In the previous chapters I analyzed views of the Jewish canonical texts that I describe as “absorbing.” I use this term in order to convey the expanding comprehensiveness of the concept of the text which, moving to the center of the Jewish society, also integrated attributes reminiscent of wider entities like the world or God. This expansion facilitated the attribution of more dynamic qualities to the text conceived of as capable of allowing various types of influences on processes taking place in the world, in God, and in the human psyche. I would now like to examine some views found in Jewish magical and Kabbalistic literatures that demonstrate the existence of a more dynamic attitude toward the canonical texts. Let me start here with some aspects that may be called magical and then, in the next chapter, turn to the mystical aspects related to the study of the biblical text.
Jewish magic is a wide religious domain that had many autochthonous productions and adopted from outside further magical techniques and concepts. This is not the place to offer a comprehensive description of this vast field, and as our discussions will deal with one limited topic, the Bible and magic in the context of hermeneutics, they will perforce be rather preliminary and tentative. Given the importance of the Bible in different strata of Judaism, its sacredness attracted many magical interpretations of the role it might play. The best known is bibliomancy, which is based on the assumption that parts of the book may conspire to offer an answer to all sorts of questions, including practical ones.1 In the present framework, however, I shall focus my remarks on matters that have some relevance to this topic, as part of a more comprehensive effort to integrate magic into the study of Jewish mysticism much more fully than has been done in the dominant lines of research.2 Let me address, therefore, some examples of a descending type of magic, one concerned with bringing down spiritual entities from above in connection with the study of the Torah. Other forms of magic, related to the powers acquired through Torah study or the apotropaic function of studying the Torah, will not be treated in this context.
The assumption that there is an angel assigned to the Torah, and that Torah study is somehow related to the possibility of gaining access to such an angel, as formulated in the Heikhalot literature, is part of a gradual process of constellation that attributed to mundane entities, including canonical materials, a dependence on a higher governing power. This view was also alive between the time of composition of the Heikhalot literature and that of the late medieval and early modern texts, a period that will be the focus of the following discussions. As shown throughout the present book, secrecy is connected mainly with an orientation toward a spiritual verticality, and in this case we have a fine example wherein the knowledge of the angelic power assigned to the Torah, found in the supernal world, is a secret.
As we have seen, the reception of the Torah by Moses in heaven was described in several rabbinic and Jewish magical sources as preceded by a contest between him and the angels.3 According to several early medieval Jewish sources, after Moses’ “triumph” he was given, by the very angels that had opposed God’s intention to reveal the Torah to him, some divine names. This linkage of reception of the Torah and disclosure of divine names is found explicitly in a passage from the magical book entitled Shimmushei Torah. I must stress, however, that the extreme difficulty in dating the composition of this treatise complicates any attempt to offer a more precise historical picture of the process of magical arcanization of the Torah. Nevertheless, my working hypothesis, based on analyses presented later in this section, is that this narrative structure is reflected already in the Talmud and thus suggests a tentative pedigree starting sometime in the third century C.E. That said, let us now turn to the most important discussion of this issue, found in the preface to Sefer Shimmushei Torah:
The Holy One, blessed be He, has immediately called Yefeifiah, the Prince of the Torah, and he [Yefeifiah] gave to him [Moses] the Torah, “arranged in its proper order in every detail and kept [intact],”4 and all the servant angels became his lovers and each and every one of them gave him a remedy and the secret of the names, which emerge from each and every pericope, and all their [magical] uses … and this is the [magical] use given to him by the angels, by means of Yefeifiah, the Prince of the Torah, and by Metatron, the Prince of the [Divine] Face. And Moses transmitted it to Eleazar, and Eleazar to his son, Pinheas, who is [identical to] Elijah,5 the high and respectable priest.6
Several topics in this text are relevant for the concept of the Bible as possessing a magical and esoteric layer. The first is that there is an obvious relationship between an angel, Yefeifiah, and the Torah as a whole,7 and between angels, pericopes of the Pentateuch, and their magical uses; whether such a nexus was elaborated in ancient Jewish texts in order to offer a comprehensive scheme for the whole biblical text, or whether there ever was a complete list of fifty-three names of angels corresponding to the pericopes, we do not know. It is evident, however, that Sefer Shimmushei Torah, which means “magical uses of the Torah,” consists in a description of the “remedies,” namely the medical and other uses of oftentimes incomprehensible names derived from various verses found in each of the pericopes of the Torah.
In this passage Moses is said to have transmitted the magical and linguistic secrets he received to his followers, in a manner reminiscent of the way the Pirqei ‘Avot, an early rabbinic source, described the transmission of oral lore. This obvious attempt to provide a pedigree for magical-biblical knowledge also recalls the genealogies found in other books of magic dating from late antiquity.8 In any case, the last part of the quote makes it clear that Moses’ magical lore, consisting in the “secret of the names,” has not been lost but is still available in the book dealing with this topic. This claim is not new, for it too appears in late-antiquity magical texts.9 In Sefer Shimmushei Torah there is no explicit or even implicit thesis that the entire text of the Torah could or should be transformed into a series of divine names; only a few selected verses from each biblical pericope are treated as sources of magical names and portents of special power.
This is also the case in another book, the widely printed Sefer Shimmushei Tehilim, which deals with the magical uses of the Psalms and in structure closely resembles Shimmushei Torah. In both books the regular order of the letters of certain verses has been juggled to generate a magical name that has extraordinary powers. That is to say, rearranging the letters in some of the biblical verses reveals another manner of relating to the linguistic material, not as organs of transmission of knowledge or lore, but as a powerful magical force. By shifting from the usual run of nouns and verbs to the order of angelic and divine names, the biblical verses traveled dramatically, from a regular semantic organization of language to magical, in most cases meaningless but allegedly powerful names.
The relation between these two manifestations of the same linguistic material is not clarified in the extant magical sources. Was the magical order of letters conceived of as more important because it was more powerful? What are we to make of the conjunction of facts that the so-called Prince of the Torah (Sar ha-Torah) revealed the order of the Torah while the other, apparently lower angels delivered the magical and presumably secret aspects of the Torah? What is the relation between the plain order and the magical order of the text? Does the angelic hierarchy, which would subordinate the secret and magical to the plain sense and order, indeed reflect such a hierarchical relation between these two senses? Does such a hierarchy reflect a social situation or a specific social imaginary of the magical authors who produced the magical book, in comparison to the rabbinic “authorities”?
Several talmudic discussions seem to be pertinent for understanding the above passage and answering the questions just formulated. The implicit assumption in the Babylonian Talmud (BT), Sabbath, is that the gifts given by the angels are magical names, a view that does not correspond exactly to the assumption in Shimmushei Torah of a correlation between them and portions of the Torah.10 Moreover, one may claim that while gifts, mattanot, are mentioned in another context in BT, Sanhedrin, fol. 91a, where Abraham is said to have given to the sons of his concubines the name of impurity, which is a lower mode of activity, the rabbis’ understanding of the divine names in the talmudic passage in Tractate Sabbath does not elevate them to the status of a secret knowledge superior to that acquired by students of the Torah through the ordinary sequence of letters. If this is the case, we may ask whether the Sabbath passage does not include a polemic against views like those found in the Shimmushei Torah passage. Or, sociologically speaking, it is quite possible that the anonymous author of Shimmushei Torah belongs, like the authors of the Heikhalot literature, to a secondary elite.
