From Alphabetical Mysticism to Theosophical Kabbalah: a Rare Witness to an Intermediate Stage of Moses De León’S Thought

Avishai BAR ASHER Hebrew University of Jerusalem

FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH: A RARE WITNESS TO AN INTERMEDIATE STAGE OF MOSES DE LEÓN’S THOUGHT

ABSTRACT

This article investigates Moses de León’s early kabbalistic thought through a cluster of his unsigned works in manuscript, some of which have only recently come to light, and others of which have not received any scholarly attention at all. The analysis of these works reveals an intermediate stage of his thought that bridges his earlier esoteric writing with the later, and more familiar, theosophical compositions that bear his name. The folia of these unsigned works are replete with speculations concerning the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the names of God, through which de León expressed a unique blend of theology and angelology that was shaped, mainly, by Aristotelian paradigms. Scholars previously posited that de León, and other kabbalists active in roughly the same time and place, abruptly and mysteriously abandoned this worldview for a new one predicated on the theosophical foundation of a multiplicity of attributes or sephirot within the emanated Godhead. Through careful study of these works in manuscript, particularly a neglected work in MS Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibl., hebr. 47, the author recovers a transitional period in de León’s thought, when he had not quite given up one conceptual paradigm for the other. A new historiographical account is then proposed, according to which Castilian kabbalists living in the generation of the Zohar absorbed the new theosophy slowly and tried to incorporate it into existing paradigms, resulting in unique hybrids, even as they also consolidated new modes of speculation. This article therefore provides an alternative account of a critical stage in the history of medieval kabbalah, one which concerns the fundamental stratum of the so-called Sepher ha-Zohar. In addition to deepening our knowledge of the conceptual humus from which the Zohar’s foundational concepts germinated, the findings of this study force us to reconsider what we know about the appearance of the most canonical work in Kabbalistic literature.

RÉSUMÉ

Cet article examine la pensée kabbalistique de Moïse de León à travers un ensemble de ses œuvres manuscrites non signées, dont certaines n’ont été découvertes que récemment et d’autres n’ont fait l’objet d’aucune étude scientifique. L’analyse de ces œuvres met à nu une étape intermédiaire de sa pensée qui fait le lien entre la doctrine reflétée par ses premières œuvres ésotériques et les compositions théosophiques plus

Revue des études juives, 179 (3-4), juillet-décembre 2020, pp. 351-384. doi: 10.2143/REJ.179.3.3288802 352 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH tardives et plus familières qui portent son nom. Les pages de ces œuvres non signées renferment des spéculations sur les lettres de l’alphabet hébraïque et les noms de Dieu, à travers lesquelles Moïse de León exprime un mélange original de théologie et d’angélologie s’inscrivant pour l’essentiel dans un cadre aristotélicien. Les chercheurs ont jusqu’ici considéré que Moïse de León et d’autres kabbalistes actifs à peu près à la même période et au même endroit avaient brusquement et mystérieusement aban- donné cette vision du monde pour une autre, reposant sur le fondement théosophique d’une multiplicité d’attributs ou sephirot émanés au sein de la divinité. En étudiant attentivement ces œuvres manuscrites, en particulier un traité négligé présent dans le ms. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibl., Cod. hebr. 47, l’auteur de cet article retrouve une période de transition dans la pensée de Moïse de León, alors qu’il n’avait pas tout à fait abandonné le premier paradigme conceptuel. Un nouveau récit historiographique est alors proposé, selon lequel les kabbalistes castillans vivant dans la génération du Zohar ont lentement absorbé la nouvelle théosophie et ont essayé de l’incorporer aux paradigmes existants, ce qui a donné lieu à la production de pensées hybrides origi- nales et à l’élaboration de nouveaux modes de spéculation. Cet article présente donc une nouvelle façon de rendre compte d’une étape critique de l’histoire de la Kabbale médiévale, concernant la strate fondamentale du Sepher ha-Zohar. En plus d’appro- fondir notre connaissance du terreau conceptuel sur lequel ont germé les concepts fondateurs du Zohar, les résultats de cette étude nous conduisent à penser à nouveaux frais l’apparition de l’œuvre canonique entre toutes de la littérature kabbalistique.

I. Introduction

The medieval doctrine of the ten sephirot, the veritable heart of theosophic kabbalah, is structurally and terminologically indebted to a basic decadic speculative framework found in Sepher Yeṣira. The “ten sephirot belima” mentioned repeatedly in the book are widely considered the mold into which various kabbalistic groups poured their own configurations of ten potencies, attributes, gradations, or sephirot created (or emanated, in Neo- platonic accounts) by God. From kabbalah’s first appearance and through the thirteenth century, different arrays of cognomina, allusions, and “symbols” evolved to refer to the aspects of this divine decad, and much space was devoted to their characterization and explication. The anonymous and enigmatic homilies in Sepher ha-Bahir – usually identified as the earliest examples of theosophic kabbalah in our possession – exercised great influence during kabbalah’s formative period. Many of the homilies reflect on the letterforms of the Hebrew alphabet, which they conceive as linguistic and graphic blueprints of the divine architecture.1 Whether the homilies of Sepher

1. See esp.: H. PEDAYA, “The Provencal Stratum in the Redaction of Sefer ha-Bahir” (Hebrew), Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 9/2 (1990), p. 139-164; O. H. LEHMANN, “The Theology of the Mystical Book Bahir and Its Sources,” Studia Patristica, 1 (1957), p. 477-483; FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 353 ha-Bahir are already correlated with Sepher Yeṣira’s ten sephirot is hard to determine, but the connection is certainly made by the earliest groups to draw on the Bahir. Over time, interpretive activity concerning the Hebrew alphabet and its secrets increased in most circles of theosophic kabbalists.2 Early rabbinic literature fueled this facet of kabbalistic creativity (we see this in classic midrashim on letters in the Torah and Talmudic aggadot about the alphabet, in Ši‘ur Qoma, in the Hekhalot and Merkabha literature, and in neglected magical works such as the Otiyyot de-Rabbi ‘Aqibha)3 as did medieval exegesis of the letters, of the type found in the writings of R. Abraham Ibn Ezra.4 The earliest Catalonian kabbalists recorded a number of ancient traditions about the creation of the universe through letters (especially those of the Tetragrammaton: YHWH).5 Some of these they attributed to “the Ḥasid,” the Provençal kabbalist R. Isaac the Blind, son of R. Abraham b. David (Rabad) of Posquières.6 At the same time, they systematically deemphasized Sepher Yeṣira’s characterization of the ten sephirot as spheres or numbers. A perusal of the kabbalistic literature produced in Catalonia during the first two-thirds of the thirteenth century reveals minimal discussion of the numerological value of the letters or of the sephirot as numerical cyphers. Similarly, cosmo- gonic accounts from this same period, which are dedicated to defining the

E. R. WOLFSON, “Hebraic and Hellenic Conceptions of Wisdom in Sefer ha-Bahir,” Poetics Today, 19 (1998), p. 151-156; J. DAUBER, Knowledge of God and the Development of Early Kabbalah, Leiden and Boston, 2010, p. 191-216. 2. For an extended discussion of these matters, see in particular the following comprehensive studies with works cited: S. KATZ, “Mysticism and the Interpretation of Sacred Scripture,” in S. KATZ (ed.), Mysticism and Sacred Scripture, Oxford, 2000, p. 21-32; M. IDEL, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation, New Haven, 2002, and E. R. WOLFSON, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination, New York, 2005. 3. K. E. GRÖZINGER, “The Names of God and the Celestial Powers: Their Function and Meaning in the Hekhalot Literature,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 6 (1987), p. 53- 70; E. R. WOLFSON, Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death, Berkeley, 2005, p. 145-166. 4. On the special influence of Ibn Ezra’s writings, such as Sepher Ṣaḥut, on the development of kabbalistic letter speculation, see D. NEUMARK, Toledot ha-Pilosophiya be-Yiśra’el [The History of Jewish Philosophy], vol. 1, New York, 1921, p. 258-260; E. R. WOLFSON, “Anthro- pomorphic Imagery and Letter Symbolism in the Zohar” (Hebrew), Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 8 (1989), p. 150-152. 5. See especially H. PEDAYA, Name and Sanctuary in the Teaching of R. Isaac the Blind (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 2001, p. 103-147. See now H. H. BEN-SASSON, YHW-H: Its Meanings in Biblical, Rabbinic, and Medieval Jewish Thought (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 2019, p. 171- 230. 6. See esp.: PEDAYA, Name and Sanctuary, p. 1-102; E. P. FISHBANE, “The Speech of Being, the Voice of God: Phonetic Mysticism in the Kabbalah of Asher ben David and His Contem- poraries,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 98 (2008), p. 485-521. 354 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH role of the sephirot or the importance of primordial letters in the creation of the world, spend little time on the mathematical and Pythagorean speculations common in Sepher Yeṣira and its rich commentarial tradition. But Catalonia was the exception rather than the rule. Elsewhere, roughly contemporary schools of mystics and esotericists invested more energy into unpacking the meaning of the Hebrew alphabet. A few generations of mystics active in the Franco-German cultural orbit left behind a fascinating body of works dedicated to alphabetical speculation on the Godhead and on cosmology. Compositions written by members of the Rhenish Kalonymide family7 stand out in this regard, as do works linked to Nehemiah of Erfurt (especially those which have come to light in recent years).8 Other regions witnessed the vigorous activity of R. Abraham Abulafia in the latter half of the thirteenth century. Scholars have hailed Abulafia as the main representative of the so- called linguistic or alphabetical kabbalah, also termed “prophetic-ecstatic” kabbalah.9 The sprawling literature he produced during his travels around the Mediterranean basin is replete with mystical speculation on the divine names, the Hebrew language, and the Hebrew alphabet, which would shape kabbalah for generations.10 Around the same time, the cities of Castile were home to kabbalists culti- vating different views of the Hebrew language. R. Jacob ha-Kohen of Segovia, conventionally identified (correctly or not) as the brother of R. Isaac b. Jacob ha-Kohen of Soria (author of the demonological doctrine of the “emanation

7. See esp. J. DAN, History of Jewish Mysticism and Esotericism, The Middle Ages, Vol. VI: Rabbi Eleazar of Worms and Thirteenth-Century Circles of Jewish Mysticism and Esoteri- cism in Germany (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 2011, p. 493-525; and also D. ABRAMS, “‘The Secret of Secrets’: The Concept of the Divine Glory and the Intention of Prayer in the Writings of R. Eleazar of Worms” (Hebrew), Da‘at, 34 (1994), p. 61-81. 8. See esp. M. IDEL, “Incantations, Lists, and ‘Gates of Sermons’ in the Circle of Rabbi Nehemiah ben Shlomo the Prophet, and Their Influences” (Hebrew), Tarbiz, 77 (2008), p. 475- 554; ID., “On R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo the Prophet’s ‘Commentaries on the Name of Forty- Two’ and Sefer ha-Ḥokhmah Attributed to R. Eleazar of Worms” (Hebrew), Kabbalah, 14 (2006), p. 157-261; ID., “On the Genre of Commentaries on the Forty-Two Letter Divine Name and its Later History” (Hebrew), Kabbalah, 42 (2018), p. 131-191. 9. See esp. M. IDEL, “The Writings of Abraham Abulafia and His Teaching” (Hebrew), PhD diss., Hebrew University, 1976, p. 142-166; ID., The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, trans. J. CHIPMAN, Albany, 1988, p. 13-54; ID., Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia, Albany, 1989, p. 1-28. And see the reexamination and novel exposition of Abulafia’s oeuvre in E. R. WOLFSON, Abraham Abulafia – Kabbalist and Prophet: Hermeneutics, Theosophy and Theurgy, Los Angeles, 2000. 10. For general surveys, see in particular: G. SCHOLEM, “The Name of God and the Linguistic Theory of the Kabbala,” Diogenes, 79 (1972), p. 59-80; ibid., 80 (1972), p. 164-194; M. IDEL, “Reification of Language in Jewish Mysticism,” in S. T. KATZ (ed.), Mysticism and Language, Oxford, 1992, p. 42-79; ID., “Defining Kabbalah: The Kabbalah of the Divine Names,” in R. A. HERRERA (ed.), Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics, and Typologies, New York, 1993, p. 97-122. FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 355 of the Left”), wrote a treatise on the meaning embedded in the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.11 R. Todros ha-Levi Abulafia of Toledo, a disciple of R. Isaac ha-Kohen, was familiar with mystical interpretations of the letterforms and of the cantillation signs, which he included in one of his two known works.12 A younger contemporary active in the same milieu was R. Joseph b. Abraham Gikatilla, whose popularity may well rest on theosophic treatises like Ša‘arei Ora, but whose literary career was launched with Ginnat Egoz, a work that mainly engages in speculation on various aspects of the Hebrew language. The surprising fact that this work betrays not a hint of the sephirotic paradigm or of other concepts central to theosophic kabbalah led scholars to posit that at some point in the late 1270s Gikatilla broke sharply with alphabetical mysticism and adopted theosophic kabbalah.13 In biographical terms, he is generally described as abruptly tur- ning his back on Abulafia and the alphabetical mysticism of his “prophetic- ecstatic” kabbalah, and soaking up theosophical kabbalah from an uniden- tified source. This hypothesis was first advanced many decades ago and has since become the standard scholarly account, in the absence of historical evidence indicating otherwise. In connection with this conjecture, scholars posited a nearly identical “conversion” for Gikatilla’s Castilian contemporary, R. Moses b. Shemtob

