Jewish mysticism, like other forms of religious mysticism, was in permanent search of objective validation. Personal experience and sometimes mystical intuition, important as they might be for the spiritual life of the individual, strove also to anchor themselves in the collective experience of the community, basically by resorting to a reinterpretation of the canonical writings.1 Accordingly, the hermeneutic enterprise in Kabbalah is a main component of this mystical lore. Centered much more on the Bible than the Christian mystics were, and perhaps more even than the Sufis, the Kabbalists offered a plethora of mystical interpretations whose relationship to the already existing corpus of traditional nonmystical interpretations of the scriptures is complex and deserves further clarification. The major expression of this attempt to establish an explicit scheme that explicates the hierarchical relationship between the different types of Jewish exegesis is known as pardes, an acronym that designates a fourfold system of exegesis used mostly in Kabbalistic writings. Pardes stands for peshat or plain meaning, remez or hint, sometimes designating allegorical explanations, derash or homiletic exposition, and sod or secret (namely symbolic) interpretation. In the following I shall present some reflections about the background of the emergence of the fourfold hermeneutics as it was advocated by Kabbalists and the significance of its structure.
There are two main scholarly explanations for the emergence of pardes exegesis among the Kabbalists at the end of the thirteenth century. Wilhelm Bacher maintained that the Kabbalists adopted and adapted the Christian fourfold theory of interpretation,2 whereas Peretz Sandler asserted that this exegetical system emerged as the result of an inner development starting with twelfth-century Jewish exegesis.3 At first Gershom Scholem adopted Bacher’s theory, but later he did not explicitly reject the view of Sandler.4
I, too, believe that Sandler did not make a very strong case. On the other hand, it is rather difficult to accept the Bacher-Scholem theory because of the simple fact, pointed out first by Sandler and more recently by Frank Talmage and A. van der Heide, that in crucial details the Kabbalistic fourfold method does not correspond to the Christian fourfold method.5 Although it is always possible that one particular Kabbalist might accept an alien type of exegesis, Christian or Muslim,6 it seems to me unconvincing to assume that several Kabbalists accepted, exactly at the same time and apparently independently, a very similar exegetical method. We must look for a common factor that will explain the concomitant resort of several Kabbalists to these exegetical methods. Can we accept as reasonable the explanation that independent Kabbalists would accept, in the same period, an alien type of exegesis, without having more substantial factors in common?
The obvious fact that those who exposed such a fourfold method of exegesis were Kabbalists is highly significant. However, in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, when this system emerged, it designated methods which were applied separately in various types of Jewish literature. The plain sense was the main subject of the rich exegetical literature produced by the school of exegetes in northern France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. There was already a voluminous homiletic literature produced between the third century and the early Middle Ages. Jewish philosophers starting using allegorical interpretation in the eleventh century, and its floruit can be established in the thirteenth century. Finally, Kabbalistic—that is, symbolical-theosophical—interpretations of the Bible and other canonical Jewish writings were already known at the middle of the thirteenth century. Pardes incorporated a variety of types of Jewish literature that had already been in existence when this system was first articulated. The latest type of literature was Kabbalah, and it is no accident that the exponents of this mystical lore were those who first expounded the method of pardes.
We have, however, sufficient evidence to suggest that some of the Kabbalists who proposed pardes or other systematic exegetical methods underwent a certain spiritual development before they became Kabbalists. There can be no doubt, as pointed out by Isadore Twersky,7 that Isaac ibn Latif, Moses de Leon, Joseph Gikatilla, and Abraham Abulafia were interested in Jewish philosophy before they became Kabbalists. They clearly were well acquainted with the Bible and its plain interpretations as well as with the midrashic literature. Thus the personal spiritual development of some of those Kabbalists who expounded pardes or similar systems is highly relevant for the acceptance of such peculiar methods, even if such acceptance resulted from having appropriated a foreign method. Because of the emergence of the additional, mystical type of Jewish literature in Spain, the peculiar biography or curriculum of some of the Kabbalists also included Kabbalah; the other three bodies of literature were considered to be a preparation for the study of the mystical lore. Consequently, in order to better understand the ascent of systematic hermeneutics in Spanish Kabbalah, it is not sufficient to notice the possible alien sources; it is equally important to inspect the cultural framework within which the new hermeneutics emerged as well as the spiritual biographies of those Kabbalists who articulated it.
