VAbulafia’sKabbalahversus other Kabbalists 24 Prophecy and Individuality

The emphasis on the readingofthe parable thatviews it as dealingwith Abulafia’s own role as the son of God and the possessor of the pearl is part of the more indi- vidualistic propensity of his general approach. Under the pressureofthe noetic vi- sions he adopted from the Greek sources as mediated by Muslim and Jewish texts, Abulafia regards the paramount processes as amatter of an individual’smind and as reversible events that an aspirant mayre-experience if he so chooses. He also al- legorised collective events such as the Exodus from Egypt and the Sinaitic revelation. As Abulafia explicitlystates:Sinai, Paradise, and the Land of Israel are analogous to alower entity,just as the Seat of Glory,Jerusalem, and the supernal academyall rep- resent the same entity on high, although they are reinterpreted as being related to the experience of aliving person.¹ Ipropose to designatethis type of allegory as spiritu- alistic exegesis,² which also reverberatesinhis followers’ writings.³ AccordingtoAbulafia’sunderstanding,his Kabbalah had two mains goals: one is union with God and the other is the attainment of prophecy.The formerisunder- stood as the goal of the Torah,⁴ and the various expressions of Abulafia’sunitive vi- sion have been analysed in detail elsewhere.⁵ The second one, which Ihaveanalysed in aseparate study,isdiscussed in numerous instances in Abulafia’stexts.⁶ However, Iwould like to adduce one more expression of the centrality of this ideal. In the in- troduction to his Mafteaḥ ha-Ḥokhmot,Abulafia writes:

From the entireTorah, the prophet will indeed onlypursue that which is sufficient to bring him to prophecy.Sincewhat does it matter whether the world is eternal or created?This will not add anydegree to him or diminish his degree because of this; it will not add to his rank and will not diminish his rank.⁷

This seems to me to be afundamental statement on Abulafia’sattitude towards the special nature of the topics thatare found in the Bible: neither the theological nor the cosmologicalones are conceivedasimportant,but onlyahuman’spsychological

 See SitreiTorah,90.  See Idel, Language,Torah, and Hermeneutics,xvi–xvii. This has to do with astrongindividualist tendency in Maimonides’s Guide. See also Ralph Lerner, “Maimonides’ Governanceofthe Solitary,” in Perspectives on Maimonides,33–46. . יה נכ חס לי ןג דע ן : Forexample,see the anonymous treatise from his school, Sefer ha-Ṣeruf,1  Introduction to his Mafteaḥ ha-Ḥokhmot,32.  Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah,1–31.  Idel, “Definitions of Prophecy: Maimonidesand Abulafia.” See also Mafteaḥ ha-Šemot,163.  Mafteaḥ ha-Ḥokhmot,38: או נמ הם בנ אי אל בי שק כמ הל ות הר וכ הל לא מא שה סמ יפ לק לו בה אי לו די הי בנ האו . יכ המ ול םא עה לו קם מד ןו וא שדח קו מד תו לו תא סו ףי ול עמ הל לו תא רג מע לע ות צמ הד חו די שו גו כם לן יא סו מולףי לע וה אל פי יח מת רד ותג .

OpenAccess. ©2020, Moshe Idel, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110641585-005 258 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

transformation into aprophet.Inthis context,weshould takeinto consideration a statement from the same book—which will be quoted in Appendix B—to the effect that he wrotehis commentary on the Pentateuch onlyfor those who prophesy. As seen above, the true operation is the inner change. To be sure: aserious schol- ar does not have to accept the self-presentation of the author that he is studying,but in Abulafia’scase, the content of his writingsabundantlysustains thosestatements as to what is or is not central for him. In anycase, Abulafia envisions the purpose of the Torahinamannerthatexplicitlycontradictsthe Rabbinic statement thatprophe- cy had alreadyceased,⁸ aview adopted by manythinkers,though not all Jewish ones, in the Middle Ages.⁹ Unlike for the Rabbinic authorities, for Abulafia,the ulti- mate aim of the Torahistobring people to prophecy. Let me provide one more example of his allegorical understanding of avital topic in biblical and Rabbinic Judaism: the ancient Temple ritual. In one of his epis- tles, Abulafia writes:

Whoever wants to come into the Temple and to enterits inmost part should sanctify himself by the sanctity of the highpriest,and should studyand teach and keep and do¹⁰ until he becomes perfect in his ethical and intellectual attributes, and then he should seclude himself ¹¹ in order to receive the prophetic influx from the mouth of the Dynamis.¹²

 Ephraim E. Urbach, “When Did ProphecyCease?” in Me-ʿOlamam Šel Ḥakhamim,ed. Ephraim E. Urbach (Jerusalem: Magnes Press,1988): 9–20;Ephraim E. Urbach, “Prophet and Sageinthe Jewish Heritage,” in Collected Writings in JewishStudies,eds.Robert Brodyand Moshe D. Herr (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press,1999): 393–403;Philip S. Alexander, “ASixtieth Part of Prophecy: The Problem of ContinuingRevelation in Judaism,” in WordsRemembered, Texts Renewed:Essaysin Honour of John F. A. Sawyer,eds.Jon Davies,Graham Harvey,and WilfredG.E.Watson (Sheffield: Shef- field Academic Press, 1995): 414–33;Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “‘The SageisSuperior to the Prophet’: The Conception of Torahthrough the Prism of the History of Jewish Exegesis” [Hebrew],inStudy and Knowledge in JewishThought,2:37–77;Joseph Dan, “The End of Prophecyand ItsSignificance to Jewish Thought” [Hebrew], Alppayyim 30 (2007): 257–88;Stephen L. Cook, On the Question of the “Cessation of Prophecy” in Ancient Judaism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011); and especiallyBen- jamin D. Sommer, “Did ProphecyCease? EvaluatingaReevaluation,” Journal of Biblical Literature 115 (1996): 31–47.  As to the medieval material, see the rich material collectedand analysedinAmos Goldreich, Au- tomatic WritinginZoharic Literatureand Modernism [Hebrew] (Los Angeles:Cherub Press,2010), 9– 12; Huss, “ASageIsPreferable Than aProphet,” 103–39;Wolfson, “SageIsPreferable to Prophet.”  Cf. Avot 4:5.  Yitboded. This term can also be translated here as “concentrate.” See Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah,103–69.  Maṣrefla-Kesef,Ms. Sassoon 56,fols. 33b–34a, ed. Gross (Jerusalem: 2001), 23: רצ ךי רה צו לה וב אא בל תי מה דק וש הל כי סנ פל ינ פל ינ ם , הל קת שד קב וד תש הכ גן וד ול לל ומ וד לל דמ של ומ ור על וש עת ד יש לש בם דמ תו וי בו בד יר תו וי , או יז בת דו כד יד קל לב שה עפ נה וב יא פמ הי בג רו ה . Letmepoint out that Iproposed to distinguish between ecstatic Kabbalah, which is less interested in placebut rather seeks to emphasise the importance of the human being’sperfection, versus theo- sophical-theurgical Kabbalah, which is much moreconcerned with placeand with the emendation of the divine sphere. See my “The Land of Israel in Jewish Mystical Thought” [Hebrew], in The Land of Israel in Medieval JewishThought,207–8, 211. In my opinion, this claim is true both emicly 24 Prophecy and Individuality 259

Abulafia himself was not of priestly extraction, nor was he especiallyinterested in rebuildingamaterial Temple¹³ or even in the Jews’ return to the Land of Israel, de- spite his belief that he wasthe Messiah. We know for sure that he was an Israelite,¹⁴ and as such, he could not,Halakhicallyspeaking,serveasapriest—Kohen—still less ahighpriest.Thus, accordingtohis own criterion, if we takehis words on the level of their plain sense, he could not become aprophet. Interestingly enough, he claims thathereceivedatradition thatthe Messiah would build the supernal Jerusalem by means of the divine name before the terres- trial Temple would be built,apassagethat Iunderstand to be dealing with the human intellect.¹⁵ Though emiclyspeaking, Abulafia believes he is dealingwith the real temple and does not actually subvert what he sawasthe authentic under- standing of this concept,from aRabbinic or etic point of view,hesubverts the tradi- tional understanding of the Temple as such, as well as the importance of the special space in general. In two discussions, one in the context of the parable of the pearl and again in a parallel to this context,Abulafia claims that the best of the Israelites are the Levites, that the best of the Levites are the priests, and thatthe priestsare considered to be prophets.¹⁶ The ecstatic Kabbalist’sassumption that the highpriest’sexperience in