11. See his commentary on the letterforms printed in G. SCHOLEM, “Qabbalot R. Yiṣḥaq we-R. Ya‘aqobh Benei R. Ya‘aqobh ha-Kohen: Meqorot le-Toledot ha-Qabbala liphnei Hit- gallut ha-Zohar” [The Kabbalistic Traditions of R. Isaac and R. Jacob, Sons of R. Jacob ha-Kohen: Sources for the History of Pre-Zoharic Kabbalah], Madda‘ei ha-Yahadut, 2 (1927), p. 201-219. For scholarly discussion, see A. FARBER, “Jacob ben Jacob ha-Kohen’s Commentary to Ezekiel’s Chariot” (Hebrew), MA thesis, Hebrew University, 1978; D. ABRAMS, “‘The Book of Illumi- nation’ of R. Jacob ben Jacob HaKohen: A Synoptic Edition from Various Manuscripts” (Hebrew), PhD diss., New York University, 1993, p. 9-48; O. R. WIENER, “The Mysteries of the Vocalization of the Spanish-Castilla Kabbalah in the 13th Century” (Hebrew), PhD diss., Bar-Ilan University, 2009, p. 52-175. 12. See below, note 110. 13. G. SCHOLEM, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, New York, 1954, p. 194 with n. 132- 133. See further A. FARBER, “‘Zohar’ Traces in R. Joseph Gikatilla’s Writings” (Hebrew), ‘Alei Sepher, 9 (1981), p. 70 (repr. with slight variations as R. Joseph Gikatilla’s Commentary to Ezekiel’s Chariot [Hebrew], ed. A. FARBER, Los Angeles, 1998, p. 28-41); EAD., “A New Frag- ment from the Introduction by Joseph Gikatilla to Ginnat Egoz” (Hebrew), Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 1 (1981), p. 158-163; Sh. BLICKSTEIN, “Between Philosophy and Mysticism: A Study of the Philosophical-Qabbalistic Writings of Joseph Giqatila (1248-c.1322),” PhD diss., The Jewish Theology Seminary of America, 1983, p. 115-123; E. MORLOK, Rabbi Joseph Gika- tilla’s Hermeneutics, Tübingen, 2011, p. 23-35; A. MARTINI, Yosef Giqatilla, The Book of Punctuation: Flavius Mithridates’ Latin Translation, The Hebrew Text, and an English Version, Torino, 2010. For a general objection to the distinction between Gikatilla’s earlier and later writings, see H. LACHTER, “Kabbalah, Philosophy, and the Jewish-Christian Debate: Recon- sidering the Early Works of Joseph Gikatilla,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 16/1 (2008), p. 1-58; F. DAL BO, Emanation and Philosophy of Language: An Introduction to Joseph ben Abraham Giqatilla, Los Angeles, 2019, p. 1-96. 356 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH de León (more on this in the next section). Taken together, the trajectories of both writers have been interpreted as evidence of a rapid and significant reorientation amongst Castilian kabbalists, in which they suddenly moved from a language-based mysticism to a sephirot-based one. Scholars have applied this interpretation to a much broader and central phenomenon, namely, the appearance of anonymous discourses (mostly in Aramaic but also in Hebrew) that would eventually crystallize into the Zohar. In other words, the model explaining the shift from one field of speculation to another became a means to account for the conceptual differences between the homilies of the Midraš ha-Ne‘elam and the theosophical discourse of the main body of the Zohar on the Torah. The identification of de León as the main or exclusive author of these midrashic corpora justified the expanded application of this model. It has been argued that, broadly speaking, the cosmogony and theology of Midraš ha-Ne‘elam on Genesis (and other lections) represent a pre-theosophic worldview, that was, as yet, unschooled in the kabbalistic doctrine of the sephirot. The early writings of Gikatilla and de León, as I have said, are also categorized as part of this pre-theosophic school,14 but the catalyst for the shift to theosophy in their writings remains a mystery. It also bears noting that, with the recent identification of a kabbalistic explication of the ten sephirot by R. Isaac b. Solomon Ibn Sahulah (a contemporary and landsman[?] of Gikatilla and de León), we have additional evidence of a kabbalist whose writing transitioned from pre-theosophic preoccupations to theosophic ones. Although his writings from the early 1280s contain the earliest citations from Midraš ha-Ne‘elam, his recently discovered commentary on the sephirot contains theosophic speculations that can be traced to the kabbalistic writings of R. Moses b. Nahman of Gerona and R. Asher b. David, the grandson of Rabad of Posquières.15

14. See in particular the formulation of A. ALTMANN, “Sefer Or Zarua‘ by R. Moses de León” (Hebrew), Kobez al Yad, 9 (1980), p. 243, apparently following SCHOLEM, Major Trends, p. 194-195, which is mostly about Gikatilla; G. SCHOLEM, Zohar: The Book of Splen- dor: Basic Readings of the Kabbalah, New York, 1949, p. xiv. See, too, E. GOTTLIEB, Kabbalah at the End of the Thirteenth Century (Hebrew), ed. Y. LIEBES, Jerusalem, 1969, p. 6-7 ; ID., Studies in the Kabbalah Literature (Hebrew), ed. J. HACKER, Tel-Aviv, 1976, p. 101 (Altmann’s formulation is based on Gottlieb’s descriptions). Cf. M. C. WEILER, “Issues in the Kabbalistic Terminology of Joseph Gikatilla and in His Relationship to Maimonides” (Hebrew), Hebrew Union College Annual, 37 (1966), p. 13-44, and ID., “The Kabbalistic Doctrine of R. Joseph Gikatilla in His Works” (Hebrew), Ṭemirin, 1 (1972), p. 157-186. See further Y. LIEBES, “How the Zohar Was Written,” in Studies in the Zohar, trans. A. SCHWARTZ et al., Albany, 1993, p. 99 with n. 78-79. 15. See A. BAR-ASHER, “Isaac b. Shlomo Ibn Sahula’s Commentary on Psalms” (Hebrew), Kobez al Yad, 26 [36] (2018), p. 1-45 with works cited in n. 21-26, and cf. the description of Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut in A. ELQAYAM, “Between Referentialism and Performativism: Two Approaches in Understanding the Kabbalistic Symbol” (Hebrew), Da‘at, 24 (1990), p. 5-40. FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 357

The fact that the writings of a number of contemporary Castilian kabbalists lend themselves to being divided neatly into a “before and after” has con- tributed to the acceptance of this account of a clean break along some chrono- logical fault line in the late thirteenth century. But the historical circumstances precipitating this supposedly sharp conceptual turn are unclear. As the rest of this study will show, a long fragment from a neglected work by de León preserved in MS Munich hebr. 47 (henceforth: the Munich treatise) complicates this neat division. In fact, this text corroborates an in-between stage within a more gradual paradigm shift that had not yet been fully realized.16 The following analysis of this treatise and its relationship to de León’s other works will therefore deepen our knowledge of, among other things, the conceptual humus from which the Zohar’s foundational concepts germinated. More broadly, this study aims to demonstrate the critical contribution of these recently discovered works, some of which have not been published in any forum, to the fundamental stratum of the so-called Sepher ha-Zohar, and to outline a new and more accurate history of its appearance.

II. Alphabetical Mysticism in the Early Kabbalistic Writings of R. Moses de León

The early phase of de León’s kabbalistic activity first came into focus following the discovery of links between writings bearing his signature and anonymous writings bearing his signature style. Foremost among these is a

16. MS Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cod. hebr. 47, fols. 335v-385r. This text is a unicum. My study of this text has been conducted in collaboration with Jeremy P. Brown. I wish to thank him for reading this article and offering valuable comments. Ms. Munich Cod. hebr. 47 contains a collection of works (mostly kabbalistic treatises) in Ashkenazic script, which were produced around 1551 as part of the scribal workshop of Johann Jakob Fugger in Venice. On this text, see G. SCHOLEM, “Eine unbekannte mystische Schrift des Mose de León” [An Unknown Mystical Work by Moses de León], Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissen- schaft des Judentums, 71 (1927), p. 109-123, and esp. p. 123 where Scholem suggested that the material likely comprised the bulk of the missing second half of de León’s Šošan ‘Edut of 1286. Later, in 1941, Scholem retracted this suggestion; see SCHOLEM, Major Trends, p. 393, n. 115; see too ID., “Two Treatises of R. Moses de León” (Hebrew), Kobez al Yad, 8 (1976), p. 325-384 (327). While Scholem has been credited with identifying de León as the author of this treatise, the initial link to de León was in fact established by M. STEINSCHNEIDER; see Hebräische Bibliographie, 9/49 (1869), p. 28-29; ID., Die hebräischen Handschriften der K. Hof- und Staatsbibliothek in München, Munich, 1895, p. 31-32. See also A. FARBER, “On the Sources of Rabbi Moses de León’s Early Kabbalistic System” (Hebrew), Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 3 (1984), p. 67-96 (87-88); and see also below note 22. On the collection of manuscripts copied in the scribal workshop of Johann Jakob Fugger, which included the codex pre- serving our text, see I. STEIMANN, “Jewish Scribes and Christian Patrons: The Hebraica Col- lection of Johann Jakob Fugger,” Renaissance Quarterly, 70 (2017), p. 1235-1281. 358 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH fragment from Or Zarua‘,17 an unsigned commentary on the pericope of Genesis that de León mentions in one of his later, signed works. An array of evidence, including connections with Gikatilla’s Ginnat Egoz, helped prove that this work had been written by de León many years before he first refer- enced it in 1290. However, for whatever reason he had left the text unsigned.18 Once scholars identified de León as the author of Or Zarua‘, a work differ- ing radically in its subject matter and concept from the rest of his theretofore- known oeuvre, the discovery factored into scholarly discussion about the formation of de León’s masterpiece, the Zohar. This resulted in a fundamental disagreement.19 The disagreement specifically concerned the part of the Zohar called Midraš ha-Ne‘elam, because Or Zarua‘ is one of the earliest sources – if not the earliest – to include citations from and adaptations of that part of the Zohar.20 Fragments of other anonymous works have been connected to the fragment from Or Zarua‘, based on their similar language, style, and subject matter. Such connections have, in turn, helped to solidify de León’s authorship of these works as well.21 Although they are not accompanied by explicit dates of composition, a number of factors indicate that these works belong to de León’s pre-theosophic period. These works typically engaged in linguistic speculation on the meaning of letterforms, vowel points, divine names, et cetera, which correlates with the structures and functions of the celestial spheres, angelology, cosmogony, the secrets of the Chariot, and more.22 One

