The centrality of the Torah as organizing a bibliocentric religiosity was generated by a variety of factors, one of them being the destruction of the Second Temple and the growing disintegration of the practical, ritualistic aspects of a topocentric religiosity. This means that the emergence of the centrality of the Torah and later the Talmud, and a geographically decentralized society, coincided to a great extent. Later, the more conspicuous the exilic existence was, the more central the book of the Torah became. This development is paralleled by the gradual arcanization of the canonical text. To a certain extent, the secrets imagined to be found in the Torah multiplied with the passage of the time in exile. This historical explanation of the development of the status of the text and its “secrets” has been seen in quite a different light by some Lurianic Kabbalists writing at the end of the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth centuries. The Torah and its secrets have been regarded as central issues before and beyond any historical development, and only a certain deterioration could be attributed to a historical event; with the destruction of the Second Temple, the Torah was described by Lurianic Kabbalists as burned and its secrets as imprisoned in the realm of evil. Before addressing the details of this specific theory, let me survey what seems to me to be the historical background of its emergence.
Since the late fifteenth century the emergence of the Christian Kabbalah attracted the attention of some Jews acquainted with the situation in northern Italy.1 I assume that R. Elijah del Medigo criticized the Jewish Kabbalah as a result of his encounter with Pico della Mirandola’s involvement with Kabbalah.2 A few decades later, we learn from the writings of two Kabbalists about their acquaintance with Christians interested in Kabbalah. R. Elijah Menahem Halfan, a Kabbalist active in Venice in the first part of the sixteenth century, has left a remarkable description of what happened in his generation: “Especially after the rise of the sect of Luther,3 many of the nobles and scholars of the land [namely the Christians] sought to have a thorough knowledge of this glorious science.4 They have exhausted themselves in this search, because among our people there are but a small number of men expert in this wisdom, for after the great number of troubles and expulsions5 but a few remain. So seven learned men6 grasp a Jewish man by the hem of his garment and say: ‘Be our master in this science.’”7 R. Elijah Menahem Halfan was concerned with the emergence of Christian Kabbalah elsewhere too, in a Halakhic discussion dealing with the talmudic interdiction against revealing secrets of the Torah to gentiles.8 The Venetian rabbi connected this development causally with the Christian openings as evinced in Italy and in Germany, in the case of Luther’s early attitude toward Jews, which was positive.9
Much sterner is the attitude of Jewish Kabbalists active outside Christian Europe, in the Ottoman Empire. So, for example, we learn from R. Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi, a messianic Kabbalist who was asked to send his apocalyptic treatises to Italy:
In my opinion there is a danger sending to you this commentary, since it was said that our brethren, the sons of Esau, study Hebrew and these matters are ancient,10 and whoever will write11 anything there, it may, God forfend, fall into their hands. And despite the fact that those who study are faithful to us, nevertheless it is reasonable and compelling to conceal these matters from them, and there is also a severe ban concerning it.12 In any case, I have refrained13 from sending to you these treatises constituting the Epistle of the Secret of the Redemption and you, my masters, those who conceal the wisdom and the secret of the Lord are to the fearers of God,14 the participants in the covenant will contemplate it, but this will not be accessible to every gentile.15
The sharpest reaction, however, to the study of Kabbalah in Italy was formulated by R. Moses Cordovero, in a treatise composed two decades after the passage by ha-Levi: “Just as foxes damaged the vineyard of God, the Lord of Hosts, nowadays in the land of Italy the priests studied the science of Kabbalah and they diverted it to heresy, because of our sins, and the ark of the covenant of the Lord, the very science [of Kabbalah] had hidden itself. But blessed is he who gave it to us, because neither they16 nor the gentiles distinguish between right and left, but are similar to animals17 because, ultimately, they did not fathom the inner [essence of the lore].”18 Foxes in the divine vineyard is a well-known topos for heretics that caused damage to either the Torah or the people of Israel. In the Maimonidean controversy the topos had been applied to Jews from the other camp. Here, however, it stands for the gentiles, whose entry into the vineyard—kerem, a term related to pardes, the “mystical” orchard, which was understood, like the ark, as the wisdom of Kabbalah19—inflicted damage. The motif of the ark also hints at the theft of the ark by the Philistines, which is reminiscent of the Christians’ taking over the Kabbalah in the present. Those damages were seen as the reason for the esoteric nature of the Kabbalah, a contention reminiscent of R. Elijah Menahem Halfan’s claim that in his day the Kabbalists are few.