(in whatthe Kabbalists themselvesclaim) and eticly(what can be observed by an outsider). However, Haviva Pedaya, in “The Divinity as Place and Timeand the HolyPlace in Jewish Mysticism,” in Sacred Space: Shrine, City,Land,eds.Benjamin Z. Kedar and Raphael J. Zwi Werblowsky (London: Palgrave Macmillan,1998): 95,claims that theosophicalKabbalah is also concerned with the form of man and his activity and thus in this wayissimilar to ecstatic Kabbalah. In this case, it contradicts the emic, theomorphic, and theocentric approaches of the theosophical Kabbalists,which Iconsider to be cor- rect, although it is true that it empowers the human being. Pedaya simplyconfuses the emic and the etic categories. See also below chapter 25 note 84.Given Abulafia’sreduction of the ideal humanityto the intellect and the divine to asublime, separate intellect,the idea of theomorphism as merely deal- ing with both the human and the divine limbs is agross religious misunderstanding.  The onlypossible exception is abrief reference to the buildingofthe temple in Sefer ha-Ot,69, though immediatelyafterwards, he mentionsthe lettersofthe names of 72 and 42 letters that were revealed to him as somethingtobeperformed now;another exception maybehis Oṣar ʿEden Ganuz,2:8,272.Iassume that the passageabout the Temple is part of the national/historical narra- tive.  See Mafteaḥ ha-Šemot,148.  Mafteaḥ ha-Šemot,100–101: קו לב ונ לע מה יש שח וה בא נו יה ור לש שם מל לע בה םש יי ' לכ מו מר יכ מן וק הם קמ שד הל כש ןי כש ני בה ו , או רח ןכ דנ יח שי אר יל נכ ס . כו קך לב ונ יא הן חת ות הנ בנ ינ עת שד בת הנ עה יל נו מה נפ שי יב הת קמ שד לש עמ הל כמ וו כן גנ בד תי מה דק שש מל הט כו ין ור לש מם וכ נו זת כו גנ זד ו . Ihavenot found the source of such atradition.  See the HebrewtextofOr ha-S´ekhel below in Appendix A, paragraph [d], whereanEnglish trans- lation is also provided. See also Oṣar ʿEden Ganuz,1:10, 190,3:8,337.This claim does not fit Abulafia’s own extraction at all as he was an Israelite.See his confession in Mafteaḥ ha-Šemot,149.The tripartite distinction between the threedegrees of the Jews is found in manyinstances in Abulafia’swritings. See also his Šomer Miṣwah,14–15.Interestingly enough, in Sitrei Torah,73, he equates the words 260 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

the Temple was aprophetic one has very little, if anything at all, to do with the man- ner in which the ancient ritual is perceivedinRabbinic sources, transformative and apotheotic as the experience of the high priestwas conceivedtobe, as has been pointed out by Michael Schneider.¹⁷ In fact,Abulafia understands the high priest as comprisingall the other Jews, as well as the Gentiles,aspart of his vision of the highest individual being more uni- versalthan the lowest ones, who are sublated by the process of elevation. In aman- ner reminiscent of the wayinwhich Abulafia describes God as both the simplest and the most complex entity,the “distinguished man” and highpriest sublate the lower forms that comprise humanityinto ahigher one. The particularist figure of the high priest in Rabbinic Judaism, who is mainly conceivedasperforming avery specific and concrete ritual once ayear for the wel- fare of the people of Israel, is—in Abulafia’sphilosophical allegorisation—trans- posed into the most spiritual and universal figure. Amystic who sometimes uses the specific gesture of the blessingpriest alone in asecluded room when thereis no one to be blessed, not on aspecial dayofthe year but rather on anyday or night,and not in aspecial place in the space thatthe community deems important, is, in my opinion, an anomian practitioner.¹⁸ Understood in terms of Rabbinic Judaism, wherethereisnolinkage between the concept of priesthood and the phenomenon of prophecy,this prophetic understand- ing of the high priest is quite an absurdclaim. At least in the biblical material, there are oftenconflicts between the two forms of Jewishreligious leadership; the manner in which Abulafia presents the hierarchyweare discussinghere is absurd according to its plain sense and requires an allegorical interpretation,which can be found in his writings. The Kabbalist,however,describes the mystical experience as being re- lated to afeeling of being anointed, which mayhavesomething to do with the anoint- ing of the highpriest,the king,and—important for the manner in which Abulafia un- derstood himself—the Messiah.¹⁹ In fact,inthefigureofthe Messiah,Abulafia unifiesthe three ancient elites:the king,the highpriest,and the prophet,all of them conceivedasirrelevant in the exilic situation.

Kohen Gadol (“highpriest”)with ha-Neviʾim (“the prophets”)=118. Forthe gematria of 118, see Ap- pendix Abelow.  See his TheAppearance of the High Priest—Theophany,Apotheosis and Binitarian Theology:From Priestly Tradition of the Second Temple Period through Ancient JewishMysticism [Hebrew] (Los An- geles: Cherub Press, 2012).  See Idel, TheMystical Experience,29–30.See especially Sefer ha-Ḥešeq,16, where Abulafia’stech- nique is describedinterms that are identicaltothe priestlyblessing. However,itshould be pointed out that this blessingwas not part of what happened in the HolyofHolies, where the servicewas silent,unlikeAbulafia’srecitation of the combinations of the letters. See Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: ThePriestly Torahand the HolinessSchool (Minneapolis:Fortress,1995),and Israel Knohl, “Between Voice and Silence: The Relationship between Prayer and Temple Cult,” JBL 115,no. 1(1996): 17–30,and its pertinent bibliography.  Idel, TheMystical Experience,76–77. 24 Prophecy and Individuality 261

Abulafia’sinterpretation of themesrelated to the Temple is allegorical and is reminiscent of the views of Philo and Plotinus on this topic,²⁰ though Ihavenorea- son to assume anydirect influencefrom their writings. In this case, the impact of Maimonides’sNeo-Aristotelianism was the main reason for the allegoricalinterpreta- tions that permeate Abulafia’sapproach. As with the philosophers mentioned above, Abulafia is concerned with private experience,unlike the ancient Jewish “Templar” ritual in which the highpriest is the representative of all the Israelites, who are un- derstood to be both acorporate collective and privateindividuals.Tojudge from a passagefound in the epistle we are dealing with here that parallels passage[d] from Or ha-S´ekhel,the priest stands for the intellectual faculty.²¹ This is also the case in adiscussion found in Abulafia’sUntitled Treatise.²² In away,Abulafia opens the possibilityofamore democratic understanding of this ritual: “whoever wants to come.” However,his concepts of perfection and seclu- sion represent amuch more elitist approach, and are part of an epistle thatwas most probablywritten to one of his disciples. In anycase, Iamnot acquaintedwith any discussions in Kabbalistic textsconcerning the dramatic allegorisation and demo- cratisationofthe ancient ritual—indeed, the high priest was onlyeverone person at atime.Inmyopinion, this interpretation belongstowhat Icall the third narrative, to be distinguishedfrom the much more widespread allegorical understandingsof the Temple as amicrocosm thatreflectsthe structure of the macrocosmos found in avariety of ancient and medieval sources, includingRabbi Baruch Togarmi and Abulafia himself.²³ Thislatter understanding maybelong to what Icalled the second narrative, as it is concernedwith the rituals of the nation.