Two related conclusions can be drawn from these observations. Kabbalists presented, as van der Heide has suggested, the fourfold method in a very specific manner in order to confer on their mystical lore the privileged status of an exalted type of knowledge.8 By including the other three non-Kabbalistic types of interpretation in the fourfold system, the Kabbalists accomplished two different, though complementary, achievements: they safeguarded a place of honor for their peculiar lore, at the same time preserving the traditional modes of interpretation as necessary stages for the development of the ideal approach to the canonical texts. Jewish mysticism was not portrayed as an alternative to the already existing bodies of Jewish literature; it was conceived of as their culmination. This inclusive character of the Kabbalistic fourfold system of interpretation avoided the centrifugal tendencies characteristic of some non-Jewish types of mysticism.9 This is also true in the case of Abraham Abulafia’s sevenfold exegetical system. As we might imagine, it is his peculiar sort of Kabbalah, the ecstatic one, that is considered the source of the highest methods of interpretation. In the various expositions of his hermeneutics Abulafia does not discredit or oppose the symbolic types of Kabbalistic interpretation, but he posits his own mystical approaches to the text as superior.10 Again we can see both the conservative and innovative character of the Kabbalistic hermeneutic systems: they are always inclusive, allowing an important role for all the existing achievements of Jewish cultural creativity as preparatory approaches, while presenting the respective mode of interpretation that corresponds to the Kabbalistic system in whose framework it was articulated as the highest one. De facto, however, we may describe specifically Kabbalistic exegesis itself, according to the versions found in the different layers of the Zohar, as integrating elements from the other three sorts of exegesis, despite mutual tensions. I would like to emphasize that the Zohar does not resort systematically to the four exegetical methods as separate types of interpretation but uses various elements together as part of the Zoharic interpretation of the Bible.11 No doubt the author or authors of the Zohar were aware of the contributions of the various layers of Jewish exegetical literature to the formation of the Zoharic text. The second conclusion, which derives from the first, is the relative conservative nature of even some of the innovative types of Kabbalah. Far from being ready to regard the previous stages of Jewish exegesis as obsolete or superfluous, the innovative Kabbalists strove to integrate them into more comprehensive exegetical systems, safeguarding their importance and survival12 even when some of the Kabbalists, like Abraham Abulafia, would consider the “lower” types of exegesis as pertinent for the vulgus alone.13 Kabbalists attempted to articulate their hermeneutics in concert rather than in conflict with traditional hermeneutics. This responsible attitude toward the spiritual heritage of Judaism ensured the special role of Kabbalah in those Jewish circles that were not identical with the Kabbalistic groups proper.