Another leading Kabbalist, R. Hayyim Vital, a former student of Cordovero’s, was preoccupied with the transmission of secrets to Christians. In one of his dreams he reported that he arrived to Rome only to be arrested by the officials of the “Roman Caesar.” After his detainment by soldiers he is brought into the presence of the “Caesar,” who commands all persons to clear the hall, leaving the two men alone. Vital reports his dream as follows:
We were left by ourselves. I said to him: “On what grounds do you want to kill me? All of you are lost in your religions like blind men. For there is no truth but the Torah of Moses, and with it alone can exist no other truth.” He replied: “I already know all this and so I sent for you. I know that you are the wisest and most skilled of men in the wisdom of truth.20 I most knowledgeable want you to reveal to me some of the secrets of the Torah and the Names of your blessed Lord, for I already recognized the truth” … Then I told him a little bit of the wisdom [of Kabbalah] and I awoke.21
The phrase “Roman Caesar” apparently points to the pope, with whom many messianic figures, Vital among them, looked for an audience. There is no doubt from the context, in which Vital portrays himself as dwelling in a cave with the paupers of Rome, that a messianic background informs the dream. The pope offers total recognition of the superiority of Vital over other Kabbalists, as well as the acceptance of the truth of Judaism over Christianity. The very resort to the phrase “Roman Caesar” must, however, have been associated by Vital with the destruction of the Temple. I assume that this interruption reflects an unconscious resistance, while dreaming, to teaching Kabbalistic secrets to a gentile.
R. Jacob Hayyim Tzemah, a younger contemporary of Vital, a Lurianic Kabbalist quoted earlier in this book,22 wrote in his Sefer Tiferet ’Adam:
And also the gentile who wrote a book on occult philosophy, whose name is Enrico Cornelio Agrippa, wrote in it a little of every science, but no one [science] has successfully discussed it in its entirety; and he mixed profane and impure things which should not be accepted by Jews. He found some circles, tables, divine names, and figures from the Kabbalah, and he did not know that God had given the understanding of the truth to his people only, but not to him. And since he had seen himself empty and devoid of the essence of Kabbalah, he wrote another book and called it The Vanity of Sciences, that is, De Vanitatis Scientiarum, because he lacked the understanding of the truth.23
Elsewhere in the same work the Kabbalist wrote about the Christians that “since they do not know nor believe in the unity of God, we must not believe anything [of their teaching] even if it seems that part of it is correct. For there is no book dealing with the sciences of the gentiles in which profane and impure things are not mixed, and they direct their wisdom in the way of their faith and therefore, as regards the essence of any subject, they ultimately err.”24 There can be no doubt that Tzemah was well acquainted with Christianity, from his former period as a Christian in Portugal, and he knew much about Christian Kabbalah, but he insisted that there are impure things in those Kabbalistic treatises.
These quotes were taken from books written by major Kabbalists active in the land of Israel but aware of what was happening in Europe, especially in Italy. It is superfluous to adduce here quotes from the writings of Jewish Italian Kabbalists to this effect.25 Those Kabbalists’ awareness of developments taking place in some Christians circles is not only quite visible but, in my opinion, also influential on some developments in the politics of some Jewish Kabbalists. As I have pointed out elsewhere, it is plausible to discern certain affinities between the printing of books on Christian Kabbalah and the decision to print books on Jewish Kabbalah, or to see the nexus between the Jewish critique of Jewish Kabbalah and the influence of the Christian Kabbalah on Jews, an influence that was viewed as pernicious.26 Here, however, I am concerned with the possibility of a more subtle influence, one that pertains to certain details of a well-known ritual cultivated by Kabbalists.
As part of the widespread ritual of tiqqun hatzot, a rite performed at midnight,27 R. Hayyim Vital instructs the Kabbalist to touch the dust of the ground with his face and so direct his thought to the ancient event of burning the Torah and dispersing its secrets. This ritual includes an important component of the study of the Torah in order to embellish the Shekhinah and repair the disharmony in the divine world. In Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot Vital wrote: “The burning of the Torah, which became ashes, and to what is miswritten in my Sha’ar Ruah ha-Qodesh28 that from the day the House was destroyed and the Torah was burned, Her secrets and arcana were transmitted to the hitztzonim, and this is called the ‘exile of the Torah.’”29 In addition to the two disasters, one concerning the Shekhinah and the other concerning the city and the Temple, the Torah was also conceived of as having been burned and as going in exile. Of utmost importance is the explicit statement that the “secrets and arcana” have been dispersed within the impure, external powers, the hitztzonim. This is reminiscent of the Lurianic view concerning the breaking of the vessels and the dispersing of the divine sparks in the realm of the qelippot, as we shall see below. Unlike the ontological disaster, however, that of the secrets is an amazing statement when formulated in a school dominated by a particularistic attitude toward Kabbalah, as the Lurianic school was. It assumes that the secrets of the Torah, which in my opinion are none other than the Kabbalah, are now found in the realm of darkness, and that the linkage to the destruction of the Temple makes plausible the view that the hitztzonim are the nations in general, and perhaps the Christians in particular. As mentioned above, Scholem has already pointed out the possible Christian context, and I propose to qualify his assertion by emphasizing the importance of Christian Kabbalah as the immediate trigger for the formulation of the Lurianic passage.
