer, is employed as a cognomen for God: Prayer [tefillah] is derived from the word casting downward [nefillah], and the unity that the Holy One, blessed be He, unites in Keter and bestows upon it to strengthen the sefirot. . . . That is to say that Keter is concealed within the power of the Holy One, blessed be He, and this is a subtle matter that cannot be understood at all, since Keter is called soul [neshamah] and is the supernal blessing,60 and the Holy One, blessed be He, subsists upon Keter and grasps it, as the soul is to the body, and the Holy One, blessed be He, does not deviate from above to either side, but instead He encompasses everything within Himself. And know that the Holy One, blessed be He is called “prayer” [tefillah] because He is the root and source of all and from Him blessing descends [nofel] by way of emanation, from blessing to blessing, until the end of all of the sefirot. The prayer that we pray each day, height and root, magnificence and glory, greatness and kingdom that we give, is rooted in the domain of Thought. And while we pour forth our faith in the place that is the pure living essence, from the artisan of faith, from which faith emanates by way of emanation, this is Keter. Regarding this the masters of the Kabbalah have said that the Holy One, blessed be He, is only called prayer [tefillah] because He is full of eyes from within and without, and all of it is within the interiority of Thought, and the domain of Thought that is beyond the grasp of the intellect. Understand this well if you are among those who understand, for it was not for nothing that it is said in the verse, “As for me, my prayer [va-­ani tefilati]” (Ps. 69:14), that is to say, I am filled with the ornaments of the brilliant, perfect and pure light . . . and our faith abides continuously in the strength of this unity, which is the Holy One, blessed be He, and we carry out our prayers as testimony to His unity.61

According to this author, the Hebrew term for prayer, tefillah, is an apt cognomen for God because it alludes to the “casting down,” nefillah, of divine energy from Keter into the lower sefirot. Despite the fact that Keter is an aspect of the divine that is “a subtle matter that cannot be understood at all,” prayer is understood as reinforcing the concealment of Keter within the Holy One, blessed be He, or Tifferet. This in turn enables the emanation of divine energy “from blessing to blessing,” that is, successively through the sefirot, until the final sefirah, Shekhinah. The prayer that Jews offer each day is thus, according to this text, rooted in the domain of “thought” or Keter that is “beyond the grasp of the intellect.” Based on a reading of Psalms 69:14, “As for me, my prayer [va-­ani tefilati],” which

1 4 4

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

is interpreted in this text to imply “I am My prayer,” the attribution of the name tefillah to God implies that he is “full of eyes,”62 and “filled with the ornaments of the brilliant, perfect and pure light.” The testimony offered during prayer is rendered according to this text as a reflection of the unity of Keter with the other sefirot. Traditional Jewish rituals of prayer are thus interpreted by this text as reflective of the intradivine dynamics between the sefirot.63 This idea is reinforced on the next page of the text where the author interprets the practice of bowing at the beginning of the eighteen benedictions when one says “Blessed are you, YHWH.” The traditional practice is to bow forward when one says “blessed,” and then to stand upright upon saying the divine name. This practice, according to the text, reflects the relationship of Keter with the other sefirot: “When we bow we attest in our minds that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the ‘prayer’ united with Keter, that His is the blessing, as we have explained above as reference to unity. When we resume standing upright, we recite the name and attest that everything is emanated from Him and that He is the Lord of all and that by His will everything exists, blessed be He; that He is the overflow of blessing and pours forth from that overflow unto Keter through the power of increase, and from Keter onto the sefirot, and from the sefirot upon us—­the wise shall understand the allusion.”64 The gesture of bowing at the start of prayer is regarded by the anonymous author as attesting to the connection of Keter with the Holy One, blessed be He, or Tifferet. By resuming the upright position and reciting the divine name, the one who prays ritually reflects the emanation of everything from God, flowing from Keter through the sefirot and finally, onto the Jewish people. In some depictions of the drawing down of divine energy during prayer, particular aspects of the divine form are identified as the source of the blessing theurgically brought forth by a given prayer. In the first chapter of I Samuel, Hannah, the childless wife of Elkanah, prays before the altar in Shiloh to request a child from God. Hannah’s request is granted, and the child she bears, whom she vows to “dedicate to the Lord all the days of his life” (I Sam. 1:11), is none other than the prophet Samuel. Hannah’s moment of worship is identified in the rabbinic tradition as an ideal example of sincere prayer.65 In a discussion of Hannah’s prayer found in an anonymous text, the author describes how Hannah’s prayer impacted the sefirot, noting that “it came from Binah, for everything is sequestered within it, and from it all things come forth, and unto it all things return. When Hannah prayed, she bound [davka] her thought to Repentance, as it is written, ‘And she prayed to [’al, “upon”] the Lord, weeping all the while’ (I Sam. 1:10), ‘upon [’al]’ God, truly! The power of her action upon creation was through the power of Hesed.”66 By cleaving to “Repentance,” or Binah, Hannah, according to this text, was able to draw forth the efflux from Hesed, the sefirah right below Binah, which then enables the “power of her action upon creation,” causing her to conceive and bear a child. By interpreting the word “’al” from

Pr ayer Ab ove a nd Bel ow

145

I Samuel 1:10 to mean that Hannah bound herself with Binah and Hesed, the text understands this biblical narrative to carry the esoteric implication that through concentrated intentionality, prayer can grant the supplicant access to the divine attributes such that one can harness God’s power to effect change in the physical world. The first point of access to the world above during prayer is often described as the lowest or tenth sefirah, Shekhinah. Before the beginning of the recitation of the eighteen benedictions it is traditional to recite, “Oh Lord [adonai], open my lips.” In one anonymous text, for example, the author states, “The tenth is the key to every matter, and one cannot enter and make supplications before the King except by means of the key. Thus it has been established [to recite] before the prayer of eighteen benedictions, ‘Oh Lord [adonai], open my lips,’ because Lord [adonai] refers to the tenth [sefirah], and it is the key.”67 Joseph Gikatilla makes a similar comment with regard to the opening phrase at the beginning of the eighteen benedictions, noting that “no created thing in the world has any way by which to enter the Lord, may He be blessed, except by means of [the Shekhinah], and all requests and supplications and entreaties can only enter by way of adonai [cognomen for Shekhinah], hence the necessity to establish that all prayers begin: ‘adonai open my lips.’”68 By the end of prayer, where the final phrase after the eighteen benedictions is “may the utterances of my mouth be desirable [le-­ratzon],” Gikatilla says that “at the end of prayer we say, ‘may the utterances of my mouth be desirable [le-­ratzon],’ because desire [ratzon] is the end of the gradations from below to above, and it is the yod, called ratzon, of the proper name. And from the ratzon, which is yod, he rises into the crown of the supernal yod and cleaves in the supernal keter, which is called ein sof.”69 Thus, the entry into Shekhinah at the beginning of prayer culminates in the cleaving, devekut, of the one who prays with Keter/ein sof.70 The course of the recitation of the central feature of Jewish liturgy, the eighteen benedictions, is mapped onto an ascent through the sefirot, providing not only access to the world above, but also the opportunity to cleave to the innermost facets of the divine. The theurgic power of prayer is correlated with powerful depictions of a mystical experience with God. In such descriptions of the function of prayer, Jews are triumphantly presented as those who are both granted divine power, and given exclusive access to the inner aspects of God. In a passage from the zoharic literature discussing the reason why prayer is traditionally recited in a whisper,71 the intimate relationship between the people of Israel and God is described in relation to their unique ability to unite the sefirot during worship: It is written, “And you, oh God, do not withdraw; my strength, hasten to my aid” (Ps. 22:20). King David said this when he was adorning and arranging the praises of the King, in order to unite the sun in the moon. When he was

1 4 6

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

adorning and ordering his praises for unification, he said, “And you, oh God, do not withdraw.” “And you, oh God,” the mystery of the combination as one without separation. “Do not withdraw.” Once she ascends to be crowned by her husband, all in the upper world, and from there he ascends to ein sof, so that all may be conjoined above, above. Therefore [it says] “do not withdraw,” to ascend from us and leave us. Because of this, in arrangement of prayers, Israel must be encompassed there and cleave to them from below, so that if this glory seeks to ascend, Israel below will be united with it, grasping it, so that it will not withdraw from them. This is why prayer is in a whisper, like one who speaks privately with a king. While he is secretly with the king, he does not withdraw from him at all. “My strength [eyaluti].” Just as a deer [ayyal] or hart, when it hears something, withdraws, and then returns to that place that it left, so too, the Holy One, blessed be He, even though He ascends above, above, into ein sof, He returns immediately to His place. Why is this? Because Israel below are united with Him, and they do not abandon Him, to be removed or separated from Him, and of this [it is said] “my strength, hasten to my aid.” Because of this we must unite with Him, in the Holy One, blessed be He, grasping Him as one who is drawing something down from above to below, so that no one will be abandoned by Him even for one hour. This is why one must connect redemption to prayer.72 One must unite with Him and speak with Him in a whisper, privately, so that He will not withdraw from us and He will not abandon us, and of this it is written, “And you who cleave to God your Lord, you are all living this day” (Deut. 4:4). “Happy is the people for whom such this is, happy is the people for whom God is their Lord” (Ps. 144:15).73

One must pray in a whisper, according to this passage, because it is important to draw close to God and hold Him near, so that one will not be left behind when the Shekhinah ascends, along with the rest of the sefirot, to ein sof. During prayer, the people of Israel must cleave to Him from below so that they will not be separated when the divine glory ascends “above, above, to ein sof.” Commenting on Psalms 22:20, “my strength [eyaluti],” the Zohar plays on the unusual term for “strength” in this verse, and equates it with the word ayyal, meaning “deer.” God is comparable to a deer because, just as a deer runs away momentarily and then returns to where it was, so to it is God’s nature to withdraw from His place and then return. The people of Israel and God have an intermittent connection punctuated by moments of separation and alienation. However, the Zohar explains that God quickly returns to Israel after departing “because Israel below is united with Him.” Prayer is depicted here as effective in breaching the intermittent gap between the people of Israel and God by virtue of the unity established between them. This is the reason given for the injunction to “connect

Pr ayer Ab ove a nd Bel ow

147

redemption to prayer,”74 referring to the practice in the morning service of saying “Blessed are you, oh Lord, who has redeemed Israel,” right before the commencement of the tefillah or eighteen benedictions. Prayer is redemption, according to the Zohar, when it unites the people of Israel with God via the sefirot. The passage ends with the verse from Deuteronomy 4:4, “And you who cleave to God your Lord, you are all living this day,” emphasizing the unifying nature of prayer and the connection between Israel and God reinforced by these rituals. Devekut, cleaving to God, signals the special power granted to Israel by virtue of their prayers. The Jewish soul, as we have seen above, shares a primordial unity with God, and for this reason, Israel is able to pray to God and overcome the distance between them. The practice of whispering during prayer is understood here as an indication of both the intimacy and the secrecy of the relationship between God and the Jewish people. On the one hand, by praying in a whisper, Jews relate to God in a close and private encounter such that even if the divine glory ascends to ein sof, it returns to them because of the unity that has been established between them. The prayers of the people of Israel are depicted here through the image of one who grasps the divine, “as one who is drawing something down from above to below, so that no one will be abandoned by Him even for one hour.” At the same time, prayer in a whisper implies a secret and concealed relationship. The bond between God and the people of Israel is not displayed publicly, but rather, in private. In this sense the Zohar implies that the unique bond between the Jewish people and God, reinforced during prayer, and the redemptive favor they enjoy as a result, is not a phenomenon that is made manifest in the mundane world. In a possible attempt to account for the experience of exile and political disempowerment while still advancing a claim for Jewish superiority, the construction of prayer in relation to redemption in the passage maintains that Israel is united with God, drawing His power down from ein sof, but secretly, in a whisper.

bound to god: divine power and the tefillin Access to the highest levels of the Godhead is frequently identified as the unique patrimony of the Jewish people. Because of their divine souls and particular relationship with God, Jews have a “portion” or stake in the sefirot. In their discussions of worship, the kabbalists frequently claim that Jewish prayer is more powerful than that of other peoples because of the heights to which Jewish petitions can ascend within the divine realm, enabling Jews to cleave even to Keter. In one anonymous text, for example, the author declares, “None of the prayers of any other people reach this place [Keter] except for Israel. The reason is that no other people has a portion in the sefira of Tifferet except for Israel. . . . [T]his is the secret of, ‘Israel, in whom I am glorified’

1 4 8

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

(Isa. 49:3), . . . and the wise one will consider that prayers ascend to Keter by way of Tifferet, and therefore no other people can ascend to that place other than Israel.”75 The people of Israel are set apart from other nations, according to this text, because of their portion in the sefirah of Tifferet. Since that attribute occupies a central position, it is necessary for prayers to pass through it as they ascend ultimately to Keter, a task that only the Jewish people can accomplish. In the secret inner workings of the divine, the people of Israel are the superior agents of the sacred transaction of worship. Joseph Gikatilla makes a similar argument in his Sodot, or descriptions of the kabbalistic meaning of various commandments. In his discussion of the practice of wearing tefillin, or phylacteries on the arm and head during the weekday morning service,76 he formulates a bold conception of the power implications of this practice for the Jewish people. He begins by describing the special capacity that the wearing of tefillin conveys to Jews: I have already made known to you that the first three sefirot, Keter, Hokhmah, and Binah are [His] secret, may He be blessed, and they are concealed and hidden, and they are the secret of the wondrous acts [of God] and they are the secret of the world to come. Neither heavenly angel nor anything else has ever reached them, with the exception of our father Jacob, peace be upon Him; he alone ascended above and clove to supernal Keter, by means of Hokhmah and Binah. This is the secret of “Then you shall delight in the Lord, and I shall set you astride the heights of the earth, and let you enjoy the inheritance of your father Jacob” (Isa. 58:14). And we, the sons of Jacob, have inherited the portion of our father Jacob, peace be upon him. And if you were to ask how we can cleave to the Supernal Keter by means of Hokhmah and Binah, know that it is through the secret of the tefillin that we are able to cleave to the supernal Keter.77

The inheritance of Jacob bequeathed to the Jewish people, according to Gikatilla, is the capacity to ascend and cleave to the highest sefirah, Keter, by means of the two sefirot immediately below it.78 Gikatilla seems to anticipate the reader’s wonder at such a bold claim, since ascent to and cleaving with Keter is a very strong formulation of the extent to which Jews can access the transcendent divine realm. In response, Gikatilla argues that the tefillin are the means by which Jews can attain this remarkable encounter with God. The secret or esoteric meaning of this practice is one that, in perfect kabbalistic fashion, far exceeds its apparent function. Rather than simply fulfill a biblical commandment in keeping with a rabbinic tradition, the tefillin are envisioned here as mechanisms for binding Jews to God, granting them access to the upper sefirot which are, as Gikatilla puts it, the secret of God’s “wondrous acts,” and the place of the world to come.

Pr ayer Ab ove a nd Bel ow

149

After describing the correlation between various sefirot and the four scrolls in the four boxes of the tefillin that are worn on the head, Gikatilla makes an even stronger claim regarding the divine power granted to Jews when they observe this practice: Therefore we find that one who wears these four scrolls of the tefillin occupies the place of Tifferet, and is grasped by the four scrolls, which are the four sefirot, which comprise a unity, and he becomes a throne for Tifferet . . . thus it is that one who dons tefillin ascends above to Keter, to the place where Jacob our father, peace be upon him, ascended. Concerning this it is said, “Israel, in whom I glory” (Isa. 49:3). Now consider how great is the power of one who dons tefillin on his head, and which form he assumes when he wears them, for one who dons tefillin occupies the place of Tifferet.79

The ascent to Keter is possible, according to this passage, because the one who wears tefillin literally occupies the place of Tifferet, reflecting the divine configuration in his body as he prays. To engage in prayer with tefillin enables Jews, according to Gikatilla, to secretly inherit the portion of Jacob and ascend above to the level of Keter. This point is underscored in the conclusion of the discussion where, after noting the correlation of the tefillin on the left arm with Shekhinah, Gikatilla states: All who wear tefillin on the hand and arm causes the ten sefirot to unite, and they are called, “the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4). Therefore, one who wears tefillin on his head and arm occupies the image of Tifferet and binds all ten of the sefirot to one another and rectifies all of the channels and pours forth blessings to all of the worlds. It is said of such a man, during the hour in which he wears the tefillin, “Let us make man in our image according to our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). Then, he is a perfected man, beloved above and adored below.80

In the discussion of kabbalistic anthropology in chapter 3 it was noted that many of the texts in question regard the Jewish self as an incarnation of the divine, in that they embody a divine soul that in turn enables them to wield theurgic power. In the case of the practice of wearing tefillin, we can see this idea reflected in the way that Gikatilla imagines the performance of this ritual as the culmination of the statement in Genesis 1:26 regarding the creation of man in God’s image. By wearing the tefillin on the arm and head, Jewish men manifest and embody the configuration of the divine and theurgically cause the sefirot to unite.81 This act “rectifies” the channels between the sefirot, causing blessing to descend into the world. Moreover, such a man also becomes “perfected” and sanctified by the divine efflux brought forth by this uniquely Jewish mode of imitatio dei. As we read in the Zohar, “when a man dons tefillin and is encompassed in the covering

1 50 

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

of the commandments, he is crowned with holy crowns in accord with the paradigm above, and he is called one.”82 A more polemical formulation of this idea is found in an anonymous text discussing the meaning and power of the wearing of tefillin. Like Gikatilla, the author notes that this practice enables Jews to ascend to the level of Keter. However, it is also noted that, when Israel ascends, Shekhinah ascends to the head of Keter, when Israel descends, she is upon the left arm . . . and thus the tefillin are called “strength” [oz], since Malkhut is on the side of Gevurah, which is the attribute of Judgement, as it is said, “For all in the heavens and upon the earth” (I Chron. 29:11), and the Shekhinah was King David’s power, which was called “the shield of David.” For this reason the gentiles are called uncircumcised, [areilim] for they oppose the corona [’atarah], and the tenth [sefirah] is called corona [’atarah], and it is not revealed until one removes the foreskin.83

The author argues that wearing the tefillin on the left arm, as is the mandated practice, puts the people of Israel in control of the attribute of Judgment, din, as manifest in the tenth sefirah, Malkhut or Shekhinah. In this passage the author inverts the Christian claim regarding the ideal form of circumcision as purely spiritual, arguing instead that the physical presence of a foreskin places one at odds with the tenth sefirah, concealing it from them just as the foreskin conceals the corona. Only the circumcised Jew,84 with his phylacteries adorning his left hand, falls under the protection of the shield of David because he embodies the divine image by virtue of his circumcision and tefillin. Therefore, the people of Israel, through their rituals of prayer, can ascend with the Shekhinah to the “head of Keter,” protected by the “shield of David.” The somatic performance of the law is infused with esoteric meaning and divine power according to this approach. The polemical intent is clear: only Jews, the proper descendants of Jacob, can truly reflect the divine image and manifest God in the world because only they have inherited the performance of the commandments. As David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid argues, “a man who wears tefillin truly fears nothing, since the supernal Keter is upon his head.”85 The prophylactic function of the tefillin is directly related to their kabbalistic meaning in that the fulfillment of this ritual enables Jews to manifest the sefirotic order, even the transcendent power of Keter, through the actions of their bodies. A similar move is at play in some discussions of the wearing of the tallit or prayer shawl. In one anonymous text the author describes the practice as follows: “The secret and allusion of the tallit is that, just as Hokhmah surrounds everything, like a cluster that encompasses and bears everything, for this reason, we enwrap ourselves and focus our concentration in the tallit, according to the

Pr ayer Ab ove a nd Bel ow

15 1

supernal model.”86 Employing the image of the cluster,87 the tallit is compared to the sefirah of Hokhmah, in that it encompasses everything, in keeping with the emanational model of being and creation. To don the tallit is to reflect the “supernal model” of the divine. Joseph Gikatilla makes this point even more strongly in a discussion of the meaning of the tallit and tzit-­tzit, or fringes worn on the corners of the garment: “One who enwraps himself in tzit-­tzit with concentration assumes the supernal form, and he is encompassed from every side and stands within the veil, and all of the sefirot enwrap him and crown him, and he is incorporated within all of the worlds, above and below, and he is holy and pure in every aspect. ‘Happy are the people who have it so’ (Ps. 114:15).”88 The wearing of the tallit implies more than an evocation of an idea for Gikatilla. Like the tefillin, the tallit enables Jewish men to assume the “supernal form” reflected in the secret structure of the sefirot. The sefirot then “enwrap and crown him,” adorning him with the divine attributes known only to the masters of the Kabbalah. Moreover, such an individual is, according to Gikatilla, “incorporated within all of the worlds, above and below,” serving through his body equipped with the accoutrements of Jewish prayer, as both a reflection of God and a connection between the divine and physical realms. Jews who observe these practices are thus “holy and pure in every aspect.” The reinforcement of the physical rituals of traditional rabbinic prayer is accomplished through a strategy whereby the esoteric, secret implications of these practices are rallied to explain their true power. The relevance of the sacerdotal rites of the Jewish people is radically reimagined in these texts, while the details of their observance are left unaltered, producing a discourse that significantly shifts the claimed meaning of Jewish religious praxis without threatening the basis of established forms of rabbinic authority.

hear, oh israel: secret dimensions of the shema A central feature of Jewish liturgy is referred to as the Shema, which entails the recitation of Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one [shema yisra’el, YHWH eloheinu YHWH ehad].” According to the halakhic regulations regarding prayer, it is obligatory to recite this prayer twice each day, once in the morning during the shaharit service, and once during the evening ma’ariv prayers. Given the importance of this prayer, which according to the Mishah requires special concentration and can only be interrupted under certain circumstances,89 as well as the fact that it includes three divine names and a declaration of divine unity, it is unsurprising that kabbalists focus on this particular moment in the daily service as an occasion of theurgical importance. Moses de Leon, for example, states that, “we find [in the recitation of the Shema] two unifications; the secret of the unification of the world above and the secret of the unification of the world below, and all is one.”90 That is to say, the divine realm

1 52 

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

of the sefirot and the cosmic order are unified through this act. As Wolfson has noted, “prayer is not conceived by de Leon as a preparation for contemplation. It is rather to increase God’s power.”91 Reciting the Shema, according to de Leon, is therefore an act of uniting the divine powers with the world rather than a mere declaration of faith. In a more elaborate description of the significance of the Shema, de Leon describes in some detail the desired outcome of the performance of this ritual: The one who unites [that is, recites the Shema] must increase overflow in order to arrange the gradations in one secret, in fear and humility—­with his heart and his mouth he should utter it, like a flame bound to a coal, and his heart like a burning fire in the bond of his proper unity. Then, when his heart and thoughts are bound above, when he unites his unification properly, then he unites and multiplies the overflow as is appropriate, and he causes all to emanate as a chain, this in that, as a single united secret. One should focus his heart, spirit, and soul upon this, as we have said. This is the man of whom it is said, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I am glorified” (Isa. 49:3). And thus, in the mystery of unification, in the drawing near of the lower world into the upper world as one, then there is perfected unity, and everything is augmented and blessed as is appropriate.92

Through the concentrated intentionality of the one who recites with the “fire” of one’s heart accompanied by the utterance of the mouth, such an individual’s “heart and thoughts are bound above.” This experience of union with God occasioned by uttering the Shema in turn draws the sefirot together, reinforcing the shalshelet or chain of emanation that extends from ein sof into the world below.93 The recitation of the Shema with this goal focused in the mind of the one who prays then causes, according to de Leon, the “drawing near of the lower world into the upper world as one,” augmenting the flow of divine blessing into the world. Joseph of Hamadan associates the recitation of the Shema twice daily with the offering of the incense in the Temple, which was also performed two times each day: “The incense [ketoret] alludes to the bond [kesher] which binds and unites the powers and makes them one thing. Therefore it is performed twice daily, corresponding to the two times that we unite His name and recite the Shema, morning and evening; so too the incense is to unite the supernal form twice daily.”94 Both of these rituals, according to Hamadan, reinforce the kesher, or bond, between the sefirot. Like the offering of sacrifices by fire, the uttering of the words of the Shema with the “fire” of the heart accomplishes the same outcome, namely, unity within the Godhead. In a discussion of the proper object of mental focus during the recitation, one anonymous text notes, after stating that all tens are unities, “thus one who concentrates on ten while reciting [the word]

Pr ayer Ab ove a nd Bel ow

15 3

‘one’ [at the end of the Shema] should concentrate upon the ten sefirot during each ‘the Lord is one.’” The text then continues with an involved description of the correspondences of tens and sefirot in the language of the Shema, concluding, “All who thus unite Him in the Shema are regarded as though they have fulfilled the entire Torah.”95 Todros Abulafia similarly comments that “the unification [of God] is the pillar upon which everything rests, and the entire world was only created for the purpose of this commandment, for this is the entirety of man, to unite our creator and receive his kingship upon ourselves through the truly inscribed verse, ‘Hear, oh Israel, YHWH, our God, YHWH, is one,’ for it is the root of faith, and all who have faith in this and imagine this matter correctly in their mind, have faith in the entire Torah and all of its particulars.”96 By serving as a primary instrument for creating divine unity, recitation of the Shema is equivalent to observing the entire Torah, since it accomplishes the ultimate purpose of the commandments. Joseph Gikatilla makes a direct connection between the outcome of wearing the tallit and tefillin and the recitation of the Shema, stating, “The recitation of the Shema is the secret of the unification whereby a man unites the Name through speech. However, the unification through tefillin and tzit-­tzit is through action.”97 According to Gikatilla, uniting the sefirot through the letters of the divine name during the recitation of the weekday morning Shema adds words to the action of wearing a tallit and tefillin: “One who recites the Shema unites the name, cleaving from above to below, and from below to above, and everything is in the secret of the four letters [of the Tetragrammaton] . . . and thus we find that one unites the name in both word and deed, and such a man is beloved and desired, and his prayers are received above and his requests are granted.”98 Here Gikatilla adds that uniting the four letters of the divine name contributes to the theurgic power of the Shema,99 binding the sefirot together “from above” and uniting the world with God “from below.” Moreover uniting the name of God in both “word,” through the recitation of the Shema, and “deed”100 renders one’s prayer efficacious. Joseph of Hamadan makes a similar point when he comments, “Every man in Israel who recites the Shema twice [each day] and contemplates its letters, it is as though he attaches a crown to the Holy One, blessed be He, and as though he has constructed the entire cosmos and builds the heavens and the earth . . . the voice ascends and binds the sefirot with one another and makes them a single entity.”101 Contemplation of the words and letters of the Shema has far reaching consequences in that it binds the sefirot together in a manner that is tantamount to creating an entirely new cosmos twice each day. In many cases, the unification of God and the sefirot during the Shema is mapped onto the letters of certain words in the prayer. In these cases, the theurgic power of the prayer is associated with the idea that specific divine attributes are hinted at by the letters of the words in the prayer. As we read in one representative example from an anonymous text:

1 5 4

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

All who concentrate upon the Tetragrammaton during the Shema shall be beloved above and adored below, his words shall be heard and his prayer shall be welcomed and received before the Holy One, blessed be He, for the Tetragrammaton entails the entire unity, a perfect unity, like the flame that is bound to the coal. . . . For the sefirot and attributes are the instruments of the craftsmanship of the Holy One, blessed be He, and he performs by means of them everything that he desires. The root that is concealed within them is the Cause of Causes, Master of all the earth, the Lord our King, there is none besides Him. Everything is alluded to in the Tetragrammaton during the recitation of the Shema, for the crown of the yod is the secret of Keter, which is an allusion to ein sof, and the yod itself refers to Hokhmah, the first heh refers to Binah, who is called “the mother of children,” the vav alludes to the six directions, and the final heh [refers] to Malkhut.102

By establishing an association for each of the sefirot with one of the letters of the divine name, the Shema is rendered as a ritualized tool for establishing divine unity. Like Gikatilla argues above, the anonymous author of this text states that a consequence of the recitation of the Shema in this manner is that one’s prayer is “heard” by God and his petitions are “welcomed and received before the Holy One, blessed be He.” By uniting the divine name in this way, the farthest reaches of the divine economy sequestered within Keter/ein sof, are united with the final sefirah, Malkhut, thereby opening a channel for divine efflux to enter the world. In some cases, sefirotic corollaries with the letters of the final word of the Shema, ehad, “one,” are put forth as a way of emphasizing the theurgic impact of this prayer.103 In a discussion found in an anonymous text of the word ehad, spelled alef, het, daled, the author argues that this word, like the Tetragrammaton, also alludes to the entirety of the sefirotic order: “The aleph is an allusion to supernal Keter, the het to the eight sefirot beneath it, the daled alludes to the entryway of the heavens, which is [kingdom] Malkhut of all of the worlds. This is the essence of unity upon which one must concentrate in his heart while reciting the Shema, to connect all of the sefirot to this matter of which we have spoken, and through this he shall be beloved above and admired below.”104 Since all of the attributes from Keter to Malkhut are secretly encompassed within the three letters of the word ehad, one is able to enact the unification of the sefirot by means of this word if one concentrates upon it properly while reciting it during the Shema. As a result, such an individual will be “beloved above and admired below,” an honorific frequently offered in these texts as an apt description of one who recites the Shema with the proper intentionality. The image not just of Jewish prayer, but of the Jew who prays, is that of a powerful broker of divine energy, who, through knowledge of kabbalistic secrets, sustains the cosmic and divine orders.

Pr ayer Ab ove a nd Bel ow

15 5

In the Zohar’s interpretation of the commandment to recite the Shema we encounter a number of clear examples of how prayer enables unification with God on both the individual and cosmic levels. The theurgic significance of the commandment to utter this verse twice daily, followed by the whispering of the formula, “Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingship forever and ever,” is understood in the Zohar as relating to the process whereby the physical universe and the dimensions of space are reincorporated into the divine economy. In a common articulation of the zoharic understanding of the significance of the utterance of the Shema, we read, “We must unite the upper world in one, and unite the lower world in the mystery of one, this in six directions and this in six directions. Thus, six words here in the mystery of six directions, and six words here in the mystery of six directions, ‘[On that day] God [will be] one and His name one’ (Zech. 14:9).”105 The unification of the upper world signifies the combination of the sefirot into one contiguous entity, usually beginning with the reunification of Shekhinah and Yesod. Uniting the lower world into the “mystery of one” involves an ontological transformation of the physical realm into a cohesive whole ready for unification with the upper world. The final sentence alludes to the “six words here” of the Shema from Deuteronomy and “six words here” of the formula following the Shema. Each set of six words signifies six directions, one set of which is in the world above and one in the world below. Together, there are twelve words which constitute the “mystery” of unity, playing off of the fact that the Aramaic word of “one,” had, has a gematria or numerical equivalence of twelve. Thus, the recitation of the Shema, also referred to in the Zohar as the “prayer of unification,”106 is the activity whereby through human agency the world and God are combined in the mystery of “one” through the utterance of the twelve words of the shema, which unites the six lower directions with the six upper directions, containing the total twelve dimensions of physical and divine space in the “mystery” of one, had, and twelve. In another passage we can see more specifically how the recitation of the Shema, according to the Zohar, reinforces the bond between the sefirot and the physical cosmos during prayer. We will begin first by citing the portion of the passage that relates to the unification of the world above. When Israel enacts the unification of the mystery of “Hear, oh Israel” (Deut. 6:4) with perfect intention, a single radiance issues from the concealment of the upper world, and that radiance strikes within the hardened flame, and is shattered into seventy lights, and these seventy lights flash into the seventy branches of the tree of life. Then, that tree wafts scents and perfumes, and all of the trees of the Garden of Eden waft scents and praises to their Master, for then, the Queen is adorned to enter the wedding canopy with her husband. All of these supernal limbs unite in one desire, and in one aspiration, to be

1 5 6

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

one with no separation at all. And thus, her husband is adorned for her, to bring her to the wedding canopy in a single union, to unite with the Queen. Therefore, we arouse her and say “Hear, oh Israel,” adorn yourself, for your husband is coming to you with his adornments ready to receive you. “The Lord, our God, the Lord;” one, in one unification, in one desire without separation, for all of these limbs are all made one and ascend in one delight. Once Israel says, “the Lord is one,” arousing six directions, then all of these six directions are made one, ascending in a single desire. And the mystery of this is a single [letter] vav, simple, by itself, with no other cleaving to it, but rather it by itself, removed from all; it is one. All these three [names] are one in one unity.107

This passage begins by describing how the recitation of the Shema causes an emergence of a “single light” from “the concealment of the supernal world,” or ein sof. This light strikes the “hardened flame,” and splits into seventy lights, referring to the seven sefirot from Hesed to Malkhut, each of which is said to shine with ten lights. The lights constitute the seventy branches of the Tree of Life, a reference to the middle sefirah, Tifferet, in its connection with all of the other lower sefirot. When this “tree of life” is thus illuminated by the lights that are generated by the utterance of the Shema, it gives forth pleasant “scents and perfumes” signaling the adornment of the Queen, or Shekhinah, before her bridegroom, Tifferet. The erotic bonding of these sefirot binds the entire divine structure together in a single unity. Again, the effects of prayer in the Godhead are parallel to the emergence of being from within ein sof during creation. The utterance of the passage from Deuteronomy theurgically causes the emergence of the light from within ein sof that generates the sefirot, and, as we saw in the first chapter, the being of the cosmos itself. Evident in this passage as well is an engagement with the claim made by some Christian polemicists that the three successive divine names in Deuteronomy 6:4, “YHWH, Eloheinu, YHWH,” is an allusion to the concept of the trinity.108 The implication would be that Jews, “blind” as they are to the inner meaning of the Hebrew Bible, unwittingly profess the truth of Christian doctrine each day by reciting the Shema. The kabbalistic response to this argument involves the construction of an elaborate set of esoteric associations with each of the names and their letters, arguing that the placement of the divine names in this passage hints at the union of the six “directions,” or sefirot from Hesed to Yesod, and the erotic union of the holy couple, Tifferet and Malkhut. The continuation of this passage relates the intimacy of the holy couple in the sefirot with the relationship between God and the Jewish people. Building on the idea explored above that prayer in a whisper is an indicator of the close relationship Jews share with God during worship, the Zohar states regarding the power of the recitation of the Shema:

Pr ayer Ab ove a nd Bel ow

15 7

Once everything has been unified as one, and all remains in the mystery of the letter vav, complete, from the source of the spring and the innermost chamber, and he inherits from Father and Mother, then they bring the Bride to him. For now he is complete with all supernal goodness and can sustain her, providing her with nourishment and satisfaction fittingly. All those limbs of his are all one; then they bring Her to Him in a whisper. Why in a whisper? So that a stranger will not mingle in this joy, as it is said, “in his joy no stranger will share” (Prov. 14:10). Once He is united above in six directions, so too, She is united below in six other directions, in order that everything will be one above and below, and it is said, “On that day, God will be one and His name one” (Zechariah 14:9). One above in six directions, as it is written, “shema yisrael YHWH eloheinu YHWH ehad” (Deut. 6:4), six words corresponding to six directions. One below in six directions, as it is written, “baruch shem kavod malkhuto le’olam va’ed;” six other directions in six words. YHWH ehad, [the Lord is one] above, “u-shemo ehad” [and His name is one] below.109

The “joy” of the Shema is associated here with the union of the Bride, Malkhut, with the Groom, the letter vav, or Tifferet. Partaking in this delight is identified as the exclusive honor of the Jewish people, according to the zoharic authorship since, as the text states citing Proverbs 14:10, no “stranger,” zar, or “member of a foreign people,” may partake in this delight with Israel. Through the performance of this liturgical ritual, Jews are granted a share and central role in the union of the divine Bride and Bridegroom in the realm of the sefirot. The power and scope of this act are far from understated—­as this passage from the Zohar makes clear, the unification of the Shema entails an act of unification that starts with Malkhut, wherein the six directions of space and the six sefirot surrounding Tifferet are united. The Zohar claims that the six words of the Shema that end with ehad unite the sefirot, while the six words of the baruch shem bring together the six directions of space.110 In order to avoid the misunderstanding that perhaps the lower world remains outside of the unification of the Shema, since the baruch shem ends with the word va-­ed rather than ehad, the Zohar emphasizes in the continuation of that passage that this unification applies both to the Godhead and the lower world.111 The claim is based on the idea that through a process of exchanging certain interchangeable letters,112 the word va-­ed becomes ehad. The last word of the baruch shem is a secret way of proclaiming, and thereby generating, the eschatological unity of the lower world and its six directions with God. The unity that will one day be absolute in the “time to come,” that is, messianic redemption, is presented here as attainable, twice daily, through the recitation of the Shema.