On the other hand, the author of the Sabbath passage might have belonged to the primary elite, who were interested in emphasizing the superiority of the Torah in its ordinary order of letters against the claims of magicians, who attempted to offer another, more powerful and apparently superior secret reading of the Torah, in comparison to the regular rabbinic one. Thus, for example, in the early medieval midrash Deuteronomy Rabba’, Moses boasts, “I prevailed over the supernal pamalya and revealed their secrets [razeihem] to men and received the Torah from the right hand of the Holy One, blessed be He, and taught it to Israel.”11 The exoteric propensity of the rabbinic author is quite evident. There are no more secrets unknown to any humans; the Torah was revealed directly by God, not by an angel, high as it may be. Indeed, the distinction between the two readings suggested in Shimmushei Torah may best be understood against the background of double revelations, as found in sectarian claims advanced in such works as the Book of Jubilees and the Qumranic literature.12 Especially interesting is the similarity between the contention found in Jubilee that an angel revealed the secret understanding of the Torah and the later rabbinic and magical theories discussed above.13
In the late twelfth century the relation between Moses, Torah, angels, and names was already known in Europe. So, for example, we learn from the anonymous Ashkenazi treatise on seventy divine names entitled Sefer ha-Hesheq that “pure and sacred names … were taught by angels to Moses our master when he ascended to heaven and received the Torah.”14 According to the opening sentence of another version of this book, “Whoever knows the seventy names of Metatron will be able to operate whatever he will desire … and he [Metatron] will reveal to you all the secrets of the Torah, and you will be capable of bringing a maggid according to your will.”15 The very expression Sar ha-Torah is explicitly mentioned elsewhere in the same book.16 Assi Farber-Ginat has drawn attention to the nexus between the Sar ha-Torah practice and the Ashkenazi text, as well as the possible impact on the later concept of maggid.17 Indeed, this term appears already in the most famous of the Ashkenazi speculative texts, Sefer Hasidim.18
However, the description of angels as princes of the Torah did not remain the patrimony of the rather marginal book Shimmushei Torah or of the various not-so-influential versions of Sefer ha-Hesheq. The first book, devoted to issues related to oneiric technique, was composed at the end of the first third of the thirteenth century in central France by a halakhic author, R. Jacob of Marveges, and was entitled Questions and Responsa from Heaven.19 This book is quite unique in the vast rabbinic legalistic literature, for it aims at finalizing difficult halakhic issues by resorting to the assistance of revelations coming from angels speaking to the author in a dream. So, for example, one reads in this book a question closer than any other to mystical topics:
About the Holy Name of forty-two letters, whether it is permitted to make a magical use of it and invoke angels which are assigned to the Torah in order to understand whatever he studies and not forget what he learns,20 and also for the purpose of invoking the angels assigned to richness and victory over enemies and over favorable treatment by high officers, or whether it is forbidden to use it21 for any of these [purposes]? And they have answered: “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts,”22 He alone will take care of your needs.23
The meaning of the answer is quite clear: the angels should not be addressed despite the fact that they are conceived of as assigned to the Torah; the ultimate source remains God alone. Interestingly, the manner in which the answer was formulated is also a biblical verse, as in many cases in this book, which should be decoded in order to understand the answer. In our case the tripling of the epithet “holy” points to the triple separation or distinctness of God: He alone is the source for the knowledge of the Torah, He will endow richness, and He will ensure victory. This is an oneiric interpretation of the Bible, a technique that was also accepted beyond R. Jacob of Marveges’s book.
Apparently from this book, though perhaps also from some other parallel sources, the Zohar accepted the view that each and every pericope of the Torah has an angel that is assigned to it and that will protest before God if the reader of the pericope cuts its reading in an inappropriate manner.24
R. Abraham Abulafia, the ecstatic Kabbalist contemporary to the Kabbalists who wrote the Zohar, also mentions the Sar ha-Torah. In an untitled book which I contend should be attributed to him, it is said that “the secret of Metatron, whose name is Na’ar, is ‘the angel of the Torah,’ as is known from the secret of the calculation 999, the numerical value of Metatron Sar ha-Panim.”25 There can be no doubt that Abulafia did not subscribe to the mythic understanding that an angel waits to be conjured in order to reveal the secrets of the Torah. For him, as he mentioned elsewhere in the same book, the secret of the tenth angel is the secret of the Torah.26 Metatron is not only the tenth angel but also the Torah, as we shall see in Chapter 11. In other words, Abulafia adopted the mythic imagery of the Prince of the Torah in order to propose a synthesis between philosophical and linguistic conceptualizations of an intellectual-linguistic entity.27 Moreover, I assume that this “angel” is not only an ontological construct but also an entity believed to reveal itself to Abulafia, as we learn from another quote from the same book, where the angel says to him:
“I am the angel of the Lord of hosts, so and so, and it is the secret of the Garden of Eden [Gan ‘Eden] that amounts to three names, YHWH ‘adonai elohim, whose vowels are the Prince of the Garden of Eden”28 … and he will tell him: “I am the tree of life, the Garden in Eden from the east.” And he will understand that God has sent to him His angel in order to help him by instruction, and to accustom him to the strong love of the Creator, by announcing to him the truth of the essence of the tree of life that is within the garden, and he is the “Prince of the Garden of Eden.”29
Elsewhere in the same text Abulafia contends that from the “tree of life Torah,” prophecy and commandments emerge.30 On the ground of Abulafia’s Kabbalistic system it is obvious that the divine names are not simply secrets to be mentally known but linguistic units that should be recited in order to change the consciousness of the performer. Here the ergetic aspect is conspicuous, for the Torah is understood as an influx whose reception is conditioned by the resort to mystical technique.