17. See SCHOLEM, Major Trends, p. 194, with n. 132-133, and ALTMANN, “Or Zarua‘,” p. 243-244. 18. See the studies in the previous note. 19. See G. SCHOLEM, Kabbalah, Jerusalem, 1974, p. 433; ALTMANN, “Or Zarua‘,” p. 243- 244. For the disagreement between Scholem and Altmann, see E. R. WOLFSON, The Book of the Pomegranate: Moses de León’s Sepher ha-Rimmon, Atlanta, GA, 1988, p. 4-5 (English sec.); D. ABRAMS, “The Secret of the Upper and Lower Waters: An Unknown Work from Early Castilian Kabbalah” (Hebrew), in M. NIEHOFF, R. MEROZ, and J. GARB (eds), And This is for Yehuda: Studies Presented to Our Friend, Professor Yehuda Liebes on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, Jerusalem, 2012, p. 313; J. DAN, The History of Jewish Mysticism and Esotericism, Vol. X (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 2014, p. 266-267, n. 25. 20. See ALTMANN, “Or Zarua‘,” p. 221, 235-240. See also N. WOLSKI, “Metatron and the Mysteries of the Night in Midrash ha-Ne‘elam: Jacob ha-Kohen’s Sefer ha-Orah and the Transformation of a Motif in the Early Writings of Moses de León,” Kabbalah, 23 (2010), p. 69-94. 21. G. SCHOLEM, “Review of Carlo Bernheimer, Codices Hebraici Bybliothecae Ambro- sianae” (Hebrew), Qiryat Sepher, 11 (1934), p. 188; ID., “Qabbalot,” p. 30; ID., Kabbalah, p. 60; FARBER, “Sources,” p. 67-96. See further ABRAMS, “Book of Illumination,” p. 53-56. 22. See, at length, A. BAR-ASHER, “Sepher ha-Ne‘elam, New Parts of Sepher Or Zarua‘, and Clarifications Regarding the Early Writings of R. Moses de León: Studies and Critical Editions” (Hebrew), Tarbiz, 83 (2014-2015), p. 197-329. Cf. Scholem’s characterization of Or Zarua‘ with his emphasis on its philosophical dimension: SCHOLEM, “Eine unbekannte FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 359 of these unsigned works survives in more manuscripts than all of the others combined, and in most of them it is titled Sod Darkhei ha-Otiyyot we-ha- Nequddot.23 Another is extant in only two manuscripts and has no title; it is divided into chapters named after Hebrew vowels.24 Recently, fragments of a third work called Sepher ha-Ne‘elam were discovered, although chrono- logically it appears to have been composed first.25 On the one hand, these mysterious compositions share the basic approach of Or Zarua‘; on the other hand, they all stand apart from it in their pseudepigraphic nature.26 The discovery of Sepher ha-Ne‘elam and the detection of de León’s finger- prints all over this corpus have not only revealed the author of this large corpus of unsigned works, but also exposed the origins of amorphous groups mystische Schrift des Mose de León,” p. 121; E. R. WOLFSON, “Left Contained in the Right: A Study in Zoharic Hermeneutics,” AJS Review, 11/1 (1986), p. 27-52 (49, n. 98); ID., “Moisés de León y el Zohar” [Moses de León and the Zohar], in J. FERNÁNDEZ VALLINA et al. (eds), Pensamiento y mística hispano judía y sefardí, Cuenca, 2001, p. 167-168; J. P. BROWN, “Distilling Depths from Darkness: Forgiveness and Repentance in Medieval Iberian Jewish Mysticism,” PhD diss., New York University, 2015, p. 197-205, 212-218. 23. See above, note 21. See, too, G. SCHOLEM, Reshit ha-Qabbala, Jerusalem, 1948, p. 124 with n. 1; ID., Origins of the Kabbalah, ed. R. J. WERBLOWSKY, trans. A. ARKUSH, Philadel- phia, PA, 1987, p. 362, n. 317. Cf. M. STEINSCHNEIDER, “Hebräische Handschriften in Parma,” Hebräische Bibliographie, 10 (1870), p. 99, n. 3; ID., “Zur kabbalistischen Literatur,” Hebräische Bibliographie, 17 (1877), p. 37; E. R. WOLFSON, “Letter Symbolism and Merkavah Imagery in the Zohar,” in M. HALLAMISH (ed.), Alei Shefer: Studies in the Literature of Jewish Thought Presented to Dr. Alexander Safran, Ramat-Gan, 1990, p. 204, n. 31; D. ABRAMS, “From Germany to Spain: Numerology as a Mystical Technique,” Journal of Jewish Studies, 47 (1996), p. 86-87, n. 9; BAR-ASHER, “Sefer ha-Ne‘elam,” p. 221-227. For printings of the work, see “Sepher Sod Darkhei ha-Niqqud we-ha-Otiyyot,” in Sh. BAUER and Sh. EISENBACH (eds), Yalquṭ ha-Ro‘im ha-Gadol, Jerusalem, 2000 (which they attribute to R. Jacob ha- Kohen), and WIENER, “Mysteries,” p. 377-449 (who also attributes this work to R. Jacob ha-Kohen). 24. MS Paris, BN héb. 817, fols. 55r-91v, and MS New York, JTS 1886, fols. 1r-24v. See G. SCHOLEM and I. JOEL (eds), Catalogus Codicum Cabbalisticorum Hebraicorum (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1930, p. 58; G. SCHOLEM, “An Inquiry in the Kabbalah of R. Isaac ben Jacob Haco- hen: III. R. Moses of Burgos, the disciple of R. Isaac (continued)” (Hebrew), Tarbiz, 5 (1934), p. 195-196, n. 11; ID., “An Inquiry in the Kabbalah of R. Isaac ben Jacob Hacohen: III. R. Moses of Burgos, the disciple of R. Isaac (concluded)” (Hebrew), ibid., p. 305, n. 1; ID., “A Key to Commentaries on the Ten Sefirot” (Hebrew), Qiryat Sepher, 10 (1933-1934), p. 506; FARBER, “Sources,” p. 68, n. 2; BAR-ASHER, “Sefer ha-Ne‘elam,” p. 221-227; ID., “The Earliest Citation from Sefer ha-Zohar and from Whence Had the Book of Zohar Received Its Name” (Hebrew), Kabbalah, 39 (2017), p. 95-109. Also see E. R. WOLFSON, “Biblical Accentuation in a Mystical Key: Kabbalistic Interpretations of the Te‘amim,” Journal of Jewish Music and Liturgy, 12 (1989-1990), p. 1-4; M. IDEL, “On the Meanings of the Term ‘Kabbalah’” (Hebrew), Pe‘amim, 93 (2003), p. 53, n. 62. 25. BAR-ASHER, “Sefer ha-Ne‘elam”; ID., “New Fragments from Sefer Or Zarua‘ and Sefer ha-Ne‘elam” (Hebrew), Tarbiz, 83 (2016), p. 635-642; ID., “Sefer ha-Nequddah, the Short Sefer ha-Yiḥud, and Fragments from Sefer Or Zarua‘ and Sefer Toledot Adam” (Hebrew), Kabbalah, 35 (2016), p. 307-321. 26. See Farber’s conjecture in “Sources,” p. 92-96 with notes. 360 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH of fictitious secret-bearers, whose traditions and conceptual worldview were related to and continued to develop within these works. The latter literary invention – and use of similar fictive devices – is part of the important shift in genre which, together with conceptual transitions, characterizes de León’s work. Unlike de León’s signed books, written according to the theosophical kabbalah of the ten sephirot, the unsigned compositions under discussion here do not conceive of God theosophically in terms of an emanatory structure, nor do they speak of sephirot or potencies emanated by God. Instead, the focus is on the hierarchy of all sub-divine, created entities (intellects, spheres, angels), which are linked to God or the “Prima Causa” according to an Aristotelian model of causality. The speculation typical of this corpus turns on the investigation of graphic, phonological, and numerological aspects of the Hebrew consonants and vowels, and, in particular, aims to demonstrate how these linguistic elements corroborate the ontological/cosmological theory that treats of the spheres, angels, and Chariot. In these writings, God is referred to as “the Supernal Grade (may He be blessed)” (an epithet used by Maimonides27) and also “the Master,” “the supernal Charioteer,” “the Sovereign of All,” “the Ancient One,” and so on. The great chain of being concatenates causally from God and is divided into three worlds: the upper world of the intellects, which is the world of forms; the middle world of the celestial spheres; and the lower world in which matter and form commingle.28 Positioned between “the Supernal Grade” and these three worlds is the Active Intellect, the first created entity, also known as “the Prince of the Countenance” (Śar ha-Panim) or, following an identification adopted by earlier kabbalists, the angel Metatron, an entity from which all of the creations beneath it are “emitted” (nišpa‘im).29 In the fifth section of Or Zarua‘, de León therefore describes the Active Intellect as a supernal Chariot located above the Chariot of the ḥayyot that Ezekiel beheld, a notion elaborated on in all of these unsigned works.30 Nearly all of de León’s extant works (both signed and not) can be relatively easily assigned to either his so-called “pre-theosophic” or theosophic period. But

27. See R. MOSES B. MAIMON, Mišne Tora, “The Laws of the Foundations of the Tora,” 2:9. 28. On these schemata and their possible sources in medieval thought, see WOLFSON, “Letter Symbolism,” p. 196-197, n. 5; BAR-ASHER, “Earliest Citation,” p. 103-109. 29. On the identification of Metatron with the Active Intellect in different kabbalistic circles in the thirteenth century, see esp. M. IDEL, “The Writings of Abraham Abulafia,” vol. 1, p. 87- 88; FARBER, “Sources,” p. 84-87; E. R. WOLFSON, “God, the Demiurge and the Intellect: On the Usage of the Word Kol in Abraham ibn Ezra,” Revue des études juives, 149/1-2 (1990), p. 77-111. 30. See the thorough treatment of FARBER, “Sources,” p. 79-87. FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 361 one composition – the Munich treatise – demonstrates remarkable correspondences with both his pre-theosophic and theosophic worldviews.31 As Asi Farber pointed out, some of this composition’s alphabetical speculations are clearly lifted from the earlier works, a tendency she interpreted as part of an attempt to square the older material with “the spirit of theosophic kabbalah.”32 But, as I will try to demonstrate below, this composition simultaneously works these earlier speculations into a new conception of the Godhead and the cos- mos rooted in the kabbalistic theosophy of the sephirot. As such, the fragment of the composition before us opens a window onto the formation of a unique strain of theosophic kabbalah. As noted above, this composition contradicts the prevalent scholarly presumption of a sharp break and suggests replacing it with a subtler narrative, one which represents a more gradual and complex process of reorientation occurring among Castilian kabbalists in the final quar- ter of the thirteenth century. This shared approach, with its creative mystical exegesis of the Hebrew language, became a tributary to the extensive creative activity that gave rise to many speculative traditions which, in time, achieved canonical status in the Zohar. The Munich treatise concentrates on the mystery of the Hebrew letters primarily in the penultimate and final chapters, because they pertain to the uppermost sephirot – Ḥokhma and Keter respectively. The detailed letter speculations discussed here relate mostly to the sephira of Ḥokhma, particularly its relationship to the transcendental realm above (referred to as Ayin and traditionally linked by kabbalists to Keter), and the manner in which all existence emerges from thence. As such, these chapters contain a number of interesting disquisitions on the first two letters of the Tetragrammaton, yod and he, which the author consistently associates with Ḥokhma and the sephira that emanates from it (Bina).33 Thanks to the discoveries of the complete version of Or Zarua‘ and of Sepher ha-Ne‘elam, and to scholarly advances in clarifying the status of the corpus linked to them, one can now properly appreciate the evolution of de León’s thought, the Munich treatise constituting the “missing link.” In light of this, what follows is a comparative study between de León’s early writings (especially Or Zarua‘) and the Munich treatise. My analysis is divided into

31. See ibid., p. 70, and BAR-ASHER, “Sefer ha-Ne‘elam,” p. 213-214, 253-254. For the conception of the sephirot in the Munich treatise, see Y. LIEBES, Ars Poetica in Sefer Yetsira (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 2000, p. 283, n. 13. 32. Compare the account in FARBER, “Sources,” p. 87-91. 33. The extant fragment indicates that the first part of the work, now lost, originally included homilies on the last two letters of the Tetragrammaton, waw and he, which were associated with the lower sephirot, including feminine Malkhut. 362 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH three parts. The first part deals with speculations on the letter aleph and their bearing on theology; the angelology of the “two Chariots”; and the cosmology of the three worlds. The second part focuses on speculative lore concerning the letters of God’s names, which the text attributes to “masters of the secret of the letters”; this lore, as I will show, is based on a novel “intellec- tualist theosophy.” The third section explores the technique of “letter transposition,” which the text attributes to “masters of the numerological secrets” and the construction of a realm of purely intellectual existence.

III. One Alef, Two Chariots, Three Worlds, and Four Banners

In the early, pre-theosophic Or Zarua‘, de León clusters the main alphabetical speculations into the sixth chapter. Three separate discussions are set within the framework of “three mysteries.” Each of these “mysteries” comprises interpretations of the graphic attributes, phonology, and numerical value of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, with a particular focus on the tenth letter, yod. The recent location of the extensive, missing portion of Or Zarua‘ has yielded an additional section dealing with alphabetical mysticism in a subsection of “the first mystery.” This additional discussion deploys various structural elements in the Hebrew language in order to interpret the biblical description of the four banners of the Israelite tribes in Numbers 10.34 A careful comparison of each of these discussions in Or Zarua‘ with the large extant portion of the Munich treatise reveals intentionally drastic changes made in “translating” the linguistic hermeneutic from one conceptual framework to another. Investigation of other works in the Sepher ha-Ne‘elam corpus, which likewise predate the ascendancy of theosophic kabbalah, shows that this reworking was extensive. To all this we should add the interesting fact that throughout the Munich treatise de León attributes a number of these earlier speculations to shadowy unnamed figures, such as the “masters of the secret of the letters” (ba‘alei sod ha-otiyyot) and “masters of the numerological secrets” (ba‘alei sod ha-ḥešbon). De León apparently sought to distance himself from his “sources,” yet knowing as we now do that he himself authored them, it seems that he resorted to pseudepigraphy and fiction to suffuse the treatise with an air of authority, and perhaps also to distance himself from this earlier corpus of his.