1 5 8

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

The kabbalistic conception of prayer presents a forceful claim regarding Jewish power. As the agents of divine energy in the world, Jews unite the Godhead and sustain the cosmos by means of their daily performances of liturgical acts. As the sons of God who embody the divine and channel his energy, Jewish men accomplish, according to the kabbalists, far more than praise when they pray. By ascending the “rungs” of the Godhead and drawing the sefirot together, Jewish prayer reenacts the process of creation, sustaining the fabric of the universe. This power, however, and the close relationship between Jewish men and God, is concealed, expressed privately by means of a whisper. Even the daily death and resurrection that occurs during prayer is an act that takes place beyond the view of the observer. Such a formulation of the efficacy of Jewish prayer has obvious countertheological connections to Christianity, as well as Christian criticisms of Judaism. Through an inversion of the image of Jews as mindlessly persevering in their “carnal” performance of the law despite the overwhelming evidence that God has spurned them, Kabbalists depict Jewish prayer as a subtle but powerful expression of divine Christlike power. Jewish men become, in the kabbalistic imagination, the site for the manifestation of divine power, as well as the means by which that power is enacted. As humble, suffering servants, Jews fulfill an essential, yet unappreciated role in the world. Through prayer, Jews alone are able to attain each day an encounter with God that anticipates the moment of redemption when the private role occupied by Jewish men in the cosmic and divine realms will be expressed openly. The kabbalistic vision of prayer is a strategy for coping with the conditions of Jewish life, urging Jews to continue in their adherence to traditional practice with the knowledge that, despite all appearances to the contrary, they are divine beings among mortals.

CONCLUSION

The development of kabbalistic discourse at the end of the thirteenth century can be regarded as a revolution in some important respects, though, perhaps in keeping with what one might expect from a kabbalistic phenomenon, ironies and qualifications are certainly in order. As we have seen, the kabbalists were at once boldly creative and emphatically conservative. While they introduced a novel way of imagining Judaism, they did so in a manner that reinforced rather than undermined the traditional forms of Jewish life and law. And though they advanced their ideas on the basis of esoteric claims to revelatory knowledge, they presented that knowledge as the ever-­present but unstated core of Jewish theology. What could have been a destructive challenge to the authority of rabbinic Judaism was in fact a constructive strategy for reasserting the legitimacy of the tradition. The kabbalistic model offers a distinctive mode for imagining the meaning and power of Jewish life, but it does not seek to radically alter the behavioral norms of Judaism. As Wolfson has observed, tradition in Judaism often incorporates “effective misreading and creative refashioning . . . a form of radical thinking that is concurrently innovative and conservative, rooted but revolutionary.”1 The cultural transformation initiated by the spread of Kabbalah is a revolution, but not a rebellion. In reflecting on the tensions between innovation and conservation in kabbalistic thought, Scholem observes that, “with the exception of messianic and heretical forms of Sabbatianism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, kabbalistic systems were generally conceived as conservative ideologies within the frame of Rabbinical Judaism. Yet nearly all of these systems are so revolutionary in implication that their conservative character was time and again called into question.”2 And indeed, Kabbalah has not been without its Jewish critics who were unimpressed by its claims to ancient revelation and assumption of a role tantamount to that of the Oral Torah.3 Yaacob Dweck’s recent study

159

1 6 0

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

of Leon Modena’s critique of Kabbalah in Venice in the seventeenth century reveals how his “counter revolution” that sought to debunk the legitimacy of Kabbalah focused on demonstrating its origins in the Middle Ages, thus rendering it “a recent innovation within Jewish theology rather than an ancient preserve of Sinaitic secrets.”4 Modena, who preferred the rationalism of Maimonides to a Judaism of inscrutable secrets, argued that the knowledge of the sefirot “could not be knowledge,” since they are regarded by the kabbalists themselves as entities beyond human comprehension. Modena also critiqued the concept of the sefirot as implying something akin to Christian Trinitarian thought,5 echoing a claim made in the thirteenth century by Abraham Abulafia.6 Nonetheless, as Dweck notes, the kabbalistic conception of Judaism was one that Modena’s challenge tried “with utter futility” to change.7 As a cultural transformation, Kabbalah turned out to be particularly successful, and once it was embraced, it proved markedly difficult to dislodge. Part of its success was that, despite many reasonable arguments that could be rallied to the contrary, the kabbalistic revolution was understood as a conservative project. But revolutionary it was. Though it is certainly true that important affinities are to be found between the kabbalistic texts of the thirteenth century and older forms of rabbinic thought, and it would be a mischaracterization to regard medieval kabbalistic theosophy and theurgy as fundamentally at odds with other trends in premedieval Jewish discourse, the kabbalistic texts explored above present us with something new. As Magid has observed, “the question as to whether a particular thinker or text breaks new ground in the history of the subject matters less than the way it refracts, and even sometimes distorts, the tradition it reads and the cultural capital that is generated by that misreading.”8 For the medieval kabbalists, especially those living and writing in Castile near the end of the thirteenth century, the conception of Jewish life and identity that they advanced constituted a bold reformulation of the meaning of the rabbinic tradition. But this reformulation was offered as a reclamation of that which has always been, secretly, at the very heart of Judaism—­the traditions of the inner life of God understood in terms of the ten sefirot, and the capacity for Jews to theurgically impact these entities and thereby sustain the cosmos through the practice of rabbinic law. To achieve this, the kabbalists dedicated the vast majority of their literary activity to producing texts that presented this worldview, interpreting creation, revelation, and the meaning of halacha through a kabbalistic lens. The proliferation of kabbalistic discourse involved a transformation of how Jews talked about themselves; how they imagined, to refer once again to Jonathan Z. Smith’s terminology, “a ‘space’ in which to meaningfully dwell.” In reimagining the Jewish self, the kabbalists transformed Jewish discourses regarding the process of creation, the nature of God, and the function and purpose of Jewish law. While this shift in culture did not entail a challenge to the norms of religious

C onclu sion

161

praxis—­a move that would have rendered the development of Kabbalah a schismatic break—­the development of a new mode of imagining the meaning of Jewish life is far from inconsequential. The open articulation of kabbalistic discourse in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in Spain had far-­reaching repercussions in the realm of culture and textual production, indicating something important to us about the appeal that this Jewish self-­conception has had beyond the boundaries of the texts discussed in this book. The rereading of tradition by making recourse to claims to ancient, divinely revealed secrets may in the end be fairly described as a genuinely conservative form of transformation within the rabbinic tradition. As Albert Baumgarten and Marina Rustow observe, “traditionalists are not always the guardians of stasis but can be the greatest proponents of change.”9 Reimagining the meaning of the Torah and commandments, of the Jewish self and Jewish life, is a prominent feature of the history of Judaism that has had a defining impact on the production of Jewish culture and identity. In Scholem’s view, “the Kabbalists’ thinking remains specifically Jewish. In a way they have merely drawn the final consequence from the assumption of the Talmudists concerning revelation and tradition as religious categories.”10 In other words, the kabbalistic revolution of medieval Spain simultaneously transformed and preserved the rabbinic tradition by continuing the practice of redescribing Jewish meaning in terms of retrieval and recovery of divine word. In so doing, they added considerable momentum to one of the most important Jewish cultural developments to emerge from the Middle Ages.

POSTSCRIPT cultural logics: kabbalah, then and now

One of the greatest ironies in the history of Jewish mysticism is that the esoteric tradition of Kabbalah has in the early twenty-­first century become one of the most widely known aspects of Judaism. Many people in the Unites States and elsewhere are more familiar with the term Kabbalah than other, arguably more exoteric features of the Jewish tradition. The intriguing reason for this is that, in the late twentieth and early twenty-­first centuries, Kabbalah has come to be embraced by a wide range of people in a manner unconnected to the traditional forms of Jewish law. This phenomenon is not entirely new—­in the Renaissance, Christian scholars took an interest in Kabbalah, mining it for their own purposes and even developing a distinctly Christian mode of kabbalistic discourse.1 The contemporary phenomenon is different in that, especially in the case of the Kabbalah Center, what we encounter is not a “Christian” form of Jewish esotericism, but instead an articulation of Kabbalah as a useful and valuable tool for attaining personal fulfillment without claiming any inherent connection to religion at all. And this of course begs the question, in what way is the present fascination with Kabbalah, the “Madonna” phenomenon,2 related to other historical manifestations of the Jewish mystical tradition? While there are significant distinctions to be made, I would argue that the comparison is useful in that it draws our attention to an important feature of Kabbalah that has been central to the concerns of this book, namely, that kabbalistic discourse is always produced and consumed, or rendered meaningful, through an engagement with the idiom of the culture in which those who create it or read it are living. As an historical phenomenon, Kabbalah is reflective of human engagements with the construction of meaning within particular historical and cultural contexts, and this is no less true for medieval kabbalistic literature than it is for kabbalah.com. Notwithstanding substantive differences in doctrine and approach between some contemporary and classical forms of Kabbalah,3 these phenomena are analogous examples of how cultural capital is generated through culturally engaged strategies of reading the idea of Jewish secrets.

163

1 64 

Ka bbali sti c Revolu ti on

The modern academic study of Jewish mysticism has had an ambivalent attitude toward contemporary forms of Kabbalah.4 Gershom Scholem, widely regarded as the founder of the field, was decidedly uninterested in the kabbalists of his day,5 despite the fact that he lived in Jerusalem for much of the twentieth century, where numerous kabbalists were active. Scholem mentions his interactions with a few of these individuals,6 but their life and work never interested him enough to publish a single study dedicated to an analysis of Kabbalah as a living phenomenon.7 This seems to be related to Scholem’s conviction that Kabbalah, and mysticism more generally, has ceased to function as an important historical force. As he observes in an article published in 1963, “it may be said that in our time, for the most part, there is no original mysticism, not in the nation of Israel and not among the nations of the world.”8 Recently, however, scholars have paid more attention to modern and contemporary formations of Jewish mysticism, notably including Garb’s study of twentieth-­century Kabbalah in Israel;9 Wolfson’s study of the messianic mysticism of Menachem Mendel Schneerson,10 whose impact on the Habad Hasidic movement in the United States has been profound; and Magid’s study of neo-­Hasidic trends in American Judaism.11 The scholarly examination of more recent forms of Kabbalah has required that academics relinquish any claim to being arbiters of the legitimacy of a given phenomenon as reflective of “real” Kabbalah. Garb has noted the missed opportunities for important scholarship that can result when “researchers perceive themselves as more ‘authentic’ because they study thirteenth-­century Spanish manuscripts rather than contemporary kabbalistic works published in the small Israeli town of Bet Shemesh.”12 Huss has argued that the devaluation of contemporary Kabbalah as an object of study in modern scholarship is the result of the “theological perspective of scholars engaged in the field,” as well as a desire on the part of some academics who study Kabbalah to “control its increasing cultural capital in the modern world.”13 For these reasons, the movement associated with the Kabbalah Center and famous personalities in American popular culture has, despite its vast size and significant cultural impact, met with a degree of suspicion among scholars. The pioneering works of Myers14 and Huss have brought fresh new insights into this phenomenon, exploring how the Kabbalah Center functions in people’s lives and how it constructs a discourse of meaning that is reflective of the cultural logic of late capitalist, postmodern western society. The eclectic and hybrid nature of contemporary kabbalistic discourse, especially in the form it takes among kabbalists associated with the Kabbalah Center, could mistakenly be understood as a sign that the movement is somehow only “loosely” associated with Kabbalah. However, when we consider the accepted discursive practices associated with New Age movements and postmodern religion, we can appreciate, as Huss has demonstrated, that contemporary forms of Kabbalah are merely speaking the

P osts crip t

165

language of the contemporary moment and the postmodern spiritualities that have become current in many sectors of popular culture.15 Huss cites Wouter Hanegraaff ’s observation that “the New Age movement has taken the shape of a spiritual supermarket where religious consumers pick and choose the spiritual commodities they fancy, and use them to create their own spiritual syntheses fine-­tuned to their strictly personal needs. The phenomenon of a spiritual marketplace is not limited to the New Age movement only, but is also a general characteristic of religion in (post)modern Western democracies.”16 The sale of “Kabbalah water” and red strings, and the general trend to commoditize Kabbalah as a tool for attaining self-­fulfillment by selling courses (both in person and online), counseling sessions, and books—­as well the dissociation of Kabbalah with the traditional forms of rabbinic law and the “grand narratives” of Judaism—­are all features that are familiar aspects of current religious trends. In this sense, “New Age and New Kabbalah, like other postmodern cultural formations, respond to the new forms of life created by the radical economic, social, and technological changes of the late twentieth century,”17 and as such, its “manner of presenting kabbalistic themes integrated with other cultural and religious signifiers should be understood as a typical postmodern pastiche, which reshuffles and reconstructs previous cultural elements.”18 Consider, for example, a description of Kabbalah and the potential benefits of studying it, offered on the Kabbalah Center’s website under the heading “What Is Kabbalah?” Kabbalah is an ancient yet entirely new paradigm for living. It teaches that all of the branches of our lives—­health, relationships, business—­emanate from the same trunk and the same root. It’s the technology of how the universe works at the core level. It’s a whole new way of looking at the world that can connect you to the kind of permanent fulfillment you may be seeking. The bottom line in Kabbalah is—­the proof is in the pudding. The knowledge kabbalah.com imparts, the information we provide for you, and the tools we share must have practical results in your life, results you can feel. One of the nice things about studying Kabbalah is that it doesn’t require you to leave your current faith or religious path. Kabbalah will merely deepen your understanding of the universe and give you more information and tools to understand why things are happening to you and how you can better connect to the light of the creator and receive the fulfillment you’re looking for. Kabbalah teaches universal principles that apply to all peoples of all faiths and all religions, regardless of ethnicity or where you come from. The beauty of studying Kabbalah is that you can’t be forced to think in a particular way. All we can do is simply share information with you and hope that you will apply it in your life for the sake of bettering it. That’s the purpose of everything you will discover on kabbalah.com.19

1 6 6

Kabbali sti c Revolu ti on

Differences between this understanding of Kabbalah and that of the medieval texts explored in the preceding chapters are many. For the Center, Kabbalah has no inherent connection to Judaism, or any other religion, though it acknowledges in other places that this wisdom was preserved until very recently mainly among Jewish kabbalists. Moreover, the purpose and aim of studying Kabbalah is to provide “permanent fulfillment” to individuals from whatever background rather than, as we encountered in the medieval sources, a reinforcement of a collective, and distinctly Jewish, identity. It goes without saying that the theurgic manipulation of the inner dimensions of the Godhead through the practice of Jewish law will not feature prominently in a construct according to which Kabbalah is understood as “universal principles that apply to all peoples of all faiths and all religions.” Instead we find an emphasis on openness, utility, and “practical results,” “results you can feel.” It is worth considering, however, that while contemporary forms of Kabbalah, appealing as they do to contemporary concerns and values, present a face different from premodern forms of Kabbalah, they bear important structural similarities. In both the contemporary and medieval formulations of Kabbalah, meaning, authenticity, authority, and value are articulated in keeping with categories that are current within the societies in which those authors lived and wrote. It is unthinkable to imagine the above-­cited statement from the Kabbalah Center coming from the pen of Joseph Gikatilla or Moses de Leon, not simply because they would disagree with it but because it would be meaningless in the world in which they functioned. That is to say, such a conception of Kabbalah would simply be too far from the locations of cultural power and mechanisms for authorizing knowledge, in particular Jewish knowledge, in late thirteenth-­ century Castile. For the same reasons, Gikatilla and de Leon’s works are not, at least not in any unfiltered way, part of a global phenomenon attracting the attention of millions of people in the manner that we observe with the Kabbalah Center today. Nonetheless, contemporary and medieval Kabbalah are analogous phenomena—­despite the differences in their audiences and the content of their ideas—­in that in both cases we find successful presentations of Jewish esoteric knowledge as a source of desirable wisdom. Each phenomenon reveals an important part of the ongoing story of Jewish mysticism and esotericism in the West, and the continuing process whereby humans create conceptions of meaning and power in the everchanging cultural environments in which they find themselves.

N OT E S

introduction 1. See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 210–­213. While southern France and Iberia were geographic centers that gave rise to important schools of kabbalistic thought from the late twelfth to early fourteenth centuries, other centers existed in locales throughout the Mediterranean. See ibid., 15–­16 and Idel, “The Kabbalah in Byzantium,” 660. Castile is important not because it was the unique point of origin for kabbalistic ideas or that other locations were peripheral, but rather because it was an unusually creative and active region for the development of kabbalistic literature. 2. On the history of the reception of the Zohar, see Huss, “Sefer ha-­Zohar as a Canonical”; Huss, “The Appearance of the Zohar”; Huss, Sockets of Fine Gold; Huss, Like the Radiance of the Sky; Giller, Reading the Zohar; Mopsik, “Le Corpus Zoharique”; and Scholem, “The Cultural Reception,” 312. 3. On the increase of Christian anti-­Jewish argumentation in the thirteenth century, see Chazan, Daggers of Faith; Chazan, Fashioning Jewish Identity; J. Cohen, The Friars and the Jews; J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 313–­363; Lipton, Images of Intolerance; Patton, Art of Estrangement; Le Goff, The Birth of Europe, 86–­89; Stow, “The Church and the Jews,” 204–­219; and Dahan, The Christian Polemic. 4. Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 31. See also the discussion in Abrams, “The Virgin Mary,” 14–­20. 5. As Idel has noted, “It is a striking fact, which has curiously remained largely unnoticed by Kabbalah scholarship, that the emergence of major kabbalistic schools did not stir significant controversies in the Jewish milieus in which they arose.” Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 250–­251. Or, as he puts it elsewhere, “the appearance of the Zohar was like a seed falling on fertile ground.” “Symbolic Self-­Interpretations,” 95. 6. See, for example, Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, 74–­141. 7. On the relationship between phenomenological and historical research in Kabbalah scholarship, see Wolfson, “Structure, Innovation, and Diremptive Temporality.” See also, Abrams, “Phenomenology of Jewish Mysticism.” Gershom Scholem himself

167

1 6 8

N ote s to page s 5– 7

noted that the study of Kabbalah “cannot dispense with historical criticism and clear vision. For even symbols grow out of historical experience and are saturated with it. A proper understanding of them requires both a ‘phenomenological’ aptitude for seeing things as a whole and a gift for historical analysis. One compliments and clarifies the other; taken together, they promise valuable findings.” On the Kabbalah, 3. 8. Sandmel, “Parallelomania.” 9. Huss, “The Mystification of Kabbalah,” 13. 10. Hames, “Exotericism and Esotericism,” 106. See also the comments in Hames, Like Angels on Jacob’s Ladder, 4–­5 and Hames, The Art of Conversion, 25–­26. See also, Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 9–­10. Scholem likewise argued that “[t]he Judaism of each and every period is more similar to its own world than it is to the Judaism which followed it. I am certain that the Judaism of Maimonides was closer to the Christianity or Islam of his contemporaries than it is to the Judaism of the contemporary Jew.” “Memory and Utopia,” 163. 11. J. Levi has argued that Kabbalah is “a form of cultural practice” and as such is “amenable to anthropological analysis.” “Structuralism and Kabbalah,” 931 (italics in original). Scholem himself laments the tendency of scholars of mysticism to “take the phenomena of religious mysticism out of their social context, to isolate them and to stress their alleged basic difference from historical and social phenomena.” “Mysticism and Society,” 2. Nonetheless, Scholem still regards Kabbalah, together with other forms of mysticism, as “a quasi anti-­social phenomenon.” Ibid., 5. Wexler has noted that in this essay, “Scholem brings a social perspective to bear on questions of Jewish mysticism in a way which prevents the analyses from becoming fully social.” Scholem, “Mysticism and Society,” 107. See also Wexler, “Society and Mysticism,” 107–­125. 12. Baer offered one of the earliest attempts to understand kabbalistic texts in this way. See Baer, A History of the Jews, 1:243–­277 and Baer, “The Social Background,” 1–­44. 13. Stuckrad, “Discursive Study of Religion,” 268. See also the insightful introduction by Boustan, Kosansky, and Rustow, Jewish Studies at the Crossroads, 1–­28. 14. Stuckrad, “Discursive Study of Religion,” 263 (italics in original). Stuckrad notes that he follows Kippenberg’s coinage, “discursive study of religion,” in this regard. Ibid., 266. Kippenberg, “Discursive Religionswissenschaft,” 9–­28. This is not, of course, to ignore the “self critical responsibility for the academic study of religion” (Stuckrad, “Discursive Study of Religion,” 267), and the need for continuous recursive critique, since, as Wolfson has argued, “The scholarly enterprise of contextual reading—­that is, situating the text in historical/philological context—­is part of the continuous enterprise of cultural formation.” Language, Eros, Being, 116. 15. Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 7. 16. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 5. 17. Ibid. 18. Asad, “Anthropological Conceptions of Religion,” 237. 19. Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 53–­54. 20. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 1:101. See also Kruger, The Spectral Jew, xxii–­xxiii. 21. Magid, From Metaphysics to Midrash, 8. Richard Strier points out that Greenblatt preferred the term “cultural poetics” to that of “New Historicism” to describe this approach to reading texts. See Resistant Structures, 68.

not es to page s 7–12 

169

22. Yerushalmi, “Medieval Jewry,” 18. He also notes, somewhat ironically, that as important as archival materials are for learning about medieval Jewish experiences, such documents represent only the “foreign affairs” of Jewish communities and individuals, and reveal very little about the internal dynamics of Jewish life. Ibid. 23. Ibid, 21. While Yerushalmi rightly calls for an intensified study of rabbinic responsa literature, I would argue that Kabbalah also provides a vast and underutilized resource. 24. See Fishman, “The Penitential System.” 25. Smith, Map Is Not Territory, 299. For an insightful application of this idea to the Mishnah, see Neusner, “Map without Territory.” 26. Smith, Map Is Not Territory, 292. 27. Ibid., 309. 28. Ibid. 29. Jonathan Garb has argued that the tensions between “the faith in an absolute power and a historical reality of powerlessness” has contributed to the creation of a “compensatory discourse” that, in the case of Kabbalah, emphasized “privileged access to supernatural sources of power.” The Chosen Will Become Herds, 38 and Garb, Hofa’otav shel ha-­Koah. 30. Smith, Map Is Not Territory, 291. 31. On the interconnection of Jewish and Christian identity, especially in medieval Ashkenazi sources, see Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb. On the complexities of this interchange in medieval Jewish art, see Epstein, The Medieval Haggadah. 32. Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 85. 33. Wolfson, “Textual Flesh, Incarnation,” 191. 34. Ray, “Beyond Tolerance and Persecution,” 12. 35. Stuckrad, Locations of Knowledge, 16. 36. See Idel, “Transmission in Thirteenth-­Century Kabbalah,” 153–­154. 37. Scholem, Major Trends, 122. 38. Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, 37. 39. See the extensive and important studies now published in Abrams, Kabbalistic Manuscripts, especially 224–­428, 464–­469. 40. See Emden, Mitpahat Sefarim; Jellinek, Moses de Leon; Graetz, History of the Jews, 10–­22; Scholem, Major Trends, ch. 5; and Scholem, “Ha’im Hibber R. Moshe de-­Leon et Sefer ha-­Zohar?” 16–­29. On the complex relationship between Moses de Leon and the Zohar, see, for example, Wolfson, “Introduction to the Critical Edition,” 6–­9, 46–­55; Wolfson, “Hai Gaon’s Letter”; Farber, “li-­Meqorot Torato”; and most recently the discussion in de Leon, Sefer Mishkan ha-­Edut, bar-­Asher ed., 26–­51. 41. Liebes, “How the Zohar Was Written,” 5. An English version of this study can be found in Studies in the Zohar, 85–­138. The first scholar to advance the idea that the Zohar is the product of a group of kabbalists working in dialogue was G. Margoliouth in an article published in 1908 in which he comments that “[i]n reading certain parts of that work [the Zohar], more particularly the ‘Idra Rabba’ (‘Great Assembly’) and ‘Idra Sutta’ (‘Small Assembly’), one almost becomes inclined to vote in favor of a certain company of Kabbalists meeting in conclave having produced the book rather than a single individual.” “The Doctrine of the Ether,” 825–­861.

N ote s to page s 1 2 – 1 6

1 7 0

42. For a qualification of this position, see Mopsik’s, introduction to de Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, iv–­v, and Liebes’s response in “Review Essay, Charles Mopsik, Moses de Leon’s Sefer Sheqel Ha-­Qodesh,” Kabbalah 2 (1997): 274–­275 (in Hebrew). See also Mopsik’s response, “Moise de Leon, le Sheqel ha-­Qodesh,”177–­218. 43. See Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 22–­23. 44. Abrams, Kabbalistic Manuscripts, 227 (italics in original). 45. See, for example, Meroz, “Zoharic Narratives.” For a chronology of the development of zoharic literature in four periods or “generations,” see ibid., 22n73. See also Meroz, “The Chariot of Ezekiel”; Meroz, “And I Was Not There?”; Meroz, “The Weaving of a Myth”; Meroz, “R. Joseph Angelet”; Meroz, “The Middle Eastern Origins”; Meroz, “Der Aufbau des Buches Sohar,” and her forthcoming Headwaters of the Zohar. 46. Wolfson has argued that “it is justifiable . . . to continue to speak of ‘zoharic kabbalah,’ as a taxonomy of this sort does not level the composite text to a monolithic and univocal system.” Language, Eros, Being, 48. 47. On the delineation of the various strata within the Zohar, see Scholem, Major Trends, 159–­162 and Giller, Reading the Zohar, 5–­8. 48. See Scholem, “Mafteah le-­Peirushei ’Eser Sefirot.” For a more recent study of this important genre of kabbalistic literature, see Abrams, “A Commentary to Ten Sefirot.” 49. See Sefer ha-­Shem, Oron ed., 11, 17. 50. Scholem, “Mafteah le-­Peirushei ’Eser Sefirot,” 498. Scholem’s dating continues to be reflected in the online catalogue through the Jewish National University Library.

1  masters of secrets 1. See Idel, “The Kabbalah’s ‘Window,’” 173–­208; Idel, “Kabbalah and Elites,” 5–­19; and Idel, “Transmission in Thirteenth Century Kabbalah,” 146–­148. 2. Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 212. On Castile as the venue for the convergence and synthesis of many different schools of kabbalistic thought, see ibid., 211–­218. 3. See, for example, Wolfson, “The Anonymous Chapters,” especially 166–­172. 4. Urban, “The Torment of Secrecy,” 210. For a helpful analysis of Bourdieu’s notions of “strategy” and “capital” in the study of religion, see Urban, “Sacred Capital,” especially 357–­367. See also, Stuckrad, Locations of Knowledge, 57–­59. 5. See Matt, “‘New-­Ancient Words’”; E. Fishbane, “Authority, Tradition, and the Creation,” 59–­95; E. Fishbane, As Light before Dawn, ch. 3. Wolfson notes that, while the current state of research cannot demonstrate conclusively in what manner and to what extent kabbalah was disseminated in the Middle Ages, it is clear that “[t]he kabbalists believed that their doctrines were at the core of Judaism and, as such, were relevant for the education and formation of Jewish society at large.” “Beyond the Spoken Word,” 168. 6. See for example, Burns, Emperor of Culture and Martinez, Alfonso X; Linehan, Spain, 1157–­1300. On Jewish physicians, see Kozodoy, “The Jewish Physician”; Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine; Baer, A History of the Jews, 1:111–­137; and Aranda, “The Jew as Scientist,” 90–­92.

not es to page s 16–18 

17 1

7. Linehan, Spain, 1157–­1300, 209. 8. Ibid., 116–­119, 207–­208. 9. See Procter, “The Scientific Works.” 10. Grismer, ed., Cronica abbreviada, Prologo, 38, as cited in Martinez, Alfonso X, 543–­544. 11. On the political implications of Alfonso X’s intellectual projects, see Martinez, Alfonso X, 555–­556; on Alfonso X’s ambitions to be emperor, see O’Callaghan, The Learned King, 198–­213. 12. See Bagby, “The Jews in the Cantigas”; Milton, “Jews and Finance,” 231–­233; and Carpenter, “The Portrayal of the Jew.” Gampel argues that the negative depictions of Jews in the Cantigas may not have been particularly disturbing to Castilian Jews, since it would likely have been clear to them that Alfonso was merely “repeating attitudes prevalent in medieval Christian Europe about the Jews and their behavior.” “Letter to a Wayward,” 410. On Siete Partidas see Carpenter, Alfonso X and the Jews. On Jews in the illustrations of the Cantigas, see Patton, Art of Estrangement, 135–­169. 13. See N. Roth, “Jewish Collaborators,” 59–­7 1. See also, Gutwirth, “‘Entendudos,’” 384–­399 and Gutwirth, “History, Language, and the Sciences,” 517–­519. 14. Gutwirth, “‘Entendudos,’” 385. 15. Linehan, Spain, 1157–­1300, 88–­89; Baer, A History of the Jews, 1:120–­129; and N. Roth, “Two Jewish Courtiers.” 16. In open contradiction to the stipulation in Sieta Partidas, 7.24.8. 17. Linehan, Spain, 1157–­1300, 92. See also, Prado-­Vilar, “Life, Law, and Identity,” 138n12. Nirenberg has noted that Sancho’s justification of his own rebellion against his father through the tale of King Alfonso and his Jewish lover, which gained popularity only in the later thirteenth century, represents a complex engagement with “complaints about Jewish influence and charges of royal philo-­Semitism [which] became a preferred weapon in the increasingly sharp debates over taxation and administration that marked the late thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries.” “Deviant Politics,” 25. See also, Nirenberg, Anti-­Judaism, 184–­186, 200. 18. Gampel, “Letter to a Wayward,” 410. 19. Libro de las caza, Blecua ed., 1:519–­520, as cited in Linehan, Spain, 1157–­1300, 137. 20. Fraker, “Hermes Trismegistus,” 87–­98 and Fraker, The Scope of History, 190–­222. 21. In Alfonsine histories, Nimrod is associated with the building of the tower of Babel and is regarded as the first great world ruler. Unsurprisingly, Nimrod is claimed as a direct forbearer of Alfonso himself. See Fraker, “Hermes Trismegistus,” 87–­88. 22. As Fraker noted, the General Estoria, in a manner very similar to the twelfth-­ century Latin text Kyranides, uses this strategy to establish an ancient and mysterious origin for a contemporary idea. Fraker, “Hermes Trismegistus,” 94. On this passage see also, Fraker, The Scope of History, 197. 23. See N. Roth, “Jewish Collaborators,” 60. 24. Cited in ibid., 60–­61. See also, Procter, “The Scientific Works,” 19; Linehan, Spain, 1157–­1300, 134; O’Callaghan, The Learned King, 143; Prado-­Vilar, “Life, Law, and Identity,” 116; Gutwirth, “History, Language, and the Sciences,” 518; and Gutwirth, “‘Entendudos,’” 388–­390. On the self-­representation of medieval

1 7 2

N ote s to page s 19 – 2 1

Jewish translators “as someone who reveals what has been concealed,” see Gutwirth, “‘Entendudos,’” 388n19. 25. Gutwirth, “‘Entendudos,’” 390. 26. See Idel, “On European Cultural Renaissances,” 55–­64; Idel, “Kabbalah in Spain,” 62–­66; Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 5–­14; and Felix, “Theurgy, Magic, and Mysticism,” 11–­13. 27. On Hermetic themes in Alfonso el Sabio’s General Estoria, see Fraker, The Scope of History, 190–­202; and Fraker, “Hermes Trismegistus,” 87–­98. On Jewish interest in Hermetic ideas, see Idel, “Hermeticism and Kabbalah,” 385–­428; Idel, ‘Hermeticism and Judaism,” 59–­76; Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 40–­41, 160; Lelli, “Hermes among the Jews,” 111–­135; and Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 7–­8. On Neoplatonic and Neo-­Pythagorean texts see Idel, “Johannes Reuchlin,” 2n6; Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, especially 77–­83, 153–­160, 222–­228; and Langermann, “Studies in Medieval Hebrew Pythagoreanism,” 219–­236. 28. Lelli, “Le versioni ebraiche,”147–­164 and The Book of the Moon Greenup ed. On Isma’ili thought and the teachings of the Ikhwan al-­Safa as a conduit for various forms of esoteric speculation, including Neoplatonic, Neo-­Pythagorean, and Hermetic ideas, into medieval Jewish thought, see Tirosh-­Samuelson, “Kabbalah and Science,” 485–­488. See also the comments in Verman, The Books of Contemplation, 127–­128. 29. On the possible participation of a Jewish scholar in the translation of the Picatrix in Alfonso’s court, see N. Roth, “Jewish Collaborators,” 65. 30. Idel, “Magical and Neoplatonic,” 192–­193; Idel, “Some Images of Maimonides,” 48–­49; and Idel, Enchanted Chains, 92. 31. The Hebrew Version, Gaster ed. 32. Likely an alchemical reference that may have influenced zoharic literature. See Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 31n45. On alchemy in relation to medieval Kabbalah, see ibid., 10–­41. On Aristotle’s letters see ibid., 4. 33. Baer, A History of the Jews, 1:188. 34. Ibid., 1:188–­189. 35. Ibid., 1:190. 36. Ibid., 1:192. As Baer notes, “Hebrew culture blossomed even in the smaller centers—­a fact very important for understanding the social and religious life of the time.” Ibid., 1:196. 37. See Ray, The Sephardic Frontier, 100–­101. 38. Ibid., 177. 39. Idel, “Kabbalah in Spain,” 64. 40. McGinn, “Jewish Mystical Leadership,” 185 (italics in original) and citations in note 15. On the use of secrecy as a Christian accusation against Jews, see Carlebach, “Attribution of Secrecy.” On the interaction of Jews and Christians regarding claims to secret knowledge in the early modern context, see Jutte, “Trading in Secrets” and Jutte, Das Zeitalter des Geheimnisses. 41. See Nahmanides, Peirush al ha-­Torah, Chavel ed., 4. For a comparison of Nahmanides views with those of Jacob ben Sheshet, see Wolfson, “Beautiful Maiden,” 160–­164.

not es to page s 2 1–2 4 

17 3

42. Joseph Gikatilla, Ginat Egoz, Atia, ed., 340–­341. See also, Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 184–­185 and Lachter, “Kabbalah, Philosophy,” 16–­18. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Hebrew and Aramaic sources are my own. English renderings of passages from the Hebrew Bible were informed by the Jewish Publication Society translation. 43. See Wolfson, “Jewish Mysticism,” 454. See also the passage from de Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik. ed., 17–­18, cited and discussed in Stuckrad, Locations of Knowledge, 35–­36. 44. Stuckrad, “Western Esotericism,” 88. As Stuckrad puts the matter elsewhere, “As scholars we have to focus less on the content of secret knowledge but on the very fact that this knowledge is claimed.” Locations of Knowledge, 56. On the interconfessional nature of esoteric claims, see Wasserstrom, “Sharing Secrets,” especially 208–­209. 45. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 198. 46. For more on this, see below, chapter 4. 47. London Sofer 33, 14b. See also the version cited in Idel, Ascensions on High, 43. 48. See Paris 799, 5a–­b. 49. Idel, Ben, 416. On the role of the figure of Enoch in zoharic and related literature, see ibid., 410–­417. 50. Ibid., 434. See also, Idel, Olam ha-­Malakhim, 110. 51. BL Add. 26, 929, 108b. On this text, which contains an intriguing early example of a non-­zoharic attribution of kabbalistic knowledge to Shimon bar Yohai, and its relation to JTS 2203, see Huss, Like the Radiance of the Sky, 65n82. 52. See BL Add. 26,929, 111b. 53. See b. Berachot, 6a. 54. Ibid., 7a. On the use of the rabbinic image of God engaged in prayer in kabbalistic sources, see Idel, Enchanted Chains, 167, 215–­220. 55. B. Berachot, 3a. 56. See, for example, b. Hagiga, 5b. 57. This usage is similar to the Iyyun texts, where the association with primal hyle is transferred to a name for ein sof. See Scholem, “Traces of ibn Gabirol,” 58. 58. BL Add. 26,929, 108b. 59. Joseph of Hamadan makes a similar point regarding the secrets hidden within rabbinic literature: “because of our many sins we no longer have eyes to see or ears to hear their hints, for they allude to a great principle, and we do not understand.” “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 26. 60. Baumgarten and Rustow, “Judaism and Tradition,” 229. 61. Oxford Opp. 487, 15a. 62. See the sources in rabbinic literature cited above in the notes 53–­56. 63. Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers, 95. See also, Kruger, The Spectral Jew, 111–­139. 64. See Resnick, Petrus Alfonsi, 26, 28n82. 65. Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers, 100. 66. Resnick, Petrus Alfonsi, 46. I thank Irven Resnick for bringing these passages to my attention.