 See Moshe Idel, “Hitbodedut: On SolitudeinJewish Mysticism,” in Einsamkeit,eds.Aleida and JanAssmann (Munich: Fink, 2000): 192–98;Idel, Messianic Mystics,96–97,361,note 148; Scholem, Major Trends in JewishMysticism,123,378,note 9; and, moregenerally, the comprehensive study by Ron Margolin, TheHuman Temple: Religious Interiorization and the Structuring of Inner Life in Early Hasidism [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press,2005). See, morerecently, Avraham Elqayam, “Nudity in the Sanctus Sanctorum: Philo and Plotinus on Nudity,Esthetics and Sanctity” [Hebrew], Kabbalah 28 (2012): 301–21.AstoPedaya’sclaim that Abulafia’sview of the Temple was influenced by Sufi views,there is no proof. She attributed the threefold division of the Temple as correspondingto threeparts of the human bodyaswell as to the macrocosmos,which had actuallyalreadybeen dis- cussed by Rabbi Judah ha-Levi (Kuzari), Rabbi Ezra of Gerona, and Rabbi Baruch Togarmi, to Abu- lafia without referringtoany of his writings.See my “Sefer Yetzirah and ItsCommentaries,” 482, note 59.See also chapter27note 186 below.  See Maṣref la-Kesef,7–9. See also Sefer Toledot Adam,Ms. Oxford, Bodleian 836, fol.154a, where the high priest refers to the intellect in habitus. Interestingly enough, Sefer Ner Elohim,atreatise from Abulafia’sschool that deals with the priestlyblessingand mentions the high priest manytimes,does not use philosophical allegoresis in order to interpret the roleofthe highpriest.This is just one of the reasons whyIthink that this book was not written by Abulafia himself.  Ms.Firenze, Laurenziana, Plut., II, 48, fol. 98b, where the actualisation of the human intellect,the Ṣelem,isdescribed as alower temple. Forthe allegorisation of the Tabernacle in the Pseudo-Maimo- nidean Iggeret ha-Mussar,see my Language,Torah, and Hermeneutics,45–46.  See, for the time being, Idel, “Definitions of Prophecy: Maimonidesand Abulafia,” 33,note 21. 262 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the person whom Abulafia described to be enteringthe Temple was Abulafia himself, although intended solelyinanallego- rical manner.Inhis Oṣar ʿEden Ganuz,hedescribes the end of aperiod of negative experiencesasGod “brought me into the palace of holiness.”²⁴ The single exception to such an interiorisation of the concept of the Temple seems to be amuch later text that was written in the fifteenth century.Inthis text,the anonymous Sefer Toledot Adam,the impact of Abulafia’swritingsisquite obvious. There, it is said thatafter becomingaphilosopher,astrologer, and aperson capable of conjuring angels, de- mons, and liliths, and of reachingthe rank of prophecyand beingsilluminated by the light of God, the aspirant then arrivesatanevenhigher rank, an event that is described as follows:

And cleave to Him and your soul unites with the Creator of the Berešit and will cleave to All and will be abletoperformwonders on earth and will enterinto the chambersofchamberstogether with the King, the Lord of Ṣevaʾot,and youwill be called the Palace of the Lord,²⁵ the Palaceof the Lord, twotimes […]this is the reason whyyou will be abletobeone of those whosee the face of the Kingand be illuminated by the light of life. Rememberand do not forget.²⁶

The description of enteringofthe chambers whereGod is found is quitereminiscent of the highpriest in the ancient Temple.Inthe abovecases, the spiritual sense is, most evidently, not accompanied by an actual performance of the Temple ritual, as the Jewish Temple had been destroyed manycenturies previously. In fact,Abula- fia’sKabbalah’sconcentration on the techniquesfor pronouncingthe divine names represents aqualified continuation, and even more, areplacement,perhaps even a displacement,ofthe most important ritual performedinthe ancient Temple: the high priest’spronunciation of the divinename as the culminationofthe ritual of the Day of Atonement. However,although in bothcases, the divinename is the focus of the ritual, the details of its pronunciation differ dramatically, and Iamconfident that Abulafia was well-aware of this divergence, since he invented the details and the general structure

Inhis Mafteaḥ. בי אי ינ לא יה לכ קה שד הו או זה ןמ בש הו לש תמ הי פס הר הז שא חר רב ית פו בה סמ יני : 3:10,370 ha-Šemot,26, Abulafia claims that Kabbalists identify the holypalacewith the intellectual soul and the holyspirit with the intellect.Thus,wehaveclear indications as to the existenceofamoresus- tained inner,orthird, narrative.For his secluded room as asanctuary where aperson meets the di- vine, see Idel, TheMystical Experience,34. Letmepoint out that Abulafia compares the Israelitesto and to the body, certainlynot acompliment,but rather an( נא יש פה טש ) ”the “people of the plain sense attitude that reflects his ambivalence towards the chosenness of the Jewish nation as understood in traditional texts. See his Šomer Miṣwah,14–15.  In Ms.Firenze, Laurenziana, Plut.II. 48, fol. 71a, the Agent Intellect is allegorised as the “Palace of God.”  Ms.Oxford, Bodleian 836, fol. 156a: תו בד בק ה ' נו שפ מך את דח עת ים צו בר אר יש ות דת קב כב ול ות לכ ע " לכ שע תו וא ות ות ומ תפ םי אב ץר תו נכ בס דח יר דח יר ם םע למ יך י ' בצ וא ות קת אר יה לכ יי ' יה לכ יי ' עפ ימ ם [ … ] ע " תכ כו לל יה תו רמ או פי ינ מה ךל לו וא בר וא הר יח םי . כז רו או ל שת חכ . 24 Prophecy and Individuality 263

of those techniques. Or,toput it adifferent way: Abulafia does not continue or en- hance the ancient ritual, but rather its dramatic abrogation. The person now con- ceivedasahigh priest is not apriest; the chamber of seclusion is not atemple; the time is not aspecial moment in the year,but whenever one would like to perform the technique; the divine name is not what is pronounced in those techniques.What is dramaticallydifferent is the fact that no one is blessed because the technique is performedintotalisolation. While afew elements are used, its ritualistic logic— the culmination of the Temple ritual, taking place in aspecial space, performed by the representative of the Jewishpeople acting in aprivileged moment of the year—has been abrogated. Abulafia’sextreme spiritualisation opensthe question as to whether the assump- tion thatthe actual performance of Jewish rituals as formulatedinRabbinic literature is indeed necessary for understandingthe mannerinwhich his Kabbalah functioned. Let me nuance the question: giventhe detailed descriptions of the techniques Abu- lafia offered, it is strangethat he does not specify apreliminary requirement of keep- ing the commandments in order to enter the path of prophetic Kabbalah, or of inte- gratingthe performance of the commandments as an essentialpart of the technique he described. In our specific case, the question maybeasked whether the spiritual interpreta- tion of the parable is necessarilydependentonthe assumption of the veracityofthe historical narrative,and in my opinion, the answer is no. Accordingtowhat Icall Abulafia’sthird narrative,the highpriest,like the Messiah (both of whom played an important role in the Jewishpopular imagination), is now considered to be apara- digmatic, ideal figurefor modelling aspiritualised inner life, independent of his his- torical role or even his existence.²⁷ This ambivalent attitude towards fundamental as- pects of biblical and Rabbinic forms of Judaism is paramount for understanding Abulafia: though not necessarilydenying the validity of the second narrative,hecon- ceivesittobemarginalatbest to an individual’sspiritual life in the present and the ideal life in general. In our case, it seems evident that Abulafia’stechniques function as an alterna- tive to (and are conceivedasbeing higher than) the most important rite in ancient Judaism: the Templarritual. In my opinion, it is onlybarelycapable of strengthening them, as access to the pronunciation of the previouslyunknown divine name is an act that is explicitlydescribed as being open to everyone, at least in principle. By al- lowing access to the techniques of pronouncingthe letters of the divine namesto people who are not priests, and by ignoring the restriction of such ause to special occasions as the Rabbinic rituals do, Abulafia undermines the efficacy of the more mundanerituals whose mystical efficacy is conceivedasless evident,unlike the par-

 See also Abulafia’streatise preserved in Ms. Firenze, Laurenziana, Plut.II. 48, fols.87b–88a and 92ab,wherethe high priest is again describedinterms of ecstatic Kabbalah. See also Idel, Messianic Mystics,194–97,and Sagerman, TheSerpent Kills,154–55. 264 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

amount importance of the Rabbinic commandments in most other forms of Kabba- lah. In away,Abulafia articulatesadetailed type of technique or ritual of his own that has several slightlydifferent variants in his various handbooks. One of his most influential expressions of these techniquescan be found in Or ha-S´ekhel. This ritual or technique implicitly supersedesthe other,traditionalrituals and is in- tended for younger people through the effective wayinwhich they bring them as close as possibletothe cosmic intellect.²⁸ From his point of view,this is the universal religion and the languageand script thatare of supreme religious importance for the human species are found within the human spirit.However,Abulafia hardlydared to formulate his intention in amore explicit manner,given the persecutions that could resultfrom such aradical approach, and indeed, persecutions seemed to haunt him throughout his career.Evenprophecy, related as it is to imaginative power,speech, images, and writing,constitutes alower form of activity in comparison to the much purer state achieved by the act of universalisation, which assumes aperfect form of intellection and the state of being with God alone, aformoftheosis.²⁹ Abulafia interprets the parable and the meaning of the pearl in terms thatreflect his own messianic mission, which has strongintellectual overtones that transcend the historicalreligions. Not being interestedinthe question of which of the threehis- torical religions is the true one, as in the ordinary version of the three ringsparable, he proposes another,competingalternative which transcends the particular reli- gions. He understood the highest form of religious life as amatter of inner develop- ment that is conceivedasmoving from alow form of cognition/connection to higher forms thereof and then the effacement (not the integration) of the lower in order to be able to attain the higher.Thisprocessshould alsobeunderstood as referringto historical religions that emergedfrom the descent of the influx of the cosmic univer- sal intellect and its transformation into the imaginative representations thatinclude the conventionallyestablished languages and institutional structures thatconstitute these religions. Their return to the universal status in the ideal situation means the