34. See BAR-ASHER, “Sefer ha-Ne‘elam,” p. 213. This passage is absent from all manuscript witnesses except for the recently discovered manuscript containing the full work; see ibid., p. 301-304. Compare Scholem’s proposed identification of the “masters of the numerological secrets” with the German Pietists: SCHOLEM, “Eine unbekannte mystische Schrift des Mose de León,” p. 116-117, n. 4. FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 363

The “first mystery” in Or Zarua‘ includes a series of alphabetical speculations, only some of which made it into the Munich treatise in modified form. An interesting example of an idea that did not survive the shift to the new conceptual framework is the numerological equation between the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, and the first five letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The numerical equivalence of the entire Tetragrammaton is 26: Y (10) + H (5) + W (6) + H (5). The same operation performed on the first four letters of the alphabet yields 10: ’ (1) + B (2) + G (3) + D (4). Now, 10 is the numerical value of the tenth letter, yod, and when yod is written in full (YWD) it equals 20: Y (10) + W (6) + D (4). If one adds to that the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, he, also spelled out in full (H’), then one arrives at 26: 20 (YWD) + 5 (H) + 1 (’).35 Elliot Wolfson explained that this string of numerological equivalences is intended to demonstrate, through letter symbolism, that “the divine name thus comprises the totality of existence, or, alternatively expressed, the chariot and the charioteer.”36 This exegesis thus encapsulates the cosmology of Or Zarua‘ and kindred pre-theosophic works,37 in which the divine realm houses the lofty “Supernal Grade” (symbolized by the letter he), as well as two Chariots, one atop the other: the first Chariot is “the tenth Intel- lect,” “the Minor Charioteer,” also identified with the supreme angel Meta- tron (symbolized by the letter yod), and beneath him are the four angelic bearers of the second Chariot: Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Nuriel (symbolized by the letters aleph through dalet).38 Although this numerological equation did not make it into the Munich treatise, a sliver of it was incorporated into a different speculation about the relationship between the Tetragrammaton and the first letters of the alphabet.39 As Wolfson has noted, in lieu of the correspondence between the letter yod and “the tenth Intellect,” which appears in Or Zarua‘ and related works, the Munich treatise posits a correspondence between the letter yod and the sephira of Ḥokhma, which is based on theosophic kabbalah.40 Consequently,

35. BAR-ASHER, “Sefer ha-Ne‘elam,” p. 300 and 306. 36. WOLFSON, “Letter Symbolism,” p. 202. 37. For parallel exegeses in other works in the Sepher ha-Ne‘elam corpus, see the sources in ibid., p. 204 near n. 32, and BAR-ASHER, “Earliest Citation,” p. 106, n. 96. 38. On this see ALTMANN, “Or Zarua‘,” p. 270. But see the discussion about the “double Chariot” in FARBER, “Sources,” p. 83-84. As Farber noted, this conception was repeated in Or Zarua‘ as part of the disagreement with the usual conception of a single Chariot, which de León ascribed to “the wisdom of the Kabbalah.” This notion is also presented in the recently discovered introduction to Sepher ha-Ne‘elam, where de León distinguishes explicitly between the “Great Charioteer,” meaning God or “the Highest Degree,” and the “Minor Charioteer,” beneath whom lies the (lower) Chariot of the four archangels and the four ḥayyot. See BAR-ASHER, “Sefer ha-Ne‘elam,” p. 236-237. Also see WOLFSON, “Letter Symbolism,” p. 204. 39. MS Munich 47, fol. 370v. 40. WOLFSON, “Letter Symbolism,” p. 204-205 and n. 33. 364 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH the aforementioned exposition in Or Zarua‘, with its focus on the four archangels on which the tenth Intellect rides, did not survive the transposition to the new conceptual register of the Munich treatise. Careful study of the Munich treatise shows that the fate was much the same for the other alphabetical “mysteries” in Or Zarua‘ which linked the Tetragrammaton and the first four letters of the alphabet.41 By disconnecting the letter yod from the tenth Intellect (or the angel Metatron) and connecting it to the sephira of Ḥokhma, de León methodically erases any hint of the previous model in which the angels of the Chariot populated the divine realm (as numerically encoded in the letters of the Tetragrammaton). At most, the status of these angels – entities of real substance – is diminished to that of mere cognomina or symbols. In other words, the Munich treatise transposes the angels into signifiers for various nodes on the sephirotic tree of theosophic kabbalah.

The Interpretation of the Four Israelite Banners

While the previous speculation was omitted or concealed, most likely because it did not square with de León’s new theosophy in the Munich treatise, the continuation of Or Zarua‘’s “first mystery” was overhauled to fit the new paradigm. In the last chapter of the work (fols. 366r-370v), there appears a long, fascinating interpretation of the four standards of the Israelite encamp- ment, and their connection to various fourfold structures in cosmology (the four elements, the four ends of the earth), the Hebrew language (the first four letters of the alphabet, four of the Hebrew vowels [qamaṣ, ḥiriq, pataḥ, and šewa]), and angelology (the four angels of the Countenance).42 The text describes the arrangement of the angelic camps on high that mirror the Israelite camps below, and thus, for example, it discusses the banners of Reuben and Judah: “On the south: the standard of the camp of Reuben” (Num. 10:2) – it is below Judah on the right side, but unlike Judah because Judah is above, at the head, and Reuben is below. You should be aroused to the fact that the beginning of Judah is on the left side and comes to the right and stays on the right, whereas

41. Compare Wolfson’s claim ibid. 42. For these fourfold correspondences see FARBER, “Sources,” p. 88, n. 50; EAD., “Jacob ben Jacob ha-Kohen’s Commentary to Ezekiel’s Chariot,” p. 104-105, n. 18. Ronit Meroz also discussed the correspondence between the four elements and the four cardinal directions in de León’s thought, in her treatment of his Commentary on the Thirteen Attributes [by Which the Torah is Expounded], which is in fact part of the Munich treatise; see R. MEROZ, “Kabbalah, Science, and Pseudo-Science in R. Moshe de León’s Commentary on the Thirteen Attributes” (Hebrew), in NIEHOFF et al. (eds), And This is for Yehuda, p. 123-143. See, too, WOLFSON, “Anthropomorphic Imagery,” p. 160, n. 58. FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 365

Reuben begins on the right side and comes to the left and stays on the left. […] On account of this, the waters – which are from the right side and are cold and wet – went to the north, which is cold and wet; just as you find originally that the fire became bound to the south, since fire is hot and dry and the south is hot and dry. In this way the corners are interlinked and [causally] emerge from one another.43

In this passage, one can see how the symbolic triads of north-left-water and south-right-fire allude to a theosophic system in which the various stages emanate from and are linked to one another. Comparison of this interpretation with similar ones provided by de León in his Sepher ha-Ne‘elam corpus reveals a few discrepancies. In the Munich treatise, he only vaguely gestures at the connection between the four angels and various elements of the Hebrew language, and he recasts the angelological and cosmological features to express new ideas.44 In the other early works, one encounters highly detailed explication of the midrash on the standards that presents a radically different theology and cosmology.45 Consider the following example. In de León’s earlier description of the four banners in Or Zarua‘, he lays out an elaborate parallelism between the middle and lower worlds, between the four archangels bearing the Chariot above and the four Israelite encampments below.46 He is in fact expanding upon Numbers Rabba (2:10), which asserts that the banners are arranged according to the four cardinal directions, and that each angel of the Chariot corresponds to a particular tribal banner. De León interprets this midrash through the alphabetical kabbalah characteristic of his earlier writings, adding an additional layer of correspondences between the four standards and four vowel points. According to the ontology in Or Zarua‘, the four angels of the Chariot are stationed underneath the transcendental God – “the Supernal Grade” – and are identical to the separate intellects (with the tenth Intellect on top) from which the world of the spheres and the lower world unfold.47 A similar and consistent picture emerges from the other unsigned works in the

43. MS Munich 47, fol. 366r-v. 44. See FARBER, “Sources,” p. 88 with n. 50. 45. For a comprehensive treatment see A. BAR-ASHER, Journeys of the Soul: Concepts and Imageries of Paradise in Medieval Kabbalah (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 2019, p. 269-273. 46. This appears in the recently discovered full version of Or Zarua‘. In light of its absence from the other manuscript witnesses (such as MS Vat. ebr. 428, which generally is a bit briefer than the full version), it may be part of a later stratum added by the author to the existing edition. 47. The status of the tenth Intellect, which also plays a special role in de León’s other unsigned writings, is ambiguous, and the precise relationship between God and the tenth (Active) Intellect remains unclear. See FARBER, “Sources,” p. 79-80 with n. 28, and WOLFSON, “Letter Symbolism,” p. 196-197, n. 5 and p. 203, n. 27. 366 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH corpus: at the center of the angelological cosmography are the four ḥayyot bearing the Chariot or the angels of the Countenance upon which Metatron “the Prince of the Countenance” rides, he himself constituting a supernal Chariot on which rides “the Master,” the transcendent God.48 The sources for the cosmography in these works and in the rest of the Sepher ha-Ne‘elam corpus have yet to be identified.49 Nevertheless, significant is the fact that in the Munich treatise de León begins to discern concepts and structures stemming from the theosophic kabbalah of the sephirot. For instance, the detailed description of the Israelite banners concludes with a fourfold scheme: aleph-Michael-qamaṣ; bet-Gabriel-ḥiriq; gimel-Raphael- pataḥ; dalet-Uriel-šewa. Then, de León aligns these groupings with different rungs of the sephirotic emanation: aleph-Michael-qamaṣ corresponds to the Right Side or side of Ḥesed, symbolized by the High Priest; bet-Gabriel-ḥiriq corresponds to the Left Side, the feminine, the supernal Gebhura; gimel- Raphael-pataḥ corresponds to the Tree of Life, the end of the Median Line; dalet-Uriel-šewa alludes to “the mystery of the fire.”50 For the first time in de León’s writings, the angelic realm is mapped onto the sephirot of Ḥesed and Gebhura, the middle sephira between them (apparently Yesod rather than Tiph’eret), and the lowest sephira (Malkhut). This is accompanied by

48. See the unsigned Sha‘ar Ḥeleq ha-Nequdda in MS Paris, BN héb. 817, fol. 81r (and see fol. 82v). In fragments of Sepher ha-Ne‘elam only a rough version of this two-tiered structure is found, and without any connection to the Israelite standards of the lower world; see BAR-ASHER, “Sefer ha-Ne‘elam,” p. 322. But another work from this corpus contains a long discourse on the standards that has nearly the same exact wording as found in the recently discovered full edition of Or Zarua‘, which attests to intertextuality or a shared source. See further A. BAR-ASHER, “Concepts and Imageries of Paradise in Medieval Kabbalah” (Hebrew), PhD diss., Hebrew University, 2014, p. 214-218, and cf. FARBER, “Sources,” p. 67. For example, Reuben’s order of travel (Num. 10:18) alludes to the southern position of the archangel Nuriel, who is appointed over fire: “Nuriel is appointed over fire, and there he is to the southern side, for there is no warmth in the heat of a flame except [in the] south, and there is no cold in the frigidity of the world except [in the] north, and for this reason he is appointed there” (MS Paris 817, fol. 87r). 49. In these compositions, at most we find pseudepigraphic attributions to fabricated figures or works, which are unhelpful in locating the real sources. One conjectured but good candidate is the appendix to R. Baruch Togarmi’s Maphteḥot ha-Qabbala, which transmits a tradition in his name about the twinned encampments – angelic and Israelite – and the three worlds; see MS Paris, BN héb. 770, 7r-8r. This tradition was also copied by R. Isaac of Acre: Sefer Meʼirat ‘Einayim by R. Isaac of Acre (Hebrew), ed. A. GOLDREICH, Jerusalem, 1984, p. 186-187. See E. GOTTLIEB, Kabbalah in the Writings of R. Bahya ben Asher ibn Halawa (Hebrew), Jeru- salem, 1970, p. 55-57; I. WEINSTOCK, Peruš Sepher Yeṣira “Almoni,” Jerusalem, 1984, p. 51- 53; M. IDEL, “The World of Angels in Human Form” (Hebrew), Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 3 (1984), p. 61, n. 264; H. PEDAYA, “‘Possessed by Speech’: Towards an Under- standing of the Prophetic-Ecstatic Pattern among Early Kabbalists” (Hebrew), Tarbiz, 65 (1996), p. 624-625. 50. MS Munich 47, fols. 368r-370v. FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 367 an isomorphic principle: “the mystery of the four below are bound to and emerge from the mystery of the four above.”51 It is not beyond the realm of possibility that de León was familiar with theosophic interpretations given to the midrash in Numbers Rabba by Catalonian kabbalists a generation or two earlier.52 Scrutiny of de León’s manifestly theosophic, later compositions shows that he expanded the connection between these four triads and the four aforementioned sephirot.53 In them, de León describes the four elements and the four standards along theosophic lines.54 In Šeqel ha-Qodeš, completed in 1292,55 his presentation closely matches its Aramaic Zoharic parallel, where “the secret of the holy supernal Chariot” is recorded in the name of R. Šim‘on b. Yoḥai.56 Both the Hebrew and the Aramaic versions include an alchemical theory of the four material elements based on Aristotelian physics (water, fire, wind, earth), under which they correspond to the four cardinal directions (south, north, east, west), and from which are cast the four elemental metals (copper, gold, silver, and iron) and the four lesser metals (“inferior copper” [tin], yellow dross, lead, and iron).57 In addition, these groupings of four are used in these works as models for describing and characterizing the seven lower sephirot of the theosophic tree, with Ḥesed, Gebhura, Raḥamim/ Tiph’eret, and Malkhut forming the trunk. In these two parallel sources, one can see how an Aristotelian concept serves as the springboard for the symbolic and dynamic interpretation characteristic of sephirotic kabbalah. Furthermore, this interpretation underscores the influence of the divine realm on the lower ones, and the isomorphic character of the lower ones vis-a-vis the supernal ones. It also creates an important distinction between the three first and super- ordinate Attributes and the fourth and subordinate Attribute (corresponding to