1 74 

N ote s to page s 2 4 – 2 5

67. See Resnick, “The Priestly Raising,” 458–­463; Resnick, Petrus Alfonsi, 29–­33; J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 204; and M. Fishbane, The Exegetical Imagination, 30–­32. 68. Resnik, Petrus Alfonsi, 46. See also, Kruger, The Spectral Jew, 128; Bedos-­Rezak, “Were Jews Made in the Image?” 73; Sapir-­Abulafia, “Bodies in the Jewish-­Christian Debate,” 126–­127; Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History, 185; and Novikoff, “Reason and Natural Law,” 110–­114, 129. 69. See Resnik, Petrus Alfonsi, 48–­51, 68–­69. 70. Ibid., 51. See also the discussion in J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 211–­12 and McGinn, “Cabbalists and Christians,” 12–­16. 71. See J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 254n99. For a new study and full English translation of Peter the Venerable’s anti-­Jewish polemic, see Resnick, Peter the Venerable. 72. See Merchavia, Church versus Talmudic, ch. 4 and Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History, 191–­199. 73. Cited in J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 260. 74. See the discussion in ibid., 260–­270, and Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History, 194. On Peter the Venerable’s claim that the Talmud constitutes the “secrets” and “hidden sacraments” that the Jews deceitfully hide, see ibid., and the passage in the English translation in Resnick, Peter the Venerable, 212. On the issue of anthropomorphism in Peter the Venerable’s critique of Judaism, see Sapir-­Abulafia, “Bodies in the Jewish-­Christian Debate,” 127–­129. 75. See J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 255. Lucy Pick has also explored the challenge to rabbinic authority in the works of Rodrigo Jimenes de Rada, archbishop of Toledo between 1209 and 1247 and his claim that Jews distort biblical truth by their adherence to rabbinic “storytellers,” leading to inconsistent interpretations. See Pick, Conflict and Coexistence, especially 139–­164. 76. J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 320–­322; M. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, 38–­40; Kruger, The Spectral Jew, 169–­175; and J. Cohen, The Friars and the Jews, 60–­76. On Donnin’s attack on the Talmud and Moses ha-­Kohen of Tordseillas response, composed in the 1370s under the title Ezer ha-­Emunah, see Berger, “Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud,” 158–­176. See also, Baer, A History of the Jews, 1:150–­162. 77. Lasker, “Jewish Knowledge of Christianity,” 106. 78. J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 317–­363 and Stow, Alienated Minority, 251–­ 259. See Chazan, Daggers of Faith, especially 113–­136. 79. See Chazan, Daggers of Faith, 140 and the discussion in Hames, The Art of Conversion, 258–­268. Nahmanides’s famous devaluation of the aggadot in his Hebrew version of the Barcelona disputation of 1263 is a complex case. On this question see, for example, Fox, “Nahmanides on the Status”; Wolfson, “‘By Way of Truth,’” 113n29; Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond, 18–­27; and Caputo, Nahmanides in Medieval Catalonia, 98–­112, 123–­127. It is worth noting that in one place Nahmanides argues that a certain aggadah “may be false, or may have a different meaning from the secrets of the Sages [sitrei hakhamim].” Nahmanides, Kitvei Ramban, 1:306. Hames has noted that Nahmanides’s student Solomon ibn Adret at times adopted a similar position when writing in direct response to Christian polemical rhetoric. See Hames, The Art of Conversion, 253.

not es to page s 26–2 8 

17 5

80. See Stuckrad, Locations of Knowledge, 26–­41. 81. For relevant sources, see Wolfson, “Beyond the Spoken Word,” 208n17 and Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 55n165. 82. On this image in rabbinic and kabbalistic literature, see Yisraeli, The Interpretation of Secrets, 65–­68. On the use of the notion of giluy Eliyahu, or “revelation of Elijah,” to authorize innovative esoteric claims in kabbalistic texts, as well as some Islamic sources, and a similar claim in Ramon Lull’s Vita coetanea, see Hames, “Elijah and a Shephard,” 93–­102. On this idea in rabbinic literature, see Cohn, “Mystic Experience and Elijah-­Revelation.” 83. Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, 2:1. On this passage and its connection to the Iyyun texts, see Abrams, “Traces of the Lost Commentary,” 323. For a similar formulation see Milan 57, 28a; de Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Kodesh, Mopsik ed., 17–­18. On the intersection of orality and textuality in medieval Kabbalah, see Wolfson, “Beyond the Spoken Word,” especially 193–­198. 84. In one passage, Joseph of Hamadan claims that his kabbalistic knowledge stems from “that which the Lord my God has designated and brought about [ziman ve-­hikrah] before me, and not from my own wisdom at all.” Joseph of Hamadan’s “Sefer Tashak,” Zwelling ed., 56, 184–­185. 85. Katz, “Halakhic Statements in the Zohar,” 10. 86. See the passage in de Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed. and the discussion in E. Fishbane, As Light before Dawn, 58–­60. 87. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, 202. 88. Citing Ps. 25:14, David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 187. For a similar formulation, see Joseph of Hamadan, Joseph of Hamadan’s “Sefer Tashak,” Zwelling ed., 75, 103, 149, 175, 193. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid’s Book of Mirrors draws from and cites freely, often without attribution, many sources, notably the Zohar, but also the works of Ezra and Azriel of Gerona, Todros Abulafia, Moses de Leon, and Joseph Gikatilla. See Matt, “David ben Yehuda and His Book of Mirrors,” 136–­140, and the comments on 147–­148. 89. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 193, citing Ps. 147:20. 90. Abrams, Kabbalistic Manuscripts, 510. On the relationship between zoharic pseudepigraphy and Dante, see Freedman, “Pseudepigraphy in the Zohar.” 91. Liebes, “The Zohar as Renaissance,” 5–­11. On the more revolutionary and rebellious approach found in the Tiqqunei Zohar, see Liebes, “Zohar ve-­Tiqqunei Zohar,” especially 290–­297. 92. See Matt, “‘New-­Ancient Words,’” 184. 93. Ibid., 186. 94. See Giller, Reading the Zohar, 91–­92. 95. See E. Fishbane, “Tears of Disclosure,” 25–­47. 96. Zohar 2:102b. On this passage see Matt, “‘New-­Ancient Words,’” 189 and E. Fishbane, “Tears of Disclosure,” 40–­41. 97. On the discourse of revealing and writing in the various strata of the Zohar, see Huss, “The Appearance of the Zohar,” 516–­523. 98. Based on b. Baba Batra, 89b. 99. Zohar 1:11b. See also, Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia, 24; Matt, “‘New-­Ancient Words,’” 191; Matt, The Zohar, 1:78; and Huss, Like the Radiance of the Sky, 220.

1 7 6

N ote s to page s 2 8 – 30

100. Liebes observes that the Zohar does not extend the permissiveness to others that it does to itself in terms of revealing secrets. See “The Zohar as Renaissance,” 10. 101. As Bolle points out, secrecy in religion “turns out to be less a matter of privacy, or concealment of information. . . . Mysteries when revealed continue to be mysteries.” “Secrecy in Religion,” 3. 102. See Dan, “The Epic of a Millennium,” 14–­15. 103. Zohar 2:2b. See also Matt, The Zohar 2:3. 104. Zohar 2:2b; Matt, The Zohar 2:5. On this passage see Matt, “‘New-­Ancient Words,’” 190–­191. 105. For another discussion of the need to reveal concealed wisdom due to the spread of false beliefs, see de Leon, Mishkan ha-­Edut, bar-­Asher ed., 118. 106. De Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 392. On this passage, see Huss, “The Appearance of the Zohar,” 516, and n. 40 and Liebes, “How the Zohar Was Written,” 89. 107. Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia, 22. 108. Ibid., 15. 109. On the possible connection between the activities of itinerant preachers in Spain associated with these orders and the construction of zoharic discourse, see Tirosh-­Samuelson, Happiness in Premodern Judaism, 304–­305. On the use of rationalism and science in medieval Christian polemical discourse, see Funkenstein, “Basic Types of Anti-­Jewish Polemics.” 110. On medieval Jewish allegorical interpretation, as well as some modes of kabbalistic resistance to it, see Talmage, “Apples of Gold,” 313–­355. Morlok notes that kabbalists offered “complex theosophic systems [that] were by reason of their dynamic nature, more consonant with the performative branch of Judaism than the allegorical interpretation.” Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 20. 111. As Hames persuasively argues, “the Kabbalists spearheaded a reform which sought to revitalize Jewish life and praxis in light of what they considered the devastating effects of the spread of philosophical speculation, and in particular, the allegorical exegesis of the biblical text.” The Art of Conversion, 25–­26. 112. Building on the claim in Augustine’s De Civitate Dei, 18.46. See J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 32. On the perception of Jews as willful unbelievers, rather than mere nonbelievers, in the message of Christianity in the Middle Ages, see C. Roth, “The Medieval Conception,” 298–­309. 113. See Chazan, Daggers of Faith, especially 67–­85. 114. See, for example, Dahan, The Christian Polemic, 105–­114. 115. Wolfson, “Beyond the Spoken Word,” 190. See also Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation, 138. 116. Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 7, 9. See also ibid., 33, 119. On the conservative character of medieval mystical literature more broadly, see S. Katz, “The ‘Conservative’ Nature.” 117. Referring to his father, Abraham ben David of Posquieres, and his grandfather, Abraham ben Isaac of Narbonne, both accomplished scholars and communal leaders. Cited from Scholem, Origins, 394. For a discussion of this letter and the controversies surrounding the beginnings of Kabbalah in Spain during the first

not es to page s 3 1–32 

17 7

half of the thirteenth century, see ibid., 393–­406; Scholem, “Te’udah Hadashah,” 7–­38; Wolfson, “Beyond the Spoken Word,” 176; Abrams, Kabbalistic Manuscripts, 441–­442; Idel, “Nahmanides: Kabbalah, Halakha,” 27–­38; Idel, “Secrecy, Binah and Derishah,” 330–­332; Hames, The Art of Conversion, 52–­56; Y. Goldberg, “Spiritual Leadership,” 7–­14; E. Fishbane, “The Speech of Being,” 486–­488; Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation, 70–­76; and Halbertal, By Way of Truth, 299–­305. 118. Nahmanides, Peirush al ha-­Torah, Chavel ed., 7. There is a sizable body of scholarship on the subject of kabbalah and esotericism in Nahmanides’s corpus. See, for example, Idel, “We Have No Kabbalistic Tradition”; Idel, “Nahmanides: Kabbalah, Halakha”; Idel, “Transmission in Thirteenth-­ Century Kabbalah,” 144–­146; Wolfson, “By Way of Truth”; Abrams, Kabbalistic Manuscripts, ch.3; Berger, “Miracles and the Natural Order,” 107–­128; and Halbertal, By Way of Truth, 297–­333. 119. See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 253–­254. 120. See Huss, Like the Radiance of the Sky, ch. 1. 121. Zohar 3:79b, cited in Huss, Like the Radiance of the Sky, 42. 122. This is a different strategy from the Jewish philosophical polemical literature that sought to refute Christian claims on the basis of rational argumentation. See Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics; Chazan, Fashioning Jewish Identity, 250–­277; J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 167–­218; and D. Berger, “Introduction to The Jewish-­Christian Debate,” 84–­88. 123. Citing Isa. 28:3, Joseph Gikatilla, Ginat Egoz, Atia ed., 6. 124. De Leon, “Sefer Or Zarua,” Altmann ed., 246. 125. On the paradox within Kabbalah of revealing the secret in a concealed way, see Wolfson, “Occultation of the Feminine”; Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia, 38–­93; and Wolfson, “Murmuring Secrets.” 126. For an overview of the medieval Maimonidean controversy, see Sarachek, Faith and Reason; Baer, A History of the Jews, 1:96–­110; Silver, Maimonidean Criticism; D. Schwartz, Central Problems, 117–­148; Dobbs-­Weinstein, “The Maimonidean Controversy,” 331–­349; Wolfram Drews, “Medieval Controversies,” 111–­135; and Septimus, Hispano-­Jewish Culture, ch. 4. 127. For a discussion of this question in the writings of Meir ibn Gabbai in the early sixteenth century, see Goetschel, Meir Ibn Gabbay, 55–­122. 128. Hagiga, 2:1. On esotericism in rabbinic literature, see Petuchowski, “Judaism as ‘Mystery,’” 141–­152 and Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia, 12n8. 129. On the claim that philosophy is originally a Jewish wisdom that was stolen from them, as a justification for “reclaiming” it from non-­Jewish sources by Jews in the Middle Ages, see N. Roth, “The ‘Theft of Philosophy,’” 52–­67. On the broader historical dimensions of this claim, see Melamed, “The Myth of the Jewish Origins,” 41–­59. 130. See Idel, “Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed,” especially 202–­204; Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 252–­253; and Idel, “Maimonides and Kabbalah.” See also, Huss, “Mysticism versus Philosophy,” 125–­135; Tirosh-­Samuelson, “Kabbalah and Science,” 493–­495; Tirosh-­Samuelson, Happiness in Premodern Judaism, 292–­293, 297–­300, 310; Tirosh-­Samuelson, “Philosophy and Kabbalah,” 219–­224; Mottolese, Analogy in Midrash, 42–­50; and Verman, The Books of Contemplation, 23–­24.

1 7 8

N ote s to page s 33– 36

131. Wolfson, “Beneath the Wings of the Great Eagle,” 210 and Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 190–­191. 132. See Wolfson, “Via Negativa and in Maimonides,” especially 397–­415. 133. Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia, 3–­4. 134. See ibid., 38–­52 and Y. Schwartz, “The Esoteric and Interreligious Aspects,” 129. 135. Tirosh-­Samuelson describes the relationship between Kabbalah and philosophy in the thirteenth century as one in which “Kabbalah was neither antiscientific nor ignorant of the science of its day, but rather that kabbalists subscribed to a Platonic notion of scientific knowledge, and to a Neoplatonic cosmology that differed from the view of the Jewish Aristotelians.” “Kabbalah and Science,” 476. Dauber has argued that “Kabbalah, as it emerged at the end of the twelfth and first half of the thirteenth century, did not only amount to a recording of previously oral traditions, but also an attempt to reconcile these traditions with various philosophic materials, including those of Maimonides.” “Competing Approaches to Maimonides,” 84–­85. For an overview of medieval Jewish involvement in the sciences and philosophy in Iberia, see Aranda, “The Jew as Scientist.” 136. D. Schwartz, Central Problems, 134. 137. Dauber, Knowledge of God, 3. For a helpful review of scholarship on this question, see ibid., 3–­14. 138. Joseph Gikatilla, Hassagot, 20v. 139. Ibid. See also Idel, Absorbing Perfections, 86, as well as the comment in cited there from Recanati’s Commentary on the Rationales of the Commandments that “All the sciences altogether are hinted at in the Torah because there is nothing that is outside of her” (122). 140. Joseph Gikatilla, Hassagot, 21r. 141. On the all-­encompassing nature of the Jewish esoteric tradition in the work of Nahmanides, see Wolfson, “Beyond the Spoken Word,” 203–­204. 142. Wolfson, “The Anonymous Chapters,” 160. Wolfson has advanced this conception of kabbalistic esotericism in a number of important studies. See, for example, “Beyond the Spoken Word,” 166–­224. 143. Wolfson, “The Anonymous Chapters,” especially 166–­172. 144. De Leon, Sefer ha-­Mishqal, Wijnhoven ed., 48–­49. 145. See Moses de Leon’s bitter condemnation of “Greek wisdom” as the reason why some Jewish men neglect the performance of the commandments, as cited in Hecker, Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals, 62. 146. This conception of kabbalistic esotericism was common in Catalonian texts as well. In Ma’arekhet ha-­Elohut, probably composed in the early fourteenth century, the author argues that, contrary to rational sciences, “the Torah, in all of its detail and narratives, from beginning to end, are all matters inaccessible to the intellect, for they have come down to us through tradition [kabbalah], one man from another reaching back to Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, at Mt. Sinai.” 4b. 147. JTS 1926, 30b. See also de Leon, She’elot u-Teshuvot, 65. 148. On this text see Scholem, Kitvei Yad, 19; for a transcription of the text, see ibid., 219–­225. 149. Ibid., 219. 150. Ibid., 220.

not es to page s 36–4 1 

179

151. Ibid. 152. Oxford Mich 217, 5b–­6a. 153. Ibid, 6a. On this text see Scholem, “Traces of ibn Gabirol,” 176. Scholem attributes this text to one of the students of the Gerona school of Kabbalah. For a transcription and translation of this passage, together with another witness of this text from JTS 1982, 57a–­b, see Abrams, “A Commentary to the Ten Sefirot,” 46. 154. Oxford Opp. 487, 6a. 155. See Wolfson, “Beneath the Wings of the Great Eagle,” 209–­237. 156. Oxford Opp. Add. 4 to 4, 110v. Playing on Num. 1:17, Ezra 8:20, and elsewhere. 157. On the connection between kabbalistic name theory and the Picatirx, known in Hebrew as the Takhlit he-­Hakham, see Idel, “Receiving God By/In His Name,” 81–­82. 158. Oxford Opp. Add. 4 to 4, 117a. 159. JTS 2156, 32a-­b. 160. See also the discussion in Sefer ha-­Shem, Oron ed., 78, regarding the all-­encompassing nature of the Torah. 161. Sefer ha-­Shem, Oron, ed. 51. 162. Ibid., 51–­52. 163. Ibid., 52. 164. Ibid. 165. Such scribal and orthographic matters were a matter of interest, as well as a degree of concern, for medieval Jewish authorities. See Levy, Fixing God’s Torah. 166. Sefer ha-­Shem, Oron ed., 52. In the latter stratum of the Zohar known as the Tiqqunei Zohar, composed in the fourteenth century, there are expressions of pronounced hostility toward those who refuse to read the rabbinic tradition kabbalistically, describing such a person as being “like one who returns the world to primordial chaos, causing poverty and extending the exile,” 84a, cited from Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine, 74. On the attitude of the Tiqqunei Zohar toward expositors of halakha, see Liebes, “Zohar ve-­Tiqqunei Zohar,” 270–­279. 167. In a text attributed to Joseph Gikatilla entitled “ma’amar ‘al penimi’ut ha-­ torah,” the author compares those who read the Torah only according to its literal sense as one who treats the Torah as though it were “empty,” with those who recognize the “soul” (neshamah) breathed into the Torah by God, leading them “to be drawn after and passionately desirous of [the Torah] constantly, in order to reveal and attain a matter from of her mysteries.” See the citation and discussion in Yisraeli, The Interpretation of Secrets, 238–­239. 168. De Leon, Sefer ha-­Shem, Oron ed., 53. 169. De Leon, Mishkan ha-­Edut, bar-­Asher ed., 2. 170. See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 253. 171. Hames, The Art of Conversion, 31. See also, Hames, “Exotericism and Esotericism,”102–­112. Baer even argued that the Zohar was not a book designed “for limited circulation among fellow kabbalists only,” but rather that it was intended “to serve as a guide for religious conduct among a much wider public,” A History of the Jews, 1:267. 172. On exotericism in the writings of R. Asher ben David earlier in the thirteenth century, see Abrams, R. Asher ben David, 23–­25 and E. Fishbane, “The Speech of Being,” 486–­488. Verman has observed that by the late thirteenth century, “in Castile, Kabbalah

1 8 0

N ote s to page s 4 1 – 4 6

had become exoteric.” The Books of Contemplation, 27. J. Katz also notes that, with the emergence of the zoharic literature, “[i]n the triangle composed of halakha, philosophy, and Kabbalah, there now occurred a revolutionary shift.” Halakha and Kabbalah, 38. 173. Oron, “Sefer ‘Ezrat ha-­Shem,” 177. See Scholem, “Mafteah le-­Peirushei ‘Eser Sefirot,” 498–­515; Abrams, “A Commentary to Ten Sefirot”; Idel, “The Kabbalah’s ‘Window,’” 185–­187; Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 211–­213, where Idel observes the similarities between this type of literature and “the Christian interest in such topics as the symbolic interest in beasts and stones”; and Idel, “Historical Introduction,” xxvii–­xxviii, where he notes that, including his known works, Gikatilla seems to have composed five different treatises fitting this category. 174. I am grateful to Chaim Kreisel for pointing out to me the significance of this for understanding the intended utility of these texts. 175. Sefer ha-­Shem, Oron ed., 54. See also Oron’s comments in ibid., 17–­18. 176. Ibid., 54. 177. Ibid., 58. This language is similar to a passage adduced by Wolfson from Oxford Bodleian 2396, 3b, where the “enlightened” refers to those “who comprehend the secret from within the secret [sod mi-­tokh sod],” “The Anonymous Chapters,” 183n196. In texts such as these, Wolfson is quite right to point out that “Kabbalah is, first and foremost, an exegetical enterprise of deciphering the mysteries of Torah, but in such a way that the mysteries remain occluded.” Ibid, 179. 178. On this issue of popularizing trends in thirteenth-­century Kabbalah, especially with regard to compositions written earlier than the period under discussion, see Y. Goldberg, “Spiritual Leadership”; Hames, The Art of Conversion, 31–­80; and Hames, “Exotericism and Esotericism,” 102–­112. 179. Sefer ha-­Shem, Oron ed., 195. 180. Cited from, Scholem, Major Trends, 202. See also the discussion in de Leon, Sefer Mishkan ha-­Edut, bar-­Asher ed., 48–­49. See also de Leon’s comment at the beginning of his commentary on the ten sefirot that “I elaborate in my words, since you require accessible language, so that you may enter the inner gate of the King.” De Leon “Sod Eser Sefirot Belimah,” Scholem ed., 371. 181. Milan 57, 11a. 182. Parma 1220, 74a. 183. See Ray, The Sephardic Frontier. 184. See Elukin, Living Together, Living Apart, 137. Elukin notes that the Jews of northern Europe were, like their Spanish counterparts, “deeply integrated into the rhythms of their local world,” engaging with circumstances that were “dynamic and cannot be understood only in terms of persecution.” Ibid., 137. 185. Epstein, The Medieval Hagadah, 5–­6. 186. Stuckrad, Locations of Knowledge, 41.

2  secrets of the cosmos 1. Hagiga, 2:1. 2. Joseph Gikatilla, Sod ha-­Keruvim in Parma 1230, 111a–­b. 3. On the use of this term in the Zohar see Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 556–­557.

not es to page s 4 6–4 8 

18 1

4. Scholem, Kabbalah, 94. See also, Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 101–­103; Scholem, Major Trends, 209; Gottleib, Studies in Kabbalah Literature, 271–­272; and Wolfson, “Mirror of Nature,” 305–­331. On creation in rabbinic literature, see also Urbach, The Sages, ch. 9; Abelson, The Immanence of God; and Sed, La Mystique Cosmologique Juive. It is significant to point out that in at least one intriguing passage in Midrash Bereshit 3:2 we find an articulation of creation as a coincidence of opposites: “How was the world created? Rabbi Yohanan said, the Holy One, blessed be He, took two coils, one of fire and one of snow, and combined them this with that, and from them He created the world. Rabbi Haninna said, four [coils] for the four directions. Rabbi Hama said six, four for the four directions, and one [for] above and one [for] below.” See also, Urbach, The Sages, 194–­195. In this connection, consider Moses de Leon’s comment that the conflict between fire and water serves a divine purpose, since “their being in conflict brings forth the heavens, the secret of the mediation [sod ha-­makhri’ah], and thus, it is a conflict for the sake of heaven,” The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 113. On the dialectical tensions between this view and the positive valuation of moral distinction and ethnic difference in kabbalistic texts, see Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 213–­240. 5. Wolfson, “Mirror of Nature,” 309–­310. The same paradox, according to Wolfson, applies to the temporal dimensions of past, present, and future in the highest reaches of the Godhead, especially Keter. See Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted, 244–­255. 6. For a discussion of the role of paradoxical expression in mystical literature, see Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying. On apophasis in Jewish mysticism, see Wolfson, “Megillat ‘Emet we-­Emunah,” especially 61; Wolfson, “Negative Theology and Positive Assertion”; Wolfson, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 33–­36; Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 19–­21, 215, 219, 343; Wolfson, “Via Negativa in Maimonides”; and Katz, “Utterance and Ineffability.” Consider also Scholem’s comment that “the religious world of the mystic can be expressed in terms applicable to rational knowledge only with the help of paradox.” Major Trends, 4–­5. 7. See Stace, Time and Eternity, ch. 4. 8. Ibid., 218. 9. Ibid., 306. 10. Abelson, “Introduction” to The Zohar, xvi. Altmann offers a similar characterization of medieval Kabbalah, noting the embrace of both the “world of the sefirot,” and the transcendent “world of ein sof,” as the components that comprise divine unity. Panim shel Yahadut, 90. 11. See, for example, Wolfson, “Divine Suffering,” 101–­162, and references to Wolfson below. 12. For a survey of the various conceptions of ein sof and its role in early Kabbalah, see Valabregue-­Perry, Concealed and Revealed and Valabregue-­Perry, “The Concept of Infinity.” 13. Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia, 19. 14. Idel argues that “the motif of a divine anthropomorphical decade, instrumental in the creational process, is part of ancient Jewish thought; this decade was presumably the source of the ten Sefirot of Sefer Yetzirah.” Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 112. On the relationship between medieval Kabbalah and trends in earlier forms

1 82 

N ote s to page s 4 9 – 5 1

of Jewish literature, see ibid., xiii, 32–­34, 38–­39, 112–­137, 112–­172. Idel also notes the contributions to this question by Baer, ibid., 13. 15. Oxford Add. 4 to 4, 110a–­110b. 16. See Valabregue-­Perry, Concealed and Revealed, 119–­207. For a study and transcription of some important kabbalistic texts discussing creation, see Abrams, R. Asher ben David, 301–­353. 17. See Pirkei de-­Rabbi Eliezer, ch. 3. 18. BL Add. 15,299, fol. 36a–­b. This text has significant overlap with BL Or. 1055, 107b–­108a, 127b–­128a, as well as the texts transcribed in Abrams, “The Reception and Editing,” 315, 320, where he notes the similarities between the above cited text and a number of other manuscripts, including Leipzig 38, 121a, Roma 48a, and Parma (de Rossi) 1390 (copied in the year 1286), 5b. See also, Scholem, “Mafteah le-­Peirushei ‘Eser Sefirot,” 511, #121. 19. For an articulation of divine self-­creation in the Iyyun material, see Porat, The Works of Iyyun, 68. See also Sefer ha-­Shem, Oron ed., 55–­56, 68, 199. 20. London Sofer 33, 17a. On this text see Scholem, “Mafteach le-­Peirushei ‘Eser Sefirot,” #79 and Scholem, Origins, 324, n.258, where he refers to the copy of this text preserved in Munich 54 and Munich 215, 200b–­204b. Other copies can be found in Munich 240, 50a–­52b, and Jerusalem 1959. However, the London Sofer manuscript, copied in the fourteenth century in a Spanish Hebrew script, is the oldest copy of this text that I have been able to locate. 21. Oxford Mich. 547, 64b. On the attribution of this text to Joseph of Hamadan, see Idel, “Peirush ‘Eser Sefrot ve-­Seridim,” 74–­76. 22. Joseph Gikatilla, “Ha-­Ketah ha-­Akharon,” Gottleib ed., 380. 23. BL Or. 10,324, 19b–­20a. This text was published by Toledano in Hatzopheh 13:262. 24. This term may be related to the Abraham bar Hiyya’s conception of the “pure thought,” which, as Dauber has shown, may have influenced kabbalistic conceptions of divine creation in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries in Provence and Catalonia. “‘Pure Thought’ in Abraham bar Hiyya.” Bar Hiyya understands “pure thought” as “the site in which all future creations emerge in potentiality” (ibid., 194), an idea that informed the early kabbalistic association of “thought” with Keter. On the relationship between Keter and thought in the works of David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, see Matt, “David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid and His Book of Mirrors,” 156–­157. On the association of Keter with the primeval “will” (ratzon) in early thirteenth-­century Kabbalah and the possible connection to Ihwan al-­safa’, see Fenton, “Traces of Moses ibn Ezra’s,” 55–­57. 25. On the connection of this term to Sefer Yetzirah and Sa’adia Goan’s commentary, as well as the reflection of ibn Gabirol’s thought in the Iyyun texts in a novel way, see Scholem, “Traces of ibn Gabirol,” 50. 26. On the inscrutability of Keter and the impossibility of comprehending the origin of emanated light that comes from the “splendor of the Throne of Glory,” see BL Add. 17,807, 43a–­44a. On Keter as a divine attribute beyond the reach of human thought, see Parma 3481, 72b and de Leon, Sod Eser Sefirot, 374. 27. In an anonymous commentary on the sefirot found in Berlin 538, 96a–­97b, the author warns the reader, using a fairly common formulation, to avoid the concepts

not es to page s 5 1–54 

183

of gashmi’ut (physicality), peirud (separation), and shinui (change) with regard to the first three sefirot and notes that even the Torah does not speak of these sefirot. 28. JTS 1896, 4b. 29. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 44. On the relationship between Keter and Hokhmah, see ibid., 125. Wolfson points out that such locutions “undermine any ontology of substance or metaphysics of presence with regard to the nothing in which everything is incorporated,” a conception of being that he refers to as “meontology.” A Dream Interpreted, 247. For a similar formulation by Bahya ben Asher, see Gottleib, The Kabbalah in the Writing of R. Bahya, 230. 30. On this text, see Idel, “Peirush ‘Eser Sefirot ve-­Seridim,” 82–­84. 31. JTS 1577, 91a. See also the printed edition entitled Sefer ha-­Yihud (The Book of Unity), Cohen ed., 1–­2. 32. See also, de Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed., 4, and Mopsik’s comment there in note 28, as well as the study by G. Margoliouth, “The Doctrine of the Ether.” 33. See Kanarfogel, Peering through the Lattices, 240–­242, and sources cited in note 52 and Kanarfogel, The Intellectual History, 484–­485. On the mention of Ashkenazi authorities in mid-­thirteenth-­century Castilian kabbalist sources, see Kanarfogel, “Rabbinic Figures in Castilian Kabbalistic Pseudepigraphy.” 34. See Verman, Books of Contemplation, where this idea is prominent in the work known as the Fountain of Wisdom, especially 62–­63. See also this idea which occurs frequently in the Iyyun texts published in Porat, The Works of Iyyun, 41, 43, 48, 49, 51, 84. See also, Scholem, Origins, 331–­348; Scholem, “Traces of ibn Gabirol,” 50; Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 281–­282; and Wolfson, Circle in the Square, 49–­78. 35. See the works cited by Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 282n39. 36. JTS 1690, 31b. 37. JTS 1887, 23b. The same comment is found in Oxford Mich. 217, 1a, and JTS 2156, 46b. On this text see Scholem, “Mafteah le-­Peirushei ‘Eser Sefirot,” 503, #37. 38. On this expression see Gottlieb, Studies in Kabbalah Literature, 284–­286. 39. Oxford Opp. 487, 27a; JTS 1896, 5b–­6a. 40. This is a common rabbinic expression. See, for example, b. Berachot, 31a. 41. Oxford Opp. 487, 57a; JTS 1896, 69a. 42. Oxford Opp. Add. 4 to 4, 117b. On this text see Scholem, “Mafteah le-­Peirushei ‘Eser Sefirot,” 500, #16. 43. This passage, while employing the idea of the sefirot as kelim or “instruments” of God, clearly embraces the inclusion of the sefirot within the divine self. Compare with the anonymous text preserved in Paris 837, 115a. On this issue, see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 136–­146; Idel, Rabbi Menachem Recanati, 175–­214; and Giller, Kabbalah: A Guide, 56–­57. 44. Abrams argues that this text was written in Catalonia earlier in the thirteenth century. See “A Commentary on the Ten Sefirot.” In that study Abrams notes the wide variations found in the many versions and copies of this text, which as he notes can be found in at least fifty-­two different manuscripts. While this text cannot be regarded as “Castilian” in a simple way, it was an important source for many Castilian kabbalists, one that they both read and added to as they copied. On this issue see ibid., 7–­15.