 Idaretodisagree with Elliot Wolfson’sinsistence, expressed in manyplaces in his studies,asto the hypernomian natureofAbulafia’sKabbalah. In his opinion, the importance of the actual perfor- manceofthe commandments for attainingthe ideal experience is upheld by Abulafia and his tech- niques enforce the status of Rabbinic ritual. See, for example,Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia,204–9and 222–23;Wolfson, Venturing Beyond,186–284; as wellasits reverberations in Sagerman, TheSerpent Kills,5,note 8, 109,122,note 44.Inthis context, see my different opinion in “The Kabbalistic Inter- pretations of the Secret of Incest in EarlyKabbalah,” 158–59.InOr ha-S´ekhel,25, the Kabbalist envi- sions the performance of the commandments as preservingsome form of social or psychological order whose existencefacilitates the emergenceofthe conditions that allow for the attainment of the comprehension of God. On commandments as apolitical issue, see two passagesfrom Oṣar ʿEden Ganuz,1:3,121,123.  See the important passage from Ḥayyei ha-ʿOlam ha-Baʾ,197,which is discussed in my Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah,19–20;the passage from the commentary on Sefer ha-Meliṣ,translated above, in chapter8note 66;and the passage from Sitrei Torah,188, translated in chapter 21 note 289above. 24 Prophecy and Individuality 265

transcendenceofthe specifics of theircorporeal, emotional, or imaginative manifes- tations. However,while describingthe more general events that generated collective re- ligious phenomena, for Abulafia, the most central narrative is the third one, which means not just privileging the experience of the individual elite as such, but also his ownspiritual processes that are conducivetoit. In fact,weknow much about his life because of the importance he attributed to certain details of it; he interpreted some of the events that had happened to him as beingmeaningful for his message. It is an interesting enterprise to address Abulafia’spersonal secrets,which are to be added to the secrets of the Torahand the secrets of the Guide and which are presum- ablypart of the eschatological secrets.³⁰ This is one of the major discrepancies between Abulafia and all the other thir- teenth-century Kabbalists:his personality is relatedtomessianic secrets, his itiner- ant career is stronglyrelated to the need to disseminate these secrets,and he was rejected because of them. This ultimateconcern about saving others is missing in other Kabbalists, who were more concernedwith improvingthe inner structure of the divine world. From this point of view,Abulafia attempted to continue Maimoni- des’smentalistic reform, assuming that anew and final stageofthe revelation of the secrets was possible giventhe imminence of redemption. Meanwhile, giventhe inaccurate understanding of the intellectual cosmos,each of the historical religions accuses the others of being idolatrous,asone of the follow- ers of Abulafia’sKabbalah claimed, and such astatement puts the Judaism of his time in the same category as all the other historical religions.³¹ Though proclaiming the superiority of Judaism in many places in his writings, Abulafia nevertheless rad- icallyreinterprets the natureofthis superiority by claiming that it is related less to God’spremeditated choice of aspecific nation as an organic unit,made solelyon genetic or Halakhic grounds,³² thanitistointellectual processes and to combina- tions of letters.³³ In other words, Abulafia’selitist Judaism has little to do with the much more democratic Rabbinic form of Judaism.

 See Sitrei Torah,16–17.  See the passage from the anonymous Sefer Ner Elohim,Ms. Munich, 10,fols. 156b–157a, abook whose views areclose to those of Abulafia and which was translated in Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kab- balah,57, note 22. Comparealso to Abulafia’s Mafteaḥ ha-Raʿayon,44–45,wherehedeconstructs the concept of aJewish nation that is unified by the same beliefs.Unfortunately, the unique manuscript of this work is truncated in quiteasensitive part of the discussion, perhapsbecause of Abulafia’s sharp critique of “Judaism.” MeanwhileIidentified another manuscript and will discuss the whole issue elsewhere.  See, for example, Ḥayyei ha-Nefeš,5,where he speaks about the oblivion of the knowledge of God . שא הר הי רז אמ מד לכ וא תמ ני הו חי די הה חב רי מה שה בם מי םי טה יבו הם םה קה מד נו םי :or his name in the present  On Abulafia’sinterpretation of the meaningofJudaism as confessingthe name of God without mentioningany other criterion, see the various texts presented in Idel, “AUnique Manuscript,” 20–23. 266 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

Abulafia’sidentity as aJew was less related to the Rabbinic criteria and thus less endangered by other religious options such as historical Christianity,asSagerman’s psychoanalytic approach to him stipulates. From his boastingsabout being aprophet and Messiah, wherehesometimes implies thatheisevenhigher than Moses, it is difficult to extrapolateafeelingofinsecurity as to his Jewish identity as he under- stood it.Atthe same time, let me clarify,Ido not assume that Abulafia was apred- ecessor of modernecumenical dialogues or of scholars’ assumptions that there is one universaltruth behind the external forms of the different historicalreligions or the variegated forms of mysticism. Abulafia believed that he wasthe founderofanold-new religion that possessed the true meaning of the Hebrew Bible; arbitrary as his exegesis was, the nature of this religion transcended the particularities of the historical religions and could, given the natural/intellectual character of his religiosity,inprinciple be embraced by ev- eryone. Thoughphilologicallyspeaking he was influenced by bothtypes of Christian- ity (Orthodoxand Catholic) as well as by the Islamic falāsifah,hepresents his reve- lation as original. Such apresentation consists in his strong reinterpretationof central topics related to particularism in traditional Judaism in amore natural and universal manner. The esoteric meaningofthe “choice,” which has been discussed aboveinchap- ter 18 and belowinAppendix A, is aparamount issue in Abulafia’sesotericism, and onlybyunderstanding its natural significance—namely, that some thingsare inher- entlybetter than others—can we alsounderstand other major issues in his thought. Messianism is thereforeless adivine voluntary intervention in history,asisthe case in traditionalJudaism, but rather the resultofintellectual activity initiated by an in- dividual, which means anatural type of activity.Eventhe national redemption that concerns the Jewishpeople is described by Abulafia in anatural manner—in political terms³⁴ and in some other cases in astronomical terms—but hardlyasthe forceful in- tervention of the divinity in the course of events, as is the case in the popularapoc- alyptic texts and in manyelite descriptions of messianism. To summarisethe point underscrutinyhere: the horizontal, nationalmessianism as apopularand exoteric dimension found in Jewish popularliteratureand in the historical interpretation of the parable on the one hand and the vertical, individual, esoteric redemption found in this context on the otherrepresent diverging messages that are related to the parable of the pearl and are presented in an intertwined man- ner in the same text.Nevertheless, accordingtoAbulafia,contradicting as these two narratives maybefrom the phenomenological point of view,they mayeventually convergewhen aperson who believes that he has alreadyredeemed himself takes over the responsibility or the mission of restructuring religion. This is the case

 See Idel, Messianic Mystics,79–81. 24 Prophecy and Individuality 267

with the ecstatic Kabbalist,³⁵ who believed that he was the son in the parable and, so Iassume,also the current possessorofthe pearl.³⁶ The certainty generated by presumablystrong mystical experiences,triggered by accelerated forms of bodily, vocal, and mental activities, mayhaveconvinced Abula- fia thathecould reach the statusofadifferent species from the human one,³⁷ an ex- perience thatexplains his radical attitude as well as the negative reactions to his views.³⁸ It is this type of transformation through processes leadingtospiritual sim- plificationand universalisation that constitutes the ultimate ideal of Abulafia’smys- ticism.His writingsshould be understood as an attempt to attain the pure state of noetic union with the divine realm or divinisation by an act of intellection, astate that he conceivedasbeing higher thanprophecy.³⁹ Interestingly enough,the possi- bility of attaining such extreme experienceswas not envisioned to be asecret,de- spite Maimonides’sreticence to allow it as part of intellectual life. However,unlike the philosophers, and most of the theosophical-theurgicalKab- balists, who capitalised on the Rabbinic commandments as modes for arriving at a higher type of religious experience, the ecstatic Kabbalist proposed several new and precise techniquesthat were contrivedfrom avariety of sources and wereintend- ed to assist the practitioner to achievethe highest noeticgoals. He was not onlyin- terested in using philosophical allegorisations in order to solve theological misinter- pretations,asMaimonides and most of the Maimonideans were, but much more so in an articulation of an interiorisedtype of religiosity thatcould be attained in ashort time by resortingtotechniques that neither Maimonides and his followers nor most of the otherKabbalists would accept.⁴⁰ Abulafia was more interested in arather dras- tic type of human change, while the Maimonideans,like Maimonideshimself, were