51. Ibid., fol. 370r. 52. See R. MOSES BEN NAḤMAN, Commentary on the Tora, Num. 2:2; R. EZRA OF GERONA, “Peruš le-Šir ha-Širim,” in Kitbhei Rabbenu Moše ben Naḥman, ed. H. D. CHAVEL, vol. 2, Jeru- salem, 1963, p. 489-490; R. AZRIEL OF GERONA, Commentary on Talmudic Aggadoth (Hebrew), ed. I. TISHBY, 2nd ed., Jerusalem, 1982, p. 72-73. 53. See, e.g., R. Moses de León’s Sefer Sheqel ha-Qodesh (Hebrew), ed. C. MOPSIK, Los Angeles, 1996, p. 33; I. TISHBY, “Responsa of Rabbi Moses de León on Kabbalistic Matters” (Hebrew), Kobez al Yad, 5 (1950), p. 9-38; the responsum by de León about tzitzith printed in M. ORON, Window to the Stories of the Zohar: Studies in the Exegetical and Narrative Methods of the Zohar (Hebrew), Los Angeles, 2011, p. 193; MOSES DE LEÓN, R. Moses de León’s Sefer Mishkan ha-‘Edut (Hebrew), ed. A. BAR-ASHER, Los Angeles, 2013, p. 158. 54. See TISHBY, “Responsa,” p. 40-41. 55. Sheqel ha-Qodesh (ed. MOPSIK), p. 96. 56. Zohar, II:24a-b. 57. Translation of the Aramaic terms for the metals is based on The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, translation and commentary by D. C. MATT, vol. 4, Stanford, CA, 2007, p. 87. 368 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH

Malkhut), in which individuation occurs and the “world of individuals (‘olam ha-niphradim)” begins.58

The Form of the Letter Aleph and the Structure of the Three Worlds

Like the “secret of the banners,” de León similarly retooled the final section of the “first mystery” in Or Zarua‘ for his Munich treatise. The section engages in speculation on the letterform of the aleph. The traditional graphic of the Hebrew alphabet (or the א representation of the letter aleph is the ancient Aramaic alphabet in general), consisting of three strokes: a long line slanting right in the middle, one short ascender on the right extending left- ward at the top, and one short descender on the left, extending rightward at the bottom. In Or Zarua‘, de León interpreted the three parts of the letter as ,(י) the short ascender a yod ,(ו) three separate letters: the middle line a waw The very first 59.(ד) and the short descender an inverted and reversed dalet letter of the Hebrew alphabet, then, comprises the three letters that spell the name of the tenth letter: yod (YWD). This threefold structure of the aleph, according to de León, denotes the three worlds at the heart of his pre- theosophic cosmology: the upper, spiritual world of the intellects, signified by the yod on top of the aleph; the middle, material world of the celestial spheres, signified by the central waw; and the sublunar world in which form and matter mingle, signified by the inverted and reversed dalet at the bottom. In Or Zarua‘ and the other works in de León’s Sepher ha-Ne‘elam corpus, this threefold scheme frames a unique cosmovision. According to the earlier paradigm the upper world of the intellects corresponds to Metatron, who is, in turn, identified with the tenth Intellect, whereas the middle world of the spheres corresponds to the archangels of the Chariot beneath Metatron. Each world causally moves the one below it. This worldview also conceives of a transcendent God above these three planes of existence; He is “the Supernal Grade,” the Causa causarum moving all existence – the intellects, the celestial spheres, and the world of individuals. In the Munich treatise, de León reproduces this alphabetical speculation in full, together with the structuring idea of three worlds. What is utterly missing, however, is the conceptual linkage between these three worlds and

58. See at length in BAR-ASHER, Journeys of the Soul, p. 102-104. For the possible sources of this conception, the likes of which Abraham Abulafia mentioned, see ibid., p. 96, n. 382. 59. Or Zarua‘ (ed. BAR-ASHER), p. 304-305. Compare the speculations on the letterform of aleph in R. Jacob ha-Kohen’s commentary on the letterforms in SCHOLEM, “Qabbalot,” p. 202. FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 369 the double Chariot angelology.60 De León literally gives them a whole new world of meaning, rooted in theosophic kabbalah, by drawing lines from these three rungs of being to three parts of the sephirotic tree: the upper world (symbolized by yod) corresponds to the concealed recesses of divine Wisdom (Ḥokhma); the middle world (symbolized by waw) corresponds to the trunk of the tree called the Median Line and identified with the six directions of Sepher Yeṣira, which are the sephirot from Ḥesed through Yesod; and the lower world (symbolized by dalet) is identified throughout this composition with the lowest, feminine sephira (Malkhut). The earlier corpus’ Aristote- lian depiction of each world causally moving the existents directly below it is replaced here by an emanative account in which the divine efflux descends through the sephirot. Interestingly, when de León lines up the three worlds with the sephirotic structure, he breaks the tripartite mold by inserting a fourth element, Bina, which emanates from superior Ḥokhma: stands in its mystery, the mystery of its unity denotes the א When the form three worlds visible within it: the upper world, which is the concealed world (=Ḥokhma), [and] which is joined with [the letter] ṭet (=Bina), since it is a world unto itself. And from there the mystery of the middle world goes forth and spreads out. When it is joined with it (=the upper world), it makes it (=the middle world) a world unto itself. Thence the mystery of the lower world goes forth and spreads out, and when it is joined with it (=the middle world), it makes it (=the lower world) a world unto itself.61

As one can see, in order to make room for Bina, de León must add another letter to the triune yod-waw-dalet, in this case ṭet: As for the mystery of the letter ṭet, it is the semblance of a closed exedra62 that admits nothing into it except the mystery of the letter yod. Although the tip of the yod is not visible […], the idea is that it (=yod) enters it (=ṭet) and from there is filled from each of its sides, since it (=yod, symbolizing Ḥokhma) encompasses all.63

particularly as it is ritually spelled) ט That is to say, the letterform of the in a Torah scroll) has the semicircular shape of closed exedra inside of which 64.(י) there is a beheaded yod

60. In this context it is worth noting that at the beginning of his discussion de León writes: “we have already been alerted to this” (MS Munich 47, fol. 361r). This might be a hint to prior parallel discussion in Or Zarua‘. 61. MS Munich 47, fol. 361r. 62. Akhsadra (originally from Greek: ἐξέδρα). 63. Ibid. 64. In his discussion, de León relates to the fact that the tenth letter, yod, actually represents the ninth sephira, and the ninth letter, ṭet, represents the eighth sephira (when counting upwards 370 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH

The breaking of the triadic mold to fit the sephirotic fourfold (from Ḥokhma to Malkhut) also resulted in new speculations about the Tetragrammaton. We saw above that Or Zarua‘ and affiliated works attempted to relate the Tetra- grammaton to the triad of the divine realm: the Great Charioteer (God), the Minor Charioteer (Metatron), and the angelic Chariot. The Munich treatise, however, can have a one-to-one correspondence between the letters of the Name and the sephirot due to the new fourfold model: yod corresponds to Ḥokhma, he to Bina, waw to the Median Line, and final he to Malkhut.65 For the very same reason, the presentation of the correspondence between the three worlds and the sephirotic tree is augmented by the addition of the fundamental theosophical dimension of gender. Additionally, whereas Or Zarua‘ and the Sepher ha-Ne‘elam corpus defined the transcendent God (“the Supernal Grade”) as moving all of existence below Him, de León focuses here on the inapprehensible realm above Ḥokhma, known as Keter in the theosophic tradition: The mystery of the upper world above is that it is drawn from the mystery of supernal Ḥokhma, which emerges from the Fundament of fundaments,66 from the And this .[ ִעלּוֹת כל המעלות וסבּות כל הסבות] Causa causarum, the Cause of causes is the Supernal Grade, the pure, rarefied Ether that can never be apprehended, whence all of the Debharim (=the sephirot) are emanated and emerge through the mystery of Ḥokhma, which is “the Beginning of God’s paths” (Job 40:19). It is therefore the primordial Ether, most ancient of all, most concealed of all, inapprehensible to all.67

This paragraph succinctly captures the extremely important transition from de León’s earlier theology and angelology to the new theosophy of the ten sephirot. “The Supernal Grade,” which in the earlier corpus was identified with the transcendent God and the first Cause, is henceforth identified with Keter, the transcendent aspect of the Godhead described apophatically, the uppermost crown of the sephirotic tree.68 The Munich treatise aligns the three worlds with yet another trio – the three parts of the human soul. The latter are, in turn, linked to different nodes on the sephirotic tree, and here too we see readily how older cosmological notions accommodate the new sephirotic structures: from the bottom of the sephirotic ladder). He relies on the dynamism of the sephirot to account for this. See ibid. 65. See ibid., fol. 374r-v. 66. Or: “Essence of essences” (me-‘iqqar kol ha-‘iqqarim). 67. Ibid., fol. 365v. 68. On the ether in de León’s thought, see G. MARGOLIOUTH, “The Doctrine of the Ether in the Kabbalah,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 20 (1908), p. 825-861. FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 371

The ruaḥ is always intermediate, sustaining the nepheš which is lowest. This ruaḥ only exists through the nešama, which is supernal [and] sustains the ruaḥ. As to the nešama, it is the mystery of the upper world [that] sustains the ruaḥ, and based on it the ruaḥ sustains the nepheš. Thus, the three are bound together.69

The necessary causality that governs the threefold cosmology and the assertion of essential differences between the different planes of being is carried over into this discussion of psychology. The maintenance of such a distinction is critical for discriminating between the highest part of the human soul and its source, the “primordial Ether” that is “never apprehended – it encompasses them all and apprehends them, but it is not apprehended through them.”70 Finally, I should note that brief discussions of the three worlds recur in de León’s later writings.71 Surprisingly, in his mature theosophical works he returns to the secrets of the letterforms and vowel points; in Maśkiyyot Keseph, for example, he quotes a cosmological discussion of this nature in the name of anonymous custodians of the wisdom of the “explicit [divine] names” (ha-šemot ha-mephorašim).72 The linkage between ontological gradations within the soul and the three worlds is similarly prominent in all his subsequent treatments of psychology.73 In this context, it is worth noting the

69. Ibid., fol. 381r. 70. Ibid. 71. See esp. WOLFSON, Book of the Pomegranate, p. 94-95; Sheqel ha-Qodesh (ed. MOPSIK), p. 104-106; Mishkan ha-‘Edut (ed. BAR-ASHER), p. 12-15; MS Oxford, Bodl. Lib., Opp. Add. 4°4 (Neubauer 1565), fols. 47v-48r. 72. J. H. A. WIJNHOVEN, “Sefer Maskiot Kesef [By Moshe de León]: Text and Translation with Introduction and Notes,” M.A. thesis, Brandeis University, 1961, p. 14-15. Cf. WOLFSON, Book of the Pomegranate, p. 329-330 and 333. See BAR-Asher, “Sefer ha-Ne‘elam,” p. 247- 248. 73. The same is true of his central idea of the nešamot flying from “the river that issues from Eden,” namely, the sephira of Yesod. De León writes how Malkhut receives the efflux of Bina from Yesod: “‘The ḥayya beneath the God of Israel’ (Ezek. 10:20) is the known ḥayya that rules at night. It encompasses the appropriate efflux from the ‘river that issues from Eden’ (cf. Gen. 2:10) and ‘produces the nepheš of [the] ḥayya’ (cf. Gen. 1:24) certainly through the power of emanation of the ḥayya that is above. This is when the river that issues from Eden is in its normal state and the nešamot fly from it, as we have spoken about and been aroused to” (MS Munich 47, fol. 338r). For the source of this idea see Sepher ha-Bahir (ed. ABRAMS), sec. 14, p. 125, and sec. 39, p. 139. For the pneumatic image in early kabbalistic literature, see, inter alia, R. EZRA OF GERONA, “Peruš le-Šir ha-Širim,” p. 497-498, and cf. R. AZRIEL OF GERONA, Commentary on Aggadoth (ed. TISHBY), p. 13. The tree from which the nešamot fly is also mentioned in Sepher ha-Bahir (ed. ABRAMS), sec. 14, p. 125, in discussion of the tree called Kol. For extensive analysis of this paragraph in Sepher ha-Bahir and its possible link to demiurgic ideas in Christian works, see E. R. WOLFSON, “The Tree That Is All: Jewish- Christian Roots of a Kabbalistic Symbol in Sefer ha-Bahir,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 3 (1994), p. 31-76. 372 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH parallels drawn between the levels, parts, and degrees of the soul and the worlds of being, which would continue to be developed in later works along theosophical lines.74