Nevertheless, there are examples of discussions that posit Kabbalah as indispensable for the proper interpretation of a text. A pun related to the word pardes will easily illustrate this. R. Hayyim Yoseph David Azulai, better known as HYDA’, commented in his Midbbar Qedeimot: “Whoever believes only in the plain sense of the Bible, peshat, is indeed a fool, as a permutation of the consonants of peshat ‘demonstrates’: tipesh” Moreover, he continues, without the secret, namely the Kabbalistic interpretation, designated by the s in pardes, the three first consonants of this word would form the word pered, an ass.14 Important as the first three methods may be for the accomplished Kabbalist, in themselves they do not suffice for the real understanding of the text. In fact, without the knowledge of Kabbalah the exegete is no more than an ass. Notwithstanding that the regular attitude toward the “lower” ways of exegesis was not negative, a perusal of the vast Kabbalistic interpretative literature conspicuously reveals that in general the Kabbalists were not inclined to propose plain, homiletic, or allegorical interpretations of their own. While acknowledging in principle the importance of the “lower” modes of interpretation, the Kabbalists did not see themselves as obliged religiously to provide the whole range of explanations suggested by the pardes system. Moreover, with the significant exception of R. Bahya ben Asher’s Commentary on the Pentateuch, the Kabbalists contended themselves with providing Kabbalistic commentaries par excellence, not compilations of heterogeneous types of exegetical material.15
Let me address another facet of the pardes method. According to several discussions dating after the late thirteenth century the four methods correspond to the four tannaitic figures who entered the pardes, a spiritual adventure out of which only one person, R. ’Aqivah, returned safely.16 According to the talmudic story and its parallel in the Heikhalot literature, three other figures, Ben Zoma, Ben Azzai, and ’Elisha’ ben Abuyah, were damaged in varying degrees by a spiritual adventure whose peculiar nature is rather obscure.17 For our purpose it is important to emphasize that R. ‘Aqivah, who corresponds typologically to the Kabbalistic method of interpretation, is the only person who returned safely. Thus, at least implicitly, the Kabbalistic method of interpretation is regarded as the single safe type of exegesis, whereas the other three involve, again implicitly, different sorts of dangers. Nevertheless, the underlying purpose of this correlation is not to recommend that the masses use Kabbalistic exegesis but to emphasize the elitist nature of this type of spiritual preoccupation. R. ‘Aqivah alone was able to emerge from the dangerous experience of pardes undamaged; the study of Kabbalah, albeit proposing a safe type of exegesis, also involves dangers that should not be overlooked. As such, mystical hermeneutics is to be restricted to the very few, an assumption characteristic of the whole history of Kabbalah.
Another interesting relationship was established between the four methods of exegesis and the four cosmic layers or worlds, designated in Kabbalah by the acronym ’BY’: Atzilut, Beriy ah, Yetzirah, ‘Asiyah. (I will have more to say on this correspondence, in an earlier context, in Appendix 3.) Consequently, the sod corresponds to the world of ’Atzilut or Emanation, the derash to the world of Beriy’ah or Creation, the remez to the world of Yetzirah or Formation, and the peshat to the lowest world, that of ’Asiyah or Making. According to Lurianic texts, neglect of one of the senses of the Torah induces a certain damage in the corresponding cosmic level.18 Thus, it becomes obvious that even the Kabbalist should not disregard the lower types of interpretations. Explicitly, the Kabbalistic onto-hermeneutics of the Torah leads the mystic to the divine world of emanation. The pardes system involves a certain version of scala mentis ad Deum; the Kabbalist, gradually immersing himself in the various aspects of the text, is at the same time fathoming the depths of reality; the Bible became a tool for metaphysical exploration. At the core of this text stands, according to many Kabbalists, the divinity or one of its manifestations, and the dynamism of the divine life can be extracted by the explication of the rich secret meanings of the infinite divine text. The hermeneutical enterprise of the Kabbalist brings him, according to this ontological concord, to an experience of the divine; in exploring the text, the Kabbalist enters the highest spiritual do-main.19 A Kabbalistic reading of the Torah apparently meant, at least for some Jewish mystics, more than a determination of a certain potential meaning of the text; by creating or extrapolating this significance, the Kabbalist also experienced it. In other words, some of the important stages of Jewish mysticism envisioned mystical exegesis not only as a manner of extracting novel significances from a text by propelling some theological or theosophical views into it, but also—and in some cases this was perhaps the main purpose of the enterprise—as a way of encountering deeper levels of reality.20 The experiential aspects of Kabbalistic hermeneutics is a subject that has been dealt with above; some of its facets are reminiscent of the modern phenomenological type of reading, which emphasizes understanding as an experiential moment over the analytical “objective” approach.21
The last third of the thirteenth century is the period of the emergence of the most elaborated hermeneutical systems of Kabbalah. Some fourfold exegetical systems—those of Isaac ibn Latif, Joseph Gikatilla, Moses de Leon, the Zohar and Tiqqunei Zohar, and Bahya ben Asher, on one hand, and the sevenfold system of Abraham Abulafia on the other—bear clear witness to the deep interest in techniques of interpretation to an extent unseen in discussions found in the earlier stages of Kabbalah. Writings of other Kabbalists, like R. Joseph of Hamadan in the late thirteenth century and R. Isaac ben Samuel of Acre at the beginning of the fourteenth century, though not expressing an explicit and systematic hermeneutics, similarly present a vital concern with different esoteric methods of understanding the scriptures. The common denominator of the intellectual formation of most of the aforementioned authors is the fact that, despite their good formation as Kabbalists, none of them can be considered an important Halakhic figure, and it is far from clear whether their Halakhic formation included in-depth studies of the legalistic literature. Moreover, insofar as I am acquainted with the biographies of these authors, none of them played a leading or even a significant role in Jewish communal life. There is no evidence that any of these Kabbalists was involved in the internal affairs of his community. The innovative Kabbalists22 can be described as belonging to the secondary elite, educated individuals who were continuously searching for new types of thought and were uneasy with the authoritative philosophical theology of Maimonides or the perception of Kabbalah by another great authority, Nahmanides.