1 84 

N ote s to page s 54 – 5 7

45. JTS 1895, 6b. See also Parma (de Rossi) 1390, 5b. On this text see Scholem, “Mafteah le-­Peirushei ‘Eser Sefirot,” 498, #2. For a Hebrew transcription of six manuscript witnesses of this passage, see Abrams, “A Commentary on the Ten Sefirot,” 26–­27. 46. Cited from the text edited by Scholem, Kitvei Yad, 207. Idel cites part of this passage in, Olam ha-­Malakhim, 169–­170n84. 47. On this rendering of the term botsina de-­qardinuta see Wolfson, “Woman—­ The Feminine as Other,” 178–­180. See also, Wolfson, Circle in the Square, 60, 174–­175n93. For a different reading, see Liebes, “Sections of the Zohar Lexicon,” 162–­163; Liebes, Ars Poetica, 166; Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 309; and Matt, The Zohar, 1:107–­108n4. 48. Zohar 1:15a. Compare with Scholem, Major Trends, 218–­219; Matt, The Zohar, 1:107–­109; Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 309; and Green, “The Zohar,” 46–­48. My translation primarily follows that of Wolfson (see note 47) with regard to the “hardened flame” (bostina de-­qardinuta) as an image relating to divine self-­limitation in the act of creation. See also Giller, Reading the Zohar, 69–­7 1. For a similar usage in the Tiqqunei Zohar, see Giller, Reading the Zohar, 74–­77. On the relationship of this myth to Orphic sources, see Liebes, Studies in Jewish Myth, 81–­87. 49. On the relationship of this symbolism of the first point to Neoplatonic and Isma’ili sources, see Heller-­Wilensky, “The ‘First Created Being,’” 68. On Isma’ili thought and Kabbalah, see Tirosh-­Samuelson, “Kabbalah and Science,” 485–­488. On the Zoharic use of the idea of the “primordial point” in relation to Joseph Gikatilla’s early work, Ginat Egoz, composed in 1274, see Scholem, Major Trends, 173, and notes 80, 81. 50. On the relationship of the botsina de-­qardinuta and divine withdrawal, see Wolfson, Circle in the Square, 177–­178n109. On the notion of divine withdrawal in early Kabbalah, see Wolfson, “Divine Suffering,” 117–­118. 51. On the relationship of this image to the Iyyun texts, and the possibility of precursors in ibn Gabirol, see Scholem, “Traces of ibn Gabirol,” 50–­51. See also, Scholem, “Colours and The Symbolism,” 101–­104 and Porat, The Works of Iyyun, 85. 52. On the history of this concept in early Kabbalah, see Idel, “Toldot Musag ha-­‘Tzim-­Tzum’” and Novak, “Self-­Contraction of the Godhead,” 305. 53. Oxford Mich. 217, 1a and JTS 2156, 46b 54. Scholem, Kitvei Yad, 205. 55. See also de Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed., 21–­22 and de Leon, Commentary on the Ten Sefirot, 374–­375. 56. I am indebted to Elliot Wolfson for this rendering of tkn in the Zohar. 57. Zohar 1:246b. See also Matt, The Zohar, 3:511 and Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 325–­336. 58. Compare with, for example, Avot 5:1, which states; “With ten utterances was the world created.” On the linguistic nature of creation in Kabbalah and the divine withdrawal implied therein, see Scholem, “The Name of God” and Wolfson, Circle in the Square, 53–­57, 60, 170n67, 171–­172n68, 174n92. 59. For a discussion of this term see Matt, “Ayin: The Concept of Nothingness.” 60. Wolfson, Language, Eros, and Being, 32.

not es to page s 5 7–61 

185

61. See Scholem, On the Mystical Shape, 99, 101–­115. On the term “all” in its relation to Yesod in the Bahir, and later Kabbalah, see Wolfson, Along the Path, 1–­62. 62. The fluid gender boundaries between the ninth and tenth sefirot in kabbalistic literature that Wolfson has demonstrated in a number of studies is highly instructive here. The “crossing” from female to male and vice-­versa at the lowest extreme of the ontic chain is indicative of the ontologically conflicted nature of reality, and its potential for divine reunification. See Wolfson, “Crossing Gender Boundaries,” in Circle in the Square Wolfson, Through a Speculum, ch. 7; Wolfson, “Gender and Heresy.” 63. See Idel, “The Image of Man,” 183, where he argues that in such instances, “the Neoplatonic character of the ‘Ein Sof was neutralized by virtue of its inclusion within the sefirotic order.” 64. See Matt, “David ben Yehuda he Hasid and His Book of Mirrors,” 151–­152. 65. JTS 1577, 78a. 66. See ben Shlomo, introduction to Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:30–­33. 67. According to Gikatilla, the connection between Malkhut and ein sof works as follows: “Consider and you will see that the attribute of adonai, which is the secret of Malkhut, is bound within Tiferet, which is the secret of YHWH, and YHWH, may He be blessed, unites with Keter, which is the secret of eheyeh, which is called ein sof, and these three levels are the secret of the principle of unity and faith.” Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:273. See also Ibid., 1:57. 68. Oxford Mich. 547, 65b. Compare with Gikatilla’s similar formulations, cited and discussed in Gottleib, Studies in Kabbalah Literature, 272. 69. Citing Ps. 33:6, B. Rosh ha-­Shanah, 32a and B. Megilla, 31b. 70. Oxford Mich. 547, 64b–­65a. 71. On the inscrutability of Keter, see David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 35. 72. See Holdrege, Veda and Torah, 206–­208. See also de Leon, Sefer Mishkan ha-­ Edut, bar-­Asher ed., 25. 73. Kiryat Ono 1, col. 980. 74. See also, Jacob ben Jacob ha-­Kohen’s comment that “just as a scribe clarifies and brings into light hidden matters of the book, so too, the sefirah called Binah brings forth into actuality the paths of Wisdom.” Commentary on the Ten Sefirot, Scholem ed., 228. 75. Parma 1230, 109b. 76. My articulation of this paradox is indebted to Wolfson’s study of this dynamic in the Bahir. See “Before Alef/Where Beginnings End.” Particularly significant in this study is Wolfson’s claim that the points of “beginning” and “end” converge in their origin in God, according to the Sefer ha-­Bahir, which is commonly regarded as the earliest kabbalistic text and was written in southern France about one hundred years before the Zohar. This text is an important source for the Zohar’s reflections on the question of creation. 77. See Gottleib, Studies in Kabbalah Literature, 23 and Wolfson, “Mirror of Nature.” 78. Idel has explored the issue of the reemergence of ancient Jewish esoteric ideas in medieval Kabbalah. See, for examples, Idel, Ben, 51–­57, 69–­73, and his observation

1 8 6

N ote s to page s 61 – 64

that “some kabbalistic ideas that are close to Gnostic ones represent Jewish traditions that surfaced in the Middle Ages and do not automatically reflect Gnostic influences.” Ibid., 54. Idel has critiqued Scholem’s argument that Kabbalah emerged as a result of the confluence of Gnostic and Neoplatonic ideas in medieval Jewish circles. See also, Idel, Old Worlds, 133–­153. 79. See Altmann, “A Note on the Rabbinic Doctrine,” 195 ff. 80. Joseph Gikatilla, “Ha-­Ketah ha-­Akharon,” Gottlieb ed., 368–­3 69. See also, Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:188, 189, 238; 2:84, 86, 87, 92, 119. 81. On this issue, see Idel, Enchanted Chains, especially 44–­53. 82. See Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being. See also Blumenthal, “Lovejoy’s Great Chain of Being.” 83. Idel, Enchanted Chains, 49. 84. Ibid., 48. Idel argues that the various medieval kabbalistic descriptions of the sefirot draw from the “semantic reservoirs,” of Neoplatonic, Neo-­Aristotelian, and Hermetic ideas together with organic and “archaic” imagery, such as that of the tree and the human form, along with “traditional values” of rabbinic Judaism, including the Oral and Written Torah. See ibid., 50–­51. See also Mottolese, Analogy in Midrash, 53 and Ginsburg, “The Image of the Divine and Person,” 64. 85. It is interesting to note that already in Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogi, the three letters of the Tetragrammaton were interpreted as proof, from the Jewish tradition, of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. See Kruger, The Spectral Jew, 128–­129. 86. Zohar 3:10b. 87. De Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 191. See also, ibid., 307; de Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed., 5, 89, 91; and de Leon, “Sod Eser Sefirot Belimah,” Scholem ed., 374–­375. 88. BL Add. 26,929, 108b. 89. On the image of the “chain of being” in Moses de Leon, see, Scholem, Major Trends, 222–­223; ben Shelomo, “Gershom Scholem on Pantheism,” 57–­72; Wolfson, “Mystical Rationalization of the Commandments,” 239–­240, and note 122; Idel, Enchanted Chains, 46; and S. Katz, “Utterance and Ineffability,” 291. 90. De Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 11. See also, ibid., 77. 91. Ibid., 95. 92. Ibid., 131. 93. Ibid., 182. For other examples of the image of the chain of emanation and its connection to the nothing, see ibid., 231, 307, 316, 324–­325, 363; de Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed., 104; and de Leon, Shushan Edut, Scholem ed., 354. On the chain and its connection to the “one” in de Leon’s early work, see “Sefer Or Zarua,” Altman ed., 253–­256. See also, Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:167. 94. See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 142. 95. This image is first employed by Asher ben David in Sefer ha-­Yihud. See Abrams, R. Asher Ben David, 102, as well as the citation of this passage from BL Or. 1055, 112b. See also Sefer ha-­Shem, Oron ed., 25. 96. JTS 1895, 6b–­7a. See also, Parma (de Rossi) 1390, 5b. 97. Joseph of Hamadan, Joseph of Hamadan’s “Sefer Tashak,” Zwelling ed., 62.

not es to page s 64 –66 

18 7

98. Compare to Zohar 1:15a, cited above. 99. Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 179. On “kozu” and its relationship to Heikhalot material, see Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 48–­49. On “ararita,” which derives from the mid-­thirteenth-­century Iyyun texts, see Verman, The Books of Contemplation, 101n201, 102. On the connection of this name to Ashkenazi sources, see Ibid., 200–­204. 100. Oxford Mich. 547, 66a. 101. Oxford Opp. 487, Sefer ha-­Mafteah, 13b–­14a 102. See Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 205. 103. On this idea in Eliade and its reverberations in the work of Henri Corbin and Gershom Scholem, see Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion, 67–­82. 104. De Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 22. 105. See Scholem, Major Trends, 222. 106. Zohar 2:226a–­b. My translation follows that of Matt, The Zohar, 6:298. See the discussion in Scholem, Kabbalah, 89–­90. 107. On the corollaries between theurgical and magical claims in Gikatilla’s work, see Garb, Hofa’otav shel ha-­Koah, 89. On the opposition to magic in the Sabba de-­ Mishpatim section of the Zohar, see Yisraeli, The Interpretation of Secrets, 173–­174. 108. Faivre and Voss, “Western Esotericism and the Science,” 60. For a critique of Faivre’s argument that Western esotericism entails four “intrinsic” characteristics or “forms of thought,” the first of which is the above-­mentioned notion of “correspondences,” see Stuckrad, “Western Esotericism,” 81–­83. 109. Joseph of Hamadan, “Serid mi-­peirush le-­sefer Bereishit,” Mopsik ed., 9. 110. Wolfson, “Mirror of Nature,” 311. 111. De Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed., 73. On the unity of the upper and lower worlds, see also ibid., 74, 81. 112. De Leon, “Sefer Or Zarua,” Altman ed., 259. 113. De Leon, Shushan Edut, Scholem ed., 343. 114. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’ar ha-­Nikud, 19. See also, Joseph Gikatilla, “Ha-­Ketah ha-­Akharon,” Gottlieb ed., 370 and Cambridge Add. 1511, 11b. 115. Oxford Opp. 487, 39b. 116. Ibid., 51a. 117. Joseph Gikatilla also describes the lower entities as “chariots” for the upper entities in a way that creates union above and below in Sha’arei Tzedek, 4a Sha’ar ha-­Nikud, 7; and Commentary to Ezekiel’s Chariot, Farber ed., 69. On two worlds, above and below, that are two but “the two of them stand in a single gradation, and there is no distinction between them,” see de Leon, Shushan Edut, Scholem ed., 343. Idel points out that in his Hassagot al ha-­Moreh, 19b, Joseph Gikatilla associated this meaning with the Ma’aseh Merkavah from rabbinic tradition, in open contradistinction to the philosophical interpretations of this idea as advanced by Maimonides. “Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed,” 201. See also, Morlok, “Kabbalah als Alternative?” 88–­89 and Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 214–­215. 118. Oxford Opp. 487, Sefer ha-­Mafteah, 13a. See also Zohar 2:100b, where, playing on b. Pesachim 50a, the text asserts, “The world is in a state of inversion. Verily, the supernal entities are below, and the terrestrial entities are above.” For a discussion of this passage, see Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 31–­32.

N ote s to page s 67 – 7 2

1 8 8

119. Joseph of Hamadan, Joseph of Hamadan’s “Sefer Tashak,” Zwelling ed., 438. On the connection of the idea of the “soul of the soul” to the works of Solomon ibn Gabirol and the Iyyun texts, see Scholem, “Traces of ibn Gabirol,” in Mehkerei Kabbalah, 43–­44. 120. De Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 102. See also, ibid., 105. 121. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Tzedek, 7b–­8a. 122. See Bereshit Rabbah, 10:6. 123. Zohar, 1:156a-­b. See also Matt, The Zohar, 2:370–­371 and Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 574–­575. 124. For an extensive discussion of this imagery, see Wolfson, Through a Speculum, especially 271–­317.

3  secrets of the self 1. Avot de R. Natan, Version I, 31, 91. Cited in Urbach, The Sages, 214. 2. Urbach, The Sages, 215. 3. Ibid., 217. On the rabbinic conception of “man,” see ibid., ch. 10. 4. On this point see Wolfson, “Mirror of Nature,” 312. 5. See Boyarin, Carnal Israel, especially 1–­7, 31–­35. On the development of a more dualistic understanding of the body and soul in the Amoraic period from the more monisitc anthropology in the Tana’itic schools, see N. Rubin, “From Monism to Dualism.” It is also worth bearing in mind Bynum’s observation that, in the wake of the controversies regarding the issue of resurrection among western European Christian thinkers in the late thirteenth century, the “body seems anything but eclipsed,” but rather becomes “more crucial and integral to the self than ever before.” Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, 319. 6. Goshen-­Gottstein, “The Body as Image of God,” 177. 7. Kimmelman, “Rabbinic Theology of the Physical,” 946. 8. For an extensive study of this issue in Genesis Rabba, see Aaron, “Images of the Divine and Human.” 9. D. Stern, “Imitatio Hominis,” 157. 10. See Wolfson’s extensive discussion in, Venturing Beyond, 24–­107. See also, Tirosh-­Samuelson, Happiness in Premodern Judaism, 333. 11. See Wolfson, “Ontology, Alterity, and Ethics,” 138, and citations in n. 27. 12. See Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 74–­80. See also, Gellman, “Jewish Mysticism and Morality.” 13. Wolfson, “Ontology, Alterity, and Ethics,” 147. 14. Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 27–­28. Put another way, Wolfson comments that “the demonization of non-­Jewish nations in kabbalistic texts has much to do with rabbinic xenophobia.” Ibid., 40. 15. Ibid. On incarnation in rabbinic literature, see Neusner, Incarnation of God. 16. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 165. 17. See Biale, “Gershom Scholem’s Ten Unhistorical,” 67–­93 and Dan, “Beyond the Kabbalistic Symbol.” My translation of these passages from the German is informed by Biale’s commentary.

not es to page s 72–74 

18 9

18. Biale, “Gershom Scholem’s Ten Unhistorical,” 85. 19. Scholem, Kabbalah, 152. 20. Scholem, Major Trends, 18. See also his comment that “the limited powers proceed from the unlimited powers, and the secret signature of the letters acts in everything, but nowhere more clearly than in man.” Origins, 299. On the anthropological doctrine of Azriel of Gerona, see Origins, 454–­460. 21. See, for example, Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 3–­73; Wolfson, “Images of God’s Feet,” 143–­181; and Wolfson, “Iconic Visualization.” 22. Wolfson, “Judaism and Incarnation,” 241. 23. Ibid., 254. 24. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 32–­33. 25. Kruger, The Spectral Jew, xxiv. On the condemnation of Jews through association with the feminine in medieval Spanish literature, see H. Goldberg, “Antifeminism and Antisemitism,” 85–­119. See also, Resnick, Marks of Distinction, 46–­52. Compare to M. Rubin’s observation that Jewish men are overwhelmingly identified as the culprits of medieval narratives and artistic representations of Jewish ritual murder and host desecration. Gentile Tales, especially 71–­73. Patton has noted that claims of Jewish ritual murder and host desecration were slow to make their way into Spain, Art of Estrangement, 62–­65. 26. Resnick, Marks of Distinction. 27. Lipton, “Where Are the Gothic,” 151, 156. 28. Prado-­Vilar, “Life, Law, and Identity,” 133. 29. On this see Patton, Art of Estrangement, 91–­93, 164–­169. 30. On the possible connection between the kabbalistic notion that the self comprises the entirety of creation to ancient Jewish sources that may have informed certain Christian texts, including the Epistle to Colossians 1:15–­17, see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 116–­119. 31. For a qualification of the potential problematic of the use of this term, see Idel, Ben, 60–­63. Idel prefers the term “embodiment” in relation to kabbalistic texts on this issue. Wolfson has argued in response to Idel’s caution regarding the term “incarnation” that while “the incarnational tropes to be extracted from Jewish texts are distinct from and in opposition to Christian formulations,” the term is in a sense all the more useful in that “it is the disparity that justifies the use of the same nomenclature.” That is to say, “condemnation of the other bespeaks contiguity with the other.” Wolfson, “Textual Flesh, Incarnation,” 190–­191. See also the extensive discussion in Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, ch. 5. 32. Idel has observed that, for the kabbalists, “their ontology assumes a much more mythical stance for the mystic here below, one in which the continuum between his soul—­and sometimes even his body—­and the divine is rather strong. In many theosophical-­theurgical writings, the most essential human faculty is a prolongation of the divine.” Ascensions on High, 216. 33. For a study of this idea in rabbinic and medieval Jewish thought in comparison to Christian discourse, see Altmann, “Homo imago Dei.” 34. For a comprehensive study of this theme in rabbinic literature, see Lorberbaum, Tzelem Elohim. 35. De Leon, Sefer ha-­Mishqal, Wijnhoven ed., 42.

1 9 0

N ote s to page s 7 5– 7 7

36. De Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 390. See also ibid., 56. 37. In one very interesting passage, Moses de Leon distinguishes between those “who are called wise” because of their knowledge of halakha, and the truly wise who are versed in the esoteric knowledge of the Kabbalah on the basis of knowledge of the theosophic significance of the parts of the human body. See “Sefer Or Zarua,” Altman ed., 249. On the association of the symbolic valence of the parts of the body with the science of ma’aseh bereshit, see Joseph Gikatilla, Commentary to Ezekiel’s Chariot, Farber ed., 55. On the correlation of human and divine form as reflective of the image of Torah itself in Sefer ha-­Yihud and the works of Joseph of Hamadan, see Idel, Enchanted Chains, 134–­140; Idel, Absorbing Perfections, 70–­7 1; and Idel, “The Concept of Torah,” 64–­67. 38. JTS 1577, 91b. See also Sefer ha-­Yihud (The Book of Unity), Cohen ed., 1. 39. Joseph of Hamadan, Critical Edition of the “Sefer Ta’amei ha-­Mitzvot,” Meier ed., 30. 40. Idel, “On Performing the Body,” 253. 41. See JTS 1895, 6b and Parma (de Rossi 1390), 5a. 42. Idel, “The Image of Man,” 184. 43. Compare with the comment in the anonymous text preserved in Paris 837, 115b, that the sefirot are not corporeal, but rather “forms of colored light.” 44. London Sofer 33, 16b. For a treatment of this passage as cited in Munich 54, 288a, see Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 304, whom I also thank for discussing this passage with me and making helpful suggestions. On the relationship of this passage to imagery found in the Iyyun texts, see Idel, Olam ha-­Malakhim, 43. 45. See Wolfson, Through a Speculum, especially 270–­317. 46. It is interesting to compare this to the approach of Ashkenazi thinkers on this subject, many of whom preferred to regard the anthropomorphic divine image as a “temporary” phenomenon related to prophetic visions and not reflective of a permanent theosophic configuration, as is the case with most Spanish kabbalists. See the discussion in Kanarfogel, The Intellectual History, 489–­519 and Idel, Olam ha-­Malakhim, 19, 158n3, 26–­27. 47. Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 300 and Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 304. 48. London Sofer 33, 16a. 49. See Wolfson, “Jewish Mysticism,” 472–­480. 50. See, for example, b. Berachot, 31a, 71a and b. Nedarim 3a. 51. Oxford Opp. 487, Mekor ha-­Sekhel, 28b–­29a; JTS 1896, 8b–­9b. See also Wolfson, “Jewish Mysticism,” 473, and the version of the first part of this text cited by Wolfson from an anonymous commentary on the sefirot cited from Paris 770, 62a in “By Way of Truth,” 113–­114n31, and his comparison to the passage from Ma’arekhet ha-­’Elohut, 90b: “these [things above] are the foundation for things below which are in their pattern” (“By Way of Truth,” 111), as well as Sefer ha-­ Bahir, Margoliot ed., §55. On the relationship between this position and Nahmanides’s hermeneutical stance, see “By Way of Truth,” especially 113. On this passage see also Huss, “Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Definition,” 172. On the connection between the image in Sefer ha-­Bahir, Margoliot ed.,§55 and the notion of the divine image found in the Iyyun texts, see Idel, Olam ha-­Malakhim, 41–­42. See also, Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 269. For a discussion of

not es to page s 7 7–81 

19 1

a similar argument in Jacob ben Sheshet’s Sefer Meshiv Devearim Nekhohim, see Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 40. 52. See Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, 237–­238. 53. On this passage and its influence on later kabbalists, see Huss, “Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Definition.” 54. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:49–­50. Compare to ibid., 237–­238. See also Huss, “Hagdarat ha-­Semel,” 160–­165, and the discussion in Hecker, Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals, 11–­12 and Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 250–­269. 55. Idel compares this passage in Gikatilla’s Sha’arei Orah to Proclus’s Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, 219–­220, in that in both cases, names are understood as “referring primarily to supernal beings and only analogically to their lower extensions.” Enchanted Chains, 105. See also, Idel, Olam ha-­Malakhim, 55–­56. Compare also with the passage in Menachem Recanati’s commentary on the liturgy, cited in Mottolese, Analogy in Midrash. 204, and the discussion on 330n37. See also the discussion in Scholem, Major Trends, 208. 56. On the theurgic implications of Gikatilla’s description of the symbol, see Huss, “Hagdarat ha-­Semel,” 163. 57. De Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 346. 58. JTS 1577, 91b. See also, Sefer ha-­Yihud (The Book of Unity), Cohen ed., 1. 59. Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 2. It is worth noting that some of the commandments in this book by Hamadan are correlated with specific limbs in the divine form, including the genitals. On Hamadan’s conception of the human image in relation to the angelic realm, see Idel, Olam ha-­Malakhim, 59–­63. 60. On the antirationalist dimensions of Gikatilla’s approach, see Huss, “Hagdarat ha-­Semel,” 163. 61. Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 256. See also ibid., 371–­72, 389. 62. On the chain image in zoharic anthropology, see Ginsburg, “The Image of the Divine and Person,” 76. 63. See Idel, Kabbalah and Eros, 245. 64. Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 324. 65. According to Moses de Leon, one who kills a Jewish man “diminishes the image of the world.” The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 337. For a discussion of this passage, see Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 80–­81. 66. De Leon, Sefer ha-­Mishqal, Wijnhoven ed., 130. For a similar discussion of the nature of the self and its relationship to the mystery of the chariot and the nut, see ibid., 158–­159. See also de Leon, “Shushan Edut,” Scholem ed., 353–­354. 67. De Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed., 106. 68. On the concept of incarnation in rabbinic and early medieval Judaism, and the role of the imaginal body of God, see Wolfson, “Judaism and Incarnation,” 239–­ 254; on divine embodiment in the Torah and the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, see Wolfson, “The Glorious Name”; Wolfson, “Mirror of Nature,” 305–­331; and Idel, Absorbing Perfections, 111–­136. 69. De Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 231.

1 9 2

N ote s to page s 82 – 85

70. According to de Leon, “whenever the [body and soul] are both in the world, the world cannot exist without them,” Sefer ha-­Mishqal, Wijnhoven ed., 46. Elsewhere de Leon comments that God created man in His image so that man would be able to create balance between the upper and lower worlds. The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 46, 313–­314. 71. Zohar 1:205b. See also Matt, The Zohar, 3:261. 72. Zohar 2:23b–­24a. See also, Matt, The Zohar, 4:83. Compare with the passage from Zohar 1:134b, cited and discussed in Yisraeli, The Interpretation of Secrets, 212–­213. 73. See Bereshit Rabbah, 14:8. See also the passage from Midrash Konen, analyzed by Mottolese, Analogy in Midrash, 125–­126. On the analogical correlation of sacrificial practices with “cosmic reality and the human form” in Midrash Tadshe, see Mottolese, Analogy in Midrash, 154. 74. See Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 197–­202 and Ginsburg, The Sabbath, 192–­194. 75. See also de Leon, Sefer ha-­Mishqal, Wijnhoven ed., 47; de Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 88; de Leon, Shushan Edut, Scholem ed., 354–­355, and the discussion in Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 35–­36; and Wolfson, “Mystical Rationalization of the Commandments,” 236–­237. 76. De Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed., 94. See also Joseph Gikatilla, Commentary to Ezekiel’s Chariot, 68. 77. See the thirty-­one correspondences between the human form and the natural order in ’Avot de-­Rabbi Natan, cited in, Mottolese, Analogy in Midrash, 164–­165. On Christian thinking, see, for example, LeGoff, Intellectuals, 55–­57. 78. Zohar 1:130b. See also, Matt, The Zohar, 1:231. 79. See Altmann, “The Delphic Maxim.” 80. According to Scholem, the doctrine of the microcosmic nature of the human self is “a doctrine which found universal acceptance among the kabbalists.” Kabbalah, 153. Abelson, Jewish Mysticism, 125 and Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 32. In the twelfth century, Joseph ibn Zaddik composed a book in Arabic on the subject of the human as microcosm, preserved only in Hebrew translation, known as Sefer ha-­Olam Katan. For a study of this text, with an edition of the Hebrew version and English translation, see Haberman, The Microcosm of Joseph ibn Zaddik. On the connection between the containment of the sefirot and the world in the self and the theurgic power of human action, see Brody, “Human Hands Dwell: Contemplative Ascent,” 126–­127. 81. Zohar 2:75b. See also, de Leon, Sefer ha-­Mishqal, Wijnhoven ed., 46. 82. Tanhuma, Buber edition, pekudei, 3. 83. Avot de R. Natan, version I, 31:46a. Both of these passages are cited by Urbach in The Sages, 233. See also Beit ha-­Midrash, 5:57, Aggadat ’Olam Katan, section 3. 84. B. Sanhedrin, 38a–­b. For a variation of this idea, see Bereshit Rabbah, 8:1. 85. De Leon, Sefer ha-­Mishqal, Wijnhoven ed., 42. See also de Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 4, and Wolfson’s comments, 38, 206–­207, 337. De Leon also associates this idea with the chain, shalshelet, that we saw in the previous chapter. See de Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 231. 86. De Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 38.

not es to page s 85–86 

193

87. Zohar 3:135a. Compare with comment in the Iyyun literature commenting on the same verse in Ezekiel, cited by Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 139. 88. For a survey of this issue, see Giller, Kabbalah: A Guide, 84–­100; Tirosh-­ Samuelson, Happiness in Premodern Judaism, 332–­337; and Ginsburg, “The Image of the Divine and Person,” 76–­79. 89. For a discussion of the divinity of the soul in kabbalistic sources and the possible relationship of this idea to antecedents in Philo, see Jacobs, “The Doctrine of the ‘Divine Spark,’” 87–­114. Jacobs rightly critiques Zaehner’s famous argument that strictly “monotheistic” religions like Judaism are incapable of mysticism because of their adherence to the ontological division between the self and God. Idel further advances this argument in “Nishmat Eloha.” 90. On Nahmanides, see Lorberbaum, “Kabbalat ha-­Ramban”; Lorberbaum, “Imago Dei in Judaism”; Septimus, “‘Open Rebuke,’” 28–­29; Jacobs, “The Doctrine of the ‘Divine Spark,’” 94–­95; Idel, “Nishmat Eloha,” especially 345–­348; and Scholem, Origins, 456. On Todros Abulafia, see Oron, “The Doctrine of the Soul.” See also Todoros Abulafia’s discussion in Sha’ar ha-­Razim, Oron ed., 104–­105. 91. Goshen-­Gottstein, “The Body as Image of God,” 177. Jacobs also observed that throughout rabbinic literature “there is not the slightest hint at any identification of the soul with God.” “The Doctrine of the “Divine Spark,’” 92. 92. As Tishby points out, Wisdom of the Zohar, 690–­691, the doctrine of the five parts of the soul found in rabbinic literature, Genesis Rabbah, 14:9, certainly influenced the Zohar, but is not the model the Zohar adopts. The Zohar appears to be much more influenced by ancient Greek traditions, as they were understood by Saadia Gaon. By my own reading, the doctrine of the five parts of the soul occurs only once in the Zohar, in the ra’aya mehemnah section, Zohar 2:158b. This doctrine was more influential among the Gerona kabbalists earlier in the thirteenth century. See Oron, “The Doctrine of the Soul,” 279–­280 and Yisraeli, The Interpretation of Secrets, 130–­138. For a discussion of the doctrine of the soul in Kabbalah with a number of interesting texts, see Mopsik, Cabale et Cabbalistes, 173–­187. See also Abelson, “Introduction” to The Zohar, xvii–­xix. 93. In this sense I would disagree with Tishby’s claim that the soul originates exclusively in Binah, though such a claim is not uncommon in some texts. See Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 698. See also Scholem’s discussion of the correlation between the nefesh, ruah, and neshamah and Malkhut, Tifferet, and Binah in Kabbalah, 157. On the tripartite division of the soul in the Zohar and its relation to the sefirot, see Abelson, Jewish Mysticism, 159; Giller, Reading the Zohar, 36–­37, 190n14; and Oron, “The Doctrine of the Soul,” 278–­279. One the tripartite division of the soul in de Leon’s work, see Sefer Mishkan ha-­Edut, bar-­Asher ed., 83–­84, 162–­163. 94. De Leon, Sefer ha-­Mishqal, Wijnhoven, ed., 35. See also, ibid., 38–­43; de Leon, “Sefer Or Zarua,” Altman ed., 269; de Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 305, 406–­408; and de Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed., 28–­30. De Leon also points out in the same book that the different names of the soul can each sometimes be used to refer to all of them in a general way, and one need not be overly careful in this regard. This would explain why sometimes in de Leon’s Hebrew writings as well as in the Zohar we find nefesh and ruah used in ways that

1 9 4

N ote s to page s 86 – 8 8

we might expect only of the neshamah. See de Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed., 60–­61. In some cases de Leon asserts that only the soul, properly speaking, is created in the divine image. See the comparison of text discussed by bar-­Asher in de Leon, Sefer Mishkan ha-­Edut, bar-­Asher ed., 33–­35. On the tripartite division of the soul in Gikatilla, see Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’ar ha-­Nikud, 16. On de Leon’s adoption of Nahmanides’s term, nishmat eloha, “divine soul,” see Idel, “Nishmat Eloha,” 374–­375. 95. Moses de Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed., 39. In places, Moses de Leon describes God as the ultimate core of the adam or self. See “Sefer Or Zarua,” Altman ed., 292. See also, de Leon, Shushan Edut, Scholem ed., 334. On de Leon’s claim that Jews are the “sons of God” because of the divine origin of their soul, see Wolfson, “Mystical Rationalization of the Commandments,” 242. 96. De Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 87–­88. De Leon also discusses the problem of how the soul can be punished after death, given that the soul is divine; see Sefer ha-­Mishkal, 106. 97. BL Add. 15,299, 41a. On this passage in this manuscript, see Scholem, Major Trends, 375n97. For a similar comment, see Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Tzedek, 4b. 98. See Idel, Enchanted Chains, 43. 99. Oxford Opp. 487, Sefer ha-­Mafteah, 11a. See also Isaac ibn Sahula, “Rabbi Isaac ibn Sahola’s Commentary,” Green ed., 410. 100. On this image see Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 352 and Hecker, “Kissing Kabbalists.” On this image in ecstatic kabbalistic discourse, see Idel, The Mystical Experience, 182–­186, 205–­207 and Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, 141–­146. 101. See also Jacobs, “Doctrine of the ‘Divine Spark,’” 94. 102. Based on the reading provided by Matt, The Zohar, 3:501. 103. Zohar 1:245a. 104. On “supernal soul” and its relationship to Neoplatonic sources, see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 43–­44 and Idel, Olam ha-­Malakhim, 37. David ben Yehudah he-­Hasid identifies the “soul of souls” with Keter, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 113. 105. See Hellner-­Eshed, A River Flows from Eden, 321–­322. 106. See Tanhuma (Buber), Vayaqhel, 7. On this see Matt, The Zohar, 3:501n896. 107. This is one of the ways that the soul is related to the body in zoharic literature. See, for example, the comment in the Midrash ha-­Ne’elam stratum that states “the body is in relation to the soul like the woman in relation to the male, and the soul in relation to above like the female before the male, and each one inherits its level,” Zohar 1:124b–­125a. 108. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 2:60. 109. See Idel, “Nishmat Eloha,” 374 and Scholem, Origins, 456. On the roots of this idea in the works of Ezra ben Shlomo, see Oron, “The Doctrine of the Soul,” 279. On the very different stance Gikatilla adopts in one of his earlier works, Hassagot al ha-­Moreh, in which he argues, contra Nahmanides, that the soul cannot be divine, see Idel, “Nishmat Eloha,” 373, and citations in 592n224. On the association of the neshamah with the supernal point or Hokhmah, see Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’ar ha-­Nikud, 17. On the return of souls to Binah, see the anonymous commentary on the sefirot preserved in Cambridge 10, 11, 2, 15a.

not es to page s 88–93 

195

110. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo, ed., 2:72. 111. On the problem of the relationship between ein sof and Keter, see Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo, ed., 1:30–­34 and Valabregue-­Perry, Concealed and Revealed, 94–­97. 112. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 2:88, 94, 96. 113. Gottleib, “Studies in Kabbalah Literature,” 135. 114. Moses de Leon also hints at this in The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 197, and his comment that man is created yesh mi-­’ayin, indicating the emergence of Hokhmah from Keter, 249, 286. On the soul as the seed that derives from Keter, see David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 39. 115. Based on Jer. 2:3. 116. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed, 1:257. 117. Based on b. Shabbat, 118a, b. Berakhot 31a. 118. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:259. For a comparison of this passage to Gikatilla’s commentary on the ten sefirot preserved in Vatican 456, 16b, and Paris 841, 273a–­273b, as well as Gikatilla’s Sod ha-­Nahash u-Mishpato and his commentary on Ezekiel, and their relation to ideas found in the Iyyun texts, see Idel, Olam ha-­Malakhim, 50–­51. For a comparison with Gikatilla’s earlier Ginat Egoz, see Liebes, God’s Story, 154–­155. 119. See also Gikatilla’s comments elsewhere in Sha’arei Orah, cited and discussed by Halamish, “Ha-­Yahas le-­Umot ha-­Olam,” 8. 120. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:254. On Gikatilla and the unique capacity of the people of Israel as the descendants of Jacob to ascend to ein sof, see chapter 5. 121. Zohar 2:142b. 122. For a survey of kabbalistic attitudes in relation to gentiles, see Halamish, “Ha-­ Yahas le-­Umot ha-­Olam.” 123. Zohar 2:5b. The Zohar is quoting from b. Ta’anit 3b, where this comment is made as part of an exegesis of the same verse from Zechariah. 124. See discussion in de Leon, Sefer Mishkan ha-­Edut, bar-­Asher ed., 110. 125. Barry Mark comments that “kabbalistic cosmology served to establish and justify Jewish priority in this world as a correlative of the divine hierarchical structure.” “Kabbalistic Tocinophobia,” 176. 126. As Idel has observed, “the great divergence between some forms of Judaism and Christianity is not divine sonship, but Christology.” Ben, 635. 127. Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 205. For a discussion of the Temple as the unique inheritance of Israel, occupying a central position surrounded by the seventy nations of the world in Zohar 3:8a and Gikatilla’s Sha’arei Tzedek, see Dauber, “Images of the Temple,” 222–­224. 128. Oxford Add. 4 to 4, 115a. 129. Mopsik, Sex of the Soul, 55. 130. See Holdrege, Veda and Torah, 317–­318. 131. See B. Talmud, Avodah Zarah, 3a, Shabbat, 88a. 132. See Moed Katan, 18b and Bereshit Rabbah, 68:4. 133. Zohar 1:89a. See also, Matt, The Zohar, 2:65–­66; Mopsik Sex of the Soul, 171–­193.

1 9 6

N ote s to page s 93– 9 8

134. On this issue also in relation to the sin of “spilling seed,” in de Leon and the Zohar, see Pachter, “‘A Sin without Repentance,’” especially 148–­152. 135. See, for example, Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 19–­7 1 and Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews. 136. Alfonso X, Siete Partidas, 7.24.1, in Carpenter, Alfonso X and the Jews, 28. See also, Kruger, The Spectral Jew, 167 and Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 21. 137. This usage can be found in B. Megilla, 13a, 15a. 138. JTS 1577, 83a. See also the discussion in Gikatilla’s commentary on the ten sefirot preserved in Vatican 214, 254b. 139. See, for example, in “Sod ha-­Gevanim le-­Mineihem,” a text possibly written by Joseph Gikatilla, preserved in Munich 305. Fol. 61a associates green with Hesed. On this text see Sed, “Le Mystere des Couleurs,” 3–­20. 140. B. Megilla, 13a. 141. Oxford Opp. 487, 64a–­b. On this text, see Scholem, “Mafteah le-­Peirushei ’Eser Sefirot,” 505 #61. 142. JTS 1885, 39a. 143. Ibid., 40b. 144. De Leon, Sefer ha-­Mishqal, Wijnhoven ed., 85–­86. 145. Oxford Opp. 487, 7r. 146. For a comprehensive study of the phenomenon in medieval Jewish mystical texts and its affinities to sources from late antiquity, see Idel, Ben. See also, Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, 146–­152, 160. On this issue of sonship in the polemical discourse of David Kimhi regarding the meaning of Psalm 2, see Chazan, Fashioning Jewish Identity, 239–­241. 147. Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 203. For a very similar usage by David ben Yehudah he-­Hasid, see The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 66–­67, and the citation and discussion in Halamish, “Ha-­Yahas le-­Umot ha-­Olam,” 3. 148. Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 120. See also ibid., 146. On the image of sonship in Hamadan’s work, see Idel, Ben, 425–­429. 149. See, for example, B. Hagiga, 5b. 150. Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 149. 151. Ibid., 147. On the role of food in medieval Christian formulations of Jewish difference, see Resnick, Marks of Distinction, 144–­174. 152. David ben Yehudah he-­Hasid argues similarly that the joy that gentiles experience during their idolatrous practices serves “to draw upon them a spirit of impurity from above, in order that they should cleave to the gradation that is appropriate for them.” He then contrasts this with the people of Israel who experience “the joy of those who occupy themselves with Torah,” thereby drawing sanctity to themselves. See The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 20. 153. See Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 89–­90 and Hecker, Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals. 154. Joseph of Hamadan, Joseph of Hamadan’s “Sefer Tashak,” Zwelling ed., 94–­95. 155. Zohar Hadash, Midrash ha-­Ne’elam, 10c; Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, 724. 156. This argument inverts the claims made by Peter the Venerable regarding the nonhuman and animal nature of Jews due to their inability to be persuaded by reason. See the discussion in Resnick, Marks of Distinction, 37–­38.

not es to page s 9 9 –10 0 

1 97

157. On the relationship between the process whereby a soul is acquired according to the Zohar and the doctrine of the acquired intellect in Arab philosophical writings and Maimonides, see Scholem, Major Trends, 241.