IV. God and Ḥokhma according to the “Masters of the Secret of the Letters”

Moving on to the alphabetical segment of the “second mystery” in the sixth chapter of Or Zarua‘, we find that de León transplanted it almost entirely intact to the Munich treatise. The original includes a number of speculations about the fifth letter, he, which is said to symbolize the transcendent God or “the Supernal Grade.”75 The two spellings of the fifth letter he, HY and H’, are then interpreted as alluding to the incomplete divine name YH and to the complete Tetragrammaton, YHWH. First, “HY is YH, which is half of the Name (=YH[WH]), and half of the Name is like the whole.”76 Second, as demonstrated earlier in the chapter, when the yod and he of the incomplete name YH are written out in full, they have a numerical value of 26, which is also the value of the whole Tetragrammaton.77 The next speculation concerns the phonetics of the consonant he: as a voiceless glottal fricative it is artic- ulated “effortlessly”, so it symbolizes the transcendent God who emanates all of existence effortlessly. In the same way that the he is the sound of sighing, of “rest and repose” – “whoever toils in his work and desires to rest from strenuous labor opens with he”78 – so “he sustains all existents and from it they are all “emitted.”79 The transcendent God is the source of the divine efflux and providence, and in a proximate passage he is portrayed uniquely as “the captain of the whole ship” propelling all of reality by the force of His spiritual wind.80

74. Gershom Scholem addressed the doctrine of three worlds in de León’s Šeqel ha-Qodeš and Miškan ha-‘Edut in his article, “An Inquiry in the Kabbalah of R. Isaac ben Jacob Hacohen, II. The Evolution of the Doctrine of the Worlds in the Early Kabbalah (Conclusion)” (Hebrew), Tarbiz, 3 (1932), p. 42-43. For further use of the division into three worlds, see de León’s commentary on the thirteen attributes at the end of the fragment of the Munich treatise, printed in MEROZ, “R. Moshe de León’s Commentary,” p. 136-138. For a comprehensive treatment of de León doctrine of the soul, see BAR-ASHER, Journeys of the Soul, p. 192-251. 75. Or Zarua‘ (ed. BAR-ASHER), p. 306-310. 76. Ibid., p. 306. Cf. the Talmud commentary of Rabbenu Hananel b. Hushiel to bEruv 18b: “since the Temple was destroyed, we exalt the Holy One outside the Land with half of the Name, which is tantamount to its entirety.” 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid., p. 308. 79. Ibid., p. 309. 80. Ibid. See SCHOLEM, “Eine unbekannte mystische Schrift des Mose de León,” p. 117 with n. 1; ALTMANN, “Or Zarua‘,” p. 282, n. 248; FARBER, “Sources,” p. 79-80, n. 28; WOLFSON, FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 373

In the Munich treatise, de León updates the old speculative topos for the theosophic context. The letter he no longer alludes to the transcendent deity but to the sephira beneath Ḥokhma/Bina (these two sephirot are symbolized by the first two letters of the Tetragrammaton: YH). De León also takes the two previous interpretations of YH, the numerological and the phonological, and weds them under the canopy of the new theosophy: [The letter] he is the spirit (ruaḥ) that sustains and gives life to all spirits. […] Therefore, you find that given that he sustains everything and is rest and repose, everyone in the world according to their suffering and privation return only to this letter he. […] As for the secret of he, it encompasses the secret of the Name, for in it yod and he are joined together. Therefore, the masters of the secret of the letters say that he causes the ship to move, because the ship cannot move without wind (ruaḥ). Verily, the letter he is the secret of the Name. And they said that since he comprises all of the first letters: ’B GD H, so you have the secret of YH, since ’B GD is ten through the secret of yod, and he remains.81

In light of the incontrovertible parallels presented above, it is more than likely that de León’s invocation of nameless sources, like the “masters of the secret of the letters,” is nothing but an appeal to his own authority. What makes this jarring, however, is that he is dramatically reinterpreting his own earlier speculation.82 Immediately after the foregoing quote, de León introduces a novel idea about the first eight letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The letter waw is considered a dividing line between two groups of letters that each have a numerical value of 15, which is also the sum of the letters of the incomplete name of God, YH (Y [10] + H [5] = 15): As for ’BGDHWZḤ, you find YH (=15) on the one side (’ [1] + B [2] + D [3] + G [4] + H [5]) and YH (=15) on other (Z [7] + Ḥ [8]). Waw is in the middle to govern through the secret of YH. Concerning that which we have said that he is the secret of the Name, it is so with respect to its articulation and its [numerological] secret.83

This division of the first eight letters into two groups contains a hint to the double use of the code in the name YH. That is to say, the focus here is both on its articulation in the vocal tract, and on its hidden significance concealed in its numerical value. Once again, one can see the richness of

“Letter Symbolism,” p. 202, n. 26; BAR-ASHER, “Or Zarua‘,” p. 237, n. 210. See, too, Sod Darkhei ha-Šemot, MS St. Petersburg D21, fol. 30r. 81. MS Munich 47, fols. 372v-373r. 82. In ibid., fol. 378r, he cites an idea in the name of “some sages” about the word “eḥad according to the secrets of its letters,” and this too can be traced to Or Zarua‘ (chapter 1). 83. Ibid., fol. 373r. 374 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH the linguistic foundations of the work before us, as displayed by the variety of speculations produced by distinct techniques.84 The second group of anonymous sages to whom de León ascribed alphabetical lore in the Munich treatise is “our rabbis of blessed memory,” who “plumbed the depths” of the numerological significance of the initial letters of the alphabet. De León attributed the following numerological explanation to them: ’B GD HW ZḤ Ṭ. These nine letters are the secret of the number of His essence, may He be blessed and elevated. Because you find that the secret number of the nine letters (=45) amounts to the secret of the complete Name with its letters [written out] in full, like so: YWD H’ W’W H’ (=45). They are ten letters that correspond to the ten sephirot belima. This secret is revealed through nine letters of the alphabet, which correspond to the nine sephirot, through which the secret of His Name, may He be blessed, is revealed. […] These nine letters amount to the secret of the ten, since the secret of the Name is ten letters, and the number of its secret is Mah (what) (=M [40] + H [5] = 45). That is why the secret of ’B GD HW ZḤ Ṭ is Mah – all yield the sum of the same matter. For this reason,

84. In a lengthy passage at the end of the Munich treatise de León interprets the ten theonyms that may not be erased. De León delineates how the theonyms match up with various levels of the sephirotic hierarchy: Ehyeh refers to Ayin, “the inapprehensible Ether”; the incomplete name Yah (its letters [YH] deriving from Ehyeh [’HYH]) refers to Ḥokhma, “the Beginning of existence”; and Eloah refers to Bina, the feminine aspect on the Left that is the source of the human nešama. After these three, the next two names are viewed as encoding general principles: the Tetragrammaton expresses the unity of all the sephirot, and Ṣebha’ot – meaning “hosts” – denotes their all-encompassing nature. The sixth name, Elohim, corresponds to the Attribute of Judgment. The seventh, El, is not linked to a particular sephira and so can refer to any level within the sephirotic structure. The eighth name, Šaddai, signifies the sephira that corresponds to the human phallus (Yesod) (on this see E. R. WOLFSON, “Circumcision and the Divine Name: A Study in the Transmission of Esoteric Doctrine,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 78 [1987], p. 77-112). The ninth, Adonai, signifies the last, feminine sephira known as “the Matron” (maṭronita), based on a Hebrew-Aramaic exegesis ascribed to “our rabbis of blessed memory,” and the likes of which we find word for word in the Zohar, III:21b (see Y. LIEBES, “Review of Charles Mopsik, Moses de León’s Sefer Sheqel ha-Qodesh, with an introduction by Moshe Idel, Los Angeles, 1996” [Hebrew], Kabbalah, 2 [1997], p. 275). The ten – or, more precisely, nine – erasable names that cannot be erased therefore constitute a system that enciphers the entire emanative structure, and the intercon- nection and unity of its sephirot. We should take notice of de León’s unmistakable refusal to fully map the ten names onto the ten sephirot, which is rooted in his principled misgivings about enumerating all ten sephirot (“the tenth is not part of the enumeration”). It is also worth noting that this list – which effectively summarizes many of the theosophic-kabbalistic innovations about the letters and names in this entire composition – was later reedited by de León, and this revamped version has been preserved as a kind of appendix to Sheqel ha-Qodesh (ed. MOPSIK), p. 98-102. It is fascinating to note that wherever de León deviated from the Munich treatise, he introduced the changes with “some say” or “some explain.” For a similar ambiva- lence concerning two theosophic interpretations of the ten names that may not be erased, see Zohar, III:10b-11b, where the opinion found in Sepher Rabh Hamnuna is contrasted with that of R. El‘azar. FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 375

you find the secret of Ḥokhma, which is in the secret of Mah, is the power of the essence (mahut) that can show the secret, for everything proceeds from within it.85

In this instance, too, the words of these “rabbis” can be pinpointed in Or Zarua‘, in the “third mystery” of the sixth chapter.86 There, de León notes that the numerological value of the Tetragrammaton spelled out in full is 45, and thus equals to the sum of the first nine letters. This equivalence accords with his approach in Or Zarua‘, in that it reveals something about the inapprehensible “Supernal Grade,” the transcendent God, and His relationship to the “Lower Grade,” the tenth Intellect that is God’s Chariot.87 Here in the Munich treatise, however, the number 45 is the numerological value of the word mah (what), which is included within Ḥokhma. The continuation then explains that Ḥokhma consists of two short words, as it were: koaḥ (power) and mah (what), because it is the nature of the sephira of Ḥokhma to be the “power of the essence”: “because the power (koaḥ) of His essence (mahuto), may He be blessed and elevated, exists within Ḥokhma.”88 As with the previous cases, we see again how de León transformed an exegesis originally about the transcendent God into one about the uppermost reaches of the sephirotic emanation (here, pertaining to the sephira of Ḥokhma). This is buttressed by other explanations brought by the author in his treatment of the letters, in which the letter yod, which comes right after the aforementioned nine and completes the series of the first ten letters, graphically signifies Ḥokhma through its form. This numerological account also highlights the tension between the tenfold structure of Sepher Yeṣira’s “ten sephirot belima” and the nine revealed sephirot stretching from Ḥokhma to Malkhut. It reflects the critically important notion of the transcendence of the sephira above Ḥokhma, namely Ayin, and the resultant refusal to include it in the enumeration of the sephirot. Indeed, de León tried to thread this delicate needle in his subsequent writings, and recognizing this tricky balance between the nine- and the tenfold is of utmost significance for understanding the unique development of the tenfold theosophy in the Zohar’s homilies on the Torah.89

85. MS Munich 47, fol. 364r. 86. Or Zarua’ (ed. BAR-ASHER), p. 310. 87. Ibid. 88. MS Munich 47, fol. 364r. 89. See A. BAR-ASHER, “Decoding the Decalogue: Theosophical Re-engraving of the Ten Commandments in Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah,” in J. BROWN (ed.), Accounting for the Com- mandments in Medieval Judaism: New Studies in Law, Philosophy, Pietism, and Mysticism, Leiden, 2020, forthcoming. 376 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH

V. “Masters of the Secret of the Number Who Transpose Letters”

Still a third group of anonymous sages mentioned in the alphabetical sections of the Munich treatise is “the masters of the secret of the number.” De León notes their proficiency in the technique of “letter transposition,” according to which “they transpose the letters, and all [the letters] are comprised in the secret of the letter that concludes and completes the number.”90 In other words, this method entails the combination of pairs of letters drawn from a predetermined set. The most famous use of this technique is the sub- in which the whole alphabet is the set, and ,(א״ת ב״ש) stitution cipher ’T BŠ the pairs are drawn from letters at opposite ends. After the range of letters is established, the letters are paired and their numerical value calculated. The technician then draws conclusions about their semantic meaning. In the Munich treatise, de León presents two letter transpositions concerning the first ten letters of the alphabet: the first includes the letter yod, and the second does not. In the first, the ten letters make five pairs (’Y BṬ GḤ DZ HW), the numerical value of each being 11 (’ [1] + Y [10] = 11; B [2] + Ṭ [9] = 11; etc.). As he puts it, in this operation “the number is not lost”91: each pair equals the number of letters in the entire set – 10 – plus 1, which teaches that “the One transcends them all, because He is the reality of one- ness.”92 The second letter transposition known as ’Ṭ BḤ93 takes the first nine letters as its set and so makes four pairs plus one unpaired letter (’Ṭ BḤ GZ DW H).94 Here, “the number exists but the one is absent,” that is, each of the four pairs has a numerical value of 10 (’ [1] + Ṭ [9] = 10; B [2] + Ḥ [8] = 10; etc.), but there is no remainder of 1 to symbolize the overarching unity.95 As de León sums up, only the first sequence of the full ten letters reveals the complete unity for it includes and pairs together aleph and yod. This finding embodies a paradox concerning the unity of God and the sephirot: You find the unity is the beginning and first, the One unified. As for the mystery of primordial Ḥokhma, it is both on this side and on that side. It is first since everything is in perfect unity. ’Y: these are the letters that transpose the secret of His unity, may He be elevated and blessed, since yod is the beginning, aleph is the head, middle, and end.