All this stands in sharp contrast to the role played by their contemporaries, the “primary elite” and Kabbalists who were leading figures in Catalonia and Castile. So, for example, Nahmanides in Gerona and R. Shlomo ben Abraham ibn Adret in Barcelona,23 and R. Moses ben Shimeon of Burgos and Todros ben Joseph ha-Levi Abulafia in Toledo, were accomplished Kabbalists, active in the public sphere as important legalistic figures or leaders of their communities; in none of these cases is there any evidence of interest from their side in systematic hermeneutics. I believe that this clear-cut distribution of distinct groups—the “secondary elite” interested or the “primary elite” uninterested in presentations of systematic hermeneutics—is highly significant for our understanding of the Kabbalistic conceptions of hermeneutics. The hermeneutical systems were closely related to novel approaches to the canonic texts; by applying the exegetical method, Kabbalists were able to extract new Kabbalistic views or elaborate on the preexisting Kabbalistic theories. This innovative type of Kabbalah constitutes a considerable departure from the dominant perception of Kabbalah as an ancient and precious esoteric lore, to be transmitted and preserved without changes. In other words, the emergence of the fourfold exegetical method, as well as Abulafia’s sevenfold exegetical system, coincides with the nascent innovative Kabbalah. From the vantage point of the history of Kabbalah, understanding the affinity between the pardes types of interpretation and the creativity that characterizes the contemporary Kabbalah is of paramount importance.24 It would be an exaggeration to assume that all the previously unknown themes appeared as the result of hermeneutic activity; I have no doubt that we must also attribute the plethora of unknown Kabbalistic views to the surfacing of ancient mythologoumena, for reasons that are not always clear. I assume, however, that we had better attribute to the hermeneutic processes substantial contributions to the much more variegated landscape that the late thirteenth-century Kabbalah presents to scholars.25
The level of sod, or secret interpretation, was not restricted by the innovative Kabbalists to a single type of exegesis. Although the prevalent sort of Kabbalistic exegesis was symbolic-narrative,26 in Kabbalistic literature there are also several nonsymbolic approaches to the divine text understood as secret senses:
(1) The monadic understanding of the Hebrew language and implicitly the Bible. According to this view, which has ancient sources and by the intermediary of the Kabbalistic material became prevalent in Hasidism, each and every letter is a universe in itself. The atomization of the semantic units into letters thought to designate divine names, the entire system of sefirot and the whole alphabet, diminished the importance of the specific sequence of the letters in the Bible, in favor of the immersion of the Kabbalists and, later on, the Hasidim in the inner world of the letters. It is as if the interpreter were contemplating the text through a microscope.27
(2) The hieroglyphic, iconic, or ideogrammatic understanding of the whole text as a picture of the supernal divine system. This view is closely related to the anthropomorphic view of God in Heikhalot literature and its metamorphoses in the Kabbalistic view of the ten sefirot as constituting an anthropomorphic structure. It is as if the exegete were using a telescope to see the whole text as one unit.28
(3) The Kabbalistic understanding of the white forms of the letters as pointing to a higher reality, in comparison to that symbolized by the black forms of the letter. This view, related somewhat to the hieroglyphic view, has been examined earlier, in Chapter 2.