Following the line of the first generation of Lurianic Kabbalists, R. Jacob Hayyim Tzemah composed a poem, to be recited according to his Siddur, as part of the ritual. The poem opens with these two lines: “Let them cry over the beloved after midnight—as well as on the Torah and Her secrets, / Because they have been given over to the qelippot—in prison; and Her arcana have been obscured.”30 In other words, the secrets of the Torah, presumably identical with the lore of Kabbalah, are known by the gentiles, and this event coincides with the destruction of the Temple. The latter, just like the Torah and the divine configuration of the sefirot as vessels before their breaking, are in a state of total desolation because their content is now captured by the qelippot. What was the more historical picture as envisioned by Luria and Vital? According to a more elaborate discussion found in Sha’ar Ruah ha-Qodesh, to which Vital referred above, the pride of Israel, namely the secrets, designated as mistarim, have been taken by the nations, which are viewed expressly as qelippot, and this is the reason for the divine weeping and for the weeping of the Jews.31 Therefore, according to those Kabbalists, even before the composition of the Zohar by R. Shim’on bar Yohay sometime in the second century, the gentiles were imagined to have had access to the secrets of the Torah.
The rather surprising aspect of the “exile of the Torah” is the view—expressed more powerfully in R. Jacob Hayyim Tzemah’s poem, who claims that he follows the view of the rabbi, who is apparently Luria—that the secrets of the Torah are now obscure or sealed, nistemu. The captivity of the secrets within the realm of the shells, the qelippot, is apparently the ontological correspondent to the epistemological obscuration of the secrets. Although consonant with some main views of Luria dealing with the dispersion of the divine sparks in the realm of the demonic powers, the obscuration of the secrets is interesting when advocated by Lurianic Kabbalists. Formulated during one of the most creative periods of Kabbalah, one in which Luria was regarded as the ultimate revealer of the Kabbalistic secrets, the concept of the obscuration of secrets of the Torah demands elaboration. Some Kabbalists believed the revelation of the secrets to be part of the messianic scenario. In the ritual of tiqqun hatzot, however, one does not get the impression that the secrets have been revealed or that such a revelation is imminent. The secrets were already immersed in the demonic realm. If the acute messianism was one of the triggers of the ritual, as has sometimes been claimed,32 it is not evident here, at least insofar as the concept of the secrets of the Torah in exile is concerned. Rather, I would see in Jewish Kabbalists’ awareness of the adoption of Kabbalistic views by some Christian intellectuals a plausible reason for the theory of exiled secrets within the demonic realm.
This explanation may clarify a certain turn in Isaac Luria’s politics of dissemination of his type of Kabbalah. According to one of the most important documents describing the study of Luria’s secrets in his circle, he forbade the disclosure of those secrets to Kabbalists outside his small circle and their dissemination outside the land of Israel.33 This is a sharp change which has not yet been explained. Is it connected with the danger of another “exile of the Torah”? I am not quite sure that the nexus between the claim related to tiqqun hatzot and the change in Luria’s politics of esotericism can be demonstrated conclusively. In my opinion, however, such a nexus is possible.
Let me now enter on a more elaborate discussion of the theme of the exile of the Torah. In a late-eighteenth-century commentary on the Pentateuch a famous polymath, R. Hayyim Joseph David Azulai, known by the acronym HYDA’, offers a striking example of an ergetic exegesis:
It is incumbent on everyone to bring to light his part of the Torah that he received at Mount Sinai and which was immersed within the abysses of the qelippot because of the sin of the calf and our great sins. And it is necessary to toil very much in order to bring to light everything that he received in accordance with the root of his soul … Happy is the man who found wisdom, namely that he found that [special] wisdom that had been granted to him from heaven and has been lost within the qelippot; and man extracts sagacity, which means that he brings to light and understands one thing out of another, and he extracts it from the qelippot … the sparks of the Torah had fallen in the qelippot, behold this is the meaning of “you should not forsake my Torah,”34 do not forsake my Torah there in the place of Sitra’ ’Ahara’, and toil in order to take it out.35
Unlike the ritual of mourning, which is more liturgical in nature and formulated in a more general manner, as it deals with the Torah and its secrets without any specification, HYDA’ deals here with the particular spark that was granted to him ab origine. It is no longer the nocturnal crying that deplores the immersion of the secrets in exile but the diurnal and more mental activity of extracting the idiosyncratic revelation characteristic of the individual.