4  jewish bodies and divine power 1. See Mopsik, Les Grandes textes, 18–­71. Idel has noted that this idea was not invented by kabbalists in the Middle Ages, but instead they “elaborated upon an already well-­ known conception, specifying its details with the help of a theosophical system.” Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 161. Elsewhere Idel comments that “Kabbalah can be regarded as an endeavor to explicate the midrashic theurgy by using the theosophical system of the Sefirot” (ibid., 163), and that, contra Scholem’s assertion that the distinction between law and myth in rabbinic Judaism consists of “the dissociation of the Law from cosmic events” (Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 94), there exists within rabbinic thinking the view of “the Torah and . . . even its performance as maintaining the universe” (Idel, Kabbalah, New Perspectives, 171), referring to the statement in b. Avoda Zarah 3a that, “The Holy One, blessed be He, made a condition with the Creation, saying: If Israel receive my Torah, good; if not, I shall return you to chaos.” See also the discussion in Holdrege, Veda and Torah, 374–­378. On the affinities between some forms of kabbalistic theurgy and “kinds of power” in rabbinic texts, see Garb, “Kinds of Power” and Garb, Hofa’otav shel ha-­Koah, 28–­46. 2. On the mystical rationalization of the commandments in medieval Kabbalah, see Brody, “Human Hands Dwell: Contemplative Ascent”; Matt, “The Mystic and the Mitzvot,” 367–­404; Mopsik, Les Grandes textes, passim; Mopsik, Cabale et Cabbalistes, 197–­199; J. Katz, Halakha and Kabbalah, 1–­51; Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine, 81–­105; Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia, ch. 7, and references on 179–­180n1; Wolfson, “Mystical-­Theurgical Dimensions”; Wolfson, “Mystical Rationalization of the Commandments,” 217–­251; Wolfson, “Eunuchs Who Keep,” 151–­185; Wolfson, “The Mystical Significance of Torah Study”; Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, ch. 3; Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 156–­199; Pedaya, “‘Possessed by Speech’”; Faierstein, “‘God’s Need for the Commandments’”; Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 1155–­1213; and E. Fishbane, As Light before Dawn, ch. 6. 3. See, for example, David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 75–­77. 4. See Idel, “On the Theologization of Kabbalah,” 126–­128 and Valabregue-­Perry, Concealed and Revealed, 34–­37. 5. Joseph of Hamadan, A Critical Edition of the “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 276–­277. Meier’s edition only covers Hamadan’s comments on the positive commandments. For a version of his comments on the negative commandments, see Cambridge Dd. 10, 11, 6. 6. Tanhuma (Warsaw) Beshalah, 15. London Sofer 33, 16b. On the ideal of the containment of the “left” within the “right” in medieval kabbalistic texts, see Wolfson, “Left Contained in the Right,” 27–­52 and Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 206–­07. 7. See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 232, and his comment that “for the theurgical kabbalist, the theosophical scheme serves as a blueprint for his modus

1 9 8

N ote s to page s 1 01 – 1 03

operandi.” Ibid., 261. Idel has also argued that “a specific understanding of rabbinic rites as the basic scale of values rather than the kabbalistic theologies themselves should constitute the starting point for an analysis of most forms of Jewish mysticism.” Enchanted Chains, 31. 8. Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 95. According to Scholem, the resulting attitude toward the law was deeply ambivalent, such that, in his formulation, “the lives and actions of the Kabbalists were a revolt against a world which consciously they never wearied of affirming.” Ibid., 98. 9. Oxford Opp. 487, 26r; JTS 1896, 4b. Compare with the anonymous commentary on the ten Sefirot preserved in Paris 824, 92a, which states that when Israel sins, “The channels that flow from Binah are stopped,” but when they perform the commandments, “the gates of the World to Come are immediately opened.” 10. Eichah Rabbah, 1:33 and Pesikta de-­R. Kahana, 25:1. See Holdrege, Veda and Torah, 377–­378. 11. Citing Deut. 32:18, BL Add. 26,929, 109a. Compare to R. Bahya’s commentary on Num. 14:17, cited in Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 163. See also the discussion in Gottleib, The Kabbalah in the Writing of R. Bahya, 230. 12. See the discussion in Mopsik, Sex of the Soul, 128–­129. 13. Joseph of Hamadan, Joseph of Hamadan’s “Sefer Tashak,” Zwelling ed., 206. See also ibid., 288–­289. A similar formulation can be found in Gikatilla’s Sod ha-­ Gevanim le-­Mineihem, Munich 305, published in Sed, “Le Mystere des Couleurs,” 14. 14. This is likely a reference to the passage from the Tanhuma, cited above, note 6. 15. Kiryat Ono 1, col. 986. 16. Berlin 1392, 95b. For a similar expression, see Sefer ha-­Shem, Oron, ed., 184. 17. BL Add. 15,299, 36b. 18. See the discussion in Matt, “The Mystic and the Mitzwot,” 374–­376. On this issue in Isaac ibn Sahula, see “Rabbi Isaac ibn Sahola’s Commentary,” Green ed., 458. 19. BL Add. 15,299, 45r. 20. Gershom Scholem mentions a passage in Origin’s commentary on the Psalms in which he claims to quote a “Hebrew” scholar who compares the “Holy Scriptures” to “a large house with many, many rooms, and that outside each door lies a key—­but not the right one.” On the Kabbalah, 12. On the key image in Gikatilla, see Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 284–­292. 21. Playing on b. Hagiga, 9a. 22. Oxford Opp. 487, 45a–­b; JPS 1896, 41b–42a. 23. As Mottolese has noted, the emergence of medieval kabbalistic theosophy served as an analogical model whereby “[m]edieval authors could thus produce their own complex analogical maps, in light of the new [theosophic or ontological?] imageries,” Analogy in Midrash, 13. Barry Mark has also observed that “Zoharic kabbalah stages a complete overhaul of Jewish cultural life through its inventive mapping . . . of divine and celestial characteristics that reflect and spiritualize the realia of human life . . . more than simply reflecting one another, divine and human activities actively effect one another.” “Kabbalistic Tocinofobia,” 165. 24. Oxford Opp. 487, 45b; JTS 1896, 42a.

not es to page s 103 –10 6 

199

25. Ibid., 46a; JTS 1896, 42b. 26. Ibid., 31r. This is similar to the point made by Gikatilla, in the Sodot, explored in the next chapter. On the theurgy of the commandments in Gikatilla’s works, see Matt, “The Mystic and the Mitzwot,” 382–­383. 27. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, Or Zarua, Hacohen ed., 95. 28. For a comparison of a passage from Meir bar Simon’s Milchemet Mitzvah and Zohar 3:120b–­121a on this issue, see Lachter, “Kabbalah, Philosophy,” 50–­51 and Bacher, “Jewish-­Christian Polemics in the Zohar.” 29. For a use of this image in zoharic literature, see Zohar 1:204b. 30. Smith, Relating Religion, 59. 31. Gikatilla asserts that one should learn theosophic secrets not in order to attain material gain, but rather so that “he should be loved above and endeared below, and thus inherit this world and the world to come.” Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:56. 32. BL Add. 26,929 103a. 33. Peter the Venerable, Adversus Iudaeorum inveteratam duritiem (Against the Inveterate Obstinacy of the Jews), cited from J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 255. 34. See Chazan, Daggers of Faith and J. Cohen, The Friars and the Jews, ch. 6. On Jewish identity struggle in the Middle Ages, see Chazan, Reassessing Jewish Life, 193–­221. 35. Cited from Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 353. 36. On the possible connection between the depictions of synagoga in Christian art and architecture, representing the Jews, as blindfolded, as opposed to ecclesia, and the parable of the “beautiful maiden without eyes,” in the zoharic literature, see Weiss, “Who Is a Beautiful Maiden,” 60–­76. Thomas Aquinas asserted that, while the “ancients” who lived during the period before Christ when the law was in force were faithfully observing God’s commandment, “one who now observ[es] the ceremonial precepts . . . commit[s] a mortal sin.” Cited in J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 386. For a discussion of the symbol of Rachel in zoharic Kabbalah as an example of a “subtle but strategic critique of Medieval Western Christianity’s anti-­ Jewish polemic,” see Haskell, “The Death of Rachel,” 1–­31. 37. Sefer ha-­Yihud (The Book of Unity), Cohen ed., 4. 38. Zohar 3:161a. See also David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 191. 39. Citing B. Pesahim. 68b and B. Beitza 15b, JTS 1885, 60b. 40. There has been considerable scholarly debate concerning the possible connection between the emphasis on the symbol of the Shekhinah in thirteenth-­century Kabbalah and the rise of Marian devotion in Christian society. See, for example, Green, “Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary”; Schafer, Mirror of His Beauty; and references cited by Weiss, “Who Is a Beautiful Maiden without Eyes?” 60n1; and Morlok, “Erotische Anziehung,” 3–­13. For a critique, see Abrams, “The Virgin Mary.” Biale has suggested, “might not the fascination with the divine body that one finds in the Kabbalah, reflect a similar Jewish response to the Christian preoccupation with Christ’s body?” Blood and Belief, 88. On the development of Eucharist theology in the period leading up to the thirteenth century, see M. Rubin, Corpus Christi. 41. Hecker, Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals, 15.

2 00

N ote s to page s 1 07 – 1 1 1

42. Cambridge Add. 1511, 10b. See also Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 100. 43. Joseph Gikatilla, Sod ha-­Nahash u-Mishpato, Cohen ed., 8. See also, Scholem, On the Mystical Shape, 78–­81; Scholem, Major Trends, 405–­406n113; Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 98–­99, 104; and Koren, Forsaken, 94–­96. 44. See also, Idel, Absorbing Perfections, 299; and Idel, Ascensions on High, 201–­208. 45. Compare to the image in Exodus Rabbah, 30:9, in which the commandments are compared to an orchard, or pardes, belonging to God, concerning which he says to the Israelites, “My sons, I used to care for this orchard myself, and I allowed no one to enter it. You shall now care for it in the manner that I once did.” On this passage see Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 80n253. 46. Gikatilla, Sod ha-­Keruvim, Parma (de Rossi) 1230, 109a–­b. For an alternate translation of parts of this passage, see Idel, Absorbing Perfections, 299. Compare also with the citation from Sha’arei Orah, discussed in Matt, “Ayin: The Concept of Nothingness,” 84. On the expression “uniting the branches with the root” in the compositions of some Geronese kabbalists, see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 54, 299n33. 47. See Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 220. 48. Garb, Hofa’otav shel ha-­Koah, 73–­91. 49. Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 44. See also ibid., 67. 50. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 110. 51. See G. Cohen, “Esau as Symbol.” 52. JTS 9126, 31a. See also de Leon’s comments in, “She’elot u-Teshuvot,” 46, and the discussion in Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 84, 142–­145. 53. On this theme in Zohar 1:135a–­140a, see Abrams, “Oedipal Anxiety.” 54. Brody, “Human Hands Dwell: Contemplative Ascent,” 139. 55. Playing on the passage in Ezekiel 12:16, “I have indeed exiled them among the nations and scattered them throughout the lands, and I have become for them a lesser Temple [mikdash me’at] in the lands where they have gone.” The notion of the mikdash me’at, “lesser Temple,” or “diminished sanctity” as the Jewish Publication Society translation renders it, is interpreted in b. Megilla 29a to refer to “the synagogues and houses of study in Babylonia,” implying that, after the destruction of 70 CE, the rituals of the Temple are fulfilled, though in a diminished manner, through the practice of rabbinic Jewish law. See Wolfson, “Iconic Visualization,” 150 and Wolfson, “Imago Templi,” 126–­135. Wolfson notes that the divine and human are “mutually transformed” in the imaginal Temple, such that “in the imago templi . . . the divine becomes human and the human divine.” Ibid., 126. 56. See, for example, b. Sotah, 48a; Tanhuma (Warsaw), Toldot 1 and Tanhuma (Buber), Titzaveh 13. 57. Oxford Regio 24, 121b–­122a. On this text see Scholem, “Mafteah le-­Peirushei ‘Eser Sefirot,” 506, #68. Compare with Zohar 1:84b, and discussion in Idel, “The Land of Israel,” 176, 180–­181. Compare also to the passage from the Sabba de-­Mishpatim section, Zohar 3:102, cited and discussed in Yisraeli, The Interpretation of Secrets, 260. 58. This idea will be addressed in greater detail below. 59. This image is employed in the anonymous commentary on the ten Sefirot preserved in JTS 1674, 119b.

not es to page s 111–113 

2 01

60. On the redemptive implications of prayer theurgy in relation to Temple worship in the writings of Isaac the Blind, see Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 292–­293. For a survey of the role of Temple imagery in early kabbalistic sources, see Pedaya, Name and Sanctuary. 61. On the importance of Temple imagery in medieval kabbalistic texts, see Koren, Forsaken, 464–­466. On the Temple as symbol in the Sefer ha-­Bahir, as well as the Zohar and other late thirteenth-­century writings, see Dauber, “Images of the Temple,” 199–­235. See also the extensive discussion in Mottolese, Analogy in Midrash, especially 189–­246. 62. Smith, To Take Place, 95. 63. Berlin 193, 98a. For a similar formulation see, Oxford Mich. 312, 155b–­156a. See also Scholem, Origins, 306; Scholem, “The Concept of Kavvanah,” 168; 178n38; Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 53–­54, 297n117; and Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 291. 64. Mottolese, Analogy in Midrash, 190. 65. See for example, b. Sotah, 48a; Tanhuma (Warsaw), Toldot 1 and Titzaveh 13. 66. JTS 2156, 51a–­b. For other formulations of this passage, see JTS 1898, 61a–­b; BL Or. 10,324, 27b–­28a; Oxford Regio 24, 212b–­122a; and Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 184, where he cites a similar passage from an anonymous commentary on the ten sefirot. 67. See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 46–­49. 68. Scholem advanced the very plausible possibility that this text was written by Joseph Gikatilla, “Ha-­im Hibber ha-­Ramban.” For a critical edition of the text with an English translation and comprehensive study, see Mopsik, Sex of the Soul, 150–­194. 69. Amended according to Mopsik’s citation, Sex of the Soul, 193. 70. Ibid., 172. See also Brody, “Human Hands Dwell: Worship,” 329 and Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 45, 52. 71. Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 227. 72. For a comprehensive study of devekut from biblical and rabbinic texts through the works of Nahmanides, see Afterman, Devequt. See also Afterman, “From Philo to Plotinus” and Idel, “Universalization and Integration,” 28–­37. On this theme in the works of Isaac of Acre, see E. Fishbane, As Light before Dawn, 271–­282. 73. B. Sanhedrin 64a states, “‘You who cleave to the Lord your God’ (Deut. cleaving, truly [mammash]!” See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 38, 4:4)—­ 288–­289nn.9–­12; 35–­73. 74. A sizable body of scholarship has addressed the question of this phenomenon. See, for example, Hollenback, Mysticism: Experience, Response; S. Katz, Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis; Steinbock, Phenomenology and Mysticism; and Pike, Mystic Union. 75. See, for example, Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, especially 59–­73; Idel, Enchanted Chains, 4; and Idel, “On the Language of Ecstatic,” 49–­55. 76. Wolfson, “Forms of Visionary Ascent,” 216. On the complexities of Scholem’s conception of mystical experience in relation to his “disdain for existentialism and the authority of the subjective moment,” see Magid, “Gershom Scholem’s Ambivalence.”

2 02 

N ote s to page s 1 1 4 – 1 1 6

77. Scholem, Kabbalah, 203–­204 and Scholem, Origins, 416, 456. 78. Scholem, On the Possibility, 7. Idel has written extensively on the importance of mystical union in the writings of Abraham Abulafia. See, for example, “Abraham Abulafia and Unio Mystica.” 79. Scholem, “Mysticism and Society,” 16. On Scholem’s approach to the place of mystical experience in Kabbalah, see also Idel, Enchanted Chains, 6–­11, 20–­21, 65–­66; on the relationship between Scholem’s approach and those of Robert Zaehner, Carl Jung, and Edward Caird, see ibid., 11–­19 and Idel, “Unio Mystica as a Criterion.” Idel himself argues that “the centrality of the notion of devequt in Jewish mysticism is more important than attempts to define it in a certain way; i.e., as standing for union or communion. Rather, the type of interactions between devequt, theosophy and theurgy define the essence of kabbalistic mysticism better than in-­abstracto analysis of devequt.” Enchanted Chains, 38. See also the discussion in Afterman, Devequt, 260, 292. For the influence of Philo’s understanding of the biblical term devequt on later sources that also qualifies Scholem’s position, see Afterman, “From Philo to Plotinus,” 177–­196 80. Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 190. Wolfson also notes that “kabbalists uniformly eschew an absolute metaphysical dualism.” Ibid., 194. On the relationship between cleaving to God and knowledge of the sefirot in the anonymous commentary preserved in Milan 62, 118a, see Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 283–­284. 81. See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 53. On the relationship of this idea to Neoplatonic sources mediated to the kabbalists via the works of Abraham ibn Ezra, see Ibid., 45–­46. 82. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 998. 83. Brody, Human Hands Dwell: Worship, 539. Brody also notes that for both Catalonian and Castilian kabbalists, “it is the devotee’s actual attainment of devekut which fuels the theurgic efficacy of the mitzvah and not simply his contemplative intentionality.” Ibid., 236. Wolfson has pointed out that “the typological distinction between ecstatic and theurgic Kabbalah” has obscured the fact that “the mystical goal of conjunction and the theurgical task on reunification cannot be easily separated in the lived experience that has informed kabbalistic symbolism.” Venturing Beyond, 194, and the discussion on 311. See also Garb, Hofa’otav shel ha-­Koah, 77–­79. 84. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 209. 85. Zohar 3:82a. Consider also the comment in the Zohar, 1:204b, “Happy is the one who merits to cleave to the Holy One, blessed be He, as is appropriate. Meritorious is he in this world and in the world to come, for the Holy One, blessed be He, opens for him the good and holy treasure troves when he needs, corresponding to his prayer.” 86. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:165. See also, Garb, Hofa’otav shel ha-­Koah, 87. 87. B. Hagiga, 14b. 88. BL 26,929, 109a–­b. 89. JTS MS 1887, 13a-­b. Similar formulation without reference to destruction of the world can be found in JTS 1898, 57a. 90. On the correlation of the divine name with the body of the circumcised Jewish males, see Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 96–­97.

not es to page s 116–120 

2 03

91. See Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 376–­377; Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia, 19–­ 20, and references in note 27; Holdrege, Veda and Torah, 198–­201, 317; and Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 44. Idel notes the presence of this idea in the Shiur Komah texts: Enchanted Chains, 86 and “Receiving God By/In His Name,” 75. Ta-­Shma has noted the presence of the locution, “for God is His name and His name is in Him [ki ha-­makom shemo u-vo shemo],” in a responsum composed by R. Abraham bar Isaac in the first half of the twelfth century in Provence. See Ta-­Shma, Ha-­Nigle she-­Banistar, 43. 92. Isaac ibn Sahula “Rabbi Isaac ibn Sahola’s Commentary,” Green ed., 412. 93. Oxford Regio 24, 122b. 94. Todoros Abulafia, Otzar ha-­Kavod ha-­Shalem, as cited in Altmann, “The Ta’amei ha-­Mitzvot,” 267. See also Kilcher, Die Sprachstheory, 72–­75. 95. Zohar 2:90b. My translation of this passage follows that of Matt, The Zohar, 4:515–­5 16. See also ibid., n. 544. For a similar formulation in Moses de Leon’s Sefer ha-­Rimmon, see Wolfson, “Mystical Rationalization of the Commandments,” 225. 96. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 64. See also the same formulation found in MS Jerusalem 8, 507, 21b, cited by Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 44. 97. Zohar 3:298b. 98. See Liebes, “Zaka’in Innun Israel.” 99. Zohar 2:49a. See also, Matt, The Zohar, 4:229–­238. 100. Matt, “The Mystic and the Mitzwot,” 387. 101. See Brody, “Human Hands Dwell: Worship,” 7–­10; Mottolese, Analogy in Midrash, 331–­335; and E. Fishbane, As Light before Dawn, especially 146–­148. 102. Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 325. 103. Possibly in reference to B. Rabbah, 68:12, though the formulation there is different. 104. B. Rabbah, 47:6. 105. Avot 5:1. 106. JTS 1577, 92a–­b. See also, Sefer ha-­Yihud (The Book of Unity), Cohen ed., 3–­4. See also Idel, “The Concept of Torah,” 63–­64; Matt, “Ayin: The Concept of Nothingness,” 85; and Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 274. For a similar formulation in Moses de Leon’s Sefer ha-­Rimmon, see Wolfson, “Mystical Rationalization of the Commandments,” 225, and citations in note 43. 107. On the influence of this text on Menahem Recanati in Italy in the fourteenth century, see Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, 126–­127. 108. See the discussion in Mottolese, Analogy in Midrash, 228–­230. 109. This is a locution frequently utilized by Joseph of Hamadan. Compare to Oxford Opp. 487, 39a, “One who sanctifies his limbs is bound to the limbs of the Supernal Man.” See also the version of the text preserved in JTS 1896, 25a. 110. Sefer ha-­Bahir, Margoliot ed., §124. 111. JTS MS 1895, 7a. See also, BL Add. 27,142, 192a and BL Or. 10,324, 21b. On the correlation of the ten sefirot and the ten commandments in Midrash Tadshe and Numbers Rabbah, see Mottolese, Analogy in Midrash, 155–­156. 112. Zohar 3:11b. 113. See the extensive discussion in Idel, “The Concept of Torah,” especially, 58–­75.

2 04 

N ote s to page s 1 2 0– 1 2 3

114. Zohar 2:85b. Compare with Zohar 2:162b, cited and discussed in Idel, “The Concept of Torah,” 59, and the passages from Gikatilla addressed in ibid., 58–­62. On the image of the King, see Idel, Ascensions on High, 112. 115. On the correlation of the commandments with divine limbs and theurgic performance in the Tiqqunei Zohar, see Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine, especially 93–­96. 116. Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 31. 117. Ibid., 58. See also, Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 377; Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 245–­246; and Wolfson, “Jewish Mysticism,” 473. Consider also Hamadan’s comment that “since Israel is a holy people, they dwell in the body of the holy King,” Joseph of Hamadan’s “Sefer Tashak,” Zwelling ed., 120. Compare with the comment by Shemayahu ben Yitshak, “‘God created man in his own image (Gen. 1:27),’ this image being the Torah, which is the shadow of God, blessed be he,” cited from, Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 247. See also Elior, Jewish Mysticism, 36–­37. 118. See Idel, “On Some Forms of Order,” xlii. 119. This is not an actual rabbinic saying. On this phrase, which appears frequently in Hamadan’s works, see Joseph of Hamadan “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 29n8. 120. See, for example, b. Makkot, 23b. 121. Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 29. 122. Zohar 1:216a. 123. Zohar 2:114a. See also, Matt, The Zohar, 5:137 and Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 301. 124. On the people of Israel and the shekhinah as twelve seals on the name of God, see Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:261. On the seal of truth, see ibid., 2:39–­40. On the unification with the seal in de Leon, see The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 73, 77, 87; de Leon, Sefer ha-­Mishqal, Wijnhoven ed., 104; de Leon, Sefer or Zarua, Altmann ed., 260, 290; and de Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed., 51. In one text de Leon exhorts his reader, “Consider this matter, that all things are connected and bound this with that and this with that, until everything is united in the seal of His glory as one.” Shushan Edut, Scholem ed., 369. M. Sanhedrine 4:5 employs the image of the seal to describe God’s creation of man in the image of Adam, but in such a manner that “no one is like the other.” In the zoharic passage cited above, the metaphor is reversed, and it is God who is imprinted with the seal of Israel. See Oron, “‘Place Me as a Seal.’” For a comparison of this motif to a passage in Philo, see Altmann, Homo Imago Dei, 241–­243. See also Bedos-­Rezak, “Were Jews Made in the Image,” 83. 125. On this type of kabbalistic literature from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, see Matt, “The Mystic and the Mitzwot,” 389–­400; Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, xiii–­xiv; Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 191; and Mopsik, Les Grandes textes, 181–­198. 126. Wolfson, “Mystical Rationalization of the Commandments,” 248. 127. J. Katz dedicated a series of important studies to the question of the relationship between Kabbalah and halakha in early thirteenth-­century sources, as well as the Zohar. See, “Halakha and Kabbalah,” 1–­33. Ta-­Shma has explored the connections between the halakhic stance of the zoharic literature and Ashkenazi halakhic

not es to page s 123 –12 4 

205

practices and norms. See, for example, Ha-­Nigle she-­Banistar. Ta-­Shma has advanced the interesting observation that the instances where Katz noted examples of halakhic innovation in the Zohar can all be explained in light of Ashkenazi custom, thus demonstrating a degree of Ashkenazi influence in the Jewish religious environment in which the text developed. Ta-­Shma has also argued that the tendency for medieval kabbalists not to differentiate between practices that are biblical, rabbinic, or a matter of custom, opting to attribute equivalent kabbalistic/theurigic significance to all alike, is not as surprising as Katz had thought, but instead reflective of an Ashkenazi ethos that “assigned a very important place to custom.” “Professor Katz on Halakhah and Custom,” 237. For an interesting exploration of the question of creative halakhic reasoning in the Zohar, see Yisraeli, “Studies in the Conflict.” 128. See Mottolese, Analogy in Midrash, 364–­365. 129. Gaster makes the strong claim that throughout the zoharic literature, a text he regarded as highly composite, “only one principle is constant, viz. that the harmony of this world, and especially that of the celestial world, is dependent on carrying out these laws, and that Israel has the merit of being chosen to be the forefront representative of the Law, charged with its fulfillment, and thus guaranteeing not only the stability of the world, but its ultimate perfection,” entry in “Zohar,” 859. On Gaster’s approach to the Zohar, see Idel, “Moses Gaster on Jewish Mysticism.” 130. Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 187. 131. For a comprehensive treatment of the interpretations of the Sabbath in thirteenth-­century kabbalistic sources, see Ginsburg, The Sabbath. See also Brody, “Human Hands Dwell: Worship,” 214–­218. 132. Heichal ha-­Shem, 40a. On Gikatilla’s interpretation of the Sabbath, see Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 273–­274. For a discussion of this passage in relation to that found in Moses de Leon’s Sefer ha-­Rimmon, as well as David ben Yehudah he-­Hasid’s Or Zarua, and a somewhat different formulation of this idea in Zohar 288a–­b, see de Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 58n227 and Hecker, Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals, 164–­165. For a comparison of Gikatilla’s interpretation of the Sabbath to that of Joseph of Hamadan, see Altmann, “The Ta’amei ha-­Mitzvot,” 270. 133. BL Add. 15,299, 42b. On the development of the notion of the “extra soul” or “Sabbath soul,” neshamah yeterah, in late thirteenth-­century kabbalah, see Ginsburg, The Sabbath, 121–­136. 134. See Ginsburg, The Sabbath, 72–­73. 135. Parma 1230, Sod ha-­Keruvim, 111b. 136. Ibid., 112a. On the return of the sefirot to Binah and the renewal of the world during the Jubilee, see BL Add. 26,929, 110a; Joseph of Hamadan, “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 382; Altmann, “The Ta’amei ha-­Mitzvot,” 268n38; de Leon, Sefer Mishkan ha-­Edut, bar-­Asher ed., 165–­165, and David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 104, 107. On this image see Wolfson, “Fore/giveness on the Way,” 160–­162. 137. Cambridge Add. 1511, 5b and Gikatilla, Sodot (Heichal ha-­Shem), 39b. Further down on the same page Gikatilla comments, “Know and believe that the Sabbath is the secret of the entirety of faith, and all of the Torah, and if one does not observe the Sabbath in this world, he has no path whereby to enter into the world to come,

2 06

N ote s to page s 1 2 4 – 1 29

for they are both bound together.” On the meaning of the Sabbath in Gikatilla’s Sodot, see Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 72–­74 138. Citing B. Berachot, 57b; de Leon, Nefesh ha-­Hakhmah, 9:3:3. 139. Parma 3481, 73a. 140. Cambridge Add. 1511, 5b. 141. Joseph of Hamadan, A Critical Edition of “Sefer Ta’amei ha-­Mitzvot,” Meier ed., 296. See also, Ginsburg, The Sabbath, 88. 142. At this point in the manuscript there is a rough drawing of a point with six lines extending from it. The author may be building upon the image in Sefer Yetzirah, 4:4, where the six directions of space are grounded in the “seventh,” which corresponds to Temple. 143. Oxford Opp. 487, 9a. 144. While it is unclear to which particular work the author is alluding to here, Euclid’s Elements was well known in medieval Jewish circles, with thirty-­one known Hebrew manuscript versions. See T. Levy, “The Hebrew Mathematics Culture,” 161–­163 and; T. Levy, Perspectives Arabes et Medievales, 79–­93. As Levy points out, Euclid’s Elements “was not a tool for the scholar only; it was also one of the books sought out by the ‘cultivated man,’ as indicated by its inclusion in the catalogues of the libraries of several Jewish physicians.” “The Hebrew Mathematics Culture,” 161, and citations in note 47. My thanks to Tony Levy for discussing this passage with me in Paris during the summer of 2010. The implication that every point entails six radii, according to Levy, has no clear source in Euclidean texts. 145. De Leon, Nefesh ha-­Hakhmah, 8:3:4 and Ammudei ha-­Kabbalah, 46. 146. This image is drawn from the Sefer ha-­Bahir, Margoliot ed., § 159. See Ginsburg, The Sabbath, 87. On this image of the Sabbath in the Zohar, see Ginsburg, The Sabbath, 81. 147. Ginsburg, The Sabbath, 189. 148. De Leon, Nefesh ha-­Hakhmah, 7:4:1 and Ammudei ha-­Kabbalah, 39–­40. See also, JTS 1926, 32b. 149. See Tanhuma (Buber), 58:1 and Bereshit Rabbah, 14:1; 17:8. 150. See also Num. 3:13; 8:17. 151. See, for example, Bereshit Rabbah, 8:2; Tanhuma (Warsaw), va-­yeishev 4 and Tanhuma (Buber) yitro 16. 152. Based on Ex. 13:13. 153. JTS 2156, 32b. 154. Midrash Rabbah Devarim, 6:2. 155. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, Or Zarua, Hacohen ed., 95–­96. 156. Ibid., 96. 157. Ibid., 96. 158. The first word of Deut. 6:4. 159. The first three words of Deut. 11:13. 160. Cambridge Add. 1511, 10b. 161. A similar notion regarding the capacity of the mezuzah to protect its owner from demonic forces can be found in Ashkenazi sources. See Kanarfogel, Peering through the Lattices, 236–­237n47. 162. Ibid.

not es to page s 130 –13 3 

2 07

5  prayer above and below 1. De Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed., 111. 2. Joseph of Hamadan, A Critical Edition of the “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 23. 3. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:167. On this passage, see Garb, Hofa’otav shel ha-­Koah, 88. For a similar use of the term shalshelet, or “chain of emanation,” with regard to prayer, see de Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 60, 77, 240. 4. On prayer as a means for channeling blessing into the world from their source in God, see de Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 35, 55. On de Leon’s understanding of prayer, see Wolfson, “Mystical-­Theurgical Dimensions.” 5. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, Or Zarua, Hacohen ed., 100. See also David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 266–­267, cited and discussed in Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau, 94–­95. 6. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, Or Zarua, Hacohen ed., 100, 101. 7. For a discussion of some of the relevant sources for these ideas in the rabbinic literature, see Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 867–­869, 895. 8. On the transvaluation of the sacrificial rites after 70 CE, see N. Goldstein, “Sacrifice and Worship.” 9. Zohar 1:244a. See also, Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:145; and de Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 66. According to de Leon, “the secret of all of the sacrifices from below to above is to bind everything as one.” Ibid., 189. 10. As Brody notes, kabbalists were invested in a “reclamation of the Levitical heritage, which served them as a major source of symbolism and vehicle for both the formulation and expression of some of their most significant insights concerning the function and power of ritual.” “Human Hands Dwell: Worship,” 16. On the difference between this view and that of Maimonides, see ibid., 186–­188. For a discussion of the image of sacrifice in the Tiqqunei Zohar, see Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine, 96–­103. 11. Much has been written about this debate. See, for example, Dobbs-­Weinstein, “The Maimonidean Controversy”; Jospe, “Faith and Reason”; Septimus, Hispano-­ Jewish Culture, 61–­104; Silver, Maimonidean Criticism, ch. 9; and Scholem, Origins, 377–­381, 387, 404–­414. 12. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, Pines, trans., 2:526–­527, 3:32. See also, J. Stern, Problems and Parables, 42–­45, and for Nahmanides’s reaction to Maimonides’s position on sacrifice, see 139–­144. 13. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, Pines trans., 524. 14. For a discussion of the above-­cited passage and the kabbalistic reaction to it, see Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 879–­80; Matt, “The Mystic and the Mitzwot,” 372; and M. Fishbane, The Exegetical Imagination, 132–­135. Scholem argues with regard to this debate, “the philosophers wanted concepts while the mystics wanted symbols.” Origins, 407. 15. See J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 382–­383. On Aquinas’s orientation to Jews and Judaism, see Hood, Aquinas and the Jews.

2 08

N ote s to page s 133– 13 4

16. On the kabbalistic response to Maimonides, see Brody, “Human Hands Dwell: Worship,” 564–­569; Mottolese, Analogy in Midrash, 233–­241, 267–­282. On the radical difference between early kabbalistic conceptions of prayer and the traditional rabbinic understanding, see L. Kaplan, “Response to Joseph Dan,” 123–­125. On the “magical-­ astral” model of sacrifice in the works of Nahmanides and his disciples, see D. Schwartz, “From Theurgy to Magic,” 165–­213 and Robinson, “Philosophy and Science,” 472. 17. Lipton, Images of Intolerance, 68. 18. See Matt, “The Mystic and the Mitzwot,” 383–­384. 19. On this passage, see Idel, Ascensions on High, 227. 20. Cited from Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar 2:881–­882. 21. Joseph of Hamadan, A Critical Edition of the “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 49. 22. On fasting as a form of self-­sacrifice in the Zohar, see Hecker, Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals, 75. On the relationship between the idea of the sacrifice of the righteous in rabbinic literature to a similar theme in zoharic discourse, see Matt, The Zohar, 1:381n296. See also, de Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 263. Compare also with the comment that on the Sabbath eve, the souls of the righteous ascend to the supernal Garden of Eden, “and there in the firmament of ’aravot stands Michael, the great prince, and there is an altar before him [based on Hagiga 12b], and all of the souls of the righteous are offered on that altar, and then, by the sign of the perfumed scent that their actions created in this world, the Holy One, blessed be He, returns his spirit to Him, because by the spirit that goes forth [that is, the exhalation] they come into this world, and that spirit goes back and returns him to Him, and because of this, men return to their first cause.” De Leon, Seder Gan Eden, Jellinek ed., 137 and de Leon, “Seder Gan Eden—­Critical Edition,” 291–­292. On the image of the pillar in this text, see Idel, Ascensions on High, 105–­107. Idel notes that while this text has been attributed to de Leon by Jellinek and Scholem, this attribution is problematic, ibid., 121. For a more extensive analysis of this questions, see Shmueli, “Seder Gan Eden—­Critical Edition,” especially 203–­209. On the relationship between the image of the sacrifice of souls in Seder Gan Eden and de Leon’s Mishkan ha-­Edut, Vatican 283, 185b, see Shmueli, “Seder Gan Eden—­Critical Edition,” 236. 23. Joseph of Hamadan, A Critical Edition of the “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 159. In Sefer Tashak Hamadan describes the sacrifices as a form of divine sustenance: “The sacrifices that Israel performs are nourishment for the Shekhinah. Thus it is written, ‘My offerings, my food; offerings by fire (Num. 28:2),’” Joseph of Hamadan, Joseph of Hamadan’s “Sefer Tashak,” Zwelling ed., 325. 24. D. Schwartz argues that this view of the sacrifices common among late thirteenth-­century kabbalists is a “magical-­astral” model that “entered Kabbalah thanks to the influence of Abraham Ibn Ezra and Judah Halevi, in whose thought the idea of bringing the spirituality of the stars down to earth is prominent. It is already clear in Judah Halevi’s teachings that one can embrace the model of emanations assumed in astral magic while not necessarily considering the stars to be the source of the emanation.” “From Theurgy to Magic,” 166–­167. 25. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, Or Zarua, Hacohen ed., 101. 26. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 36.

not es to page s 13 4 –139 

209

27. Zohar 1:65a. See Matt, The Zohar, 1:380 and Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 2:883. This passage is very similar to 2:268b–­69a. 28. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:145. 29. See, for example, b. Sotah, 48a; Tanhuma (Warsaw), Toldot 1 and Titzaveh 13. 30. On this idea in Ezra ben Solomon, see Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 290–­291. 31. Berlin 193, 98a. For a similar formulation see, Oxford Mich. 312, 155b–­156a. See also Scholem, Origins, 306. 32. JTS 1895, 6b–­7a and Parma (de Rossi) 1390, 5b. On this text see Scholem, “Mafteah le-­Peirushei ’Eser Sefirot,” 498, #2 and Scholem, Kitvei Yad, 72. Compare with Asher ben David’s Sefer ha-­Yihud, in Abrams, R. Asher ben David, 102. See also, Sefer ha-­Shem, Oron, ed., 135. 33. Zohar 3:11b. See also Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 2:883. 34. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 2:882–­883. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid also states that “incense [ketoret], is derived from the [word] bond [kesher], because it bonds the worlds; the world above with the created world.” David ben Yehuda he-­ Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 27, 60. Compare to the comment in Isaac of Acco’s Me’irat Einayim, cited in E. Fishbane, As Light before Dawn, 130. 35. Zohar 2:219a–­219b. See also Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 935–­937. 36. On the connection of this passage to other known sources for liturgical practice of this kind, see Ta-­Shma, Ha-­Nigle she-­Banistar, 59–­60. 37. Zohar 2:201a. 38. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:164. On the relation of these two formulations, see Idel, Kabbalah and Eros, 207–­208. 39. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 2:90–­91. See also, ibid., 110. On cleaving to Keter during the musaf service in order to sustain the world, see ibid., 124–­125. On prayer and Keter/ein sof in Gikatilla’s Sha’arei Orah, see Scholem, “The Concept of Kavvanah,” 170–­171. 40. Zohar 1:15a 41. On this see Matt, The Zohar, 1:379n272. It is possible that the mention of the raising of the hands in this passage has some relation to the priestly blessing, where the hands are raised and the ten fingers, representing the ten sefirot according to their kabbalistic interpretation, creates unity above and below. Compare to, Sefer ha-­Bahir, Margoliot ed., §124, §135, §138; Zohar 3:146b and David ben Yehuda he-­ Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 160. See also de Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 57; Wolfson, “Mystical-­Theurgical Dimensions,” 55; and Gruenwald, “From Talmudic to Zoharic Homiletics,” 294. 42. Zohar 1:65a. A similar formulation can be found in Zohar 2:226b, and Zohar 2:229b. On this see Valabregue-­Perry, Concealed and Revealed, 191–­196 and references in note 271. 43. On the role of desire in prayer according to the Zohar, Mopsik notes that “le desire come l’Infini traverse les formes, transcende les distinctions et franchit les frontiers entre les etres,” Les Grandes textes, 159–­160. On the idea of prayer more broadly in these texts, see ibid., 149–­180 44. Zohar 3:288b. 45. See Resnick, “The Priestly Raising,” 463–­467. 46. Oxford Opp. 487, 13b.

