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The Enoch-Metatron Tradition in the Kabbalah of Nathan Neta Shapira of Kraków (1585-1633)

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The Enoch-Metatron Tradition in the Kabbalah of Nathan Neta Shapira of Kraków (1585-1633) The Enoch-Metatron Tradition in the Kabbalah of Nathan Neta Shapira of Kraków (1585-1633) Agata Paluch UCL Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies May 2013 A dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University College London 1 I, Agata Paluch, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract Nathan Neta ben Shlomo Shapira (1585-1633) is the most famous kabbalist stemming from the Jewish intellectual environment of Poland. His major treatise, Megaleh Amuqot, is among the most complex kabbalistic texts ever written. It combines variegated strata of older mystical traditions, to which the author applies diverse, often obscure modes of interpretation. For this reason, Nathan Shapira has remained one of the least studied figures in modern scholarship, despite the fact that he is generally acknowledged as the most important early-modern Ashkenazi kabbalist, whose influence on later Eastern-European mystical circles is well attested. Although there are some general accounts of Shapira’s religious activity in Kraków, and references have been made to his startling mathematical mind-set, scholarship still lacks a thorough examination of his literary legacy, and a detailed evaluation of his contribution to the development of Jewish mystical thought. My dissertation aims to integrate Nathan Shapira’s kabbalah within a broad panorama of Jewish mystical traditions of the early modern period. It challenges the notion of the dominance of Lurianic ideas in Shapira’s thought, arguing for a more pluralistic perspective of the historical development of the kabbalistic tradition. Recently, Yehuda Liebes and Moshe Idel have raised the possibility that Nathan Shapira’s kabbalah may have belonged to a tradition that sprang from a multifaceted cultural milieu of Ashkenazi mysticism, consisting of at least two distinct major strands. Following this notion, I propose to challenge the common view that the Ashkenazi mysticism was a homogenous entity, whose influences effectively ceased after 13th century. On the contrary, I claim that the medieval mystical Ashkenazi ideas underlie much of Nathan Shapira’s kabbalah. In considering medieval Ashkenazi mysticism as Shapira’s formative background, I focus on the ‘Enoch-Metatron’ cluster of traditions, which I claim was as central to Shapira’s thought as it was to his Ashkenazi predecessors. 3 Table of contents I. Preface 8 1. Acknowledgments 8 2. A note on the presentation of sources 9 II. Introduction 10 1. Literature review 11 2. Nathan Neta Shapira’s life in Kraków 16 3. Cultural background 19 3.1. Megaleh Amuqot as a kabbalistic biblical commentary 19 3.2. Print and the dissemination of kabbalah in Ashkenaz and Poland 21 3.3. The Ashkenazi kabbalah 23 3.4. Nathan Shapira’s sources 25 4. The Enoch-Metatron constellation 28 4.1. Enoch-Metatron in medieval Ashkenazi mysticism 28 4.2. The Enoch-Metatron cluster of motifs in Nathan Shapira’s kabbalah 31 4.3. Overview of the thesis 34 III. Chapter 1: Yefeifiyah and learning the Torah 36 1. Introduction 36 2. Yefeifiyah in Megaleh Amuqot and in early mystical Jewish sources 37 2.1. The angel Yefeifiyah in the Ashkenazi medieval sources 47 2.1.1. Nehemiah ben Shlomo’s circle 47 2.1.2. Magical traditions on the angel Yefeifiyah 50 3. Yefeifiyah, Metatron and acquiring the Torah in Megaleh Amuqot 53 3.1. Metatron and Sinaitic revelation – messianic implications 56 4. Conclusions 64 4 IV. Chapter 2: The ‘youth’ as a redemptive figure in Megaleh Amuqot 65 1. Introduction 65 2. Na’ar in the early Jewish sources 68 2.1. Beloved and pure servant – the biblical usage of the term 68 2.2. Na’ar as angelic being officiating on high in 3 Enoch and its parallels 69 2.3. Metatron as primordial ‘youth’ and High Priest: variants of the Shi’ur Qomah tradition 72 3. The ‘youth’ in Nathan Shapira’s writings and its medieval Ashkenazi parallels 75 3.1. Mishkan ha-na’ar 75 3.3. Mishkan ha-na’ar in Megaleh Amuqot 84 4. Enoch and ‘son’ in the redemptive process 88 4.1. Early Ashkenazi traditions 88 4.2. ‘Youth’, Elijah and ‘son’ in Shapira’s kabbalah 96 5. Conclusions 108 IV. Chapter 3: The triad of angels as a medium of prayer 110 1. Introduction: Metatron in the heavenly liturgy 110 2. Elijah-Sandalfon in the Ashkenazi Rosh ha-Shanah liturgy 112 3. Mediation of prayer through angels 120 3.1. The three worlds 120 3.2. Akatriel, the uppermost angel 126 3.3. Metatron 133 3.3.1. Metatron as the central angel 133 3.3.2. The middle prayer 137 3.3.3. Metatron as the voice of prayer 143 4. Conclusions 146 V. Chapter 4: Metatron and the Godhead 148 1. Introduction 148 5 2. Metatron as garment and as shoe 150 2.1. Metatron as the garment of exile 150 2.2. Shoe as the power of evil 156 2.2.1. Halitsah – the separation of Sandalfon and Metatron 