The Kabbalist resorts to three apparently distinct entities: the soul and its root; the spark; and the revealed entity or part of the Torah. Or, to put it in other terms, the soul in the above text stands for the soul of a person belonging to the people of Israel, the spark stands for the divine, and the interpretation stands for the Torah. The primordial unity between the three factors has been destroyed by sin, and the study of the Torah is intended to restore this unity. When the study of the Torah is neglected, it ceases to be a “tool and pipe to draw from it the influx of the holiness,” but the “Torah goes to the Sitra’ ’Ahara’.”36
The identification of that part of the Torah that was delivered to someone at the Sinaitic revelation with a spark involves a reification of the Torah. It is not only the problem of dissemination of a certain type of instruction, shared by all Jews, but the immersion of one’s own specific understanding. The part of the Torah destined to be his, which should be identified with something found elsewhere, and the study of the Torah, apparently following the Kabbalistic manner, is a rescue operation, both of the lost interpretation of the Torah and of part of one’s own soul. In fact, following the Lurianic theory of berur, purification, one is required to extract the pure elements from impurity or the divine from the demonic. Study of the Torah, in fact exegesis, is therefore the search for part of one’s lost soul. To resort to modern literary terminology, the reader is found in the book and is shaped by the author.
If the abstract assumption is that each of the souls present at the Sinaitic revelation was given a determined share in the collectively accepted Torah, the question may be asked how exactly one knows what this part is, when does one get it, or how precisely does one get it. According to the essentialistic vision of the Kabbalists, the encounter with one’s alter ego will be self-evident. The Kabbalists, however, including HYDA’, did not elaborate a set of instructions that would facilitate the recognition of the alter ego or the shaping of one’s interpretation. I assume that it is much less the exploration of one’s individuality, or even of one’s redemption, that concerned those who formulated the theories similar to that expounded by HYDA’, but the wish to urge Jews to study Torah. The extreme emphasis on individuality in fact served the goal of expanding the Torah by an intense preoccupation with the text. Since the borders between individuals had not been defined, despite the theoretical assumption of the existence of such borders, what happened in practice was a phenomenon reminiscent of C. S. Peirce’s synechism, a continuity of activities based on the same text, which takes the earlier developments into consideration in its interpretation. This continuity is also shared by the metaphysical stand of the soul as an emanation from the divine realm, which is to be seen as a huge reservoir, where distinction is far from being clear. Or, to put it differently: the process of differentiation of the divine within the human bodies that incorporate the souls, and of the sparks of the Torah within the demonic realm, is to be undone by the study of the one, undivided entity, the text of the Torah. It is a unifying enterprise, which according to the Kabbalists is the manner of self-expression and self-redemption, while de facto it is much more a corporate activity serving to strengthen a corporate identity.
Let me now turn to a recurring theme in the passage from HYDA’: the rescue of the spark is described three times as an act of bringing to light.37 This theme presumably has something to do with the darkness of the shells and the imprisonment of the spark in that realm. But since this is a metaphor for bringing out a certain part or aspect or interpretation of the text, it is reminiscent also of the publication of a book, which has been designated in Hebrew as bringing to light, hotza’ah la-’or. HYDA’, in addition to possessing stunning Halakhic and Kabbalistic knowledge, was a great bibliographer, perhaps the greatest among the traditional Jewish bibliographers. Thus, it is not an artificial claim to surmise that one’s self-expression in the context of the Torah is also connected to the acts of writing and publishing.
HYDA”s emphasis on the individuality of a certain part of the Torah is reminiscent of the theory, thought to be characteristic of Polish Hasidism, that the tzaddiq is required to rescue those sparks that belong to his soul. Although HYDA’ was indeed aware of Hasidism and its literature, I assume that there were earlier Lurianic and perhaps even pre-Lurianic sources that inspired his view.38 This may also be the case insofar as the above passage is concerned. If we assume that the eighteenth-century author, who was acquainted with Polish Hasidism,39 was nevertheless reflecting an earlier source, his discussion may serve as an indication of a development beginning with Lurianism and going in similar directions in Eastern Europe and somewhere in the Mediterranean basin, where HYDA’ roamed for years. Given that the number of worlds from which the souls of the exegetes radiated is imagined to be infinite already in a Lurianic text, as we have seen above,40 there is good reason to posit a Lurianic and perhaps even an earlier Kabbalistic source for the Hasidic views on the redemption of the sparks belonging to the soul of the tzaddiq.41