Perhaps the most detailed and comprehensive reverberation of the magic related to the angel of the Torah is found late in the Middle Ages in Sefer ha-Meshiv, a book that will concern us more in the next chapter.31 God is reported to have instructed the anonymous Kabbalistic magician to resort to an ergetic device that will ensure the descent of the text that is not only a sacred revelation but also an interpretation of the Bible:
You should know that the secret causing the descent of the supernal book is the secret of the descent of the supernal chariot, and when you pronounce the secret of the Great Name, immediately the force of the “garment” will descend downwards, which is the secret of Elijah, who is mentioned in the works of the sages. And by this [secret] R. Shim’on bar Yohay32 and Yonathan ben ‘Uzziel learned their wisdom, and they were deserving of the secret of the “garment,” to be dressed in it. And R. Haninah and R. Nehunya ben ha-Qanah and R. ‘Aqivah and R. Ishmael ben ‘Elisha’ and our holy rabbi and Rashi and many others [learned] likewise.33 And the secret of the “garment” is the vision of the “garment,” which the angel of God is dressed in, with a corporeal eye, and it is he who is speaking to you … And the secret of the “garment” was given to those who fear God and meditate upon His name; they have seen it, those men who are the men of God were worthy of this state. And they were fasting for forty days continuously,34 and during their fast they pronounced the Tetragrammaton forty-five times,35 and on the fortieth day [the “garment”] descended to him and showed him whatever he wished [to know], and it stayed with him until the completion of the [study of the] subject he wanted [to know]; and they [Elijah and the “garment”]36 were staying with him day and night. Thus was it done in the days of Rashi to his master, and the latter taught him [Rashi] this secret [of the “garment”], and by means of it [the secret] he [Rashi] composed whatever he composed, by the means of his mentor and instructor. Do not believe that he [Rashi] wrote this down from his own mind,37 for he did it by the secret of the “garment” of the angel and the secret of mnemotechnics, to explain the questions one is asking or to compose a book one wishes to compose, and [thus] were all the sciences copied, one by one … And this happened in the days of the Talmud and in the days of Rashi’s master and in the days of Rashi too, since his master began this [usage], and Rashi ended it, and in their times this science38 was transmitted by word of mouth, one man to another, and this is the reason all the sages of Israel relied upon Rashi, as at that time they knew the secret. Therefore, do not ever believe that he [Rashi] composed his commentary on the Talmud and on the plain meaning of the Bible out of his reason, but by means of this force of the secret of the “garment,” and that [force] which dressed it, which is an angel, since by means of it he could know and compose whatever he wished … And those who were able to see it were like prophets, and in the time of the Talmud many used it.39
A more detailed treatment of the central issue of the garment must wait until Chapter 6. For the moment it is sufficient to point out that in the above passage the garment is presented as both an oracular technique, instrumental in answering questions, and a compository technique to which the rabbinic masters of late antiquity resorted in order to compose the Talmud and to which early medieval masters like Rashi turned in order to comment on both the Pentateuch and the Talmud. It goes without saying that these books, among the most exoteric in themselves, were believed by some circles in medieval Judaism to possess central secret layers. What seems of particular interest from our point of view, however, is the arcanization of the modes of their composition, not only of their content. In lieu of the exoteric view dominant in rabbinic literature concerning the unaided student, who is also the composer of midrashic texts, here the possession of a secret, reminiscent of the secret of the Torah in Heikhalot literature, is the precondition for composition. The mode of composition of the writings, which amount to a significant segment of Jewish classical literatures, by causing an angel, Elijah, to descend and reveal—in fact, to bring down—the composition, demonstrates that late in the Middle Ages theories about angels assigned to the most important intellectual activity in Judaism, compounding classical books and commentaries, were well alive and perhaps also put into practice by some Kabbalists. It is not entirely clear whether the theory of Sefer ha-Meshiv stems directly from a reading of and elaboration on the Sar ha-Torah composition, which stems from the Heikhalot literature, but the similarity in resorting to angels to produce more and more religious literature reflects the important role of magic in conceptualizing and validating religious activities. The anonymous Kabbalist whose views we discussed above was not a lonely voice in his generation; a contemporary, R. Isaac Mar Hayyim, described the emergence of the book of the Zohar as the result of revelations stemming from the angelic figure of Elijah.40
In this context we may offer perhaps another angle for understanding an important spiritual phenomenon in the sixteenth century: the emergence of the theories about the Maggid, an angelic mentor generated by the involvement in the study of some texts, especially the Mishnah.41 This seems to be the inverse of the Sar ha-Torah practices: they do not preexist the text, and thus are not assigned to it, but are understood as emerging from the accumulated human energy involved in the process of study.
Mention of a Prince of the Torah can be detected as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. In a hagiographic composition dealing with the deeds of the founder of Hasidism, an opponent of Hasidism, R. Abraham ’Abba’, father of the famous R. Pinhas of Koretz (himself an important Hasidic author), told his son that he dreamed he had ascended to the paradise and then “the Prince of the Torah entered and repeated a Torah said by the Besht. When I awoke from my sleep I remembered it very well and I came here for that reason. And what I had already heard I heard again from his holy mouth.”42 The train of thought is tautological: the Prince of the Torah is preaching the Besht’s Torah, in his name, before it had been pronounced here below. Presumably, the description of the Besht as being silent following his ritual immersion in preparation for the Sabbath, as we learn earlier in this story, is reminiscent of rites of purifications found in the Heikhalot literature. In any case, the Besht is described in the same book as performing the rites of bringing down the Prince of the Torah on Sabbath eve.43 Thus, we may assume that the Besht was conceived of as expounding his teaching in the celestial academy before he did so here below. Its acceptance on high was therefore the supreme validation of the status of the Besht in the eyes of an opponent. In fact, a detail in the story, when the Besht scolded the opponent and ordered that the Torah scroll he was holding be taken away,44 is illuminating from the point of view of the legend: on low the opponents—later to become the mitnaggedim—had the Torah taken away because they did not know how to hold it, and instead the nascent Beshtian lore is accepted on high. Moreover, I propose to see the confrontation between the two sides as involving two elites: the itinerant elite, represented by the Besht and described as keeping the Sabbath in a faraway community, and R. Abraham ’Abba’, anachronistically described as an aggressive Lithuanian. Thus, the Prince of the Torah is deemed as involved in tipping the balance between the two elites in favor of the secondary one, or the secondary intelligentsia, as Jacob Katz called it.
Moreover, in the same collection of legends the Besht is described as having been asked by his companion to bring down the Prince of the Torah, an endeavor that he believes to be dangerous.45 Given that the Besht’s involvement with the Heikhalot literature is mentioned elsewhere in the same collection, as we shall see below,46 we may conclude that many of the main forms of Jewish mysticism resorted to practices or concepts understood to enable intellectual gains from an angel named the Prince of the Torah. In fact, according to the same collection of legends, on the day of his death the Besht revealed to his son a secret name, which when invoked will bring the father down to study with his son.47 This fragmentary survey of recurrences of the concept of Sar ha-Torah in some of the main schools of Jewish mysticism demonstrates that ancient techniques never died out; they changed forms, sometimes were forgotten and then revived, but hardly fell in complete desuetude.
It is worth noting that an ancient Jewish tradition dealing with the revelatory role of the angels in the transmission of issues regarding the Bible might have had an influence on the Muslim description of the angel Gabriel’s revelation of the Qur’an to Muhammad over many years. Like the grand angel that played a central role in the ancient Jewish group deemed to be heretical, the Magharia sect,48 which includes the revelation of the Torah, Gabriel is portrayed as the main intercessor between God and the recipient of the revelation, and has been identified in Muslim philosophical and mystical sources with various revelatory entities like the Holy Spirit and the Agent Intellect.49
In addition to the angelic magic related to the Bible (apparently from Jewish sources), which assumes the performance of ritual for attaining secrets, books, and commentaries descending from the higher world, there are many more examples of turning to the Bible to obtain powers from above. Most of them resort to a type of magic that I propose to call talismanic, whose history in Judaism has been traced in the recent years.50 Let me summarize the historical trajectory of talismanic magic insofar as Jewish mysticism is concerned:
First, talismanic magic was present in some writings of ecstatic Kabbalah, the astrologically influenced Kabbalah, and even the theosophical Kabbalah of the fifteenth-century Castilian Kabbalist R. Shem Tov ben Shem Tov. This initial stage of talismanic interpretation of language did not, however, affect the mainstream of Kabbalistic writings—the theosophical Kabbalah as represented in the Catalan Kabbalah—either as formulated by the students of R. Isaac the Blind or as taught by Nahmanides and his Kabbalistic school, in the book of the Zohar, in many of the writings of R. Joseph Gikatilla,51 or in the school of R. Joseph Ashkenazi and R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid.