90. MS Munich 47, fol. 371r. 91. Ibid., fol. 362r-v. 92. Ibid., fol. 362v. 93. On the ’Ṭ BḤ technique see Y. PAZ and Tz. WEISS, “From Encoding to Decoding: The AṬBḤ of R. Hiyya in Light of a Syriac, Greek, and Coptic Cipher,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 74 (2015), p. 45-65. 94. Munich MS 47, fol. 362v. 95. “When the yod is not joined with the he the matter is absent, even though the secret of the matter is complete with respect to the decadic aspect” (ibid.). FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 377

Behold, Ḥokhma is superior to everything, since He, may He be blessed and elevated, is revealed through the mystery of Ḥokhma, given that His very existence, may He be blessed and elevated, is brought into existence through it. You now can comprehend that the yod alone is the secret of His unity, may He be elevated and blessed, because the yod is the concealment of the Thought (Maḥšabha) that is hidden in the mystery of His being.96

The explanation of this is as follows. The letter aleph comprises the all- inclusive unity of existence, along the lines of the speculations discussed above that parsed the grapheme into three component letters. The letter yod, however, represents Ḥokhma, the infinitesimal point of initiating the emanation; it therefore represents a different aspect of the cosmological and theosophical unity. Moreover, the “transposition” of the letter yod from the tenth and final position in the sequence to the first pairing (’Y) alludes to Ḥokhma’s dual standing (or dual role) within the divine emanation: “Ḥokhma is first and Ḥokhma is last.”97 Alongside the “primordial Ḥokhma” identified with the highest sephira and the beginning of all that is, there is a second Ḥokhma, at the end of the emanation, which derives from it. While the first Ḥokhma stands at the head of the sephirot, the second is identified with the final sephira (Malkhut), which interacts with the sensible world of individuals below the sephirot. Primordial Ḥokhma belongs to the purely intellectual realm of the “intelligible,” and therefore lies beyond human sensation and contempla- tion. In contradistinction, lower Ḥokhma is entwined with the sensible world, and so man can apprehend it through a process of mental refinement that is likened to removing dross.98 In this context, de León embarks on a lengthy discourse about the gender of each Ḥokhma, focusing especially on the lower Ḥokhma identified with “the feminine world,” in the course of which he engages in fascinating speculations about the letterforms of dalet and he. What is important for my purposes here is that we can track yet again how the Munich treatise incorporates the theosophy of the sephirot, in this case elaborating upon a kabbalistic idea found in Sepher ha-Bahir about the light of Ḥokhma that “causes everything,” which is part and parcel of the notion of a doubled Šekhina (“There is Šekhina below as there is Šekhina above”).99

96. Ibid., fols. 362v-363r. 97. Ibid., fol. 362v. 98. Ibid., fols. 364v-365r. 99. Sepher ha-Bahir (ed. ABRAMS), sec. 116, p. 201. See G. SCHOLEM, Das Buch Bahir: Ein Text aus der Frühzeit der Kabbala, Berlin, 1923, p. 123-125 with n. 4. This notion should not be confused with the idea of a second intellectual realm at the top of the sephirot. Cause for this confusion lies with a number of Scholem’s writings on the beginning of kabbalah in Provence and Catalonia, particularly SCHOLEM, Origins, p. 91-97, 270-276. For a critical history of this confusion, see A. BAR-ASHER, “Illusion versus Reality in the Study of Early Kabbalah: 378 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH

The doctrine of two Ḥokhmot would be developed intensively throughout de León’s theosophic writings, and it famously became a focal point of Zoharic thought and interpretation, with its multitude of distinctions between “supernal Ḥokhma” and “lower Ḥokhma.” The analogy between Divine Wisdom as the first point of emanation to the writing of the letter yod as a tiny point represents Ḥokhma visually through the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Ḥokhma is imagined as the etching of a single point from which “the formation of the letters” is drawn out, an image meant to describe the emergence of the sephirot from Ḥokhma.100 In the Munich treatise, the singularity of Ḥokhma is also expressed by its unique designation as the “intellectual point,” that is to say, the point of origin from which all being is emanated, the initial spark from Nothingness: Yod is one tiny point – a child can write it. It is the beginning of all thought, since it is the beginning of everything. […] Yod is an intellectual point (nequdda maḥšabhit) […] the beginning of all thought, since it is small and hidden, and nothing is smaller than a single point. Therefore, you find that the secret of the letter of this point has nothing above it save complete Nothingness (Ayin).101

This passage zeroes in on the primordiality latent in this infinitesimal first point, or “intellectual point.” Terminologically speaking, it is possible that the term is used for the first time in a new sense – or at least assumes its theosophical import – in this composition as part of the transition from the angelological cosmology of the Sepher ha-Ne‘elam corpus to de León’s prodi- gious writing about sephirotic kabbalah.102 This is a highly significant development for the enterprise of tracking this term in kabbalistic writings,103 and

The Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah Attributed to Isaac the Blind and Its History in Kabbalah and Scholarship” (Hebrew), Tarbiz, 86 (2019), p. 340-349. 100. MS Munich 47, fol. 359v. 101. Ibid., fol. 371r. 102. For its most sophisticated usage in de León’s theosophical writings, see Sheqel ha-Qodesh (ed. MOPSIK), p. 87-88, and with greater elaboration in the French edition: ID., Le Sicle du Sanctuaire, Chéqel ha-Qodech, Lagrasse, 1996, p. 255-257, esp. n. 898. For its appearance in de León’s other theosophic writings, see below, near note 114. On this matter see further I. TISHBY and F. LACHOWER, The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts, trans. D. GOLD- STEIN, vol. 1, Oxford, 1989, p. 281. 103. For its appearance in R. Isaac ha-Kohen’s works, see SCHOLEM, “Qabbalot,” p. 114, and ID., “An Inquiry in the Kabbala of R. Isaac ben Jacob” (Hebrew), Tarbiz, 2 (1931), p. 195, esp. the sources in p. 206, n. 16. It bears mentioning that R. Isaac ha-Kohen’s Peruš ha- Merkabha has only survived as an interlude within a long work written by none other than de León ; see Mishkan ha-‘Edut (ed. BAR-ASHER), p. lxvi-lxxi. For its appearance in Gikatilla’s writings, see esp. JOSEPH B. ABRAHAM GIKATILLA, Sha‘arei Ora, ed. Y. BEN-SHLOMO, Jerusalem, 1981, p. 119, and see also the discussions in BLICKSTEIN, “Between Philosophy and Mysti- cism,” p. 67-68, 92-112; in R. Shemtob Ibn Shemtob’s works, see G. SCHOLEM, “Remnants FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 379 for the proposal to compare it to similar terms in medieval Christian mysticism.104 It is difficult to overstate the importance of this combination of cosmological compression with intellectual concentration in the history of medieval Jewish mysticism. The mixture of ontology with an intellectual genesis, accompanied by meditations on the different components of the Hebrew language, gave rise to a unique doctrine on the concentration of consciousness into a single point encompassing all being. An understanding of the roots and shoots of this idea affords us a much deeper appreciation of the development of certain basic concepts in medieval kabbalah, concepts which would come to take center stage in later kabbalah, such as the doctrine of divine self-contraction, ṣimṣum.105 With respect to ṣimṣum, it bears noting that in a number of places in de León’s theosophic writings one finds clear expression of Ḥokhma as the primordial point from which began “the unfolding of the [sephirotic] structure” and of all existence. As he writes in one place: The mystery of the central point is the beginning of the [sephirotic] structure within the circle, because the circle does not curve properly except by means of the central point within the circle’s emptiness, from which the whole [of the circle] is properly constructed. The point located within its space is the main element […] and it is the beginning of the [sephirotic] structure.106

To this we should add the noteworthy fact that in the Munich treatise de León combines the description of Ḥokhma emerging from Ayin with the rabbinic notion of “the God who builds worlds and lays waste to them.”107 As Asi Farber noted, this idiosyncratic combination should perhaps be considered a fascinating speculative parallel to the idea of the destruction of of R. Shem Tob Ibn Gaon’s Work on the Elements of the Sephiroth Theory” (Hebrew), Qiryat Sepher, 8 (1932), p. 538, and M. IDEL, “Kabbalistic Materials from the School of Rabbi David ben Yehudah he-Ḥ asid” (Hebrew), Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 2 (1983), p. 189-190 (see Idel’s proposal for the origin of this term in the writings of R. David b. Judah). 104. In this connection see the penetrating analysis of Charles Mopsik on “Le Point suprême” in Sheqel ha-Qodesh (ed. MOPSIK), p. 65-70, in de León’s works, and especially his suggestion of linking it to the term punctus scientificus in the thought of the Dominican theo- logian Albertus Magnus. 105. Our conclusions here ought to be combined with previous scholarly calls for an inquiry into the medieval genealogy of the notion of ṣimṣum, famously developed by R. Isaac Luria and his disciples in the sixteenth century and beyond. See, too, Sheqel ha-Qodesh (ed. MOPSIK), p. 68. And see in particular M. IDEL, “On the Concept of Ẓimẓum in Kabbalah and Its Research” (Hebrew), Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 10 (1992), p. 59-112; ID., “The Mud and the Water: Towards a History of a Simile in Kabbalah,” Zutot, 14 (2017), p. 64-72; B. SACK, “R. Moses of Cordovero’s Doctrine of Ẓimẓum” (Hebrew), Tarbiz, 58 (1989), p. 207-237. 106. J. H. A. WIJNHOVEN, “Sefer Ha-Mishkal [by Moshe de León]: Text and Study,” Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1964, p. 110-111. 107. MS Munich 47, fol. 372r. 380 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH worlds found in the Zohar’s Idrot.108 Such descriptions illustrate the importance of this precious fragment of the Munich treatise for grasping the eti- ology of a hallmark cosmological theory of kabbalah. De León presents the findings of nameless numerologists, through their transposition of letters, as shedding light on the most deeply hidden secrets of the divine science. The secrets revealed mostly pertain to the uppermost, intellectual planes of existence, in keeping with the new approach de León develops in the Munich treatise. Here, too, it is productive to examine the speculations unique to this work and compare them to similar ones about the first point of being which appear time and again in de León’s earlier, unsigned works. In the latter, we consistently find that the causative hierarchy and motion spanning from the transcendent God (“the Supernal Grade”) to the three worlds below Him (intellects, spheres, and lower world) had its origins in an initial outburst of the divine “emission” – usually imagined as a flash of brilliant light – that engendered multiplicity.109 The Sepher ha- Ne‘elam corpus identifies the primordial emission with the Active Intellect. Moreover, its author describes it as the first creation, and equates it with “the Prince of the Countenance” or “Metatron,” who, in turn, it mediates between the Supernal Grade and the three worlds. De León draws another analogical template, one which he uses repeatedly, from the graphic representation of the Hebrew vowel points and cantillation signs. The vowel points, which are said to “move” the consonantal letters, represent sources of causal motion, whereas the cantillation signs animate both the letters and the vowel points through musical melody.110 Prominent in this context is the association of “the Prince of the Countenance” with the vowel ḥolam (written above the letter), and the downward distribution of the emission with the vowels šureq (or šuruq, placed in the middle of a waw) and ḥiriq (written under the letter).111