 It should be mentioned that in some Midrashic tales,the biblical Abraham was describedaspos- sessingapearl that was capable of healingwhoever sawit. See, for example, BT, Babbaʾ Batraʾ, fol. 16b. Is thereanaffinity between the two proper names,that of Abulafia and that of Abraham whopossessed apearl?  See the passage cited aboveinchapter 20 note 229; see also Idel, Language,Torah, and Herme- neutics,124.  See the passage from his commentary on the prophetic book Sefer ha-Meliṣ,written in Messina in 1282, translated aboveinchapter 8note 66.  Later on, Abulafia was persecuted by the most important figure in the camp of Sephardi Rabbinic leadership:Rabbi Solomon ibn Adret. See my “The Rashba and Abraham Abulafia.”  See Abulafia’sresort to concepts of simplificationand unity in Ḥayyei ha-Nefeš,20, and Or ha- S´ekhel,41. Comparetothe divinisation of the soul in Rabbi Judah ha-Levi’s Kuzari,1:103,and Rabbi Azriel of Gerone’sappropriation of this view in his Commentaryonthe Talmudic Legends, ed. Isaiah Tishby (Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1945), 14.  Forthe analyses of some of Abulafia’stexts as part of alargerphenomenonofan“inner religion,” see Ron Margolin, Inner Religion: ThePhenomenology of Inner Religious Life and Its Manifestation in JewishSources (From the Bible to Hasidic Texts) [Hebrew] (Ramat-Gan: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2011), 208–11, 257–60,314–19,402,405–6. In 269–71, Margolin finds asimilarity between Abulafia’s interiorised interpretation and aZoharic passage which speaks about the parallelism between human states and the various events on high, the latter dimension beingabsent in Abulafia’swritings. 268 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

concerned with alonger form of development of the human spirit that was less re- lated to ecstatic experience. To summarisethis point: though Abulafia followed Maimonides’sallegoricalex- egetical technique, he was inclined to generate anarrative that implicitlypointed not onlytoinner processes, but alsotohis own experiencesand to his special role in teachinganew spiritual message. These twopoints wereconnected to esotericism and sometimes remained onlyimplicitly.However,the interiorisation and individu- alisation of the religious experience do not alsomean its democratisation, as we have amplyseen above.

25 Individualversus CollectiveExperiences

Let me turn now to another dimension of the experiencesAbulafia described. In all the handbooks which explain his techniques, the instructions are very clear: the as- pirant should be alone in aspecial chamber whenusing them.⁴¹ This situation is cor- roboratedbythe descriptions of the mystical exercises as found in Rabbi Nathanben Saʿadyah Ḥarʾar’sbook.⁴² The masterisnever described as accompanying the aspir- ant in the secluded room when he practises the techniques,orassomeone who sur- veys the aspirant as he performs the technique or reachesanecstatic experience. This individualistic approach is also evident in Abulafia’sunderstanding of re- demption as asupremelyindividual experience, as part of the third narrative.On the other hand,notracesofdescriptions or assumptions of collective experiences are found in ecstatic Kabbalah as there are, for example, in Sufism.Surprisingly enough,this absencebecomes more evident when he describes some groups of stu- dents studying with him at the same time, also providingtheir names, unlike the rather evasive identity of the Kabbalists who co-operated in the production of the Zo- haric corpus,anissue to be addressed immediatelybelow in this chapter.⁴³ On the otherhand,the contemporary Zoharicdescriptions of raptures are often related to the uniquestatus of the master, the legendary Rabbi Simon bar Yochai, his special achievements, his life, and his death.⁴⁴ In other words, his presenceand preachingand his extraordinary revelations of secrets regarding the supernal world are part and parcel of triggering the mystical experience or rapture, or at least intensifyingit. It is his magnetic personality that is imagined to constitute the pillar of the group composed of his students.

 See Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah,103–19,122–25,and Idel, TheMystical Experience,37–41, 144.  Le Porte della Giustizia,478–79; Scholem, Major Trends in JewishMysticism,150–51.  See below.273–76.  On his special status in the Zohar and Jewish mysticism under its influence,see Yehuda Liebes, Studies in the Zohar,trans. Arnold Schwartz, Stephanie Nakache, and Penina Peli (Albany, NY:SUNY Press, 1988), 1–84,and Hellner-Eshed, ARiver Flows from Eden,31–51,330. 25 Individual versus CollectiveExperiences 269

This stark divergence sharply differentiates between the two types of Kabbalistic literature. Nevertheless, the two literatures share the samebackground of encounters between Sephardi and Ashkenazi masters, the latter bringingtoSpain from the 1260s onwards not onlyaninterest in pneumatic experiences, but also aresort to linguistic techniques,understood mysticallybyAbulafia and magicallybyother Kabbalists in Castile. This common denominator requires amore elaborate analysis thancan be undertaken within this framework. The emphasis on the importance of loneliness and seclusion in ecstatic Kabba- lah when approachingthe divine and during the prophetic experience should be compared to what happened in the same period with the Maimonideans and the the- osophical Kabbalists:noindividual who claimed to be aprophet or who was regard- ed as aprophet by others is known to have belonged to these two schools in Abula- fia’slifetime. The onlytwo examples we know about in Castile, Rabbi Nissim ben Abraham,the youth from Avila, and Rabbi Samuel the Prophet,are not known for being Kabbalists or philosophers, and in anycase, they have no extant theosophical writings. As seen above, Abulafia’sattitude to Rabbinic myths is sharplynegative,anat- titude thatopposes the more welcoming approach of the theosophical Kabbalists,es- pecially within the Zoharic corpus,tothis layerofRabbinic literature. Such awel- comingapproach contains no parallels to what we have seen aboveinAbulafia’s writings. These divergences notwithstanding,claims have recentlybeen made as to the prophetic nature of Rabbi MosesdeLeon’sand Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’sexpressions. Charles Mopsik claims they wereinfluenced by the prophetic ambience thatAbulafia had created.⁴⁵ On the other hand, Elliot Wolfson and others claim that thereare ec-

 Rabbi Moses de Leon’sSefer Šeqel ha-Qodeš [Hebrew], ed. Charles Mopsik (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 1996), 6–8. Iwould claim something different: the prophetic mode that arrivedfromAshkenaz, where the category of prophet was not problematic in the first half of the thirteenth century and in- fluenced Abulafia, also triggeredthe Castilian Kabbalists to look for amorerevelatory approach. See my “Incantations,Lists,and ‘GatesofSermons.’” We maysee acommon denominator in the sudden emergenceoftwo schools of Kabbalah at the same time in Spain(the ecstatic and the Zoharic) as the appropriation of different types of linguistic techniques that liberatedthe moredoctrinal approach found in Maimonideanism and in the earlier Spanish Kabbalah and triggeredthese different forms of creativity.For Pedaya’sattribution of the central roleofAbulafia’smessianism and calculations, as wellashis disappearance and disappointment duetothe failureofhis messianic mission in Cas- tilian Kabbalah, see “The Sixth Millennium,” 68, 73–75,82, 85,91, 96,whereshe assumes that the channel of transmission of Abulafia’smessianism was Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla, Abulafia’sformer stu- dent,whose relationship with Abulafia was discussed above. Iwonder,however,where Gikatilla ex- pressed anythingabout atype of messianism or eschatological calculations similar to those of his former teacher,either in his printed or manuscript writings.Iwould say, if at all, that he was much closer to Abulafia’sconcepts of spiritual or individual redemption, what Icall the third narra- tive or register,than to his historical eschatology,which does not occur in Gikatilla’swritings.How- ever,except for two brief mentions of his first name, which were immediatelyeliminated from the final form of Ginnat Egoz,written in 1274,Abulafia’sname never occurs throughout his manywritings 270 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