Second, beginning from the end of the fifteenth century talismanics were more substantially integrated in Kabbalistic literature, as we learn from the writings of R. Yohanan Alemanno and R. Moses Cordovero. The many followers of the latter Kabbalist disseminated this vision of language in numerous writings.52
Third, starting from the middle of the eighteenth century this view was adopted by many Hasidic masters from a variety of Kabbalistic sources, mostly Cordoverian. They elaborated on linguistic talismanics much more than the Kabbalists have done previously.53
In other words, as the evolving mystical literature of the Jews grew progressively more panoramic, the talismanic model became part and parcel of important segments of the Kabbalistic and, later, the voluminous Hasidic literature. In many, though not all, of the earlier forms of medieval Jewish mysticism the role of magic was attenuated,54 whereas during the development of the different versions of Kabbalah the role of the talismanic theory of magic became more conspicuous and influential. The significant impact of this model of understanding the powerful text, which had important implications for the understanding of Jewish ritual in general, calls for a substantial reorientation in modern scholarship’s understanding of how Jewish mysticism and the phenomenology of Kabbalah developed, as well as a shift in the methodology of future research. A greater effort should be invested by scholars of Jewish mysticism in studying ancient and medieval magic and astrology, in order to transcend theologically biased analyses of the Kabbalistic writings. Just as symbolic language is seen as a dominant feature of Jewish mysticism, talismanic language should be given a prominent place. Words of power were much more powerful in the general economy of Kabbalistic literature than modern scholars’ mentalistic understanding of this lore has assumed. Let me first adduce a particularly interesting text, which reflects a strong magical understanding of the Torah. Its author is R. Yohanan Alemanno, a late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century Kabbalist active for many years in Florence:
After the external cleansing of the body and an inner change and spiritual purification from all taint, one becomes as clear and pure as the heavens. Once one has divested oneself of all material thoughts, let him read only the Torah and the divine names written therein. There shall be revealed awesome secrets and such divine visions as may be emanated upon pure clear souls who are prepared to receive them, as the verse said:55 “Make ready for three days and wash your clothing.” For there are three preparations: of the exterior [the body], of the interior, and of the imagination.56
By reading the Torah and especially the divine names, the practicant perceives an initial infusion of power. This reading is preceded by a series of “preparations” reminiscent of the purifications performed by the Jews before they were given the Torah. The second stage of the process is described in the continuation of the above quotation. The Torah scroll itself becomes imbued with the spiritual force. At that moment “the writing of God, the spirit of the living God, shall descend upon the written scroll.” By “the writing of God” Alemanno is referring directly to the revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai as described in Exodus. A personal experience of the revelation of the law is a conventional thought in Kabbalah. What is new and striking in the process described by Alemanno is the similarity of the ceremony to the ritual of dedication found in many books of magic:
When a man devotes a great amount of time, the intermittent becomes habitual. When he immerses himself in these things, then such a great efflux will come to him that he will be able to cause the spirit of God to descend upon him and hover above him and flutter about him all the day. Not only that, but “the writing of God, the spirit of the living God” will descend upon the scroll to such a degree that the scroll will give him power to work signs and wonders in the world. And such are the books called segretti [secret words], and all the incantations are the secret words that come from evil spirits. Therefore the Torah forbade these practices. The Torah of Moses, however, is entirely sealed and closed by the name of the Holy One, blessed be He. Therefore its powers are numerous and such is the book of Psalms. This is a great secret, hidden from the eye of the blind and the cunning.57
Alemanno thus resorts to a principle formulated by the early Kabbalists, especially R. Azriel, that the Torah is sealed in the divine name. This condition makes the whole difference between the licit magical use of the scroll of the Torah and the illicit resort to books of secrets, obviously books of magic stemming from demons. The similarity that Alemanno recognizes between the licit and illicit books, however, evinces the strong magical aspect of the way Torah can be used. Its recitation, when performed after purification, has two distinct results: the first can be described as mystical, as it is related to the purified soul and consists in revelations of secrets and divine visions. The second may be described as magical, as it is related to the descent of a divine spirit on the scroll that confers on the practicant powers to perform miracles. This capacity apparently involves the body as a main factor.
How does this magic, according to Alemanno, operate? The Kabbalist practicing the “licit” recitation is enacting the purification rituals in a regular manner until he causes the more habitual presence of the divine to descend on both man and the scroll. The accumulation of power in the scroll is fraught, however, with the potentiality of transmitting to man extraordinary powers. Thus, the scroll and especially the divine names become objects on which power is collected after it had been caused to descend by means of rites performed by the Kabbalist. In other words, the Torah becomes a talisman on which the supernal powers are captured. If we compare the passage from Alemanno to that from Sefer ha-Meshiv adduced earlier, we see two common denominators: the magician causes the descent of a supernal power, and this supernal power is related to the scriptures. Yet it is only in Alemanno that the scroll of the Torah serves as a talisman.
What is also crucial in Alemanno’s text is the emphasis on the divine names, the less semantic aspects of the Bible. This understanding is corroborated by a comparison of the Torah to the book of Psalms, presumably because on these two parts of the Hebrew Bible alone a magical arcanization was available. Thus we may assume that the magical propensities inherent in the scriptures when fraught with power have to do with their having been understood as a continuum of divine names.
In another fascinating passage, found in an untitled treatise by Alemanno, the astromagical conceptualization of the Torah is even more evident. When elaborating on the third sefirah, Binah, which is assigned to the third celestial sphere dominated by Saturn, Alemanno describes that planet as
supreme and noble, higher than all the other planets, which is the reason that the ancient sages said about it that it generated all the other planets … And they say that Saturn is the true judge and the planet of Moses, peace be with him.58 The angel of Saturn is Michael,59 the great minister, so called because of his great power in divine matters, and he is the ministering angel of Israel. And the astrologers who described Saturn say that it endows man with profound thought, law, and the spiritual sciences, prophecy, sorcery,60 and prognostication and the sabbaticals and jubilees. The Jewish people and the Hebrew language and the Temple are under its jurisdiction. Saturn’s major conjunction with Jupiter in the dominion of Pisces occurred to assist the nation and the Torah and its prophets. This planet endows the people with perfection in sciences and divine matters such as Torah and its commandments, out of its sublimity, because it is spiritual … It is concerned only with thought, understanding, and design, esoteric knowledge and divine worship and His Torah, and the Sabbath day is in its sway … and if they will keep its spiritual rules and laws, it will impart a spiritual influx abundantly. But if they will not keep the way of God, it will spit out everything which is bad: prophecy will occur to the fools and babies in an insufficient manner, and to women and melancholics and those possessed by an evil spirit, and maleficent demons that obliterate the limbs and bad counsels and sorceries61 and anxieties and erroneous beliefs.62
The Torah is therefore the ideal form of behavior which ensures the attraction of the spiritual forces onto the lower world. Although in the last occurrence of the term sorcery it has a conspicuously negative connotation, in its first occurrence the context seems to point in a more positive direction. In any case, the Torah, which points to a certain regimen vitae, is placed in the same category as astromagic, which is hinted at by the spiritual sciences, hokhemot ruhaniyyot.63
I would like to draw attention to an example of the transformation of a theme, found in Lurianic Kabbalah, from the theosophical-theurgical to the talismanic mode. It is the idea of the oral, linguistic efficacy of performing the biblical text as it has been accepted. Some Lurianic sources describe the holiness of the holidays as created by the reading of the liturgical parts. These Kabbalists hold that the reading induces the unification of the divine attributes and the descent of the divine power from the higher to the lower divine manifestations. However, according to R. Tzevi Hirsch Kaidanover, an influential early-eighteenth-century Polish rabbi later active in Frankfurt, the calling down by reading canonical texts takes place not within the divine realm but in the mundane realm, where the congregation, like vessels, is prepared to receive the supernal holiness. This move from theurgical toward magical activity assumes that a certain type of recitation brings down influxes, holiness, and light within or onto those who are prepared to receive them. The implications of this transformation are far-reaching for the understanding of some topics related to the Torah in Hasidism.
