Conceptualizations of Tzimtzum in Baroque Italian Kabbalah

Home , Moshe Idel, Rachel Elior, Tzimtzum, Yehuda Liebes

Moshe Idel

Abstract

The paper will survey the ways in which three Kabbalists active in Italy at the end of the 16th and early 17th centuries transformed the Lurianic concept of divine contraction: Menahem Azariah of Fano, Joseph Shlomo of Candia, and Abraham Herrera. The main point of this essay is to analyze the contribution of philosophical concepts to the inter- pretion of Luria’s mythopoeic method.

Tzimtzum: A Constellation of Ideas

The concept of tzimtzum, understood as divine contraction, or alternatively, as divine withdrawal when it refers to the first act of the theogonic/cosmo- gonic process, has enjoyed a distinguished career in Kabbalistic texts and their scholarship.1 Earlier scholars believed tzimtzum was an original contribution

1 See, e.g., David Neumark, Toledot ha-Filosofiah be-Yisrael, vol. 1, 1921 (New York: A.Y. Shtibl, 1971), 179–80; Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, trans. Allan Arkush, ed. R.Z.J. Werblowsky, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 449–50; idem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, (New York: Schocken Books, 1960), 260–64, especially 411 n. 51, 412 n. 77; idem, Kabbalah ( Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), 129–35; Lawrence Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 128–31; Daphne Freedman, Man and the Theogony in the Lurianic Kabbalah (Pistakaway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006), 27–42; Joseph Avivi, Kabbalah Luriana, vol. 3 ( Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2008), 1184–88; Christoph Schulte, “Zimzum in the Works of Schelling,” Iyyun 41 (1992): 21–40; idem, “Zimzum in der Kabbala Denudata,” Morgen-Glantz 7 (1997): 127–40; idem, “Zimzum in European Philosophy, A Paradoxical Career,” in Jewish Studies in a New Europe: Proceedings of the Fifth Congress of Jewish Studies in Copenhagen 1994 under the Auspices of the European Association for Jewish Studies, ed. Ulf Haxen, Hanne Trautner-Kromann, Karen Lisa Goldschmidt Salamon, (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel A/S International, 1998), 745–56. For more general reflections see, e.g., David Novak, “Self-Contraction of the Godhead in Kabbalistic Theology,” in Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, ed. Lenn E. Goodman (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993), 299–318; Mordechai

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi ��.��63/9789004292697_004 Conceptualizations of Tzimtzum in Baroque Italian Kabbalah 29 of the Safedian Kabbalist R. Isaac Luria Ashkenazi, but more recent studies have uncovered a series of sources that anteceded him. These most plausi- bly served as the foundation of his formulation2 within a wider web of concepts like the breaking of the vessels or the reparation, Tiqqun.3 Those sources span the 13th century Kabbalah through early 15th century Spain to the early 16th century Ottoman Empire and Safed4 although it is easy to assume much earlier, pre-Kabbalistic inspiration.5 Keeping in mind some Safedian Kabbalists’ growing interest in the concept of tzimtzum, it is interesting to note that the idea was never mentioned by any Kabbalist in Italy (Italian, Ashkenazi or Sefardi, Jew or Christian) before the last decades of the 16th century, despite the existence of several antecedent explo- rations of the concept in Spanish Kabbalah. The independent development of Kabbalah in Italy from that of Kabbalah in Spain may explain the absence of tzimtzum in Italian sources. It seems that the more philosophically oriented Italian Kabbalists were much less concerned with mythical events associated with the very beginning of emanation.6 Nevertheless, Italy became the site of a most interesting controversy over how this concept should be understood.

Rotenberg, Hasidic Psychology: Making Space for Others (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Books, 2003). See also notes. 91, 93. 2 Efraim Gottlieb, Studies in Kabbalah Literature, ed. Joseph Hacker, (Tel Aviv: The Chaim Rosenberg School, 1976), 91; Bracha Sack, The Kabbalah of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, (Beer Sheva, IL: Ben Gurion University Press, 1995), 57–82 (Hebrew); Boaz Huss, “Genizat Ha-Or in Simeon Lavi’s Ketem Paz and the Lurianic Doctrine of Zimzum,” in Lurianic Kabbalah, eds. Rachel Elior, Yehuda Liebes, ( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992), 341–62; Moshe Idel, “On the Concept of Zimzum in Kabbalah and Its Research,” in Lurianic Kabbalah, eds. Rachel Elior, Yehuda Liebes, ( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992), 59–112; and Moshe Idel, Primeval Evil in Kabbalah: Totality, Perfection and Perfectibility, “Chapter IV: 4, Chapter 5,” (forthcoming). 3 See Isaiah Tishby, The Doctrine of Evil and the Shells in the Lurianic Doctrine, ( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1942). Tishby’s introduction, which posits the emergence of evil as the reason for divine withdrawal, failed to fully acknowledge David Neumark’s explicit linkage between withdrawal and the emergence of evil in a Kabbalistic treatise written in Spain. See note 1. 4 Cf. the studies in note 2. 5 Three sources that could inspire the Kabbalists include Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 411 n. 51; Yehuda Liebes, “The Kabbalistic Myth as Told by Orpheus,” in Studies in Jewish Myth and Jewish Messianism, trans. Batya Stein, ed. Yehuda Liebes (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993), 86–92; and Dalia Hoshen, “The Doctrine of Tzimtzum and the Teaching of R. Akivah: Kabbalah and Midrash,” Daat 34 (1995): 34–60. 6 See Moshe Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, 1280–1510, a Survey (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).