static experiencesinthe Zoharic literature, claims that softenthe gapbetween Abu- lafia’secstatic Kabbalahand theosophical-theurgicalKabbalah.⁴⁶ The first claim has alreadybeen addressed by Yehuda Liebes.⁴⁷ Isee no reason to changemyopinion because of the brief references that Mopsik dealswith that do not describeeither techniquesordetailed forms of general experiences and contain nothing similar to what is found in Abulafia’swritings. In asmall number of phrases that wereadduced to this effect,deLeon and Gikatilla used expressionsthat point to some form of spiritual arousal, but no more—such terms can be found in manywrit- ingsinthe Middle Ages. The contents of their manybooks, however,point in quite a different direction from that of authorsdrivenbyprophetic or ecstatic experiences. However,what is of capital importance from my point of view is they were nei- ther called prophets by others nor did they claim to be so. This is not just amatter of an absenceofhidden experiences, but of how they perceivedthemselvesand were perceivedbyothers. Against the background of the Rabbinic claim about the cessa- tion of prophecy,deLeonand Gikatilla did not rebel or even try to question the prev- alent traditionalopinion on the topic. To have amystical experience is one story;to claim that it is prophetic or ecstatic is quite adifferent one. We can see this see quite clearlyfrom the writingsofRabbi Isaac of Acre, who is not shyabout discussing his various mystical experiences;however,despite his acquaintance with ecstatic Kabba- lah, he categoricallydenies that he is aprophet.⁴⁸ In anycase, in Rabbi Solomon ibn Adret’sfamous responsum, he enumeratessome extraordinary pneumatic experien- ces in his lifetime among the Jews in Europe, but there is no mention of anyKabbal- ist except Abraham Abulafia. Let me point out that the most important statement about prophecy as apossible everydayexperience was formulated in Castile onlytwo generations later in afamous Halakhic compendium written by an Ashkenazi Rabbi, Rabbi Jacob ben Asher.Deal- ing with the Halakhic instructionsrelated to prayer,hewrites:

Lethim think as if the Šekhinah were standingbeforehim, as it is said “Ialwaysset God before me,”⁴⁹ and he should arouse the kawannah and erase all annoyingthoughts so that his thought and intention will remain pureduringhis prayer […]. It is obligatory to direct one’sthoughtbe- cause for Him, thoughtistantamount to speech […]and the pious ones and the men of [good]

(see also p. 76 above). In anycase, the possible link between Abulafia’sattempt to meet the pope and apassage in the Zohar,inboth cases depictedashavingsome form of messianic valence,is, surpris- ingly enough,not mentioned by Pedaya at all. See the discussions by Adolph Jellinek and me to this effect that arereferenced in Idel, Messianic Mystics,121–24.See also chapter 19 note 225above.  Elliot R.Wolfson, “Forms of Visionary Ascent as EcstaticExperience in the Zoharic Literature,” in Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism 50 Years After,eds.Peter Schäfer and Joseph Dan (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993): 219–20,227,234–35,where he claims that the Zoharic circle al- readyexisted.  “Review Essay: Charles Mopsik, Rabbi Moses de Leon’sSefer Šeqel ha-Qodeš” [Hebrew], Kabbalah 2(1997): 284–85.  See Scholem, On the Mystical Shape,227–28.  Psalm 16:8. 25 Individual versus CollectiveExperiences 271

deeds were concentratingtheir thought and directing their prayer to such an extent that they reached a[stateof] divestment of their corporeality and astrengtheningoftheir intellective spirit so that they would reach[astate] close to prophecy.⁵⁰

However,despite the prophetic moment ben Asher inserted, no serious scholar would regard his book as part of aprophetic or ecstatic literature. Ecstasy or prophe- cy is one thing;ecstatic or prophetic Kabbalah as amore elaboratedconceptual ap- proach represented as aliterature is another. Insofar as the second claim as to the alleged ecstatic experiencesinthe Zoharic literatureisconcerned, the situation is much more complex. Letmebegin with the terminological problem. Unlike prophecy, “ecstasy” is aterm imposed by scholars, and as such, it needs to be defined. Ihaveattempted to qualifythe use of ecstasy by resorting to the category of “intense ecstasy” in the case of Abulafia’sexperience, following Marganita Laski,⁵¹ in order to distinguish it from contemplative forms or from the “contained experience” of the Zoharic companions,asHellner-Eshed de- scribes it.⁵² Elsewhere, Ihaveproposed seeing ecstasy as aconstant in human reli- gious experience.⁵³ More recently, Idistinguished between different categories of ec- static languageinvarious layers of Jewish mysticism.⁵⁴ My assumption is not that ecstatic Kabbalah is the onlytype of Kabbalistic school whereecstasiesoccur,but that thatecstasy is “the essential purpose of ecstat- ic Kabbalah,” as well as the use of “techniques for its attainment.”⁵⁵ This means that the centrality and intensity of ecstatic experiencesand the existenceofspecific tech- niques for achieving them are criteria for describingagivenbodyofliterature as ec- static, not justrelying on harbouringsome types of rapturerelated to the perfor- mance of Rabbinical commandments or exegetical practices thatascholardecides to call “ecstasies.” This is the reason whyIuse the term “core” in this context in order to avoid too harsh aseparation between the different Kabbalistic schools.⁵⁶ My approach should thereforebeunderstood as asearch for the general charac- teristics of certain schools or models without assuminganabsoluteseparation be- tween them. This approach has been judiciouslyunderstood in Melila Hellner-

 Tur, OraḥḤayyim,98. Forthe huge impact of this passage,see Raphael J. Zwi Werblowsky, Joseph Karo:Lawyer and Mystic (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society,1977), 61–62,and Aryeh Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah (York Beach: Weiser Books,1982), 283–84,who pointed out some sources and influencesfor this passage. See especiallyatextprintedinTalmidei Rabbenu Yonah,onBerakhot 5, which is quoted in Heschel, Prophetic Inspiration after the Prophets,26–27;Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah,163–64,note 136;and Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic,64–65.  See Idel, TheMystical Experience,40.  Hellner-Eshed, ARiver Flows from Eden,326.  Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic,53–54,56.  Moshe Idel, “On the LanguageofEcstatic Experiences in Jewish Mysticism,” in Religionen—Die Religiöse Erfahrung (Religions—TheReligious Experience),eds.Matthias Riedl and Tilo Schabert (Würzburg: VerlagKönigshausen &Neumann, 2008): 43–84.  Idel, TheMystical Experience,8.  Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives,xviii. 272 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

Eshed’sdiscussions of Zoharic ecstasy as they comparetothoseofAbulafia.⁵⁷ With- out some definitions, qualifications, or distinctions, there is no great gain from using terms such as “genuine ecstasy”⁵⁸ or “profoundlyecstatic” experiencesthatreflect a scholar’sopinion on the Zoharic literature.⁵⁹ As becomes more and more evident in scholarship, the first layers of Zohariclit- erature, which do not includethe twolater treatises Tiqqunei Zohar and Raʿayaʾ Me- heimnaʾ,donot constitutethe work of asingle Kabbalist,asscholars thoughtwhenit was attributed to Rabbi Moses de Leon, and the question thatisincreasinglybeing discussed is whether it is acollective work of agroup of co-operating Kabbalists,⁶⁰ a work of different groups,⁶¹ or merelyuncoordinatedreworkingsofavariety of Ara- maic textsthat fell into the Kabbalists’ hands.⁶² Let me reiterate the approach that Isuggested before the emergence of these pro- posals:

By the 1270s, the province of Castile had become an importantmeetingcentre of Kabbalists […]. We can thereforeregardCastile between 1270–1290 as ameetingpoint for all the major trends within Kabbalah […]. These twodecades witness the final stepsinmost of the older Kabbalistic traditions and the birth of amorecomplex approachtoKabbalah as adiscipline encompassing previouslydiscreet trends of thought.This new approach, mostlyrepresentedbythreeKabbal- ists—Gikatilla,deLeon, and Joseph of Hamadan—as well as by the Zohar,constituteswhat Ipro- pose to call the “innovative Kabbalah” in Spain. […]. Now the time had come when the Kabbal- ists had learned the motifs of this mysteriousmelodyand wereabletocompose novel variations, elaborating upon older motifs and creating new ones.This new work was the Zohar,which con- stituted both the first outpouringand the climax of Kabbalistic symbolic creation.⁶³