156 2.2.2. Halitsah – the unification of Sandalfon and Metatron 159 2.2.3. Evil as shoe 161 2.2.4. Male-female encounter 165 3. The shoe and the shoemaker 168 3.1. The shoemaker in Megaleh Amuqot vs. Cordovero’s writings 168 3.2. Enoch-the shoemaker in the Lurianic kabbalah 173 3.3. Cordoverian and Lurianic influences on the shoemaker motif in Megaleh Amuqot 182 4. Conclusions 183 VI. Chapter 5: Moses and Metatron 185 1. Introduction 185 2. Metatron and the Tree of Knowledge 186 2.1. Cordovero on the Tree of Knowledge 186 2.2. Shapira on Metatron as the Tree of Knowledge 188 2.3. Moses and the Tree of Knowledge 194 3. Mosheh – Metatron Sar ha-Panim 201 3.1. Metatron as Moses’ mentor 201 3.2. Metatron and Moses as tiqun adam 202 3.3. Moses and Metatron on a par 203 3.4. Moses as the supreme leader 206 6 4. The rod of Moses 210 5. Conclusions 223 VII. Conclusions 225 VIII. Bibliography 229 1. Manuscripts 229 2. Primary sources – printed editions 230 3. Secondary literature 235 7 Preface Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge the financial and academic support of University College London, particularly the award of a Graduate Research Scholarship from the UCL Graduate School, which provided me with the necessary funding for my doctoral research, and enabled me to visit multiple libraries in Europe and Israel. I am also grateful to the Institute for the History of Polish Jewry at Tel Aviv University for a travel grant, which allowed me to carry out my research in Jerusalem for several months. I am indebted to the staff of the Institute of the Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the National Library of Israel, the Special Collections Reading Room of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the British Library’s Asian and African Studies Department, the Institute of Jewish Studies at the Jagiellonian University of Kraków, especially prof. Michal Galas, and the Warburg Institute Library, for all the help and support I received during my studies. Special thanks are due to my parents and Wojtek, without whose encouragement this doctoral project would never have been undertaken. My greatest debt is to my primary supervisor, prof. Ada Rapoport-Albert, whose indefatigable editorial diligence far exceeded the requirements of her office. I am extremely grateful for benefitting from her wisdom, critical eye and intellectual sharpness. Without her this dissertation would have looked entirely .שלי שלה .different Above all, I would like to express my gratitude to my second supervisor, prof. Moshe Idel, whose knowledge and illuminating insights have always been my inspiration, and from whom I continuously receive invaluable advice and support. For any errors or inadequacies that may remain in this work, of course, the responsibility is entirely my own. 8 A note on the presentation of source materials Published English translations (with some modifications, as necessary) have been used wherever possible. All other translations from the Hebrew sources are my own. Biblical quotations follow the The Authorized King James Version (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Zohar translation follows, where possible, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004-), with some modifications. The transliteration of Hebrew aims to reflect contemporary Modern Hebrew pronunciation while generally following the Library of Congress’ romanization system, with the following exceptions: there is no distinction between aleph and ayin (both represented by the same apostrophe and disregarded when appearing as initial letters), tet and tav, samekh and sin, het and he. Whenever the tseire is distinguished from the segol in contemporary pronunciation, it appears as ei rather than e. The consonants vav and quf are represented by v and q respectively. Consonants marked with a dagesh are not doubled in transliteration. Hebrew words in transliteration are generally italicized, with the exception of those in common English use (i.e. kabbalah), where the common English spelling has been preserved. Megaleh Amuqot al ha-Torah is abbreviated throughout as MAT, and Megaleh Amuqot ReNaV Ofanim as MA ReNaV. When quoting MA ReNaV, I refer to the most recent, London 2008 edition of the work, while quotations from MAT mostly follow the 2005, and occasionally the1982-1985 Bnei Brak edition. The latter is referred to in the footnotes as MAT, ed. Weiss. 9 Introduction Nathan Neta ben Shlomo Shapira, also known under the name of Spira, was the most famous kabbalist to emerge from the Jewish intellectual environment of early modern Poland, in which he most probably spent all of his life. His lifespan (1585-1633) coincided with the final stages of the cultural and economic ‘golden age’ of Polish Jewry, marking the peak of its intellectual influence in the Jewish world.1 Shapira’s major kabbalistic treatises, Megaleh Amuqot ReNaV Ofanim al Va-Ethanan and Megaleh Amuqot al ha-Torah, are among the most complex kabbalistic texts ever written.
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