In R. Hayyim Vital’s book Peri’Etz Hayyim it is said that there is a difference between the holiness of Sabbath and that of the other Jewish holidays. Whereas holiness is inherent in the special time of Sabbath, so that the contribution of the Kabbalist’s theurgical activity is negligible, for the other holidays it is prayer that causes the descent of divine energy within the divine realm. In other words, the holidays are to an extent created by the ritual of reading the liturgical texts related to those holidays, what is called in the classical sources miqra’ei qodesh. This phrase has two meanings in Hebrew: the first one, closer to the plain sense of the words, is “holy recitations.” The second, offered by Vital, assumes that miqra’ can mean “calling,” a possible semantic interpretation of the verb qore’. Thus, when reciting the liturgical texts, the Kabbalist is also inducing a certain type of relationship between the configuration symbolized by the terms ’abba’ and qodesh, namely the configuration that corresponds to the sefirah of Hokhmah and the configuration of Binah. The calling is the creation of this relation, which apparently has sexual connotations. Thus, certain intradivine processes were caused by the theurgical act of reciting a text, which contributes to the emergence of the ambiance that creates the holiday.64 Vital’s lengthy discussion focuses on the creation of the circuit of divine energy and illumination preeminently in the divine world, and the exposition involves very complex details as to the inducing of the relation between the divine attributes ’abba’ and ’imma! and the influx that subsequently descends within the lower divine powers. This discussion is included in an elaboration related to Purim, a fact that seems related to the more historical aspect of that festival, which is not mentioned in the Pentateuch. Kaidanover devotes to the same distinction between the induced holiness of the festivals and the inherent holiness of the Shabbat a rather lengthy discussion. He also exploits the two meanings of the root qore’, but his discussion is nevertheless unconcerned with the theosophical and theurgical aspects of the calling of the holiness by means of reading, though his focus is quite anthropocentric. I have no doubt that he did not invent the quasi-etymology mentioned above in the Lurianic source, and this is why I assume that Kaidanover (or his sources) has shifted from the theocentric interpretation expounded by Luria and followed by some other Kabbalists to a more this-worldly understanding of this distinction. According to Qav ha-Yashar there is a special world on high, which will be revealed only in the moment when the scroll of Esther is read (miqra’ ha-megillah) and the blessing on the reading of the scroll is made.65 This wondrous world, from which the soul of Mordechai comes, can be called to reveal itself, and an influx and illumination will then descend upon the head of the congregation that reads the megillah.66 Each individual among the people of Israel should consider himself a well-prepared vessel (keli mukhan) upon which the divine spark and light will then descend.67 Kaidanover uses the verb kavven to describe the self-awareness of the Jews that they are vessels for the descending divine power. This verb, which in Kabbalah stands for the directing of one’s thoughts toward the divine, is used here to describe the status of man toward the divine.68 In another context Kaidanover writes that when one recites the words of the Shema’ (the public avowal of God’s singularity and dominion) with intention, be-khavvanah, he ensures the descent of holiness on each and every limb.69 Again, with respect to a liturgical text, the intention and the descent of holiness are described as part of one process. This special understanding of kavvanah should be compared to the uneasiness toward the praxis of the Lurianic understanding of the term.70
As Kaidanover admits immediately following the above discussion,71 he found his views in the writings of R. Hayyim Vital. Yet because he does not cite his source explicitly, I am not quite sure whether it is also possible to find in Vital an anthropocentric understanding of the Lurianic discussions. In any case, the inclusion of such an understanding in a popular book, as Kaidanover’s was, may be taken as a sign that it had become much more prevalent. This anthropocentric shift can be discerned in a series of Hasidic treatments of the double meaning of the term miqra’. I suggest that this shift has something to do with the impact of R. Moses Cordovero.72
As we have seen, for a later Kabbalist the book par excellence was not only the Bible but also the classic of Kabbalah, the Zohar. Composed at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century, the huge Zoharic corpus at the same time became a canonical and sacred book.73 The special status of a book that is both a commentary on the Bible and a canonical and (according to some traditions) revealed text invited more magical approaches to the book. Here I would like to point out the existence of two ways in which this book is conceived to be a conduit of secrets from above, either by bringing those secrets down in terms reminiscent of magic activities or by drawing down parts of this book.
R. Moses Cordovero, a Kabbalist who prepared the longest extant commentary on the Zohar, wrote that
because this compilation is composed from the attribute of Moses our rabbi, peace be unto him, that is [the sefirah] of Tiferet, in the secret of Da’at, and all its secrets flow from it, and it is called by its name, the Zohar … and because the book is related to his attribute, he must help with all his might to draw down the secrets, and he has the ability to be impregnated in R. Shim’on and make the secrets of the Torah flow in him … and this is the reason it is called the Book of Splendor, as its light is in the secret of Da’at, the degree of Moses our rabbi, peace be unto him, to him the springs of wisdom are open, and he draws them and transmits them from the [divine] pipes through the soul of Rashby, peace be unto him.74
Cordovero capitalizes on a concept explicated in much greater detail and in a systematic manner in his Pardes Rimmonim, which attributes, in good Neoplatonic terms, to each soul an organic connection between man’s lower soul and his supernal one. This connection is designated as a channel.75 R. Shim’on’s soul was connected to the source of the Torah, Moses’ attribute, the sefirah of Tiferet, and this is why he became instrumental in the drawing down of the secrets of the Torah in his book, the Zohar. Cordovero also emphasizes R. Shim’on’s corporeal preparations, which ensured his role as an appropriate transmitter.76 The resort to the term tzinor, “pipe,” the mention of drawing down, li-sh’ov,77 and the term hakhanah “preparation,” point to the impact of the talismanic magic I have described. Being connected to the supernal springs of wisdom and possessing a soul almost identical to that of Moses, the alleged author of the Zohar could bring down the secrets. This extraordinary understanding is not merely speculative, as one might conclude from the resort to the concept of Da’at, but a more ontic sucking from a supernal source by the mediation of the spiritual pipes. This process is understood, to be sure, in terms of both knowing secrets and illumination, but the result is much more concrete: a canonical book has been compounded. Given the more concrete aspects of the description of Rashby’s body and mouth, I am inclined to accentuate the magical aspect of the descent of the Zohar, in addition to the spiritual aspects.