This means thatall the trends found in Kabbalah, includingthe ecstatic one, met and confronted each other in Castile, and in principle, thereisnoproblem with as- suming its influenceonsome of the developments in the region, including the Zoha- ric literature.After all, as mentioned above, Abulafia taught some Kabbalists in Cas- tile. However,such aview does not preclude the emergence of aphenomenologically

 Hellner-Eshed, ARiver Flows from Eden,314–16,318.  Through aSpeculum That Shines,330.Inmyopinion, “genuine” is arather doubtfulcategory, scholarlyspeaking.  Wolfson, “Forms of Visionary Ascent,” 234–35.For an additionalcontraposition of the mystical (Maimonidean) versus the mythical (Zoharic) approach, see Lorberbaum, Dazzled by Beauty,26– 28;this is an opposition that fits Abulafia’spropensity for de-mythologisation versus the Zoharic pro- pensity for mythologisation.  This is the theory of Yehuda Liebes, Studies in the Zohar,85–138, and, morerecently, Elliot Wolf- son, whoclaims to have detected the description of such agroup and has printedaKabbalistic trea- tise emanatingfromit. See chapter 25 note 64 below.  This is the theory of Ronit Meroz, “Zoharic Narrativesand Their Adaptations,” Hispania Judaica 3 (2000): 3–63.  Daniel Abrams, Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory (Jerusalem: Magnes Press,2011), 224– 428.  See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives,211–13,215. 25 Individual versus CollectiveExperiences 273

different type of Kabbalah in Castile after Abulafia left the IberianPeninsula, which is my claim. Moreover,the note attachedtomyconsiderations cited abovereads as follows:

This view of the Zohar as the zenith of acertain process takingplaceoverthe twodecades 1270– 1290 is not,however,identicalwith the view that this work is the exclusive composition of Rabbi Moses de Leon, as assumed by Scholem or Tishby.Ibelievethat older elements,including the- osophical views,symbols and perhapsalso shorter compositions,weremergedinto this Kabbal- istic oeuvre which heavilybenefited from the nascent free symbolism.⁶⁴

In my opinion, these are the facts that are of primary relevance as one of the most importantintellectual backgrounds for the emergenceofthe Zoharic literature, and all the laterhypotheses still need moreconcrete evidence in order to become full-fledgedtheses. In anycase, by now,all the serious scholars in the field do not assume ahomogenous Kabbalistic approach within the Zohar. In other words, the Zoharic literature incorporates avariety of views found in Kabbalistic trends that are different from each other and that differ from Abulafia’scorpus,which was writ- ten by asingle author and is more coherent despite his conceptual fluidity. However,from the specific point of view that concerns the comparisons to Abu- lafia, let me refer to three major differences that distinguish the two Kabbalistic schools insofar as the experiential aspectsare concerned: 1) the experiencesde- scribed in the Zohar are always collective and not individual, 2) they are described

 Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives,380,note 66,and, in general, 211–15,aswellasmyintroduction to Efraim Gottlieb,ed., TheHebrewWritings of the Author of Tiqqunei Zohar and Raʿayaʾ Meheimnaʾ [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Israeli Academyfor Sciences and Humanities,2003), 30;Idel, Ascensions on High,125;and Idel, “Moses Gaster on Jewish Mysticism and the Book of the Zohar,” 122,note 47. The quoted statement,aswell as others,points to acomplex attitude towards what “innovative” means in matters of Kabbalah. My views of the Zohar have been judiciouslysummarised by Daniel Abrams, “The Invention of the Zohar as aBook: On the Assumptions and ExpectationsoftheKab- balists and Modern Scholars,” Kabbalah 19 (2009): 56–61;Abrams, Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Tex- tual Theory,295–333. Compare, however,the distorted, in fact inverted, manner in which my views on Zoharic hermeneutics, which Ihavecalled innovative Kabbalah, arepresented in the same volume of Kabbalah (19) by Wolfson, “The Anonymous Chapters of the ElderlyMaster of Secrets,” 169–71.His “own” view on the topic of hermeneutics is actuallymuch moresimilar to what Idescribed in the passage from Kabbalah: New Perspectives,380 that was cited above. Needlesstosay,inthe case of Abraham Abulafia, another main representative of what Icalled innovative Kabbalah, Iemphas- ised the important contribution of earlier Ashkenazi elementsinhis hermeneutics. However,Ido not sharehis view that we have evidenceofwhat he calls “the earlyactivity of the Zoharic Circle” in the Kabbalistic text he printed. Ihaveexpressed my view as to the composition of the Gates of the Elderly Man in the last decade of the thirteenth century in some of my studies.Sincemorematerial belonging to this circle is extant in manuscripts and has not been dealtwith in scholarship before, it is wiser to postpone adetailed discussion of Wolfson’sargument as to the alleged “circle of the Zohar” as if it is reflected in the details found in this treatise. Meanwhile, see also the critical view of Yehuda Liebes, TheCult of the Dawn: TheAttitude of the Zohar towards Idolatry [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2011), 91, note 31, towards Wolfson’shypothesis that the Zohar was written in this specific circle, if it existed at all in reality. 274 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

as involving the Kabbalists’ souls and not their intellects,asisthe case with Abula- fia, and 3) they are presented as experiences of the past,ofancientRabbinic figures, of away of thought that negates the continuation of prophecy, though some form of ecstasy is found in Rabbinic literature in the context of prayer.⁶⁵ Again, the absence of the term “prophet” is not just amatter of terminology, but reflects the main gist of Zoharic literature, which strivestopresent itself as the deeper layerofthe Rabbinic mentality,anapproach that does not easilylend itself to claims related to prophecy.⁶⁶ Moreover,Abulafia’semphasis on individual experiencesisrelated to the fact thathe mentionshis name in his writings, which is not the case in the Zoharic literature, or in manyother theosophical-theurgical writingsthat resort to pseudo-epigraphic techniques or anonymity. Let us turn now to the recent scholarlyclaim of the existenceofecstasy in the two schools: as Ihaveproposed elsewhere, this claim would requireadistinctionbe- tween mere occurrences of moments that can be described as ecstatic in aliterature that deals with avariety of other topics,includingmoments of rapture, and aliter- ature thatasits main religious aim is devoted to reachingecstatic experiences and defining them as achievable by specific paths initiated by the mystic.⁶⁷ In principle, the claims as to the existenceofecstatic moments in the Zoharic literature are not new.Scholem formulated them in acogent manner: “It is asignificant fact that the most famousand influential book of our mystical literature,the Zohar,has little use of ecstasy.”⁶⁸ Ibelievethat this diagnosis is correct. However,mymore general assumption is that ecstasy is certainlynot the prerog- ative of one specific Kabbalistic school, as Iformulate it: “The ecstatic elementin Jewishmysticism is to be understood as an important constant,rather thanthe pre- rogative of acertain phase or school”⁶⁹ or “the quest for ecstasy […]ispart and parcel of aquest that was inherent in Jewish mysticism, much more outside Spain rather than in the Iberian Peninsula.”⁷⁰ In fact,Ihave compared the mystical elements in Abulafia and the Zohar in quite an explicit manner.⁷¹ However,while Abulafia’sKab- balah was explicitlyintended to experience prophecy, in the Zoharic literature, this is not explicated as adistinct goal and it is quite probable that they occur sporadically, at least accordingtothe claims made in the texts.