2 1 0

N ote s to page s 139 – 1 4 5

47. Zohar 2:215b. See also Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 936. 48. Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 127. 49. As Scholem notes, “in order to undergo what may be termed ‘the mystical death’ as it is described in many sources of mystical literature, even if he wants to die himself, he can accomplish this only by living on.” “Mysticism and Society,” 7. See also, Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 133n1. On this idea more broadly, see M. Fishbane, “The Imagination of Death.” 50. Referring to the rabbinic tale of the four rabbis who entered the pardes, or world above, with only Rabbi Akiva entering and exiting in peace. See j. Hagiga 77b; b. Hagiga 14b; and Matt, The Zohar, 6:215n320. 51. Zohar 2:213b and Matt, The Zohar, 6:214–­215. See also, Wolfson, “Via Negativa,” 436–­437; Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 998; and Valabregue-­Perry, Concealed and Revealed, 164–­165. 52. Sefer Yetzirah, 1:7. 53. B. Berachot, 57b. 54. See Wolfson, “Mystical-­Theurgical Dimensions,” 56–­58. On fasting as a form of self-­sacrifice, see de Leon, Sefer Mishkan ha-­Edut, bar-­Asher ed., 81–­82. 55. De Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 225. On this passage from de Leon, see the discussion in M. Fishbane, “The Imagination of Death,” 190–­191 and M. Fishbane, The Exegetical Imagination, 141–­142. 56. For a similar approach to the nefilat appayim prayer, see de Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 83–­84, and Wolfson’s comments there. On the interpretation of this ritual in the Zohar and its reverberations in Lurianic Kabbalah, see M. Fishbane, “The Imagination of Death,” 197–­204. 57. Zohar 3:241b. 58. Zohar 3:120b–­121a. On this passage, see M. Fishbane, The Kiss of God, 109. See also, L. Fine, Physician of the Soul, 240–­241. On the image of death in Kabbalah, see L. Fine, “Contemplative Death”; Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, 191–­194; and Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 335–­336. 59. See the commentary on the sefirot by Jacob ben Jacob ha-­Kohen, Commentary on the Ten Sefirot, Scholem ed., 227. This statement is found at the beginning of many other commentaries. 60. This word could also be read as breicha, “pool.” 61. London Sofer 33, 13a–­b. On this text in other manuscripts, see Scholem, “Mafteach le-­Peirushei ’Eser Sefirot,” 507, #79. For an analysis of a similar manuscript witness of this text and its possible connection with the texts known as the “Books of Contemplation,” see Idel, Enchanted Chains, 176–­177. 62. On this expression, see Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 385 and note 212. 63. Idel makes a similar point, Enchanted Chains, 177. 64. London Sofer 33, 13b–­14a. 65. See b. Berachot, 31a–­b. 66. Kiryat Ono 1, col. 1000. 67. Oxford Opp. 487, 24a. 68. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:58. See also ibid., 245. 69. Ibid., 144. See the parallel passage in Gikatilla, Sha’arei Tzedek, 15a–­b.

not es to page s 1 4 5–150 

2 11

70. On the final sefirah as the gateway to the world above, see David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid’s comment that, “all that you wish to request and enquire, enquire of Malkhut, for it is the gateway for all who which to enter the King’s abode, because all of the worlds are drawn together and gathered and go forth as an admixture [merkavah].” The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 49. 71. In the Talmud, b. Berakhot, 24b; 31a, this practice is also attributed to Hannah’s prayer in I Sam. 1:13 where it says that “Hannah was praying in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice could not be heard.” See also b. Sotah, 32b, and Rashi on b. Yoma, 18b where he claims he read in a responsum of Hai Gaon that one must pray in a whisper. See Matt, The Zohar, 5:274n236. Ta-­Shma connects this practice to a version of b. Berakhot 31a that was common in Spain according to which one should pray in a whisper such that one cannot hear one’s own voice, in connection to a passage in Zohar 1:209a, Ta-­Shma, Ha-­Nigle she-­Banistar, 60. 72. See b. Berachot, 9b. Gikatilla says that the secret of this commandment is “to draw down all of the passageways and unite all of the sefirot . . . and all of the sefirot are united by this wise man.” Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:109. Gikatilla even asks the question, “Why are the people of Israel not all redeemed on that very day when one connects ‘redemption’ [ge’ulah] with ‘prayer’ [tefillah]? Know that one man can only connect the measure of a single individual. But, if all of the people of Israel were to connect [redemption to prayer] in accordance with the measure of completed perfection necessary to bond and unite ‘redemption’ to ‘prayer,’ then they would all be redeemed.” Sha’arei Orah, ben Shlomo ed., 1:110. 73. Zohar 2:138b and Matt, The Zohar, 5:274–­275. See also, Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 1029–­1030 and Mopsik, Les Grandes textes, 164–­165. According to Mopsik, the intention of the whisper in this passage is both to draw God near to the self, as well as prevent the complete reassimilation of all being into ein sof. In this sense he argues that “la priere theurgique visant l’unification integrale du monde divin, la restauration de la plenitude du contact des sefirot avec l’Infini, comprend son proper risqué et son proper remede.” Mopsik, Les Grandes textes, 16. 74. On this issue in Moses de Leon’s Sefer Maskiyot ha-­Kesef, see Idel, Messianic Mystics, 104. 75. Oxford Opp. 487, 31a; JTS 1896, 13b–­14a. 76. See also the comments of Joseph of Hamadan, A Critical Edition of the “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 61–­62. On the possible relationship between the kabbalistic interpretations of the practice and the adoption of the Rosary among Christians in the thirteenth century, see S. Seltzer, “Divine Embodiment.” 77. Cambridge Add. 1511, 1a. 78. On prayer and Keter in Gikatilla’s Sha’arei Orah, see Brody, “Human Hands Dwell: Worship,” 87–­89. 79. Cambridge Add. 1511, 1b–­2a. See also, Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 196–­197. 80. Cambridge Add. 1511, 2a. 81. See E. Fishbane, As Light before Dawn, 143–­144. 82. Zohar 3:81a. See also Brody, “Human Hands Dwell: Worship,” 368. 83. Berlin 538, 74a.

2 1 2

N ote s to page s 150– 155

84. As Wolfson has noted, “The theme of circumcision plays a crucial part in the zoharic polemic with the thematized portrait of Christianity. In clever exegetical fashion, the authorship of the Zohar turns the Pauline view regarding circumcision on its head . . . circumcision [milah] is the true incarnation of the divine word [millah] in the flesh. Hence Abraham, and not Jesus, is the creative potency of the divine manifest in the world.” Venturing Beyond, 151. On the relationship between circumcision and the capacity to uncover the secrets of the Torah in zoharic Kabbalah, see Wolfson, “Circumcision, Vision of God,” especially 508–­512. 85. David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 55. 86. Oxford Add. 4 to 4, 111b. 87. On this, see above, chapter 2. 88. Joseph Gikatilla, Sodot, Cambridge Add. 1511, 3b. See also, Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 197–­198. 89. See Mishnah Berachot, 2:1. 90. De Leon, Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed., 86. 91. Wolfson, “Mystical-­Theurgical Dimensions,” 60. 92. De Leon, The Book of the Pomegranate, Wolfson ed., 98–­99. 93. Elsewhere de Leon asserts that in the recitation of the Shema, “when a man mentions His unity, he really [mammash] unites in Him.” Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, Mopsik ed., 78. See also ibid., 77, 81. 94. Joseph of Hamadan, A Critical Edition of the “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 118. 95. BL Add., 15,299, 38b–­39a. 96. Todoros Abulafia, Sha’ar ha-­Razaim, Oron ed., 140. 97. Joseph Gikatilla, Sodot, Cambridge Add, 1511, 3b. Wolfson notes in a study of Moses de Leon’s Sefer ha-­Rimmon that the theurgic power of prayer is enacted through “the act of utterance, oratio, an act shared by man and God” and that, like magic, kabbalistic conceptions of prayer “are predicated upon the understanding of the spoken word as a manifestation of power.” “Mystical-­Theurgical Dimensions,” 59. 98. Joseph Gikatilla, Sodot, Cambridge Add, 1511, 3a. 99. See Mopsik, Sex of the Soul, 136–­138. 100. See Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 198–­199. 101. Joseph of Hamadan, A Critical Edition of the “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth,” Meier ed., 10. See also the discussion, ibid., 12, where Israel, through the Shema, are like sons who bring peace between their “father in heaven and his Shekhinah, which sustains the world.” 102. Oxford Add. 4 to 4, 116a. 103. On this idea in the Geronese Kabbalah, see Idel, New Perspectives, 55, 120. 104. Kiryat Ono 1, col. 966. For a similar description of the word ehad in the Shema, see David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, Matt ed., 145–­146. See also his comment that “the secret of ‘YHWH, our God, YHWH, is one,’ is that you unite all of the powers and make them as single bond.” Ibid., 154. 105. Zohar 2:134b. 106. See Zohar 1:41b.

not es to page s 156–161 

2 13

107. Zohar 2:133b and Matt, The Zohar, 5:238–­239. See also, Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 1023–­1026. On this theme in Abraham Abulafia’s writings, see Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia, 131–­133n101. 108. Matt, The Zohar, 5:240n141; 426n669; Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, 140–­145; Liebes, God’s Story, 147–­152; and J. Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance, 18–­19. 109. Zohar 2:133b–­134a and Matt, The Zohar, 5:240–­241. 110. Consider the very explicit reference to the world to come in the following passage from Zohar 2:139b. The forty-­nine gates, a common cognomen for the sefirah of Binah, has inextricable connection to the light of ein sof, which dwells in her in the form of the supernal point, or Hokhmah. “One must intend his heart and desire in the twenty-­five [letters of the Shema] and the twenty-­four [letters of the baruch shem] and to ascend them with desire of the heart to the forty-­nine gates, as we have said. Once one has focused their intention in this, then he should focus his intention on that union in which one says ‘Hear, oh Israel,’ and ‘Blessed be the glorious name of His kingdom for ever and ever,’ encompassing the entire Torah. Meritorious is the lot of one who focuses his intention upon this, for indeed it encompasses the entire Torah above and below. This is the mystery of the completed man, of male and female, and the mystery of faith.” 111. See Zohar 2:134a. 112. Tishby notes that the alef and vav are interchangeable, since they are both vocalic, and the het and ayin are interchangeable, since they are both gutturals. Thus, va-­ed becomes ehad. See Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 1026n92.

conclusion 1. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 116. 2. Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 119. Scholem comments elsewhere that despite the fact that Jewish history “has been that of the defeated,” nonetheless, Jewish “religious documents reveal to the historian a powerful hidden revolutionary stream.” “Memory and Utopia,” 165. On the early opposition to Kabbalah by a R. Meir ben Shimon of Narbonne, see Scholem, “Te’udah Hadashah.” 3. See Huss, “Between Admiration and Disgust,” 203–­204; on the rejection of Kabbalah, and in particular the Zohar, in Jewish Enlightenment circles, see ibid., 205–­ 209. See also, Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 30–­38. 4. Dweck, The Scandal of Kabbalah, 11. 5. Ibid. 6. See Abraham Abulafia, Ve-­Zot le-­Yehuda, published in Adolph Jellinek, Auswahl Kabbalistischer Mystik, a letter he sent to Judah Salomon in the late 1280s responding to charges that he is guilty of heresy. See Idel, The Mystical Experience, 8 and Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia, 99–­103. 7. Dweck, The Scandal of Kabbalah, 1. For an expansive study of the success of Lurianic kabbalah as a discursive form that was accepted as a successful strategy for coping with central aspects of the early modern condition, see Weinstein, Shivru et ha-­Kelim. 8. Magid, “Mysticism, History, and a ‘New’ Kabbalah,” 523. 9. Baumgarten and Rustow, “Judaism and Tradition,” 236. 10. Scholem, “Revlation and Tradition,” 293.

N ote s to page s 1 63– 1 65

2 1 4

postscript 1. See, for example, Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter; Wirszubski, Bein ha-­Shitin; Secret, Le Zohar chez les Kabbalistes; Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chretiens; Coudert, “Christian Kabbalah”; and the studies published in Dan, The Christian Kabbalah. 2. See Huss, “All You Need Is LAV” and Stuckrad, “Madonna and the Shekhinah,” 292–­296. 3. On the complexities of the “continuous and discontinuous” in this connection, see Garb, “Contemporary Kabbalah and Classical Kabbalah.” 4. See Huss, “Contemporary Kabbalah and Its Challenge.” 5. See, for example, Huss, “Ask No Questions” and Magid, “Mysticism, History, and a ‘New’ Kabbalah.” 6. See Huss, “Ask No Questions,” 141. 7. Scholem did dedicate an essay to the question, however. See “Reflections on the Possibility.” 8. Cited from Huss, “Ask No Questions,” 142. 9. Garb, The Chosen Will Become Herds and Garb, Shamanic Trance. See also the studies in Huss et al., eds., Kabbalah and Modernity; Huss ed., Kabbalah and Contemporary Spiritual Revival; and Giller, Shalom Shar’abi and the Kabbalists of Beit ’El. 10. See Wolfson, Open Secret. 11. Magid, American PostJudaism, ch. 5. 12. Garb, The Chosen Will Become Herds, 3. Huss has also observed that for Scholem, contemporaries involved in Kabbalah in nontraditional modes were “nothing more than inauthentic charlatans.” “Ask No Questions,” 148. Scholem himself described his perception for the need for rigorous academic study of Kabbalah as a result of the fact that, “for too long before historians became interested in Jewish mysticism, charlatans and cranks were drawn to it.” On the Kabbalah, 3. 13. Huss, “‘Authorized Guardians,’” 81. 14. Myers, Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest. 15. See, in particular, Huss, “The New Age of Kabbalah” and Huss, “All You Need Is LAV.” 16. Hanegraaff, “New Age Religion,” 258–­259, cited in Huss, “The New Age of Kabbalah,” 120–­121. See also Garb, The Chosen Will Become Herds, ch. 7, and the comparative table between New Age and the Kabbalah Center in Myers, Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest, 87–­88. 17. Huss, “The New Age of Kabbalah,” 121. 18. Huss, “All You Need Is LAV,” 620–­621. 19. http://​www​.kabbalah​.com/​about/​what​-­­is​-­­kabbalah, accessed April  12, 2013. On the central features of the Kabbalah Center doctrine, see Myers, Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest, ch. 3.

B I B L I O G RA PH Y

primary texts Manuscript Sources Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich Munich 54 Munich 215 Munich 240 Munich 305

Berlin Staatsbibliothek Berlin 193 Berlin 538 Berlin 1392

Biblioteca Apostolica, Vatican City Vatican 214 Vatican 283 Vatican 456

Biblioteca Palatina, Parma Parma 1220 Parma 1230 Parma 3481 Parma (de Rossi) 1390

Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris Paris 770 Paris 799 Paris 824 Paris 837 Paris 841

2 15

2 16  Bi bli o graphy

Bodleian Library, Oxford University Add. 4 to 4 Mich. 217 Mich. 312 Mich. 547 Opp. 487 Opp. Add. 4 to 4 Oxford Bodleian 2396 Regio 24

British Library, London Add. 15,299 Add. 17,807 Add. 26,929 Add. 27,142 Or. 1055 Or. 10,324

Cambridge University Library Cambridge 10, 11, 2 Cambridge Add. 1511 Cambridge Dd. 10, 11, 6

Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York JTS 1577 JTS 1674 JTS 1690 JTS 1885 JTS 1887 JTS 1895 JTS 1896 JTS 1898 JTS 1926 JTS 1982 JTS 2156 JTS 2203 JTS 9126

Kiryat Ono (Private Collection) Kiryat Ono 1

London Sofer

London Sofer 33

Milano Ambrosiano Milan 57 Milan 62

B ib lio gr aphy

2 17

Primary Sources in Print Bahya ben Asher. Be’ur al ha-­Torah. Edited by Hayyim Chavel. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-­rav Kook, 1981. The Book of the Moon. Edited by A. W. Greenup. London, 1912. David ben Yehudah he-­Hasid. The Book of Mirrors: Sefer Mar’ot ha-­Zove’ot. Edited by Daniel Matt. Chico: Scholars Press, 1982. ———. Or Zaru’a: Man’s Attempt to Meet with His Creator. Edited by Bentsion ben Levi Hacohen. Jerusalem: Urim Publications, 2009. The Hebrew Version of Secretum Secretorum, A Medieval Treatise Ascribed to Aristotle. Edited and translated by Moses Gaster. London: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1907–­1908. Isaac ibn Sahula. Meshal ha-­Kadmoni: Fables from the Distant Past. Edited and translated by Raphael Loewe. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004. ———. “Rabbi Isaac ibn Sahola’s Commentary on the Song of Songs.” Edited by Arthur Green. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 6, nos. 3–­4 (1987): 393–­491. Jacob ben Jacob ha-­Kohen. Commentary on the Ten Sefirot. 2 recensions. Edited by Gershom Scholem. Mada’ei ha-­Yahadut 2 (1927): 227–­230. Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi. Peirush Sefer Yetzirah (attributed to Abraham ben David). In Sefer Yetzirah. Jerusalem: Lewin-­Eptein, 1965. Joseph Gikatilla. Ginat Egoz. Edited by M. Atia. Jerusalem: Yeshivat ha-­Hayim veha-­ Shalom, 1989. ———. “Ha-­Ketah ha-­Akharon shel Sefer Sha’are Tsedek le-­R. Yoseph Gikatilla.” Edited by Ephraim Gottlieb. Tarbiz 39 (1970): 359–­389. ———. Hassagot al ha-­Moreh. In She’elot Sha’ul le-­Rabbi Yitzhak Abarbanel. Venice, 1574, 19a–­31b. ———. R. Joseph Gikatillla’s Commentary to Ezekiel’s Chariot. Edited by Asi Farber. Los Angeles: Cherub Press 1998. ———. Sha’arei Orah. Edited by Joseph ben Shlomo. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1981. ———. Sha’arei Tzedek. 1881. Reprint, Jerusalem: Yarid Sefarim, 1994. ———. Sha’ar ha-­Nikud. Jerusalem: Yarid Sefarim, 1994. ———. Sod ha-­Hashmal. In Arzei Levenon. Venice, 1601. ———. Sod ha-­Keruvim. Parma (de Rossi) 1230, 108a–­112a. ———. Sod ha-­Nahash u-Mishpato. Edited by Raphel Cohen. Jerusalem: printed by the editor, 1998. ———. Sodot. In Arzei Levenon. Venice, 1601. ———. Sodot. In Heichal ha-­Shem of R. Yechiel Ashkenazi. Venice, 1594–­1604. Joseph of Hamadan. A Critical Edition of the “Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzwoth (Book of Reasons of the Commandments). Edited by Menahem Meier. Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1974. ———. Joseph of Hamadan’s “Sefer Tashak.” Edited by Jeremy Zwelling. Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1975. ———. “Serid mi-­Peirush le-­Sefer Bereishit Hameyuhas le-­R. Yoseph ha-­Ba mi-­Shushan ha-­Birah.” Edited by Charles Mopsik. Paris: Verdier, 1998. Ma’arekhet ha-­Elohut. Mantua, 1558. Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides). The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by Shlomo Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides). Kitvei Ramban. Edited by Hayyim Chavel. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-­Rav Kook, 1967. ———. Peirush al ha-­Torah le-­rabeinu moshe ben nahman. Edited by Hayim Chavel. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-­Rav Kook, 1984.

2 18Bi bli o graphy Moses ben Shem Tov de Leon. The Book of the Pomegranate: Moses de Leon’s Sefer ha-­ Rimmon. Edited by Elliot R. Wolfson. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988. ———. Nefesh ha-­Hakhmah. Basel, 1608. ———. R. Moses de Leon’s Commentary to Ezekiel’s Chariot. Edited by Asi Farber-­Ginat. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 1998. ———. Seder Gan Eden. In Beit ha-­Midrash, edited by Adolph Jellinek, 3:131–­140, 194–­198. Reprint, Jerusalem: Warmann Books, 1967. ———. Seder Gan Eden. In Leore Sachs Shmueli, “Seder Gan Eden—­Critical Edition and Study (with annotations by Gershom Scholem).” Kabbalah 28 (2012): 191–­299. ———. Sefer ha-­Mishqal: Text and Study. Edited by Joachim Wijnhoven. Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1964. ———. Sefer Mishkan ha-­Edut. Critically edited and annotated by Avishai bar-­Asher. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2013. ———. “Sefer Or Zarua le-­R. Moshe de Leon,” edited by Alexander Altmann. Kovetz al Yad 9, no. 19 (1980): 219–­263. ———. Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh. Edited by Charles Mopsik. Los Angeles, Cherub Press, 1996. ———. “She’elot u-Tshuvot be-­Inyenei Kabbalah.” In Hiqrei Kabbalah u-Shluhoteha, edited by Isaiah Tishby, 1:36–­75. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1982. ———. Shushan Edut. Edited by Gershom Scholem. Qovetz al Yad 8 (1976): 325–­370. ———. “Sod Eser Sefirot Belimah.” Edited by Gershom Scholem. Qovets al Yad 8 (1976): 371–­384. Petrus Alfonsi. Petrus Alfonsi: Dialogue against the Jews. Edited and translated Irven Resnik. Washington, DC: Catholic University Press of America, 2006. Sefer ha-­Bahir. Edited by Reuven Margoliot. 2nd ed. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-­Rav Kook, 1978. Sefer ha-­Malkhut. Toledano, ed. Casablanca, 1930. Sefer ha-­Shem Attributed to R. Moses de Leon. Edited by Michal Oron. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2010. Sefer ha-­Yihud (The Book of Unity). Edited by Raphael Cohen. Jerusalem: printed by the editor, 1999. Todros Abulafia. Otzar ha-­Kavod ha-­Shalem. Warsaw, 1897. Reprint, Jerusalem: Maqor, 1970. ———. Sha’ar ha-­Razim. Edited by Michal Oron. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1989. Yaakov ben Sheshet. Sefer meshiv devarim nekhohim. Edited by Georges Vajda. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1968. Zohar. Edited by Reuven Margoliot. 3 vols. 6th ed. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-­Rav Kook, 1984. Zohar Hadash. Edited by Reuven Margoliot. 2nd ed. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-­Rav Kook, 1978.

secondary literature Aaron, David H. “Images of the Divine and Human: On the Mythology of Genesis Rabba 8 §1.” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 5 (1995): 1–­62. Abelson, Joshua. The Immanence of God in Rabbinic Literature. London: Macmillan, 1912. ———. “Introduction.” In The Zohar, translated by Maurice Simon. London: Soncino Press, 1931–­1934. ———. Jewish Mysticism. 1913. Reprint, New York: Hermon Press, 1969. Abrams, Daniel. “A Commentary to the Ten Sefirot from Early Thirteenth-­Century Catalonia: Synoptic Edition, Translation, and Detailed Commentary.” Kabbalah 30 (2013): 7–­63. ———. Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory: Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the Study of Jewish Mysticism. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2010.

B ib lio gr aphy

2 19

———. “Oedipal Anxiety in the Fraternal Rivalry between Jacob and Esau: A Psycho-­Sexual Reading of an Anti-­Christian Polemic in a Zoharic Passage.” Kabbalah 22 (2010): 9–­32. ———. “Phenomenology of Jewish Mysticism: Moshe Idel’s Methodology in Perspective.” Kabbalah 20 (2009): 7–­146. ———. R. Asher ben David: His Complete Works and Studies in his Kabbalistic Thought. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 1996. ———. “The Reception and Editing of Kabbalistic Works by Students of Jewish Esotericism in Ashkenaz after the Appearance of the Kabbalah (Collectanea of Early Works in a Leipzig Manuscript Copied in 1429).” Kabbalah 21 (2010): 311–­330. ———. “Traces of the Lost Commentary on the Book of Creation by R. Jacob ben Jacob ha-­Kohen.” Kabbalah 2 (1997): 311–­341. ———. “The Virgin Mary as the Moon That Lacks the Sun: A Zoharic Polemic against the Veneration of Mary.” Kabbalah 21 (2010): 7–­56. Afterman, Adam. Devequt: Mystical Intimacy in Medieval Jewish Thought. Los Angeles: Cherub, 2011 (Hebrew). ———.“From Philo to Plotinus: The Emergence of Mystical Union.” Journal of Religion 93, no. 2 (2013): 177–­196. Altmann, Alexander. “The Delphic Maxim in Medieval Islam and Judaism.” In Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism, 1–­40. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969. ———. “Homo imago Dei in Jewish and Christian Theology.” Journal of Religion 48 (1968): 235–­259. ———. “The Ladder of Ascension.” Studies in Mysticism and Religion (1967): 1–­32. ———. “A Note on the Rabbinic Doctrine of Creation.” In Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism, 128–­139. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969. ———. Panim shel Yahadut. Jerusalem: Am Oved, 1983. ———.“The Ta’amei ha-­Mitzvot Attributed to Isaac ibn Farhi and Its Author.” Kiryat Sefer 40 (1964–­65): 256–­276, 405–­412 (Hebrew). Aranda, Mariano Gomez. “The Jew as Scientist and Philosopher in Medieval Iberia.” In The Jew in Medieval Iberia: 1100–­1500, edited by Jonathan Ray, 60–­101. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012. Asad, Talal. “Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz.” Man, n.s., 18, no. 2 (June 1983): 237–­259. ———. Genealogies of Religion: Disciplines and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Bacher, Wilhelm. “Jewish-­Christian Polemics in the Zohar.” Jewish Quarterly Review 3, no. 4 (1891): 781–­784. Baer, Yitzhak. A History of the Jews in Christian Spain. Translated by Louis Schoffman. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961. ———. “The Social Background of the Ra’aya Mehemna.” Zion 5 (1940): 1–­44 (Hebrew). Bagby, Albert. “The Jews in the Cantigas of Alfonso X, El Sabio.” Speculum 46 (1971): 670–­688. Baumgarten, Albert, and Marina Rustow. “Judaism and Tradition: Continuity, Change, and Innovation.” In Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History, 207–­237. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Bedos-­Rezak, Brigitte-­Miriam. “Were Jews Made in the Image of God? Christian Perspectives and Jewish Existence in the Medieval Europe.” In Studies in Medieval Jewish Intellectual and Social History, edited by David Engel, Lawrence Schiffman, and Elliot Wolfson, 63–­96. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Ben Shlomo, Joseph. “Gershom Scholem on Pantheism in the Kabbalah.” In Gershom Scholem: The Man and His Work, edited by Paul Mendes-­Flohr, 56–­72. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.

2 2 0 Bi bli o graphy Berger, David. The Jewish-­Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aaronson Press, 1996. ———. “Miracles and the Natural Order in Nahmanides.” In Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (Ramban): Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity, edited by Isadore Twersky, 107–­128. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983. Berger, Peter. “Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud.” In Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue: Essays in Jewish-­Christian Relations. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2010. Biale, David. Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol between Jews and Christians. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. ———. “Gershom Scholem’s Ten Unhistorical Aphorisms on Kabbalah: Text and Commentary.” Modern Judaism 5, no. 1, Gershom Scholem Memorial Issue (February 1985): 67–­93. Blumenthal, David. “Lovejoy’s Great Chain of Being and the Medieval Jewish Tradition.” In Jacob’s Ladder and the Tree of Life: Concepts of Hierarchy and the Great Chain of Being, edited by M. Kuntz and P. G. Kuntz. New York: Peter Lang, 1987. Bolle, Kees W. “Secrecy in Religion.” In Secrecy in Religion, edited by Kees W. Bolle, 1–­24. Leiden: Brill, 1987. Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Translated by Randal Johnson. London: Polity Press, 1993. Boustan, Ra’anan, Oren Kosansky, and Marina Rustow, eds. Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History: Authority, Diaspora, Tradition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Boyarin, Daniel. Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Brody, Seth L. “Human Hands Dwell in Heavenly Heights: Contemplative Ascent and Theurgic Power in Thirteenth-­Century Kabbalah.” In Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics, and Typologies, edited by Robert A. Herrera, 123–­158. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. ———. “Human Hands Dwell in Heavenly Heights: Worship and Mystical Experience in Thirteenth-­Century Kabbalah.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1991. Burns, Robert. Emperor of Culture: Alfonso X of Castile and His Thirteenth-­Century Renaissance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. Bynum, Carolyn Walker. The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–­1336. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Caputo, Nina. Nahmanides in Medieval Catalonia: History, Community, and Messianism. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Carlebach, Elisheva. “Attribution of Secrecy and Perceptions of Jewry.” Jewish Social Studies 2, no. 3 (1996): 115–­136. Carpenter, Dwane E. Alfonso X and the Jews: An Edition and Commentary of the Siete Partidas 7.24 “De Los Judios.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. ———. “The Portrayal of the Jew in Alfonso the Learned’s Cantigas de Santa Maria.” In In Iberia and Beyond: Hispanic Jews between Cultures, edited by B. Cooperman, 15–­42. Newark, DE: Associated University Presses, 1998. Chazan, Robert. Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and Its Aftermath. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. ———. Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-­Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. ———. Fashioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ———. Reassessing Jewish Life in Medieval Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

B ib lio gr aphy

221

Cohen, Gerson. “Esau as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought.” In Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, edited by Alexander Altmann, 19–­48. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967. Cohen, Jeremy. The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-­Judaism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984. ———. Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Cohen, Mark. Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Cohn, Jacob. “Mystic Experience and Elijah-­Revelation in Talmudic Times.” In Meyer Waxman Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of His Seventy-­fifth Birthday, edited by Judah Rosenthal, Leonard C. Nishkin, and David S. Shapiro, 34–­44. Jerusalem: Mordecai Newman Publishing House Ltd., 1966. Coudert, Allison. “Christian Kabbalah.” In Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah: New Insights and Scholarship, edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn, 159–­174. New York: New York University Press, 2011. Dahan, Gilbert. The Christian Polemic against the Jews in the Middle Ages. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998. Dan, Joseph. “Beyond the Kabbalistic Symbol.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 5 (1986): 363–­385. ———. The Christian Kabbalah: Jewish Mystical Books and Their Christian Interpreters. Cambridge, MA: Harvard College Library, 1997. ———. “The Epic of a Millennium: Judeo-­Spanish Culture’s Confrontations.” Judaism 41, no. 2 (1992): 113–­129. Dauber, Jonathan. “Competing Approaches to Maimonides in Early Kabbalah.” In The Cultures of Maimonideanism: New Approaches to the History of Jewish Thought, edited by James T. Robinson, 57–­88. Leiden: Brill, 2009. ———. “Images of the Temple in Sefer ha-­Bahir.” In The Temple of Jerusalem: From Moses to the Messiah. Leiden: Brill, 2011. ———. Knowledge of God and the Development of Early Kabbalah. Leiden: Brill, 2012 ———. “‘Pure Thought’ in R. Abraham bar Hiyya and Early Kabbalah.” Journal of Jewish Studies 60, no. 2 (2009): 185–­201. Decter, Jonathan P. Iberian Jewish Literature: Between al-­Andalus and Christian Europe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Derrida, Jacques. Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Dobbs-­Weinstein, Idit. “The Maimonidean Controversy.” In History of Jewish Philosophy, edited by Daniel Frank and Oliver Leaman, 331–­349. London: Routledge, 1997. Dweck, Yaakob. The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, and Early Modern Venice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. San Diego: Harcourt, 1987. Elior, Rachel. Jewish Mysticism: The Infinite Expression of Freedom. London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007. Elukin, Jonathan. Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-­Christian Relations in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Epstein, Marc Michael. The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative, and the Religious Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Faierstein, Morris. “‘God’s Need for the Commandments’ in Medieval Kabbalah.” Conservative Judaism 36 (1982): 45–­59. Faivre, Antoine, and Karen-­ Claire Voss. “Western Esotericism and the Science of Religions.” Numen 42, no. 1 (1995): 48–­77.

2 2 2 Bi bli o graphy Farber, Asi. “li-­Meqorot Torato ha-­Qabbalit ha-­Mequdemet she R. Moshe de Leon.” In Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy, and Ethical Literature Presented to Isaiah Tishby on His Seventy-­fifth Birthday, edited by Joseph Dan and Joseph Hacker, 67–­96. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1986. Felix, Iris. “Theurgy, Magic and Mysticism in the Kabbalah of R. Joseph of Shushan.” PhD diss, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005. Fenton, Paul. “Traces of Moses ibn Ezra’s Arugat ha-­Bosem in the Writings of the Early Qabbalists of the Spanish School.” In Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature III, edited by Isadore Twersky and Jay Harris, 45–­81. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Fine, Lawrance. “Contemplative Death in the Jewish Mystical Tradition.” In Sacrificing the Self: Perspectives on Martyrdom and Religion, edited by Margaret Cormack, 92–­106. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. Essential Papers on Kabbalah. New York: New York University Press, 1995. ———. Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. Fishbane, Eitan. As Light before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. ———. “Authority, Tradition, and the Creation of Meaning in Medieval Kabbalah: Isaac of Acre’s Illumination of the Eyes.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72, no. 1 (2004): 59–­95. ———. “The Speech of Being, the Voice of God: Phonetic Mysticism in the Kabbalah of Asher ben David and His Contemporaries.” Jewish Quarterly Review 98, no. 4 (2008): 485–­521. ———. “Tears of Disclosure: The Role of Weeping in Zoharic Narrative.” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 11, no. 1 (2002): 25–­47. Fishbane, Michael A. The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. ———. “The Imagination of Death in Jewish Spirituality.” In Death, Ecstasy and Otherworldly Journeys, edited by John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane, 181–­208, Albany: State University of New York, 1995. ———. The Kiss of God: Spiritual and Mystical Death in Judaism. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994. Fishman, Talya. “The Penitential System of Hasidei Ashkenaz and the Problem of Cultural Boundaries.” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 8, no. 2 (1999): 201–­229. Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality. Vol. 1, An Introduction. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Fox, Marvin. “Nahmanides on the Status of the Aggadot: Perspectives on the Disputation at Barcelona.” Journal of Jewish Studies 40 (1989): 95–­101. Fraker, Charles F. “Hermes Trismegistus in General Estoria II.” In Medieval Iberia: Changing Societies and Cultures in Contact and Transition, edited by Ivy A. Corfis and Ray Harris-­Northall, 87–­98. Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2007. ———. The Scope of History: Studies in the Historiography of Alfonso el Sabio. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Frassetto, Michael, ed. Christian Attitudes towards the Jews in the Middle Ages. New York: Routledge, 2007. Fredriksen, Paula. Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Freedman, Daphne. “Pseudepigraphy in the Zohar.” Journal of Jewish Studies 59, no. 2 (2008): 308–­316. Funkenstein, Amos. “Basic Types of Anti-­Jewish Polemics in the Later Middle Ages.” Viator 2 (1971): 373–­382.