Despite a huge commentary on much of the Pentateuch and other parts of the Hebrew Bible, the Zohar forgoes comment on some important biblical books, including the books of the prophets and Psalms. Though no one felt that the Zohar is an incomplete writing, some traditions claimed that originally it was a much more extensive book.78 Nevertheless, during the first centuries after the emergence of the Zohar there were no attempts to supply the missing parts, although attempts to imitate its style were not totally absent. Then at the beginning of the eighteenth century a young Kabbalist, R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, better known by the acronym Ramhal, started to compile Aramaic treatises that not only imitate the style of the Zohar but in some cases also claimed to supply commentary on those parts of the Bible that remained unaddressed by the Zohar.79 It is not my purpose here to enter the complex issue of these writings but to bring the raison d’être of their composition, as indicated by their very author:
When the Zohar is revealed, and when the treatises are accomplished, in an appropriate manner, the people of Israel will be redeemed completely. But the Zohar will never cease, because each and every day it will be increased and enhanced, and from it all the people of Israel will draw their maintenance, even all the supernal angels will be maintained, higher and lower. And when the wisdom [of Kabbalah] increases in the world, “because the world will be replete with knowledge”80 each of Israel will taste its own taste from it, each according to his capacity.81,82
Let me start with the basic observation, well documented in Zvia Rubin’s study of Luzzatto, that a messianic enterprise is involved in the completion of the Zohar. In later parts of the original, or what Luzzatto calls the “first Zohar,” the idea that the Zohar will be revealed at the end of time is indeed found,83 but there the assumption is that the revelation of the Zohar, already written but unknown even to Kabbalists, is a symptom of the advent of the Messiah. For Luzzatto, however, revelation means completion. The revelation of the mystical book is no mere symptom of the messianic advent but its sine qua non condition. By writing the missing parts, one brings about redemption itself. I shall return to the mechanism of writing and redemption later on. For now, let me address the issue of the role of the book in the messianic era. Luzzatto asserts that the people of Israel will, like the angels, draw their maintenance from the completed book. This is not a totally new development, since the “first Zohar” had already been described by Luzzatto in similar terms as supplying the maintenance of the world in the pre-messianic era: “The first Zohar is the Zohar that has not been completed, but there emerged whatever part emerged, and the world was illuminated by it until now, which is [the time] that the Zohar has finished its completion.”84
The illumination of the world by a book is hardly a surprising concept in the context of the book of the Zohar. The term zohar means “radiance” or “splendor,” and Luzzatto offers an interesting midrash on the term: it is not only the illumination of the few Kabbalists, a noetic function that informs the very few, but a cosmic purpose, the illumination of the world, which I take it to be very close to maintaining the world. Thus, it is completion of both the noetic function and the maintaining one that is invoked by Luzzatto in the context of his literary activity. But how is such a purpose fulfilled by writing the missing parts of the book? The Kabbalist offers an explanation: “By the completion this Zohar has become the second one, because by its means the communion of it to Israel was completed, and since the first Zohar has been completed, the Shekhinah has ascended and become united with her husband.”85
The Zohar, an entity conceived of as descending from above, has reached the final status of being united to Israel here below apparently by its complete descent, while on high the union of the last divine configuration, the Shekhinah, with her male counterpart will be achieved. It seems that a certain form of reparation of a break between two entities is performed by the composition of the new parts of the Zohar. Its incompleteness is the symptom of other deficiencies on both the mundane and the supernal planes. The non-textual forms of incompletion, namely the historical, national, and theosophical, are therefore dependent on the textual incompletion. In one of his other Kabbalistic books Luzzatto writes that “power has been given to man so that he will be able to draw the power of the Shekhinah and her light downward, by means of his soul; and He gave all the things of this world to his use, because by this [use] they also are repaired and the power of holiness drawn by him is spreading also over them.”86
Let me emphasize the plausibility of the affinity between the Shekhinah and her light, as drawn down by man, and the very concept of the Zohar as splendor or radiance. This idea is reminiscent of the passage where the illumination of the world by the Zohar was mentioned as descending from the firmament; indeed, in that context the Kabbalist is told by the prophet Elijah, “Rashby has opened the gates in the period when they were closed, and behold how the wisdom [of Kabbalah] was concealed from the world, but for one or two [persons], in a hidden manner. And Rashby opened the gates. What is the meaning of the gates? Obviously the gates of the firmament. From there your87 Zohar emerges, the one called the ‘Zohar of the Firmament,’88 and there the supernal arcana are comprised within a supernal light, [and] by its means he made his Zohar, [which is] the first Zohar.”89 Given that the act of drawing down is conceived of as a human strategy used for achieving the completion of the Zohar, it should reasonably be understood in terms of enhancing the descent of light on low. This is no more than an elaboration of the biblical verse that served as a proof text: the attainment of the plenitude of knowledge on earth as part of the messianic scenario.90
Only in Hasidism has the potential relationship between reading and calling, with respect to the canonic text, been exploited more explicitly than it is in the Zohar. In order to better understand the somewhat later Hasidic discussions, let me start with a short survey of topics related to the practice of reading the Torah in early Hasidism. The founder of Hasidism, the Besht, was reported by his grandson, R. Moses Hayyim Ephrayyim of Sudylkov, to have taught the following:
How is it possible to take91 the Holy One, blessed be He, as if He will dwell upon man? It is by means of the Torah, which is indeed the names of God,92 since He and His name are one unity,93 and when one studies the Torah for the sake of God and in order to keep His commandments, and abstains from that which is prohibited, and pronounces the letters of the Torah, which are the names of God,94 by these [activities] he takes God indeed, and it is as if the divine presence dwells upon him, as it is written:95 “in all places where I pronounce the name of God,” which is the holy Torah, which is in its entirety His names, then96 “I will come unto thee and I will bless thee.”97
By studying the Torah for the sake of the “name” or “names,” the mystico-magical scholar is viewed as if “he thereby takes the name, and he draws onto himself the dwelling of the divine holy presence.”98
R. Dov Baer, known as the Great Maggid of Mezeritch, one of the most important followers of the Besht, apparently continued and elaborated his master’s assessment: “He [God] contracted Himself within the letters of the Torah,99 by means of which he created the world … and the tzaddiq, who studies the Torah for its own sake, in [a state of] holiness, draws downwards the Creator, blessed be He, within the letters of the Torah,100 just as in the moment of the creation … and by the pure utterances related to the study of the Torah he draws down God within the letters.”101 The divine transcendence, implied in the concept of infinity characteristic of the state of the deity before the moment of creation, is attenuated by an act of contraction, the self-limitation of the divinity within the particular letters of the Torah, which serves as the paradigm for the subsequent creation of the world. As a cosmogonic paradigm, those letters are also a reification of the divine in His contracted aspect. In fact, some Kabbalistic views and many Hasidic ones represent interesting cases of what I propose to call linguistic immanence.102 The Torah as revealed to man, when studied by the perfecti, serves as the tool for the re-creation of the cosmogonic acts; study evokes and reproduces the first constitutive moments of the world by invoking the divinity into the letters. However, as the above text explicitly indicates, it is not the hieroglyphic, written aspect of the letters but their utterance, namely the individual performance of each of the letters by the righteous, that is involved in the process.
This invocation of the divinity by a phonic talismanics should not automatically be distinguished from a strong mystical purpose: the cleaving to the immanent God.103 The Great Maggid expressed this view in various ways, and only a very few of them will be discussed here. In a collection of his teachings entitled ’Or ha-’Emmet we find what seems to me to be one of the most magical of the Hasidic formulations of manipulating God by means of the sacred text, again in the context of the divine contraction: “It is as if God has contracted Himself into the Torah. When one calls a man by his name, he puts all his affairs aside and answers to the person who called him, because he is compelled by his name.104 Likewise God has as if contracted himself into the Torah, and the Torah is his name,105 and when someone reads106 the Torah they draw God, blessed be He, downwards toward us, because He and His name are one total unity with us.”107 The hidden affinity between God, His Name, and the Torah is a fundamental assumption that informed many of the Hasidic views of talismanic magic. Though close affinities, and sometimes even explicit identities, between these three topics appear in many Kabbalistic texts since the thirteenth century, only in Hasidic literature were the talismanic implications of such a view explicated in a rather extreme manner. Yet extreme as this magical assumption is, namely that God can be compelled by His name to descend, the mystical implication is also evident: the “callers” will cling to the descending deity and thereby attain a mystical union.