(4) A variety of mathematical approaches to the text, which consist of methods like notariqon, gematria, temurah, and tzeruf ’otiyyot, as well as other variations of these exegetical techniques.29
The symbolical-narrative as well as the static symbolical and the nonsymbolical types of interpretations allowed the Kabbalist a relatively free choice in his hermeneutic project. The accumulation of the various exegetical techniques in the late-thirteenth-century Kabbalah was fateful for its development. One of the views characteristic of some of the Kabbalistic systems designated as innovative Kabbalah is the claim that the Torah, being a divine text, is infinite and thus it is possible to extract from it innumerable meanings. This view, whose roots can be detected at the middle of the thirteenth century, was not accepted by the conservative Kabbalists, namely those persons who did not adopt the method of pardes. Nevertheless, it is recurrent in the writings of the Kabbalistic innovative her-meneutes. Through the mediation of Christian Kabbalah this view could have an influence on modern theories of the open text. The central assumption of the Kabbalistic understanding of the divine text, namely that, like its author, it is infinite, could be supported better if it were possible to return to the text and reinterpret it mystically time and again.30 Some of the innovative Kabbalists assumed that it is possible to apply more than one Kabbalistic type of interpretation at a time, and this implies that the text was understood to offer a whole range of mystical meanings all at once.31
In other words, mystical interpretation is not to be understood as explicating the infinite meanings of the texts solely as part of an evolving historical process that assumes the accommodation theory of revelation or related types of adaptationist theories. Although sometimes the Torah was indeed described by Kabbalists using theories of accommodation, as has recently been shown by S. D. Benin,32 even the lower, mundane manifestation of the Torah was thought of as pregnant with an infinity of meanings. Regularly the assumption that the divine message has accommodated to the peculiar period of time or level of evolution points to the revelation of one hidden type of meaning implicitly excluding the concomitant existence of other similar types of meaning. In the case of the Kabbalistic theory, even when the theory of accommodation was in fact adopted for one reason or another, this did not vitally affect the coexistence of a plurality of symbolic or nonsymbolic messages in the same text for the same person. Moreover, the general impression is that innovative Kabbalists, though sometimes using accommodationalist formulations, were not eager to acknowledge a lowering of the status of the Torah by attributing to it only one significance that alone will inform the religious life of a generation.
The last phase of Jewish mysticism, Hasidism, was less interested in the external shape of the text. Instead it emphasized the paramount importance of vocal realization; the real letter, and text, was the oral one, a dramatic change of emphasis in comparison to many of the Kabbalistic discussions.33 Nevertheless, as we have seen, the idea of the infinity of the significance of the Bible occurs several times in Hasidic texts; interestingly, Kabbalah was now seen as a very profound lore, which can scarcely be fathomed. To a certain extent, this mystical lore was put on a pedestal; one of the most arresting expressions of this attitude was that, according to R. Yehudah Leib ha-Kohen of Anipola, even the plain sense of Kabbalah is unknown because of the vicissitudes of the exile, a fortiori the remez, derash, and sod of pardes.34 This formula was interpreted by this Hasidic master as an exclusive device. It now points not only to the levels of the biblical text but also to the depths of Kabbalah, especially the Zohar; Kabbalah, which meanwhile was sanctified as a revealed lore, should be explored by the same criteria as the Bible itself.35 In Hasidism the plain sense of the Bible as exposed by Rashi is regarded as preeminently mystical;36 the symbolical level of interpretation is no longer the forefront of exegesis, as it focuses its expositions on the effort to disseminate devotional and psychological interpretations of Judaism.37 The neutralization of several important aspects of Kabbalistic theosophy rendered superfluous or marginal the complex Kabbalistic hermeneutics expounded by the medieval innovative Kabbalists. In fact, in one of the discussions of pardes, the peshat was explicitly connected to one of the most widespread mystical ideals of Hasidism, the hitpashetut ha-gashmitjtjut, the divestment of materiality.38