B ib lio gr aphy

2 23

———. Perceptions of Jewish History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Gampel, Benjamin. “A Letter to a Wayward Teacher: The Transformations of Sephardic Culture in Christian Iberia.” In Cultures of the Jews, edited by David Biale, 389–­447. New York: Schocken, 2002. Garb, Jonathan. The Chosen Will Become Herds: Studies in Twentieth-­Century Kabbalah. Translated by Yaffa Berkovitz-­Murciano. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. ———. “Contemporary Kabbalah and Classical Kabbalah: Breaks and Continuities.” In After Spirituality: Studies in Mystical Traditions, edited by Philip Wexler and Jonathan Garb, 19–­46. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. ———. Hofa’otav shel ha-­Koah ba-­Mistiqa ha-­Yehudit: Mi-­Sifrut Hazal ’ad Kabbalah Tzfat. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005. ———. “Kinds of Power: Rabbinic Texts and Kabbalah.” Kabbalah 6 (2001): 45–­7 1. ———. Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Gaster, Moses. “Zohar.” In Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings, 858–­862. New York: Scribner, 1921. Gellman, Jerome. “Jewish Mysticism and Morality: Kabbalah and Its Ontological Dualities.” Archiv fur Religionsgeschichte 9 (2007): 25–­35. Giller, Pinchas. The Enlightened Will Shine: Symbolization and Theurgy in the Later Strata of the Zohar. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. ———. Kabbalah: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Continuum Books, 2011. ———. Reading the Zohar: The Sacred Text of the Kabbalah. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. ———. Shalom Shar’abi and the Kabbalists of Beit El. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Ginsburg, Elliot K. “The Image of the Divine and Person in Zoharic Kabbalah.” In In Search of the Divine: Some Unexpected Consequences of Interfaith Dialogue, 61–­87. New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1987. ———. The Sabbath in the Classical Kabbalah. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. Goetschel, Roland. Meir Ibn Gabbay: Le Discours de la Kabbalah Espagnole. Leuven: Peeters, 1981. Goldberg, Harriet. “Antifeminism and Antisemitism.” In Aspects of Jewish Culture in the Middle Ages, edited by Paul Szarmach, 85–­119. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979. Goldberg, Yechiel. “Spiritual Leadership and the Popularization of Kabbalah in Medieval Spain.” Journal for the Study of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry 2 (2009): 1–­59. Goldstein, Naftali. “Sacrifice and Worship of God in Rabbinic Thought after the Destruction of the Temple.” Da’at 8 (1982): 29–­52. Goshen-­Gottstein, Alon. “The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature.” Harvard Theological Review 87, no. 2 (1994): 171–­195. Gottlieb, Ephraim. Ha-­kabbalah be-­Sof ha-­Meah ha-­Shelosh Esreh. Jerusalem: Akadamon, 1966. ———. The Kabbalah in the Writings of R. Bahya ben Asher ibn Halawa. Jerusalem: Kiryat Sepher, 1970. ———. Studies in Kabbalah Literature. Edited by Joseph Hacker. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1976 (Hebrew). Graetz, Heinrich. History of the Jews. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1897. Green, Arthur. “Rabbi Isaac ibn Sahola’s Commentary on the Song of Songs.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 6 (1987): 393–­491. ———. “Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary, and the Song of Songs: Reflections on a Kabbalistic Symbol in Historical Context.” AJS Review 26 (2002): 1–­52.

2 2 4Bi bli o graphy ———. “The Zohar: Mysticism in Medieval Spain.” In Essential Papers on Kabbalah, edited by Lawrence Fine. New York: New York University Press, 1995. Gruenwald, Itamar. “From Talmudic to Zoharic Homiletics.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8 (1998): 287–­310 (Hebrew). Gutwirth, Eleazar. “‘Entendudos’: Translation and Representation in the Castile of Alfonso the Learned.” Modern Language Review 93, no. 2 (1998): 384–­399. ———. “History, Language, and the Sciences in Medieval Spain.” In Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures, edited by Gad Freudenthal, 517–­519. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Haberman, Jacob. The Microcosm of Joseph ibn Zaddik. Cranbury, NJ: Rosemont Publishing, 2003. Halamish, Moshe. “Ha-­Yahas le-­Umot ha-­Olam be-­Olam ha-­Mekubalim.” In Meromei le-­Yerushalayim: Sefer Zikaron le-­Yoseph Sarmonita, edited by Aviezer Ravitzky, 289–­311. Jerusalem, 1988. ———. An Introduction to the Kabbalah. Translated by Ruth Bar-­ Ilan and Ora Wiskind-­Elper. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Halbertal, Moshe. By Way of Truth: Nahmanides and the Creation of Tradition. Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2006 (Hebrew). ———. Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and Its Philosophical Implications. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Hames, Harvey. The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 2000. ———. “Elijah and a Shepherd: The Authority of Revelation.” Studia Lulliana 34 (1994): 93–­102. ———. “Exotericism and Esotericism in Thirteenth Century Kabbalah.” Esoterica 6 (2004): 102–­112. ———. Like Angels on Jacob’s Ladder: Abraham Abulafia, the Franciscans, and Joachimism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007. Haskell, Ellen. “The Death of Rachel and the Kingdom of Heaven: Jewish Engagement with Christian Themes in Sefer ha-­Zohar.” Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 38, no.1 (2012): 1–­31. Hecker, Joel. “Kissing Kabbalists: Hierarchy, Reciprocity, and Equality.” In Love—­Virtual and Real—­in the Jewish Tradition, edited by Leonard J. Greenspoon, Ronald A. Simkins, and Jean A. Cahan, 171–­208. Omaha: Creighton University Press, 2008. ———. Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eating and Embodiment in Medieval Kabbalah. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005. Heller-­Willensky, Sarah. “The ‘First Created Being’ in Early Kabbalah: Philosophical and Isma’ilian Sources.” In Binah. Vol. 3, Jewish Intellectual History in the Middle Ages, edited by Joseph Dan, 65–­77. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994. Hellner-­E shed, Melila. A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar. Translated by Nathan Wolski. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Holdrege, Barbara. Veda and Torah: Transcending the Textuality of Scripture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Hollenback, Jess. Mysticism: Experience, Response, Empowerment. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Hood, John. Aquinas and the Jews. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Huss, Boaz. “All You Need Is LAV.” Jewish Quarterly Review 95 (2005): 611–­624. ———. “The Anthological Interpretation: The Emergence of Anthologies of Zohar Commentaries in the Seventeenth Century.” Prooftexts 19, no. 1 (1999): 1–­20. ———. “The Appearance of the Zohar.” Tarbiz 70 (2001): 507–­542 (Hebrew).

B ib lio gr aphy

2 25

———. “Ask No Questions: Gershom Scholem and the Study of Contemporary Jewish Mysticism.” Modern Judaism 25, no. 2 (2005): 141–­158. ———. “‘Authorized Guardians’: The Polemics of Academic Scholars of Jewish Mysticism against Kabbalah Practitioners.” In Political Encounters: Esoteric Discourse and Its Others, edited by O. Hammer and Kocku von Stuckrad, 81–­103. Leiden: Brill, 2007. ———. “Between Admiration and Disgust: The Ambivalent Re-­Canonization of the Zohar in the Modern Period.” In Study and Knowledge in Jewish Thought, edited by Howard Kreisel, 203–­237. Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2006. ———. “Contemporary Kabbalah and Its Challenge to the Academic Study of Jewish Mysticism.” In Kabbalah and Contemporary Spiritual Revival, edited by Boaz Huss, 357–­373. Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2011. ———, ed., Kabbalah and Contemporary Spiritual Revival. Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2011. ———. Like the Radiance of the Sky: Chapters in the Reception History of the Zohar and the Construction of Its Symbolic Value. Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2008 (Hebrew). ———. “Mysticism versus Philosophy in Kabbalistic Literature.” Micrologus 9 (2001): 125–­135. ———. “The Mystification of Kabbalah and the Modern Construction of Jewish Mysticism.” BGU Review (Summer 2008). ———. “The New Age of Kabbalah: Contemporary Kabbalah, the New Age, and Postmodern Spirituality.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 6 (2007): 107–­125. ———. “Rabbi Joseph Gikatilia’s Definition of Symbolism and Its Influence on Kabbalistic Literature.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 12, no. 1 (1996): 158–­176 (Hebrew). ———. “A Sage Is Preferable Than a Prophet: Rabbi Shim’on Bar Yohai and Moses in the Zohar.” Kabbalah 4 (1999): 103–­139 (Hebrew). ———. “Sefer ha-­Zohar as a Canonical, Sacred and Holy Text: Changing Perspectives of the Book of Splendor between the Thirteenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 7 (1998): 257–­307. ———. Sockets of Fine Gold: The Kabbalah of R. Shimon ibn Lavi. Jerusalem: Magnes and Ben Zvi Institute, 2000 (Hebrew). Huss, Boaz, Marco Pasi, and Kocku von Stuckrad, eds. Kabbalah and Modernity: Interpretations, Transformations, Adaptations. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Idel, Moshe. “Abraham Abulafia and Unio Mystica.” In Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, vol. 3, edited by Isadore Twersky and Jay Harris, 147–­178. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. ———. Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. ———. “Abulafia’s Secrets of the Guide: A Linguistic Turn.” In Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism, edited by Alfred L. Ivry, Elliot R. Wolfson, and Alan Arkush, 289–­329. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998. ———. Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005. ———. Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008. ———. “The Concept of the Torah in Heikhalot Literature and Its Metamorphosis in Kabbalah.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 1 (1981): 23–­84 (Hebrew). ———. “The Contribution of Abraham Abulafia’s Kabbalah to the Understanding of Jewish Mysticism.” In Gershom Scholem’s “Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism” 50 Years After, edited by Peter Schäfer and Joseph Dan, 117–­143. Tübingen: Mohr, 1993. ———. “Defining Kabbalah: The Kabbalah of the Divine Names.” In Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics, and Typologies, edited by Robert A. Herrera, 97–­122. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.

2 2 6Bi bli o graphy ———. Enchanted Chains: Techniques and Rituals in Jewish Mysticism. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2005. ———. Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990. ———. “Hermeticism and Judaism.” In Hermeticism and the Renaissance, edited by I. Merkel and A. G. Debus, 59–­76. Washington, DC: Folger Books, 1988. ———. “Hermeticism and Kabbalah.” In Hermeticism from Late Antiquity to Humanism: La tradizione ermetica dal mondo tardo-­antico all’Umanesimo, edited by P. Lucentini, I. Parri, and V. Perrone Compagni, 385–­428. Turnhout: Brepolis, 2003. ———. “Historical Introduction.” In Gates of Light: Sha’are Orah. Translated by Avi Weinstein. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 1994. ———. “The Image of Man above the Sefirot.” Kabbalah 20 (2009): 181–­212. ———. “Johannes Reuchlin: Kabbalah, Pythagorean Philosophy, and Modern Scholarship.” Studia Judaica (2008): 30–­55. ———. “Kabbalah and Elites in Thirteenth-­Century Spain.” Mediterranean Historical Review 9 (1994): 5–­19. ———. Kabbalah and Eros. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. ———. “The Kabbalah in Byzantium.” In Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures, edited by Robert Bonfil, Oded Irshai, Guy Stroumsa, and Rina Talgam, 659–­708. Leiden: Brill, 2011. ———. Kabbalah in Italy: 1280–­1510. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. ———. “Kabbalah in Spain: Some Cultural Observations.” In Encuentros and Desencuentros: Spanish-­Jewish Cultural Interaction Throughout History, edited by Carlos Carrete Porrondo, Marcelo Dascal, Francisco Marquez Villanueva, and Angel Saenz Badillos. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects (2000): 53–­82. ———. Kabbalah: New Perspectives. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. ———. “The Kabbalah’s ‘Window of Opportunities,’ 1270–­1290.” In Meah Sheharim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky, edited by Ezra Fleisher, Gerald Blidstein, Carmi Horowitz, and Bernard Septimus, 173–­208. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001. ———. “Kabbalistic Material from the School of R. David ben Judah he-­Hasid.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 2 (1983): 169–­207 (Hebrew). ———. “The Land of Israel in Medieval Kabbalah.” In The Land of Israel: Jewish Perspectives, edited by Lawrence Hoffman, 170–­187. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986. ———. “Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations of Kabbalah in the Renaissance.” In Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, edited by Dov Cooperman, 186–­242. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. ———. “Maimonides and Kabbalah.” In Studies in Maimonides, edited by Isadore Twersky, 31–­81. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. ———. “Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed and the Kabbalah.” Jewish History 18, no. 2 (2004): 197–­226. ———. Messianic Mystics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. ———. “Moses Gaster on Jewish Mysticism and the Zohar.” Te’uda 21 (2007): 111–­127. ———. The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia. Translated by Jonathan Chipman. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988. ———. “Nahmanides: Kabbalah, Halakha, and Spiritual Leadership.” In Jewish Mystical Leaders and Leadership in the Thirteenth Century, edited by Moshe Idel and Mortimer Ostow. Northvale: Jason Aronson Press, 1998. ———. “Nishmat Eloha: The Divinity of the Soul in Nahmanides and His School.” In Midrash ha-­Hayyim, edited by S. Arzy, B. Fachler, and B. Kahana. 338–­380. Tel Aviv: Yidi’ot Aharonot, 2004.

B ib lio gr aphy

2 27

———. Olam ha-­Malakhim (The Angelic World—­Apotheosis and Theophany). Tel Aviv: Yidioth Ahronoth and Chemed Books, 2008 (Hebrew). ———. Old Worlds, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-­Century Thought. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. ———. “On European Cultural Renaissances and Jewish Mysticism.” Kabbalah 13 (2005): 46–­55. ———. “On Performing the Body in Theosophical-­Theurgical Kabbalah: Some Preliminary Remarks.” In The Jewish Body: Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period, edited by M. Diemling and G. Veltri, 251–­271. Leiden: Brill, 2009. ———. “On Some Forms of Order in Kabbalah.” Da’at 50–­52 (2003): xxxi–­lviii. ———. “On the Language of Ecstatic Experiences in Jewish Mysticism.” In Religions—­The Religious Experience, edited by Matthias Riedl and Tilo Schabert, 43–­84. Eranos, 2008. ———. “On the Theologization of Kabbalah in Modern Scholarship.” Religious Apologetics—­Philosophical Argumentation, edited by Yossef Schwartz and Volkhard Krech, 123–­174. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004. ———. “Peirush ’Eser Sefirot u-Seridim Mi-­ketavim shel R. Yosef ha-­Ba’a mi-­Shushan ha-­Birah.” Alei Sefer 6–­7 (1979): 74–­84. ———. Rabbi Menahem Recanati, The Kabbalist. Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1998 (Hebrew). ———. “Receiving God By/In His Name.” Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 40. no. 1 (2004): 65–­112. ———. “Secrecy, Binah and Derishah.” In Secrecy and Concealment: Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religions, edited by Hans G. Kippenberg and Guy G. Stroumsa, 311–­343. Leiden: Brill, 1995. ———. “Some Images of Maimonides in Jewish Mysticism.” Studie Judaica (2009): 48–­49. ———. Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988. ———. “Symbolic Self-­Interpretations in Thirteenth-­Century Jewish Writings.” Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts 16 (1988): 90–­96. ———. “Toldot Musag ha-­‘Tzim-­Tzum’ be Kabbalah u-ve-­Mekhkar.” Jerusalem Studies in JewishThought 10 (1992): 60–­112. ———. “Transmission in Thirteenth-­Century Kabbalah.” In Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Diffusion, edited by Yaakov Elman and Israel Gershoni, 138–­165. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. ———. “Unio Mystica as a Criterion: Some Observations on ‘Hegelian’ Phenomenologies of Mysticism.” Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 1 (2002): 19–­41. ———. “Universalization and Integration: Two Conceptions of Mystical Union in Jewish Mysticism.” Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (1996): 27–­57. ———. “We Have No Kabbalistic Tradition on This.” In Rabbi Moses Nachmanides (RAMBAN): Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity, edited by Isadore Twersky, 51–­73. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. Jacobs, Louis. “The Doctrine of the ‘Divine Spark’ in Man in Jewish Sources.” In Studies in Rationalism, Judaism, and Universalism in Memory of Leon Roth, edited by Raphael Loewe, 87–­114. London: Routledge, 1966. Jellinek, Adolph. Moses de Leon und sein Verhaltnis zum Sohar. Leipzig, 1851. Jospe, Raphael. “Faith and Reason: The Controversy over Philosophy.” In Great Schisms in Jewish History, edited by Raphael Jospe and Raphael Wagner, 73–­112. New York, KTAV Publishing, 1981. Jutte, Daniel. Das Zeitalter des Geheimnisses: Juden, Christen, und die Okonomie des Geheimnen (1400–­1800). Gottengen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2011. ———. “Trading in Secrets: Jews and the Early Modern Quest for Clandestine Knowledge.” Isis 103, no. 4 (2012): 668–­686.

2 2 8Bi bli o graphy Kanarfogel, Ephraim. The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2012. ———. “Peering through the Lattices”: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000. ———. “Rabbinic Figures in Castilian Kabbalistic Pseudepigraphy: R. Yehudah he-­Hasid and R. Elhanan of Corbiel.” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 3 (1993): 77–­109. Kaplan, Lawrence. “Response to Joseph Dan.” In Studies in Jewish Mysticism, edited by Joseph Dan and Frank Talmage, 123–­125. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Katz, Jacob. Divine Law in Human Hands: Case Studies in Halakhic Flexibility. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1998. ———. Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-­Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times. London: Oxford University Press, 1961. ———. Halakha and Kabbalah. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984 (Hebrew). ———. “Halakha and Kabbalah as Competing Disciplines of Study.” In Jewish Spirituality from the Sixteenth Century Revival to the Present, edited by Arthur Green, 34–­63. New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1989. ———. “Halakhic Statements in the Zohar.” In Divine Law in Human Hands: Case Studies in Halakhic Flexibility. Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1998, 6–­21. Katz, Steven T. “The ‘Conservative’ Nature of Mystical Experience.” In Mysticism and Religious Traditions, edited by Steven T. Katz, 3–­60. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. ———, ed. Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. ———. “Utterance and Ineffability in Jewish Neoplatonism.” In Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, edited by L. Goodman, 279–­297. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Kilcher, Andreas. Die Sprachtheory der Kabbala als Asthetisches Paradigma: Die Konstruktion einer aesthetischen Kabbala seit der Fruhen Neuzeit. Stuttgart: Verlag H. B. Metzler, 1998. Kimmelman, Reuven. “Rabbinic Theology of the Physical: Blessings, Body and Soul, Resurrection, and Covenant and Election.” In Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. 4, The Late Roman-­Rabbinic Period, edited by Steven T. Katz, 573–­611. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Kippenberg, Hans. “Discursive Religionswissenschaft.” In Neue Ansatze in der Religionswissenschaft, edited by Burkhard Gladigow and Hans Kippenberg, 9–­28. Munich: Kosel, 1983. Klein-­Braslavy, Sarah. Maimonides’ Commentary on the Creation Story. Jerusalem: Israel Society for Biblical Research, 1978 (Hebrew). Koren, Sharon Faye. Forsaken: The Menstruat in Medieval Jewish Mysticism. Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2011. Kozodoy, Maud. “The Jewish Physician in Medieval Iberia (1100–­1500).” In The Jew in Medieval Iberia: 1100–­1500, edited by Jonathan Ray, 102–­137. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012. Kruger, Steven. The Spectral Jew: Conversion and Embodiment in Medieval Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Lachter, Hartley. “Kabbalah, Philosophy, and the Jewish-­Christian Debate: Reconsidering the Early Works of Joseph Gikatilla.” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 16, no. 1 (2008): 1–­58. ———. “Spreading Secrets: Kabbalah and Esotericism in Isaac ibn Sahula’s Meshal ha-­ kadmoni.” Jewish Quarterly Review 100, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 111–­138. Langermann, Tzvi. The Jews and the Sciences in the Middle Ages. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999. ———. “Studies in Medieval Hebrew Pythagoreanism.” Micrologus 9 (2001): 219–­236. Lasker, Daniel. “Jewish Knowledge of Christianity in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.” In Studies in Medieval Jewish Intellectual and Social History, edited by David Engel, Lawrance Schiffman, and Elliot Wolfson, 97–­110. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

B ib lio gr aphy

2 29

———. Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages. London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007. Le Goff, Jacques. The Birth of Europe: 400–­1500. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. ———. Intellectuals in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. Lelli, Fabrizio. “Hermes among the Jews: Hermetica as Hebraica from Antiquity to the Renaissance.” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 2, no. 2 (2007): 111–­135. ———. “Le versioni ebraiche di un testo ermetico: il ‘Sefer ha-­levanah.’” Henoch 12, no. 2 (1990): 147–­164. Levi, Jerome. “Structuralism and Kabbalah: Sciences of Mysticism or Mystifications of Science?” Anthropological Quarterly 82, no. 4 (Fall 2009): 929–­984. Levy, B. Barry. Fixing God’s Torah: The Accuracy of the Hebrew Bible Text in Jewish Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Levy, Tony. “The Hebrew Mathematics Culture (Twelfth–­Sixteenth Centuries).” In Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures, edited by Gad Freudenthal, 155–­171. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. ———. “Les ‘Elements’ de Euclid en hebreu (XIIIe–­XVIe siècles).” In Perspectives Arabes et Medievales sur la Tradition Scientifique et Phiolosophique Grecque, edited by Ahmad Ansawi, Abdel-­ali Elamrani-­Jamal, and Maroun Aouad, 79–­94. Louven: Peters, 1993. Liebes, Yehuda. Ars Poetica in Sefer Yetzirah. Tel Aviv: Schocken, 2000 (Hebrew). ———. God’s Story: Collected Essays on the Jewish Myth. Jerusalem: Carmel, 2008 (Hebrew). ———. “How the Zohar Was Written.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8 (1989): 1–­72 (Hebrew). ———. “Review Essay, Charles Mopsik, Moses de Leon’s Sefer Sheqel Ha-­Qodesh.” Kabbalah 2 (1997): 271–­285. ———. “Sections of the Zohar Lexicon.” PhD diss., Hebrew University, 1976 (Hebrew). ———. Studies in Jewish Myth and Jewish Messianism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. ———. Studies in the Zohar. Translated by Arnold Schwartz, Stephanie Nakache, and Penina Peli. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. ———. “The Zohar as Renaissance.” Da’at 46 (2001): 5–­11. ———. “Zohar ve-­Tiqqunei Zohar—­me-­Renaissance le-­Mahafekha.” Te’uda 21–­22 (2007): 251–­301. ———. “Zaka’in Innun Israel: Berakha be-­lashon ha-­zohar ve-­reka’ah ha-­yehudi-­notzri,” Igud: Mivhar Ma’amarim be-­Mada’ei ha-­Yahadut 3 (2005): 85–­94. Linehan, Peter. Spain, 1157–­1300: A Partible Inheritance. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2011. Lipton, Sara. Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible Moralise. Berkley: University of California Press, 1999. ———. “Where Are the Gothic Jewish Women? On the Non-­iconography of the Jewess in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.” Jewish History 22 (2008): 139–­177. Lorberbaum, Yair. “Imago Dei in Judaism: Early Rabbinic Literature, Philosophy, and Kabbalah.” In The Concept of God, the Origin of the World, and the Image of the Human in World Religions, edited by Peter Koslowski, 57–­74. Dordrecht: Klewer, 2001. ———. “Kabbalat ha-­Ramban al Bri’at ha-­Adam be-­Tzelem ‘Elohim.’” Kabbalah 5 (2000): 287–­326. ———. Tzelem Elohim: Halakha ve-­Aggadah. Jerusalem: Shocken, 2004. Loewe, Raphael. Meshal Haqadmoni: Fables from the Distant Past. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004. Lovejoy, Arthur. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. New York: Harper and Row, 1936. Magid, Shaul. American Post Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Post-­Ethnic Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.

230  Bi bli o graphy ———. From Metaphysics to Midrash: Myth, History, and the Interpretation of Scripture in Lurianic Kabbalah. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. ———. “Gershom Scholem’s Ambivalence toward Mystical Experience and His Critique of Martin Buber in Light of Hans Jonas and Martin Heidegger.” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 4 (1995): 245–­269. ———. “Mysticism, History, and a ‘New’ Kabbalah: Gershom Scholem and the Contemporary Scene.” Jewish Quarterly Review 101, no. 4 (2011): 511–­525. Margoliouth, George. “The Doctrine of the Ether in the Kabbalah.” Jewish Quarterly Review 20, no. 4.1 (July 1908): 825–­861. Mark, Barry. “Kabbalistic Tocinophobia: America Castro, Limpieza de Sangre, and the Inner Meaning of Jewish Dietary Laws.” In Fear and Its Representations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Anne Scott and Cynthia Kosso, 152–­186. Turnhout: Brepols, 2002. Martinez, Salvador H. Alfonso X, the Learned. Translated by Odile Cisneros. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Matt, Daniel C. “Ayin: The Concept of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism.” In The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy, edited by Robert K. Foreman, 67–­108. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. ———. “David ben Yehuda and His Book of Mirrors.” Hebrew Union College Annual 51 (1980): 129–­172. ———. “Matnita Dilan: A Technique of Innovation in the Zohar.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8 (1989): 123–­145 (Hebrew). ———. “The Mystic and the Mizwot.” In Jewish Spirituality from the Bible through the Middle Ages, edited by Arthur Green, 367–­404. New York: Crossroad, 1986. ———. “‘New-­Ancient Words’: The Aura of Secrecy in the Zohar.” In Gershom Scholem’s “Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism” 50 Years After, edited by Peter Schäfer and Joseph Dan, 181–­207. Tübingen: Mohr, 1993. ———. The Zohar: Pritzker Edition. 7 vols. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003–­2012. McGinn, Bernard. “Cabbalists and Christians: Reflections of Kabbalah in Medieval and Renaissance Thought.” In Jewish Christians and Christian Jews: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, edited by Richard Popkin and Gordon Weiner, 11–­34. Dordrecht: Klewer, 1994. ———. “Jewish Mystical Leadership: A Christian Response.” In Jewish Mystical Leadership in the 13th Century. Northvale, CA: Jason Aronson Press, 1998. Melamed, Abraham. “The Myth of the Jewish Origins of Philosophy in the Renaissance: From Aristotle to Plato.” Jewish History 26 (2012): 41–­59. Merchavia, C. The Church versus Talmudic and Midrashic Literature, 500–­1248. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1970 (Hebrew). Meroz, Ronit. “And I Was Not There?: The Complaints of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai According to an Unknown Zoharic Story.” Tarbiz 71 (2002): 163–­193. ———. “The Chariot of Ezekiel: An Unknown Zoharic Commentary.” Te’udah 16/17 (2001): 567–­616 (Hebrew). ———. “Der Aufbau des Buches Sohar,” Pardes 11 (2005): 16–­36. ———. “The Middle Eastern Origins of Kabbalah,” Journal for the Study of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry (2007): 39–­56. ———. “R. Joseph Angelet and his Zoharic Writings.” In Te’uda: New Developments in Zohar Studies, edited by Ronit Meroz, 21–­22 (2007): 303–­404. ———. “The Weaving of a Myth: An Analysis of Two Stories in the Zohar.” In Studies and Knowledge in Jewish Thought, edited by Howard Kreisel, 129–­164. Be’er Sheva: Ben Gurion University Press, 2007 (Hebrew).

B ib lio gr aphy

23 1

———. “Zoharic Narratives and Their Adaptations.” Hispania Judaica Bulletin 3 (2000): 3–­63. Milton, Gregory B. “Jews and Finance in Medieval Iberia.” In The Jew in Medieval Iberia, 1100–­1500, edited by Jonathan Ray, 227–­256. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012. Mopsik, Charles. Cabale et Cabbalistes. Paris: Bayard Editions, 1997. ———. “Le Corpus Zoharique: ses Tires et ses Amplifications.” In La Formation des Canons Scripturaires, edited by M. Tardieu. Paris: Cerf, 1993. ———. Les Grandes textes de la cabale: Les rites qui font dieu. Paris: Verdier, 1993. ———. “Moise de Leon, le Sheqel ha-­Qodesh et la redaction du Zohar: Une reponse a Yehuda Liebes.” Kabbalah 3 (1998): 177–­218. ———. Sex of the Soul: The Vicissitudes of Sexual Difference in Kabbalah. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2005 Morlok, Elke. “Die Herausforderung der judischen Philosophie anhand der mittelalterichen Mystik am Biespiel Abraham Abulafias.” In Sammelband der Tagung Herausforderung durch Religion? Begegnungen der Philosophie mit Religionen in Mittelalter und Renaissance, edited by Gerhard Krieger, 84–­97. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2012. ———. “Erotische Anziehung und Doppelte Konstruktion der Schechina in der kabbalistischen Literature.” In Das Geheimnis der Gegenwart Gottes: Zur Schechina-­Vorstellung in Judentum und Christentum, edited by B. Janowski and E. Popkes, 3–­20. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. ———. “Kabbala als Alternative? Die Herausforderung der jüdischen Philosophie anhand der mittelalterlichen Mystik am Beispiel Abraham Abulafias.” In Sammelband der Tagung Herausforderung durch Religion? Begegnungen der Philosophie mit Religionen in Mittelalter und Renaissance, edited by G. Krieger, 84–­97. Wurzberg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2012. ———. Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011. Mottolese, Maurizio. Analogy in Midrash and Kabbalah: Interpretive Projections of the Sanctuary and Ritual. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2007. Myers, Jody. Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest: The Kabbalah Centre in America. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2007. Neusner, Jacob. Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in Formative Judaism. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988. ———. “Map without Territory: Mishnah’s System of Sacrifice and Sanctuary.” History of Religions 19, no. 2 (November 1979): 103–­127. Nirenberg, David. Anti-­Judaism: The Western Tradition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2013. ———. Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. ———. “Deviant Politics and Jewish Love: Alfonso VIII and the Jewess of Toledo.” Jewish History 21 (2007): 15–­41. Novak, David. “Self-­Contraction of the Godhead in Kabbalistic Theology.” In Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, edited by L. Goodman, 299–­318. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Novikoff, Alex. “Reason and Natural Law in the Disputational Writings of Peter Alfonsi, Peter Abalard, and Yehuda Halevi.” In Christian Attitudes toward the Jews in the Middle Ages: A Casebook, edited by Michael Frassetto, 109–­136. New York: Routledge, 2007. O’Callaghan, Joseph F. The Learned King: The Reign of Alfonso X of Castile. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. Oron, Michal. “The Doctrine of the Soul and Reincarnation in 13th-­Century Kabbalah.” In Studies in Jewish Thought, edited by Sara O. Heller Willensky and Moshe Idel, 277–­289. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1989.

23 2 Bi bli o graphy ———. “‘Place Me as a Seal upon Your Heart’: Reflections on the Poetics of the Author of the Zohar in the Section of Sabba de-­Mishpatim.” In Massu’ot: Studies in Kabbalistic Literature and Jewish Philosophy in Memory of Prof. Ephraim Gottlieb, edited by Michal Oron and Amos Goldreich, 1–­24. Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1994. ———. “Sefer ’Ezrat ha-­Shem.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 12 (1996). ———. “Sheloshah Perushim le’Ma’aseh Bereishit u-Mashma’utam Beheker Sefer ha-­ Sohar.” Da’at 50–­52 (2003): 183–­199. Pachter, Shilo. “‘A Sin without Repentance’: On a Disagreement between Moses de Leon and the Zohar.” In And This Is for Yehuda, edited Maren Neihoff, Ronit Meroz, and Jonathan Garb, 144–­163. Jerusalem: Mandel and Bialik Institutes, 2012 (Hebrew). Patton, Pamela A. Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012. Pedaya, Haviva. Name and Sanctuary in the Teachings of R. Isaac the Blind: A Comparative Study in the Writings of the Earliest Kabbalists. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001 (Hebrew). ———. “‘Possessed by Speech’: Towards an Understanding of the Prophetic-­Ecstatic Patterns among Early Kabbalists.” Tarbiz 65 (1996): 565–­636 (Hebrew). Pick, Lucy. Conflict and Coexistence: Archbishop Rodrigo and the Muslims and Jews of Medieval Spain. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Pike, Nelson. Mystic Union: An Essay in the Phenomenology of Mysticism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992. Porat, Oded. The Works of Iyyun: Critical Editions. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2013. Prado-­Vilar, Francisco. “Iudeus sacer: Life, Law, and Identity in the ‘State of Exception’ Called ‘Marian Miracle.’” In Judaism in Christian Art: Aesthetic Anxieties from the Catacombs to Colonialism, edited by H. Kessler and D. Nirenberg, 115–­142. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Procter, Evelyn S. “The Scientific Works of the Court of Alfonso X of Castile: The King and His Collaborators.” Modern Language Review 40, no. 1 (1945): 12–­29. Ray, Jonathan. “Beyond Tolerance and Persecution: Reassessing Our Approach to Medieval Convivencia.” Jewish Social Studies 11 no. 2 (2005): 1–­18. ———. The Sephardic Frontier: The Reconquista and the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. Resnick, Irven. Marks of Distinction: Christian Perceptions of Jews in the High Middle Ages. Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press of America, 2012. ———. Peter the Venerable: Against the Obduracy of the Jews. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013. ———. Petrus Alfonsi: Dialogue against the Jews. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006. ———. “The Priestly Raising of the Hands and Other Trinitarian Images in Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogue against the Jews.” Medieval Encounters 13 (2007): 452–­469. Robinson, James. “Philosophy and Science in Medieval Jewish Commentaries on the Bible.” In Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures, edited by Gad Fruedenthal, 454–­475. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Roth, Cecil. “The Medieval Conception of the Jew.” In Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict, edited by J. Cohen, 298–­309. New York: New York University Press, 1991. Roth, Norman. “Jewish Collaborators in Alfonso’s Scientific Work.” In Emperor of Culture: Alfonso X of Castile and His Thirteenth-­Century Renaissance, edited by Robert Burns, 59–­ 71. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. ———. “The ‘Theft of Philosophy’ by the Greeks from the Jews.” Classical Folia 32 (1978): 52–­67. ———. “Two Jewish Courtiers of Alfonso X Called Zag (Isaac).” Sefarad 43 (1983): 75–­85.

B ib lio gr aphy

233

Rubin, Miri. Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ———. Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Rubin, Nissan. “From Monism to Dualism: Relationship between Body and Soul in Talmudic Thought.” Da’at 23 (1989): 33–­64 (Hebrew). Ruderman, David B. Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe. New ed. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001. Sandmel, Samuel. “Parallelomania.” Journal of Biblical Literature 81 (1962): 1–­13. Sapir-­Abulafia, Anna. “Bodies in the Jewish-­Christian Debate.” In Framing Medieval Bodies, edited by Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin, 123–­137. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. Sarachek, Joseph. Faith and Reason: The Conflict over the Rationalism of Maimonides. Williamsport: Bayard Press, 1935. Schafer, Peter. Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Scholem, Gershom. Alchemy and Kabbalah. Translated by Klaus Ottmann. New Orleans: Spring Publicatons, 2006. ———. “Colours and the Symbolism in Jewish Tradition and Mysticism.” Diogenes 108 (1979): 84–­112. ———. “The Concept of Kavvanah in Early Kabbalah.” In Studies in Jewish Thought: An Anthology of German Jewish Scholarship, edited by Alfred Jospe, 114–­122. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981. ———. “The Cultural Reception of the Zohar: An Unknown Lecture by Gershom Scholem from 1940 (Study, Edition and English Translation by Daniel Abrams).” Kabbalah 19 (2009): 279–­316. ———. “Ha-­im Hibber ha-­Ramban et Iggeret ha-­Kodesh?” Kiryat Sefer 21 (1944): 179–­186. ———. “Ha’im Hibber R. Moshe de-­Leon et Sefer ha-­Zohar?” Mada’ei ha-­Yahadut 1 (1926): 16–­29. ———. Kabbalah. New York: Meridian, 1974. ———. Kitvei Yad be-­Kabbalah. Jerusalem, 1930. ———. “Mafteah le-­Peirushei ’Eser Sefirot.” Kiryat Sefer (1933): 498–­515. ———. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken Books, 1954. ———. “Memory and Utopia in Jewish History.” In On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time, edited by Avraham Shapira and translated by Jonathan Chipman, 155–­166. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997. ———. The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality. New York: Schocken Books, 1971. ———. “Mysticism and Society.” Diogenes 58 (1967): 1–­24. ———. “The Name of God and the Linguistic Theory of the Kabbala.” Diogenes 79 (1972): 59–­80 (1972): 164–­194. ———. “A New Document for the History of the Beginning of Kabbalah.” In Sefer Bialik, edited by Gershom Scholem, 141–­162. Tel Aviv: Emunot, 1934. ———. On Jews and Judaism in Crisis: Selected Essays. New York: Schocken Books, 1976. ———. On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. ———. On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel, edited and revised by Jonathan Chipman. New York: Schocken Books, 1991. ———. On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time and Other Essays. Edited by Avraham Shapira, translated by Jonathan Chipman. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997.