Similar views can be found in writings of one of the Great Maggid’s most important students. R. Shne’or Zalman of Liady, the founder of the Habad or Lubavitch school, one of the most intellectualistic trends in Hasidism. R. Shne’or Zalman claims that the Bible is called miqra’
because one calls [or reads] and [subsequently] draws down the revelation of the light of the Infinite, by means of letters, even if he does not comprehend anything at all … and the drawing down is by means of the letters precisely, and this is the reason that despite the fact that he does not understand the meaning108 he is able to draw, whereas in the case of the oral Torah, clothed as it is within [the sefirah of] Hokhmah, he cannot draw down except on condition that he understands. In the case of the written Torah, however, he draws [down] even if he does not understand, as it [the drawing] does not depend upon understanding to such an extent [as the Oral Torah does], because the source of the drawing down109 is higher than [the sefirah of] Hokhmah etc., it means that it [the drawing] is [done] by means of the letters, and this is why the written Torah is called miqra’, because we call and [then] draw [down] by means of the letters.110
As mentioned above, the Hebrew verb qore’, translated here as “call,” can also mean “read.” Here the reading of the Torah is understood more as a recitation, an actual calling to God, an invocation that is very powerful because it is accomplished by means of letters, whose origin is higher than the realm of Hokhmah, the second sefirah. Moreover, according to another passage, this drawing down is possible by virtue of a special feature of the biblical text: its constitution by a continuum of divine names.111 A most interesting parallel to our passage is found elsewhere in the same treatise: “The whole Torah is [consists] in the names of God, blessed be He, which are the aspects of the letters of the Torah, and this is the reason that it is called miqra’, which is derived from the term qeria’h [understood as “calling”], because he calls him by His names, and because of this He makes Himself available [poneh ’atzmo].”112 In this context the hamshakhah, the act of drawing down, is also mentioned, defining the whole Torah as capable of drawing down from the sefirah of Hokhmah. Elsewhere in the same book the calling and the drawing down are again mentioned together.113
To remain in the same Hasidic school, in a collection of Hasidic traditions R. Hayyim Liebersohn quotes R. Shne’or Zalman’s grandson, the mid-nineteenth-century master R. Menahem Mendel of Lubavitch, as declaring that “the study [of the Torah] and the [recitation of the] prayer, despite the fact that they [the students] do not intend the meaning of the words, because the letters are from the Torah, they [the words] are vessels for the dwelling of God.”114 This hypo semantic approach is reminiscent of the views of the Safedian Kabbalist R. Moses Cordovero, who also emphasized the importance of performance while marginalizing the role of understanding. What seems more evident, however, in the Hasidic sources is the nexus between the act of recitation and the descent of the divine power into the continuum of the divine names. In more theological parlance, the proclamation of the divine by the ritualistic recitation of the Torah as divine names brings about the manifestation of the divine within this ritualistic performance. In the above quotes these two aspects are not distinct theological approaches but phases of a single, more complex process. Let me adduce now a quote from one of the most widespread books in Hasidism, studied in some circles up to the present day, Tanya’ by the same R. Shne’or Zalman of Liady:
To understand how the reader of the stories of deeds [that are found] in the Torah115 is connected to the Life of the World,116 according to what is written in [the book of] Kavvanot, fol. 16b, [you should know that] just as man is preoccupied here below [with the Torah], so is the configuration of the supernal man on high,117 etc., and so it is insofar as the rumination118 about the written letters [is concerned]. However, regarding the utterance, it should be said that it cuts a way through and ascends to the [world of] emanation itself, or to the [world of] creation by means of intellectual awe and love, or to the [world of] formation, by means of natural awe and love, and by means of the miqra’ it ascends from this world to the ten sefirot of making, because it cuts off the airs etc. This is [however] not the case insofar as the rumination is concerned, which [affects] but the [supernal] configuration, which is the root of his soul etc. And what is written in the Zohar, III, fol. 105,119 that the rumination does not affect anything … the thought remains there and adds there a great light, by the addition and the multiplication of the light within the [world of] emanation by means of miqra’ and the practical commandments in the [world of] Making. The quintessence of the unification is on high, but its fruits [alone] refract on the lower world, by means of drawing a little bit of light from the small [configuration]120 downward, by means of the utterance and of the deeds, this not being the case for the rumination, which does not draw down anything.121
In this passage the medieval axiology, which conceives of thought as higher than both deeds and speech, is accepted by R. Zalman Shne’or of Liady. Thought, mahashavah, alone is able to reach the highest world of emanation and to have an impact on the augmentation of the light within this realm. Thus theurgy, namely the operation concerning the influence on divine realms, is a matter of activation of thought, which is conceived of as operating on high. Yet the magical act of drawing down a small part of the light is possible only by means of religious speech and deeds. Theurgy, expounded here in rather mentalistic terms, unlike in the same author’s Liqqutei Torah, is understood as a precondition of magic, which may or may not follow the enhancing of the light within the divine realm. These two effects on extrahuman worlds depend on different acts performed by man.
The double occurrence of the term miqra’ is important for understanding the whole passage. It is the performance of the miqra’ that is the instrument of the ascent to the first and lowest of the four worlds characteristic of the later Kabbalah. From this point of view, it is certainly not the most sublime of the religious acts, yet it alone ensures the effective connection between human needs and the supernal energy that is prone to facilitate their accomplishment. According to this passage, the essence of the religious attainment is not magical but theurgical, the former being but a derivative benefit. The more abstract study of the Torah reaches the stage of the highest world, but the more mundane needs are attained by means of more material acts. It seems that the synthesis between the magical and the mystical moments, which was more organic in the writings of R. Shne’or Zalman’s predecessors, is less visible in his own thought. This author, the initiator of the most intellectualistic trend in Hasidism, remains faithful to the medieval axiology recurrent in the writings of many philosophers as to the superiority of thought over deeds. Because of the inconsistency between the emphasis on the superiority of thought, which alone affects the highest realm within the divine according to the passage from the Tanya’, and the view expressed in Liqqutei Torah, which assumes that speech and letters stem from the highest sefirah, I propose to see in the latter a position much closer to the views expressed in R. Shne’or Zalman’s entourage, while the former expresses more his own independent approach, which is inclined toward mentalism. The more magical approach, expressed in Liqqutei Torah, surmises not only a nexus between language and the highest sefirah but also one between language and the drawing down. Although the founder of Habad does not emphasize the thaumaturgical aspect of language, such a view may be adduced from a book by one of his younger contemporaries in Poland, who writes that “the genuine Tzaddiq performs miracles and wonders in the world because the supernal light is emanated onto his heart and the influxes go by his mediation, by the way of the five places of his mouth, because the mouth is the end of the head.”122
While being a human channel for the transmission of the divine energy to this world, the tzaddiq is—according to some Kabbalistic texts but more eminently in Hasidism—also the activator and distributor of this energy. The divine dwells within the human personality, and sometimes in Hasidic literature it even takes possession of him. Thus the Hasidic theory of magic is based on the assumption of the possibility of a fusion between the divine descending power or the power found within the Hebrew letters, as performed orally during prayer or study of the Torah, and the magician. For our purposes, it is worthwhile to pay special attention to the emphasis on the role of the mouth: here the heart is the organ that collects the divine presence, while the mouth is the orifice whence the divine power goes out in order to perform miracles. Pronunciation is, according to this passage, the manner not of collecting but of distributing the supernal light. This apotheosis of the role of the mouth is typical of an orally oriented culture par excellence, as Hasidism is. This turn toward the oral aspects of the Bible and liturgy, evident already at the end of the fifteenth century in R. Yohanan Ale-manno’s thought, became more pronounced in the sixteenth century and culminated in Hasidism. Interestingly, it is since the beginning of the sixteenth century that the various Protestant Christian reformers and groups have emphasized the importance of reading the Bible aloud.123
The dwelling of the divine on human utterances is a mystical version of the talismanic view. According to the Hasidic view, however, the divine presence means much more than a talismanic attraction of the higher by the lower. The act of dwelling on man, more precisely on his mouth, is accompanied by a strong mystical experience: an anesthetic state, which includes both self-oblivion and union with God in an atemporal experience. The human body becomes the house of God, as God dwells on the words of the Torah and of prayer.