108. A. FARBER, “‘The Husks Precede the Fruit’ – On the Question of the Origin of Evil in the Early Kabbalah” (Hebrew), Eshel Beer Sheva, 4 (1996), p. 133-134. 109. See, e.g., MS Paris, BN héb. 817, fol. 83r. 110. This connects to the notion of vowel points as “the soul (nešama) of the letters,” a notion adopted by kabbalists under the influence of Sepher ha-Bahir (see Bahir, ed. ABRAMS, sec. 83, p. 169). The first lines of the Munich treatise (MS Munich 47, fol. 335v) give us reason to assume that such a discussion was part of the complete composition, although only its end survives. Compare, for example, WIJNHOVEN, “Maskiot Kesef,” p. 14-15. R. Todros Abulafia, a contemporary of de León, cited this idea in combination with a tradition about the letters and vowels: “I have received profound matters and innermost ideas about the form of the vowel points and the letters” (Sha‘ar ha-Razim, ed. M. KUSHNIR-ORON, Jerusalem, 1989, p. 73-74). R. Shemtob Ibn Gaon copied this in his Sepher Baddei ha-Aron u-Migdal Ḥanan’el, written in Safed in 1325; see the facsimile edition edited by D. S. LOEWINGER, Jerusalem, 1977, p. 168. Another author who copied this from R. Todros was R. David b. Judah he-Ḥasid; see The Book of Mirrors: Sefer Mar’ot ha-Ẓove’ot, ed. D. C. MATT, Chico, CA, 1982, p. 161-162. 111. Cf. Sod Darkhei ha-Šemot we-Sod ha-Otiyyot, MS Paris, BN héb. 770, fol. 212r. FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 381

Throughout the Munich treatise, one can discern the faint contours of these underlying images. Ḥolam has been transposed from the Prince of the Coun- tenance to the sephira of Ḥokhma.112 The letterform of yod no longer alludes to the tenth Intellect, Metatron, or to the burst of light beneath the deity; it is now identified as the “intellectual point” of Ḥokhma. De León even went on to incorporate these ideas into his signed theosophic writings, where he writes profusely about the sephirot and their emanative configuration. To take one example, in his Šeqel ha-Qodeš he writes about the deity, who “out of His great concealment […] brought into existence from Himself the mystery of His existence, and brought into existence from Him- self the mystery of the light of the essential radiance, according to the mystery of a single point, which is greatly concealed,”113 which he also refers to there as “the intellectual point.”114 Existence continues to be drawn out of that luminous point of the primal radiance, identified with “the supernal Thought which is the first cause,” in other words, with the sephira of Ḥokhma.115 What is more, use of the imagery of a radiant point to portray the emanation of the efflux from God through supernal Thought to the emanated sephirot is quite familiar: it occurs in a famous discourse at the very beginning of the Zohar on Genesis.116 The discourse consists of a series of brief

112. “The three [vowel] points are positioned one above the other, three of them in one pattern: ḥolam, ḥiriq, šuruq – upper, middle, lower. For you find that ḥolam is supernal, above everything, and moves the letters below it according to its desire and will” (MS Munich 47, fol. 369r). 113. Sheqel ha-Qodesh (ed. MOPSIK), p. 92; WOLFSON, Book of the Pomegranate, p. 106-107 (cf. Šošan ‘Edut, 331). See I. TISHBY, The Wisdom of the Zohar, trans. D. GOLDSTEIN, vol. 1, Oxford, 1989, p. 552-553; H. PEDAYA, Vision and Speech: Models of Revelatory Experience in Jewish Mysticism (Hebrew), Los Angeles, 2002, p. 134-135; M. ORON, Sefer ha-Shem Attributed to R. Moses de León (Hebrew), Los Angeles, 2010, p. 72. Cf. Sheqel ha-Qodesh (ed. MOPSIK), p. 22: “He, may He be blessed, from the sealed and concealed Davar brought into existence the radiance of a single, greatly concealed point at the beginning, from which He extended His existence through the radiances of the mysteries from a greatly concealed emanation.” 114. Sheqel ha-Qodesh (ed. MOPSIK), p. 16-17. 115. Ibid. On this see R. GOETSCHEL, “The Conception of Prophecy in the Works of R. Moses de León and R. Joseph Gikatilla” (Hebrew), Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 8 (1989), p. 234; M. HELLNER-ESHED, A River Flows from Eden: the Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar, trans. N. WOLSKI, Stanford, CA, 2009, p. 36-37 and 257. 116. This homily on “the enlightened ones will be radiant like the radiance of the firmament” (Dan. 12:3) has been printed at the beginning of the Zohar of the Torah since its very first printing: Sepher ha-Zohar ‘al ha-Torah, vol. 1, Mantua, 1558, fol. 15a-b (after the Haqdamat Sepher ha-Zohar spanning fols. 1a-14b); Sepher ha-Zohar ‘al ha-Torah, Cremona, 1559, Berešit, p. 9-10. On this literary unit within the broader context of the Zoharic homilies on the first verses in Genesis, see M. ORON, “Three Commentaries to the Story of Genesis and Their Significance for the Study of the ‘Zohar’” (Hebrew), Da‘at, 50-52 (2003), p. 183- 189 (repr. in ORON, Window, p. 134-140). 382 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH meditations on the very first verse (Gen. 1:1), all of which take as their point of departure the glow of the primal radiance,117 and it resembles other Zoharic homilies on the phrase “the radiance of the firmament” (Dan. 12:3).118 Near the description of this radiance in the opening passage there also appears an opaque description about a “blinding spark” and the breakthrough of “a high and hidden point” described as the “Beginning” of being, quite similar to the description of Ḥokhma.119 Woven like a thread throughout these central homilies is this notion of the breakthrough of a primal point from which all existents emerged – from the creation of Elohim to everything else created from it through the Divine commands.120 For present purposes, there is remarkable similarity between the imagery describing the emanation of the sephirot in a famous Aramaic discourse in the Zohar, on the one hand, and both the theosophic and pre-theosophic writings of de León. In this case, too, I believe that the description of the intellectual point in the Munich treatise shows us an intermediate phase between the two conceptual worldviews.

VI. Conclusions

The long fragment from de León’s treatise preserved in MS Munich hebr. 47 is a rare witness to the transition from de León’s early period, over the course of which he produced a thick dossier of unsigned compositions, Sepher ha-Ne‘elam and Or Zarua‘ particularly notable among them, to his later and more familiar period reflected in his signed treatises on sephirotic

117. Zohar, I:15b-16a. A number of scholars have noted the link between the term “radiance” and its appearance in Dan. 12:3 in Sepher ha-Zohar; see LIEBES, “Zohar we-Eros” [The Zohar and Eros], Alpayyim, 9 (1994), p. 73-74 with n. 45; E. R. WOLFSON, Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism, Princeton, NJ, 1994, p. 355-357, 377-380; B. HUSS, The Zohar: Reception and Impact, trans. Y. NAVE, Oxford, 2016, p. 47-48, 51-57; P. GILLER, Reading the Zohar, the Sacred Text of the Kabbalah, Oxford, 2001, 69-87; D. ABRAMS, “The ‘Zohar’ as Palimpsest: Dismantling the Literary Constructs of a Kab- balistic Classic and the Turn of the Hermeneutics of Textual Archeology,” Kabbalah, 29 (2013), p. 30-32. 118. Particularly well known is the short homily on this verse printed in Tiqqunei ha-Zohar, ed. R. MARGOLIYOT, Jerusalem, 1978, fol. 1a; compare Zohar Ḥadash, ed. R. MARGOLIYOT, Jerusalem, 1953, p. 104 col. b (“tiqqunim”). 119. For a brief discussion about this passage’s textual history, see most recently R. MEROZ, The Spiritual Biography of Rabbi Simeon bar Yochay: An Analysis of the Zohar’s Textual Components (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 2018, p. 27-28. 120. Zohar, I:15a. In this discourse, one also finds a description of the splitting of the point of radiance into “the mystery of the three [vowel] points: ḥolam, šuruq, and ḥiriq” (I:15b), an idea also repeated in de León’s signed works, as we have said. See, e.g., WOLFSON, Book of the Pomegranate, p. 329 (and compare the general point made in SCHOLEM, Major Trends, p. 395, n. 132). FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH 383 theosophy. In this intermediate phase, de León continued to engage in speculation on divine names, letters, and vowel points, which he consistently made sure to attribute to mysterious mystical fraternities. Signs of this intermediate stage are also evident in de León’s later theosophical works,121 which complicates the oversimplified description of a clear and sharp break ascribed to de León and his contemporaries. The evidence collected here suggests that the scholarly consensus of a general abandonment of alphabetical mysticism by Castilian kabbalists in the thirteenth century and sudden flocking to theosophical kabbalah should be superseded by a more nuanced and complex narrative. According to this narrative, the transition does not only entail bring- ing an old speculative system up to date with the cutting edge, but also the creation of new conceptual models by blending together distinct conceptual systems. As noted above, this paradigm shift came with dramatic changes in genre and the deployment of an array of literary devices to transmit the concealed content. As I have tried to show in this study, the Munich treatise may serve as a kind of frozen frame of a mind in motion. It exhibits a systematic translation of certain speculative topoi from one conceptual framework to another. Discussions and speculations about the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and names of God that appeared in de León’s earlier unsigned writings reap- pear in new conceptual garb. The theological perspective of the earlier works, which made reference to a divine realm partially constituted by two planes of chariots and angels, has been abandoned. In its place stands a completely different account: a Godhead with a multiplicity of emanated attributes or sephirot. As a result, the angelological concepts are rejected entirely or reduced to symbols of the ten sephirot. The notion of the Chariot’s duality is replaced by a different duality, that is, an isomorphic correspondence between the realm of divine emanation and the created universe. The three-tiered universe is pressed into a correspondence with various levels of the Godhead according to the new theosophy. And the fourfold structures of the Chariot angels are incorporated into the multiplicity of the singular Godhead.

121. De León’s obvious appreciation of the kabbalah of divine names comes across in his theosophic discussions of the reasons for commandments and customs (“mysteries”), in which he mentions the masters of the divine names. See WIJNHOVEN, “Sefer Ha-Mishkal,” p. 116 and 136; ID., “Maskiot Kesef,” p. 14-15. Reference is made to these attributions in SCHOLEM, “Qabbalot,” p. 92, n. 4 ; FARBER, “Sources,” p. 87, n. 47; WOLFSON, Book of the Pomegranate, p. 70 (with notes); M. ORON, Samuel Falk: The Baal Shem of London (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 2003, p. 17, n. 25; Mishkan ha-‘Edut (ed. BAR-ASHER), p. 88-89 ; A. BAR-ASHER, “‘Kabbalah’ and Minhag: Geonic Responsa and the Kabbalist Polemic on Minhagim in the Zohar and Related Texts” (Hebrew), Tarbiz, 84 (2016), p. 214-223. 384 FROM ALPHABETICAL MYSTICISM TO THEOSOPHICAL KABBALAH

Similarly, previously alphabetical speculations brought to light mysteries about the transcendent God, the Active Intellect (identified with Metatron), or the angels and celestial spheres; now, they yield information about the uppermost intellectual plane of theosophic kabbalah – the sephira of Ḥokhma and the sephirot emanating from it. The Aristotelian model of causal motion (or generation) is here worked into the dynamics of the divine Ḥokhma, the first emanated entity that can be affirmed cataphatically. In this connection, de León deploys different letter combinations of the alphabet and the Tetragram- maton to demonstrate the graphic and phonological expression of Ḥokhma as the “intellectual point” of existence. A lower Ḥokhma is also identified at the end of the sephirotic emanation, functioning as an intermediate intellectual realm where the intelligible meets the sensible, the axis mundi bridging the realm of the divine emanation with the world of matter beneath the sephirot. As the brief quotes have exemplified throughout this study, the conceptual shifts that can be pinpointed in this rare work, of which only part survives, furnish us with the thick background necessary for understanding the formation of key concepts in the theosophic worldview of the Zohar. The conceptual linkages and developments that reflect drastic changes from a particular theological model to new theosophical positions, open a window onto the uncharted world of thought that gave rise to unique strands of theosophic kabbalah during the initial period of the Zohar’s composition. The conceptual shifts detailed here contribute greatly to comprehending the conceptual soil from which the sephirotic doctrine of Zoharic kabbalah sprung, the doctrine that would in time, eclipse the theories propounded by other medieval schools of kabbalah. This is especially true of the foundational kabbalistic concepts that first appeared in the writings of the first Spanish kabbalists and were given a new spin in the kabbalah of the Zohar due to, it would seem, mean- ingful engagement with other modes of thought. The alphabetical secrets of the Munich treatise hold priceless information about the immensely influen- tial intellectual and polemical undercurrents shaping texts that would eventually form the core of canonical kabbalistic literature.

Avishai BAR-ASHER [email protected]