23 4  Bi bli o graphy ———. Origins of the Kabbalah. Edited by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, translated by Allan Arkush. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. ———. “Revelation and Tradition as Religious Categories in Judaism.” In The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays in Jewish Spirituality. New York: Schocken Books, 1971. ———. “Reflections on the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time.” In On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time, 6–­19. Edited by Avraham Shapira, translated by Jonathan Chipman. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997. ———. “Te’udah Hadashah le-­Toldot Reshit ha-­Kabbalah.” Sefer Bialik (1934): 141–­162. ———. “Traces of ibn Gabirol in the Kabbalah,” 160–­178. Me’assef Sofrei Eres Yisra’el. Jerusalem, 1940. Schwartz, Dov. Central Problems of Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Leiden: Brill, 2005. ———. “From Theurgy to Magic: The Evolution of the Magical-­Talismanic Justification of Sacrifice in the Circle of Nahmanides and His Interpreters.” Aleph 1 (2001): 165–­213. Schwartz, Yossef. “The Esoteric and Interreligious Aspects of the Relation Philosophy/ Kabbalah in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.” Studia Judaica (2008): 126–­143. Secret, Francois. Le Zohar Chez les Kabbalistes Chretienes dans le Renaissance. Paris: Librairie Dulacher, 1958. Sed, Nicholas. La Mystique Cosmologique Juive. Paris: Mouton, 1981. ———. “Le Mystere de Couleurs de J. Gikatilla.” Chrysopoeia 1 (1987): 3–­20. ———. Les Kabbalistes Chretiens de la Renaissance. Paris: Dunod, 1964. Sells, Michael. Mystical Languages of Unsaying. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Seltzer, Sanford. “Divine Embodiment and the Mysteries of the Phylacteries, Fringes, and the Rosary.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 46, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 201–­213. Septimus, Bernard. Hispano-­Jewish Culture in Transition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. ———. “‘Open Rebuke and Concealed Love’: Nahmanides and the Andalusian Tradition.” In Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (Ramban): Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity, edited by Isadore Twersky, 11–­34. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. Shatzmiller, Joseph. Jews, Medicine and Medieval Society. Berkley: University of California Press, 1994. Silver, David. Maimonidean Criticism and Maimonidean Controversy: 1180–­1240. Leiden: Brill, 1965. Smith, Jonathan Z. Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. ———. Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. ———. To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. ———. “Wisdom’s Palace.” In Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys, edited by John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane, 3–­14. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. Stace, Walter. Time and Eternity: An Essay in the Philosophy of Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952. Steinbock, Anthony J. Phenomenology and Mysticism: The Veridicality of Religious Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Stern, David. “Imitatio Hominis: Anthropomorphism and the Character(s) of God in Rabbinic Literature.” Prooftexts 12 (1992): 151–­174. Stern, Joseph. Problems and Parables of the Law: Maimonides and Nahmanides on Reasons for the Commandments (Ta’amei ha-­Mitzvot). Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.

B ib lio gr aphy

235

Stow, Kenneth. Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. ———. “The Church and the Jews.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5, edited by David Abulafia, 204–­219. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Strier, Richard. Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Stuckrad, Kocku von. “Discursive Study of Religion: From States of the Mind to Communication and Action.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 15 (2003): 255–­271. ———. Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities. Leiden: Brill, 2010. ———. “Madonna and the Shekhinah: The Playful Transgression of Gender Roles in Popular Culture.” In Kabbalah and Modernity: Interpretations, Transformations, Adaptations, edited by Boaz Huss, Marco Pasi, and Kocku von Stuckrad, 283–­312. Leiden: Brill, 2010. ———. “Western Esotericism: Toward an Integrative Model of Interpretation.” Religion 35 (2005): 78–­97. Talmage, Frank. “Apples of Gold: The Inner Meaning of Sacred Texts in Medieval Judaism.” In Jewish Spirituality From the Bible through the Middle Ages, edited by Arthur Green, 313–­355. New York: Crossroad, 1986. Ta-­Shma, Israel. Ha-­Nigle she-­Banistar: The Halakhic Residue in the Zohar. Kibbutz Hameyuchad Publishing, 2001 (Hebrew). ———. “Professor Katz on Halakhah and Custom.” In Creativity and Tradition: Studies in Medieval Rabbinic Scholarship, Literature and Thought, edited by Israel Ta-­Shma, 228–­ 238. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Tirosh-­Samuelson, Hava. Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-­ being. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2003. ———. “Kabbalah and Science in the Middle Ages.” In Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures, edited by Gad Fruedenthal, 476–­510. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. ———. “Philosophy and Kabbalah: 1200–­1600.” In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, edited by Daniel Frank and Oliver Leaman, 218–­257. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Tishby, Isaiah. The Wisdom of the Zohar. Translated by David Goldstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Tolan, John Victor. Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993. Urbach, Ephraim. The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs. Translated by Israel Abrahams. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975. Urban, Hugh B. “Sacred Capital: Pierre Bourdieu and the Study of Religion.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 15 (2003): 354–­389. ———. “The Torment of Secrecy: Ethical and Epistemological Problems in the Study of Estoeric Traditions.” History of Religions 37, no. 3 (February1998): 209–­248. Vajda, Georges. Recherches sur la Philosophie et la Kabbalah dans la Pnesee Juive du Moyen Age. Paris: Ecole Pratique, 1962. Valabregue-­Perry, Sandra. Concealed and Revealed: ’Ein Sof ’ in Theosophical Kabbalah. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2010. ———. “The Concept of Infinity (Eyn Sof) and the Rise of Theosophical Kabbalah.” Jewish Quarterly Review 102, no. 3 (2012): 405–­430. Verman, Mark. The Books of Contemplation: Medieval Jewish Mystical Sources. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Wasserstrom, Steven M. Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

236  Bi bli o graphy ———. “Sharing Secrets.” In New Directions in Jewish Philosophy, edited by Aaron Hughes and Elliot Wolfson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. Weinstein, Roni. Shivru et ha-­Kelim. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2011. Weiss, Tzahi. “Who Is a Beautiful Maiden without Eyes? The Metamorphosis of a Zohar Midrashic Image from a Christian Allegory to a Kabbalistic Metaphor.” Journal of Religion 93, no. 1 (2013): 60–­76. Wexler, Philip. “Society and Mysticism.” In After Spirituality, edited by Philip Wexler and Jonathan Garb, 107–­125. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2012. Wirszubski, Chaim. Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989. _____. Bein ha-­Shitin. Edited by Moshe Idel. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1990 (Hebrew). Wolfram Drews, Bonn. “Medieval Controversies about Maimonidean Teachings.” In Moses Maimonides (1138–­1204): His Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte in Different Cultural Contexts, edited by Gorge Hasselhoff and Otfried Fraisse, 113–­135. Wurzburg: Ergon Vorlag, 2004. Wolfson, Elliot R. Abraham Abulafia—­Kabbalist and Prophet: Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2000. ———. Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, Death. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. ———. Along the Path: Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and Hermeneutics. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. ———. “The Anonymous Chapters of the Elderly Master of Secrets: New Evidence for the Early Activity of the Zoharic Circle.” Kabbalah 19 (2009): 143–­278 ———. “Anthropomorphic Imagery and Letter Symbolism in the Zohar.” Jerusalem Studies in JewishThought 8 (1989): 147–­181 (Hebrew). ———. “Assaulting the Border: Kabbalistic Traces in the Margins of Derrida.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 70 (2002): 475–­514. ———. “Beautiful Maiden without Eyes: Peshat and Sod in Zoharic Hermeneutics.” In The Midrashic Imagination: Jewish Exegesis, Thought, and History, edited by Michael Fishbane, 155–­203. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. ———. “Before Alef/Where Beginnings End.” In Beginning/Again: Towards a Hermeneutics of Jewish Texts, edited by Aryeh Cohen and Shaul Magid, 135–­161. New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2002. ———. “Beneath the Wings of the Great Eagle: Maimonides and Thirteenth Century Kabbalah.” In Moses Maimonides (1138–­1204): His Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte in Different Cultural Contexts. Edited by Gorge Hasselhoff and Otfried Fraisse, 209–­237. Wurzburg: Ergon Vorlag, 2004. ———. “Beyond Good and Evil: Hypernomianism, Transmorality and Kabbalistic Ethics.” In Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism, edited by Jeffrey J. Kripal and G. William Barnard, 103–­156. NewYork: Seven Bridges Press, 2002. ———. “Beyond the Spoken Word: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Medieval Jewish Mysticism.” In Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Diffusion, edited by Yaakov Elman and Israel Gershoni, 166–­224. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. ———. “‘By Way of Truth’: Aspects of Nahmanides’ Kabbalistic Hermeneutic.” AJS Review 14 (1989): 103–­178. ———. Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. ———. “Circumcision and the Divine Name: A Study in the Transmission of Esoteric Doctrine.” Jewish Quarterly Review 78 (1987): 77–­112.

B ib lio gr aphy

237

———. “Circumcision, Vision of God, and Textual Interpretation: From Midrashic Trope to Mystical Symbol.” History of Religions 27 (1987): 189–­215. ———. “Divine Suffering and the Hermeneutics of Reading.” In Suffering Religion, edited by Walter Gibs and Elliot Wolfson, 101–­162. London: Routledge, 2002. ———. A Dream Interpreted within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination. London: Zone Books, 2011. ———. “Eunuchs Who Keep the Sabbath: Becoming Male and the Ascetic Ideal in Thirteenth-­Century Jewish Mysticism.” In Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, edited by Jeffrey J. Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, 151–­185. New York: Garland, 1997. ———. “Fore/giveness on the Way: Nesting in the Womb of Response.” Graven Images: Studies in Culture, Law and the Sacred 4 (1998): 153–­169. ———. “Forms of Visionary Ascent as Ecstatic Experience in the Zoharic Literature.” In Gershom Scholem’s “Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism” 50 Years After, edited by Peter Schäfer and Joseph Dan, 209–­235. Tübingen: Mohr, 1993. ———. “Gender and Heresy in the Study of Kabbalah.” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Medieval Texts 6 (2001): 231–­262 (Hebrew). ———. “The Glorious Name and the Incarnate Torah.” In The Jewish Study Bible, edited by Adele Berlin, Marc Zvi Brettler, and Michael Fishbane. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979–­1990, 2004. ———. “Hai Gaon’s Letter and Commentary on ’Alainu: Further Evidence of R. Moses de Leon’s Pseudepigraphic Activity.” Jewish Quarterly Review 81 (1991): 365–­410 ———. “Iconic Visualization and the Imaginal Body of God: The Role of Intention in the Rabbinic Conception of Prayer.” Modern Theology 12 (1996): 137–­162. ———. “Images of God’s Feet: Some Observations on the Divine Body in Judaism.” In People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective, edited by Howard Eilberg-­Schwartz, 143–­181. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. ———. “Imago Templi and the Meeting of the Two Sees: Liturgical Time-­Space and the Feminine Imagery in Zoharic Kabbalah.” In Anthropology and Aesthetics 51 (2007): 121–­135. ———. “Introduction to the Critical Edition of Sefer ha-­Rimmon.” In The Book of the Pomegranate: Moses de Leon’s Sefer ha-­Rimmon, edited by Elliot R. Wolfson. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988, 3–­7 1. ———. “Jewish Mysticism: A Philosophical Overview.” In History of Jewish Philosophy, edited by Daniel Frank and Oliver Leaman, 450–­490. London: Routledge Press, 1997. ———. “Judaism and Incarnation: The Imaginal Body of God.” In Christianity in Jewish Terms, edited by Tikva Frymer-­Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, and Michael A. Signer 239–­254. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000. ———. Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005. ———. “Left Contained in the Right: A Study in Zoharic Hermeneutics.” Association for Jewish Studies Review 11 (1986): 27–­52. ———. “Letter Symbolism and Merkavah Imagery in the Zohar.” In Alei Shefer: Studies in the Literature of Jewish Thought Presented to Rabbi Dr. Alexandre Safran, edited by Moshe Hallamish, 195–­236 (English section). Ramat-­Gan: Bar-­Ilan Press, 1990. ———. “Light through Darkness: The Ideal of Human Perfection in the Zohar.” Harvard Theological Review 81 (1988): 89–­91. ———. Luminal Darkness: Imaginal Gleanings From Zoharic Literature. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. ———. “Megillat ’Emet we-­Emunah: Contemplative Visualization and Mystical Unknowing.” Kabbalah 5 (2000): 55–­110.

23 8  Bi bli o graphy ———. “Mirror of Nature Reflected in the Symbolism of Medieval Kabbalah.” In Judaism and Ecology: Created World and Revealed Word, edited by Hava Tirosh-­Samuelson, 305–­ 331. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. ———. “Murmuring Secrets: Eroticism and Esotericism in Medieval Kabbalah.” In Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism, edited by Wouter Hanegraaff and Jeffrey Kripal, 65–­110. Leiden: Brill, 2008. ———. “Mystical Rationalization of the Commandments in Sefer ha-­Rimmon.” Hebrew Union College Annual 59 (1988): 217–­251. ———. “The Mystical Significance of Torah Study in German Pietism.” Jewish Quarterly Review 84 (1993): 43–­77. ———. “Mystical-­Theurgical Dimensions of Prayer in Sefer ha-­Rimmon.” In Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times, vol. 3, edited by David R. Blumenthal, 41–­79. Atlanta: Scholars University Press, 1984. ———. “Negative Theology and Positive Assertion in the Early Kabbalah.” Da’at 32–­33 (1994): v–­xxii. ———. “Occultation of the Feminine and the Body of Secrecy in Medieval Kabbalah.” In Rending the Veil: Concealment and Secrecy in the History of Religions, edited by Elliot R. Wolfson, 113–­154. New York and London: Seven Bridges Press, 1999. ———. “Ontology, Alterity, and Ethics in Kabbalistic Anthropology.” Exemplaria 12 (2000): 129–­155. ———. Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. ———. Pathwings: Philosophic and Poetic Reflections on the Hermeneutics of Time. Barrytown, NY: Barrytown/Station Hill Press, 2004. ———. “Re/membering the Covenant: Memory, Forgetfulness, and the Construction of History in the Zohar.” In Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Yerushalmi Festschrift, edited by Elisheva Carlebach, John Efron, and David S. Myers, 214–­246. Hanover, NH: University of New England Press, 1998. ———. “Structure, Innovation, and Diremptive Temporality: The Use of Models to Study Continuity and Discontinuity in Kabbalistic Tradition.” Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 6, no. 18 (Winter 2007): 143–­167. ———. “Textual Flesh, Incarnation, and the Imaginal Body: Abraham Abulafia’s Polemic with Christianity.” In Studies in Medieval Jewish Intellectual and Social History, edited by David Engel, Lawrence Schiffman, and Elliot Wolfson, 189–­226. Leiden: Brill, 2012. ———. Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. ———. Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. ———. “Via Negativa in Maimonides and Its Impact on Thirteenth Century Kabbalah.” Maimonidean Studies 5 (2008): 393–­442. ———. “Weeping, Death, and Spiritual Ascent in Sixteenth-­Century Jewish Mysticism.” In Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys, edited by John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane, 209–­247. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. ———. “Woman—­The Feminine as Other in Theosphic Kabbalah: Some Philosophical Observations on the Divine Androgyne.” In The Other Jewish Thought and History, edited by Lawrence Silberstein and Robert Cohn, 166–­204. New York: New York University Press, 1994. Yerushalmi, Yoseph Hayyim. “Medieval Jewry: From Within and from Without.” In Aspects of Jewish Civilization in the Middle Ages, edited by Paul Szarmach, 1–­22. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979.

B ib lio gr aphy

239

Yisraeli, Oded. The Interpretation of Secrets and the Secret of Interpretation: Midrashic and Hermeneutic Strategies in Sabba de-­Mishpatim of the Zohar. Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2005. ———. “Studies in the Conflict between Halakhah and Kabbalah in the Zohar.” In And This Is for Yehuda, edited by Maren Niehoff, Ronit Meroz, and Jonathan Garb, 202–­221. Jerusalem: Mandel and Bialik Institutes, 2012 (Hebrew). Yuval, Israel Jacob. Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

I N D E X

Aaron (biblical character), 94, 95 Abraham (biblical character), 21, 26, 89, 90, 94, 95, 108, 109, 110, 132, 212n84 Abraham bar Hiyya, 182n24 Abraham ben David (Ra’avad) of Posquieres, 176n117 Abraham ben Isaac (Ra’avi) of Narbonne, 176n117 Abraham ibn Ezra. See ibn Ezra, Abraham Abrams, Daniel, 12–­13, 27 Abulafia, Abraham, 12, 160, 175n99, 176n107, 177nn125,128, 178n133, 181n13, 197n2, 202n78, 203n91, 213nn107,6 Abulafia, Joseph ben Todoros ha-­Levi, 11, 25, 86, 116, 153, 175n88, 193n90, 203n94, 212n96 Adam (biblical character), 26, 27, 83, 84, 85, 89, 95, 98, 99, 126, 204n124 Alfonso X of Castile, 10, 16–­19, 93, 170n6, 171nn10,11,12,17,21, 172nn27,29, 196n136 Aragon, 12 Aristotle, Aristotelianism, 3, 18, 19, 29, 32, 34, 38, 40, 172n32, 178n135, 186n84 Asad, Talal, 6–­7 Asher ben David, 11, 63, 179n172, 182n16, 186n95, 209n32 Ashkenaz, 8, 52, 169n131, 183n33, 187n99, 190n46, 205n127, 206n161; halakhic norms of, 205n127; Hasidei Ashkenaz, 8 Azriel of Gerona, 11, 25, 133, 175n88, 189n20 Baer, Yitzhak, 19–­20 Bahir, 86,119,133,185nn61,76, 190n51, 201n61, 203n110, 206n146, 209n41 Binah (sefirah), 21, 48–­50, 53, 56–­57, 59, 61, 68, 75, 86, 88–­90, 94, 120, 123–­126, 128, 136,

138, 140, 144, 145, 148, 154, 177n117, 185n74, 193n93, 194n109, 198n9, 205n136, 213n110 Castile, 1, 3, 4, 10–­13, 15, 16, 17, 19–­21, 25, 29, 31, 40, 43–­44, 160, 166, 167n1, 170n2, 179n172, 183n44, 202n83 Catalonia, 12, 15, 30, 31, 174n79, 178n146, 182n24, 183n44, 202n83 chain of being. See shalshelet Christianity and Christians, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 16, 18, 20, 24, 25, 29, 43, 44, 73, 83, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 98, 105, 106, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 123, 133, 150, 156, 158, 160, 163, 167n3, 168n10, 169n31, 171n12, 172n40, 174nn68,70,74,76,77,79, 176nn109,112,114, 177n122, 180n173, 186n85, 188n5, 189nn30,31,33, 192n77, 195n126, 196n151, 199nn28,36,40, 211n76, 212n84, 214n1 colors, 55, 64, 94, 100, 190n43, 196n139 David (biblical character), 94, 106, 144, 150 David ben Yehuda he-­Hasid, 11, 21, 26, 51, 75, 104, 110, 116, 127, 131, 134, 150, 173n45, 175nn88,89, 182n24, 183n29, 185nn64,71, 194n104, 196nn147,152, 197n3, 199n27, 200n50, 203n96, 205nn132,136, 206n155, 207nn5,6, 208nn25,26, 209nn34,41, 211n70, 212nn85,104 Works: The Book of Mirrors, 173n45, 175nn88,89, 182n24, 183n29, 185nn64,71, 194n104, 196nn147,152, 197n3, 200n50, 203n96, 205n136, 207n5, 208n26, 209nn34,41, 211n70, 212nn85,104; commentary on liturgy, 104; Or Zaru’a, 199n27, 205n132, 206n155, 207nn5,6, 208n25

241

2 4 2i n de x death, 86, 139, 141–­142, 158, 194n96, 199n36, 210nn49,55,56,58 de Leon, Moses, 3, 11, 12, 20, 28–­29, 32, 34, 35, 38, 40, 42, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 74, 79, 81, 83, 85, 86, 95, 110–­111, 124, 125–­126, 130, 141, 151–­152, 166, 169n40, 170n42, 173n43, 175nn83,85,86,88, 176nn105,106, 177n124, 178nn144,145,147, 179nn168,169, 180n180, 181n4, 182n26, 183n32, 184n55, 185n72, 186nn87,89,90,93, 187nn104,111,112,113, 188n120,189n35, 190nn36,37, 191nn57,65,66,67, 192nn70,75,76,81,85,86, 193nn93,94, 194nn95,96, 195nn114,124, 196nn134,144, 200n52, 203nn95,106, 204n124, 205nn132,136, 206nn138,145,148, 207nn1,3,4,9, 208n22, 209n41, 210nn54,55,56, 211n74, 212nn90,92,93,97 Works: The Book of the Pomegranate, 176n106, 181n4, 186nn87,90, 187n104, 188n120, 191nn57,65,69, 192nn85,86, 193n94, 194n96, 195n114, 203nn95,106, 204n124, 205n132, 207nn3,4,9, 208n22, 209n41, 210nn55,56, 212nn92,97; Mishkan ha-­ Edut, 42, 176n105, 179n169, 180n180, 185n72, 193n93, 194n94, 195n124, 205n136, 208n22, 210n54; Nefesh ha-­Hakhmah, 206nn138,145,148; Seder Gan Eden, 208n22; Sefer ha-­ Mishqal, 179n168, 189n35, 190n36, 191n66, 192nn70,75, 81, 193n94, 194n96, 195n144, 204n124; Sefer Maskiyot ha-­Kesef, 211n74; Sefer Or Zarua, 177n124, 187n112, 190n37, 193nn94,109, 204n124; Sefer Sheqel ha-­Qodesh, 173n43, 175nn83,85,86, 183n32, 184n55, 186nn87,93, 187n111, 191n67, 192n76, 193n94, 194n95, 204n124, 207n1, 212n90; “She’elot u-­Teshuvot,” 178n147, 200n52; Shushan Edut, 186n93, 187n113, 191n66, 192n75, 194n95, 204n124; “Sod Eser Sefirot Belimah,” 182n26, 184n55, 186n87; Sodot, 35, 125 Din (sefirah). See Gevurah ein sof, 1, 48, 50, 51, 53, 55–­58, 62, 64, 68, 69, 72, 74, 75, 76, 86–­91, 96, 101, 133–­134, 137–­140, 145–­147, 152, 154, 156, 173n57, 181nn10,12, 185nn63,67, 195nn111,120, 209n39, 211n73, 213n110; relationship with Keter, 57–­58, 195n111. See also Keter

emanation, 1, 45–­50, 54–­65, 68, 75, 79–­83, 88, 91, 102, 113, 120, 125, 134, 138, 143–­144, 151–­152, 186n93, 207n3, 208n24 embodiment, 48, 71–­74, 92, 189n31, 191n68, 211n76. See also incarnation Enoch (biblical character), 21–­22, 173n49 esotericism, 1, 3–­4, 7, 9–­11, 15, 18–­26, 28–­34, 37–­41, 43–­44, 45, 48, 54, 6, 64, 66, 68–­69, 70, 73, 76, 100, 103, 105, 111, 115, 119, 122, 132, 137, 145, 148, 150–­151, 156, 159, 163, 166, 168n10, 172n28, 173n44, 175n82, 177nn118,128, 178nn134,141,142,146, 179n171, 180n178, 185n78, 187n108, 190n37 exile, 1, 3, 28–­29, 97, 101, 111–­113, 116, 131, 135–­ 137, 147, 179n166, 200n55 Ezra of Gerona, 11, 175n88 female, 18, 87, 88, 185n62, 194n107, 213n110. See also women Gabirol, Solomon ibn, 52, 173n57, 179n153, 182n25, 183n34, 184n51, 188n119 Gerona School, 179n153, 193n92 Gevurah (sefirah), 48–­50, 53, 75, 89, 97, 102, 110, 120, 128–­129, 150 Gikatilla, Joseph, 3, 11, 20, 21, 31, 33–­34, 36, 45, 50, 58–­61, 64, 66–­67, 78, 88–­ 90, 107–­109, 115, 123–­124, 128–­129, 131, 134–­135, 137–­138, 145, 148–­151, 153–­154, 166, 168n10, 172nn26,27, 173n42, 175n88, 176n110, 177n123, 178nn138,140, 179n176, 180nn173,2, 182n22, 184n49, 185nn66,67,68, 186nn80,93, 187nn99,107,114,117, 188n121, 190nn37,51, 191nn53,54,55,56, 191n60, 192n76, 194nn94,97,108,109, 195nn110,111,112,118,119,120,127, 196nn138,139, 198nn13,20, 199nn26,31, 200nn43,46,47, 201n68, 202n86, 203n106, 204nn114,124, 205nn132,137, 207nn3,9, 209nn28,38,39,68,69, 211nn72,78,79, 212nn88,97,98,100 Works: Ginat Egoz, 21, 173n42, 177n123, 184n49, 195n118; Hassagot al ha-­ Moreh, 33, 178nn138,140, 187n117, 194n109; Ma’mar al penimi’ut hatorah (attributed), 179n167; Sha’arei Orah, 78, 185nn66,67, 186nn80,93, 191nn54,55, 194n108, 195nn110,111,112,116,118,119, 120, 199n31, 200n46, 202n86, 207nn3,9, 209nn28,38,39, 210n68, 211nn72,78; Sha’arei Tzedek, 187n117,

i ndex 2 4 3 188n121, 194n97, 197n195, 210n69; Sha’ar ha-­Nikud, 187nn114,117, 194nn94,109; Sod ha-­Keruvim, 59, 108, 180n2, 200n46, 205n135; Sodot, 124, 148, 199n26, 205n137, 212nn88,97,98 Greek philosophical traditions, 193n92 Guadalajara, 20 Hai Gaon, 169n40, 211n71 Halakha, 71, 101, 103, 105, 107–­109, 111, 120, 122, 124, 129f, 177nn117,118, 179n166, 180n172, 190n37, 197n2, 204n127 Hamadan, Joseph of, 11, 50, 52, 58, 64, 66–­67, 75, 79, 80, 92, 96–­97, 100, 101, 105, 109, 113, 120, 121, 123, 124, 130, 131, 133, 134, 152, 153, 173n59, 175nn84,88, 182n21, 186n97, 187nn99,109, 188n119, 190nn37,39, 191nn59,61,64, 195n127, 196nn147,148,150,154, 197n5, 198n13, 200n49, 201nn66,71, 203n109, 204nn116,117,119,121, 205nn130,132,136, 206n141, 207n2, 208nn21,23, 211n76, 212nn94,101 Works: fragment of commentary on Genesis, 187n109; Sefer Ta’amey Ha-­Mitzvoth, 173n59, 187n99, 190n39, 191nn59,61,64, 195n127, 196nn147,148,150, 197n5, 200n49, 201nn66,71, 204nn116,119,121, 205nn130,132,136, 206n141, 207n2, 208nn21,23, 211n76, 212nn94,101; Sefer Tashaq, 175nn84,88, 186n97, 188n119, 196n154, 198n13, 204n117, 208n23 Hasidei Ashkenaz, 8 Hesed (sefirah), 48–­50, 65, 75, 89, 94, 101, 110, 120, 144–­145, 156, 196n139 Hod (sefirah), 48–­49, 75 Hokhmah (sefirah), 21, 38, 48, 49–­53, 55–­59, 61–­24, 75–­76, 84, 89, 94, 101, 120, 126, 127, 136, 148, 150–­151, 154, 183n29, 194n109, 195n114, 213n110 Huss, Boaz, 5, 31, 164–­165 ibn Ezra, Abraham, 202n81, 208n24 ibn Sahula, Isaac, 11, 116, 194n99, 198n18, 203n92 Idel, Moshe, 4, 12, 15, 20, 22, 26, 32, 61–­62, 75 incarnation, 71–­74, 81, 91–­92, 96, 142, 149, 169n33, 179n15, 189nn22,31, 191n68, 212n84. See also embodiment incense (ketoret), 136–­137, 152, 209n34

Isaac (biblical character) 26, 89, 90, 95, 110 Isaac ibn Sahula. See ibn Sahula, Isaac Isaac of Acco, 209n34 Islam and Muslims, 4, 16, 89, 90, 168n10, 175n82 Jacob (biblical character), 26, 89–­90, 92, 94, 95, 110, 110–­111, 119, 132, 148–­149, 150, 195n120 Joseph (biblical character), 94 Joseph of Hamadan. See Hamadan, Joseph of Judah Halevi, 208n24 Keter (sefirah), 36, 37, 48, 49, 50, 51, 56, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 75, 76, 88, 89, 90, 91, 94, 96, 101, 103, 108, 109, 110, 121, 123, 127, 128, 136, 138, 142–­145, 147–­150, 154, 181n5, 182nn24,26, 185nn67,71, 194n104, 195n111, 195n114, 209n39, 211n78. See also ein sof Kimhi, David, 196n146 Leon, Moses de. See de Leon, Moses Liebes, Yehuda, 12, 27, 117 Luria, Isaac, 3, 7, 55, 210n56, 213n7 Magid, Shaul, 7, 160, 164 Maimonides, 32–­34, 80, 132–­133, 160, 168n10, 172n30, 177n130, 178n135, 181n6, 187n117, 197n157, 207nn10,11,12,13, 208n16 male, 70–­74, 81, 87, 88, 127, 130, 142, 185n62, 194n107, 202n90, 213n110 Malkhut (sefirah), 48–­49, 57, 75, 88, 94, 96, 102, 108–­109, 123–­124, 126, 137, 150, 154, 156–­157, 185n67 Meroz, Ronit, 13 Modena, Leon, 160 Moses (biblical character), 21, 26, 31, 34, 35, 39, 94, 95, 96, 178n146 Moses de Leon. See de Leon, Moses Muslims. See Islam and Muslims Nahmanides, 11, 12, 20–­21, 22, 30–­31, 86, 88, 172n41, 174n79, 177nn117,118, 178n141, 190n51, 193n90, 194nn94,109, 201n72, 207n12, 208n16 Neoplatonism, 4, 19, 60, 62, 172nn27,30, 178n135, 184n49, 185n63, 186nn78,84, 194n104, 202n81 Netzah (sefirah) 48–­49, 75, 94 Noah (biblical character), 21 Peter the Venerable, 25, 105, 174nn71,74, 196n156, 199n33

2 4 4i n de x Petrus Alfonsi, 24–­25, 139, 173nn63,64,65,66, 174nn67,68,69, 186n85 prayer, 11, 94, 102–­105, 112, 130–­158, 173n54, 201n60, 202n85, 207nn3,4, 208n16, 209nn39,43, 210n56, 211nn71,72,78, 212n97 Provence, 30, 182n24, 203n91

Shimon bar Yohai, 22, 27, 31, 138, 173n51 sleep, 141 Smith, Jonathan Z., 8–­9, 48, 104, 112, 160 sodot (writings), 13. See also under individual authors Stuckrad, Kocku von, 5, 10, 21

Rashi (Solomon b. Isaac), 40, 211n71 rationalism, 11, 29, 104, 160, 176n109 Ray, Jonathan, 10, 20, 43

tallit, 150–­151, 153 Talmud, 3, 17, 22, 25, 27, 41, 42, 71, 73, 91, 110, 132, 141, 161, 174nn72,74,76, 195n131, 209n41, 211n71 tefillin, 147–­151 Tetragrammaton, 35, 62, 118, 153–­154, 186n85 theosophy, 1, 3, 19, 35, 38, 47, 52, 62, 68, 74, 76, 80, 84, 85, 92, 94, 100, 103, 113, 115, 119, 136, 160, 176n110, 189n32, 190nn37,46, 197nn1,7, 198n23, 199n31, 202n79 theurgy, 11, 76, 100–­129, 132, 160, 172n26, 197n1, 199n26, 201n60, 202n79, 208nn16,24 Tifferet (sefirah), 48–­49, 53, 57, 67, 75, 80, 88, 90, 92, 96, 103, 110, 123, 143–­144, 147–­149, 156–­157, 185n67, 193n93

Saadia Gaon, 61, 193n92 Sabbath, 105, 123–­126, 192n74, 205nn131,132,133,134,137, 206nn141,146,147, 208n202; meals of, 123; sacrifices, 132–­135 Sahula, Isaac ibn. See ibn Sahula, Isaac Scholem, Gershom, 12, 13, 30, 46, 72, 101, 113–­114, 139, 159, 161, 164 secrecy, 15, 20, 28, 29, 34–­35, 147, 170n4, 172n40, 176n101, 177n117. See also esotericism Sefer ha-­Mafteah, 125–­126, 187n118 Sefer ha-­Shem, 39, 41, 170n49, 179nn160,161,166,168, 180nn175,179, 182n19, 186n95, 198n16, 209n32 sefirot, 1, 3, 11, 13, 21–­24, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 46, 48–­68, 75–­81, 84, 86–­97, 100–­ 103, 106, 108–­116, 119–­160, 170nn48,50, 179n153, 180nn173,180, 181nn10,14, 182nn18,20,21,26,27, 183nn29,37,42,43,44, 184nn45,55, 185nn62,63,74, 186nn84,87, 190nn43,51, 192n80, 193n93, 194n109, 195n118, 196nn138,141, 197n1, 198n9, 200nn57,59, 201n66, 202n80, 203n111, 205n136, 209n32, 209n41, 210nn59,61, 211nn70,72,73, 213n110. See also under individual sefirot shalshelet (chain of being), 60–­63, 80, 152, 192n85, 207n3 Shekhinah (sefirah), 3, 26, 48, 67–­68, 98, 102, 106, 111–­112, 122–­123, 125, 128, 134, 143, 145–­ 146, 149–­150, 155–­156. See also Malkhut Shema (liturgical passage), 112, 135, 141, 151–­ 157, 212nn93,101,104, 213n110

Wolfson, Elliot, 5–­6, 10, 15, 29–­30, 32–­34, 46–­47, 55, 57, 66, 70–­72, 76, 113–­115, 118, 122, 152, 159, 164 women, 73, 184n47, 194n107. See also female Yesod (sefirah), 48–­49, 57, 68, 75, 123–­124, 126, 155–­156, 185n61 Zohar, 1, 3, 12–­13, 26–­28, 31, 46, 47, 54–­57, 62, 65, 67, 70–­7 1, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86–­88, 90–­93, 105, 115, 116–­117, 119–­122, 134, 136–­ 142, 146–­147, 149, 155, 156–­157, 167nn2,5, 169nn40,41, 170nn42,45,46,47, 172n32, 173nn49,51, 175nn85,88,90,91,94,97,99, 176nn100,103,104,106,109, 177n121, 179nn166,171; compilation into a “book,” 12–­13, Midrash ha-­Ne’elam, 98, 194n107, 196n155; ra’aya mehemnah section, 193n92; Tiqqunei Zohar, 179n166, 184n48, 204n115, 207n10

A B O U T

T H E

AU T H O R

Hartley Lachter is the Philip and Muriel Berman Professor of Jewish Studies and director of the Berman Center for Jewish Studies at Lehigh University. He holds a PhD in medieval Kabbalah from New York University. Some of his previous publications include “Kabbalah, Philosophy, and the Jewish-­Christian Debate: Reconsidering the Early Works of Joseph Gikatilla” in the Journal for Jewish Thought and Philosophy; “Spreading Secrets: Kabbalah and Esotericism in Isaac ibn Sahula’s Meshal ha-­kadmoni” in Jewish Quarterly Review; and “Medieval Jewish Mysticism,” in the Blackwell History of Jews and Judaism edited by Alan T. Levenson, 2012. Hartley Lachter lives with his wife, Jessica Cooperman, and his two daughters, Zoe and Mollie, in Allentown, Pennsylvania.