The direct experience of the divine presence, so crucial for this theory of magical text and language, is related to an attenuation of their importance as conduits of meaning. As we have seen in various Hasidic texts and their Kabbalistic sources, the centrality of meaning transcends both the plain sense and the esoteric sense124 in favor of oral performances, implying the restitution of the primacy of the spoken language. La langage parlé, which amounts to a magical incantation of the divine emanation, is reminiscent of the move away from meaning in some developments in modern literary language, when the emergence of a langage poètique, in lieu of the langage classique, to use the terminology of Roland Barthes,125 was described as accompanied by a monadization of language that opens it to the supernatural world: “Le simple recours à une parole discontinue ouvre la voie de toutes les Surnatures,”126 Barthes writes. “Le geste oral vise ici à modifier la Nature, il est une demiurgie; il n’est pas une attitude de conscience mais une acte de coercition.”127 As in some forms of modern poetry, or in what Barthes has called langage poetique, so in the theory of language of some Jewish mystics who attributed to language a great importance, language has been monadized. Indeed, the Hasidic emphasis on a talismanic linguistic approach to the Bible or the liturgy was coupled by an atomization of language. The fascination with the magical power of language exercised such pressure on it that language disintegrated into its components.
This more activistic or ergetic approach to Hasidism differs from the more quietistic understanding of this lore. Hasidic mysticism has been envisioned by Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer as including moments of suppression of linguistic performance in favor of a purely spiritual worship.128 By doing so, she took the part of the philosopher in the above-mentioned dispute between him and the theurgist beginning in late antiquity. The Hasidic masters, however, ignorant as they were of modern predilections, took, in my opinion, the part of the theurgists. My position should be understood as differing substantially from the claims of Schatz-Uffenheimer, insofar as she deals, rather emphatically, with what she believes was a suppression of speech in some cases of mystical prayer; there can be no doubt that moments of sublime contact with the divine realm, which may also imply silence, are to be found in Hasidic literature, but the question is whether ritualistic prayer at its peak has been understood by Hasidic masters as culminating in a process that is solely mental, as Schatz-Uffenheimer argues. The dominant mode of thinking and acting, as expressed in the Hasidic texts, prefers, in my opinion, a strong and positive role for language in this kind of mysticism. This strong language is able, according to many Hasidic masters, to induce the dwelling of the divine presence in a manner that seems to be more direct than the claim of symbolistic Kabbalists. Indeed, the above analyses of talismanic canonic texts as one of the major models in Kabbalah should be understood as part of a much greater complexity, which includes both talismanics and theurgy. The Bible was not the only entity interpreted in such a way by the Kabbalists; the biblical commandments, the Temple, and the land of Israel, as well as other topics, have been reinterpreted in the same vein.129
Does the feeling that God is drawn into the human realm and experienced there, within the confines of the mundane world, detract from the more “classical” notion of mysticism? The answer depends on what definition of mysticism, and of the Godhead, we adopt. If the deity is regarded as a totally spiritual and unchangeable power that cannot be activated and influenced by human ritual, the talismanic interpretation of religion may be regarded as a self-styled form of magic, which lacks the “true” mystical trait of disinterested contact between two spiritual entities. This view, acceptable as it may be for some forms of spirituality and widespread though it is in studies on mysticism, should not be regarded as exclusive, just as the symbolic interpretations so recurrent in Kabbalah should not be accorded a higher axiological status than that of the talismanic or theurgical views of language.130 Indeed, I am inclined to accept the self-consciousness of the medieval and modern authors as an important, though not unique, criterion for understanding their experience. For those talismanicians, the act of devequt, the experience of a mystical communion, or sometimes union, with the divine realm, has not been precluded by their emphases on talismanic perception of the Bible. And from my point of view as a scholar, I do not see an actual difference between the claim of a Western mystic that God is present within, or reached by human spirit, and the argument of a Kabbalist or a Hasidic master that God can rather be attained within or by the activation of human language.131
Indeed, given that the talisman as described above is constituted by the sounds uttered by the Hasidic master, and that God’s emanation is brought down onto it, the categories of mysticism and magic often converge. The induction of the divine within the human body can be seen as both mystical and magical. These two categories, which may sometimes reflect distinct forms of religious attitudes, should not be too simply and drastically distinguished from one another. At least insofar as Jewish texts are concerned, magical elements present in many of the mystical writings do not by themselves attenuate their mystical characteristics. This seems to be the case already in the Heikhalot literature in early Kabbalah and, as we have seen, in later developments of Kabbalah and Hasidism.
It seems that the talismanic view of language combines within it traits of what the French thinker Jacques Maritain has called the magical sign and the sacramental one. Maritain views the magical sign as having as its end “the exercise of power over nature or over powers on which nature is dependent.”132 On the other hand, the sacramental sign “has as its end the interior sanctity to be produced in the soul.”133 In the account of the Hasidic view of text and its performance as discussed above, as well as of many of its Kabbalistic sources, Maritain’s sacramental moment, which is comparable to what I have described here as mystical, precedes the magical moment. Indeed, to dwell once again on the interesting distinctions proposed by this French thinker, the magical moment of talismanic linguistics is more socially oriented, namely it is part of the influence that the Hasidic righteous claims he can impart on his followers, while Maritain characterizes the magical sign as “the nocturnal kingdom of the mind.”134 In my opinion, Thomas Merton’s formulation of the effect of a mystical experience is more congenial to the way I have portrayed the relation between mysticism and magic. Merton claims that “contemplation, at its highest intensity, becomes a reservoir of spiritual vitality that pours itself out in the most telling social action.”135
From this vantage point, the mystical moments that precede the magical acts, as well as the mystical overtones of talismanic linguistics recurrent in Hasidic literature, invalidate Martin Buber’s unilateral “spiritual” interpretation of Hasidism as a distinctly non-magical form of mysticism. The “rarified” and most “sublime” version of Hasidism in his otherwise very sensitive writings has overlooked the important role played by Kabbalistic theories of magic for the spiritual physiognomy of the different types of Hasidism.136 Buber’s own emphasis on the dialogical principle in Hasidism, as part of his broader philosophical project, has led to an underestimation of the technical role played by voice and recitation of the text in Hasidic mysticism.