 On the nexusbetween prayerand ecstasy in earlyRabbinic literature, see Shlomo Naʾeh, “Boreʾ Niv Śefatayyim,” Tarbiz 63 (1994): 185–218; Abraham Wolfish, “Ha-Tefillah ha-Šogeret,” Tarbiz 65 (1996): 301–14.  See Moshe Idel, “Lawyers and Mystics in Judaism: AProlegomenon for aStudyofProphecyin Jewish Mysticism,” in TheJoseph and GwendolynStraus Institute Working Papers (New York: New York University,2010): 3–42.  See Idel, “On the LanguageofEcstatic ExperiencesinJewish Mysticism,” 71–72.  Scholem, Major Trends in JewishMysticism,123.  Idel, “The Contribution of Abraham Abulafia’sKabbalah,” 129.  Idel, 128.  Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic,97–98. 25 Individual versus CollectiveExperiences 275

The Zoharic momentsofraptureoccur as part of homiletic discussions in agroup or circle; whether this is imaginary or real is less important.⁷² This is part of an in- terpretive symbolic-mythic approach to the biblical and Midrashic materials.⁷³ As Mopsik dulyputs it,the Zohar is aMidrash on aMidrash.⁷⁴ It includes efforts to deep- en the mythical aspectsofthe canonical texts by elaborating on the fabric of the texts,not by arbitrarilydeconstructing and then reconstructing them.⁷⁵ Moreover, as seen above, Abulafia’sdeconstruction of the textsisnot onlyamatter of aradical exegetical approach, but one thatcentres the development of the individual, that consciouslyinfusesnew meaningsthat do not come from aproject or group focused on the fate of anation, as is the caseinthe Zohar. Abulafia does not choose imaginary ancient Rabbis promenadinginimaginary geographical areas of the Land of Israel or agroup studyinginacave to be his pro- tagonists, but rather aKabbalist who is capable of allegoricallyunderstandinghis or others’ experiencesasacontinuation of thoseofthe biblical figures, or even atran- scendenceofthem. Abulafia writes mainlyabout himself for his specific—and in manycases, younger—disciples; in some cases, we know their names and writings, their locale, and rather precise dates.Thoughhewas aNeo-Aristotelian thinker, the background of Abulafia’sexperiences is not the peripatetic walks of the ancient philosophers in nature as is the case of some of the compositions from the Zoharic circle,⁷⁶ but asecluded room found, so Iassume,inapopulated area. However,itshould be emphasised that some of Abulafia’sdescriptions of the mystical experience,especiallythose in the prophetic books, reflect what he claims werehis experiences and can be described as ego-documents. Letmegivejust one example: “[…]Soalsothe Agent Intellect,⁷⁷ and Itestify taking heavenand earth as my witnesses, that it [the Agent Intellect] taught me in such away […]and the speech that comes from it is accordingtothe intellectual comprehension.”⁷⁸ Thisresort to first-person revelations is rather rare outside the school of ecstatic Kabbalah. This confession should be understood in the context of Abulafia’sunderstanding of Kabbalah as arevelation stemmingfrom the Agent Intellect in amannerthat is more profound than the philosophicalknowledge thatstems from the very same source.⁷⁹ Unlikethe expansion of consciousness in the various descriptions of the

 Hellner-Eshed, ARiver Flows from Eden,107–10.  See Hellner-Eshed, 331–32, 334.  See Mopsik, Chemins de la cabale,168–70.  See Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics,xiii–xv;comparealso to Hellner-Eshed, ARiver Flows from Eden,330–32, and Mopsik, Chemins de la cabale,229–30.  Hellner-Eshed, ARiver Flows from Eden,111–20.  Earlier,hedescribes this intellect functioning as ateacher.  Mafteaḥ ha-Šemot,147–48: … ךכ שה לכ פה עו ל , נא מי יע עד יל מש םי או ץר מש מל נד בי רד הך וה בא צע ומ [ … ] יכ דה וב הר אב ממ ונ וה עא דל ךר שה תג שה לכ . ForGod speakingwith prophets without mention of visions,see Sitrei Torah,91.  Mafteaḥ ha-Ḥokhmot,56–57: 276 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

experiencesofthe companions of the Zoharic circle,which did not annihilate their personalities, but nevertheless maintained an intimate contact with the supreme realm,⁸⁰ Abulafia is concerned with amystical union of the intellect that mayculmi- nate in afusion between it and the supernal intellectual realm. Nor is Abulafia concerned with theosophy and theurgy that sometimes puts the complex divine structure at the centreofits sermons, as the Zoharicliterature does. It suffices to read the most theological Zoharic compositions, Sifraʾ di-Ṣeniʿutaʾ and the Iddrot,inorder to understand how far the Zoharic world is from thatofAbulafia. The compositenatureofthe divinity with its various manifestations, the ten sefirot or the various parṣufim,isnevertheless conceivedasconstitutingone unified dynamic theological unit and is also reflected by the confraternity,bythe entire people of Is- rael, which are such compositeentities. Also, from this point of view,the main bulk of the Zoharic literature continues the Rabbinic-Midrashic mode of creativity thatop- eratedwith avariety of ideas which wereintension with one another,but which were nevertheless accepted as part of amore comprehensive structure. Those are two quite different forms of imaginaire thatstem from different pro- found structures,distinguishedfrom each other terminologically, structurally, and conceptually. They also determined their different fates in the history of Jewishmys- ticism:the Zoharic imaginaire wasdrawing from the Rabbinic universe, which was interpreted mythicallyand sometimes symbolically,⁸¹ while the Abulafian imaginaire drew from the Greek philosophical universe and operated in what Ihavecalled an allegorical-spiritualistic manner.The former is dramaticallynomian and its protago- nists are famous Rabbis;the latterisanomian, articulatedbyaperson who is most often writing for individuals who belong to the secondary elite and who criticises contemporaryRabbis rather than emulatesthem. Theseare the reasons for the huge success of the Zoharic corpus in the history of Jewishmysticismincomparison to the Abulafian Kabbalahthat remained asecondary and elitist school. In away,the two main Kabbalistic schools that emergedinthe last quarter of the thirteenth century in Europe represent two different modes of religiosity,parallel, mutatismutandis,towhat Strauss and Eliade advocated: the individual versus the group in the case of the former, and the group as the basic religious unit that thrives by developing amythical type of consciousness in the caseofthe latter.Let me em- phasise the historical dimension of the two modes: mythical elements are found in Greek myths, but the Greek philosophersinlate antiquity either ignored them or al- legorised them. This also happened in late antique Judaism in the caseofPhilo of

יא בן ןי חה מכ וה יב הן בק הל לא שא קה לב הה גו הד פמ הי כש הל ופ לע , יב תו ער ומ הק ממ שה וה דג הה כח המ םע יה תו תש י הה דג ו מת יפ וה . הו בק הל םא ןכ שה הג וי רת קד וה כח המ וי רת מע קו מה הן מכח הה ומ גש בת כש הל מח יר . See Scholem, Major Trends in JewishMysticism,143–44.  Hellner-Eshed, ARiver Flows from Eden,325.  See Yehuda Liebes, “Myth vs. Symbol in the Zohar and Lurianic Kabbalah,” in Essential Papers on Kabbalah,ed. LawrenceFine(New York: New York University Press, 1995): 212–42. 25 Individual versus CollectiveExperiences 277

Alexandria,⁸² but the philosophical-allegorical approach did not make its wayto Rabbinic Judaism, which continued to operate with manymythologumena.The adoption of this exegetical approach in the HighMiddle Ages, especiallyinibn Ga- birol, ibn Ezra, and Maimonides, prompted Abulafia’sexegesis, with its proclivity to- wards the individual inner experience,triggered to use one of his techniquesbyhis personal predilections. While the theosophical-theurgicalKabbalists remythologised the Jewishtexts and the meanings of the commandments, Abulafia, following Maimonides, strove to demythologise them. However,unlike the Great Eagle, Abulafia does so not onlythrough anaturalist approach, but also and prominentlyby“mystifying” the sources, by claiming thatthe true meaningofthe sources is to point to the ideal of prophecy,ecstasy,orunitive experiences.Inshort,the tension between the noetic interpretation and the mythicalone thatshapes the relationships between how Mai- monides, the Maimonideans, and Abulafia understood reality and society and tradi- tional Judaism (includingtheosophical-theurgical Kabbalah) are part of amuchlon- gerhistory;italsoassumes atension between the individual and the social.⁸³ While in ecstatic Kabbalah the mystical experience is conceivedasstanding in itself, especiallyinthe case of the mystical union, in the Zoharic Kabbalah, and I would sayintheosophical-theurgical Kabbalah in general, the experience of adher- ence to the divine as amystical experiment was thoughttobefollowed by atheur- gical operation.⁸⁴ This means thatwhen seen in amore holistic manner—namely, when incorporated into different conceptual structures—the same mystical phenom- ena, if we mayspeakabout significant similarities in issues like these, are different since they are conjugated with different elements and thus generate different mod- els.⁸⁵

 Maren R. Niehoff, JewishExegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2011).  See also Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis,ed. and trans. Gerhart Niemeyer (Columbia: University of Mis- souri Press, 1990), 185.  See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives,xviii, 51–58, and Hellner-Eshed, ARiver Flows from Eden, 318. Comparetothe quitesimilar view of Seth H. Brody, “Human Hands Dwell in HeavenlyHeights: Worship and Mystical ExperienceinThirteenth-Century Kabbalah” (PhD diss., University of Pennsyl- vania, 1991), and “‘Human Hands Dwell in HeavenlyHeights’:Contemplative Ascent and Theurgic Power in Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah,” in Mystics of the Book:Themes,Topics,and Typology,ed. Robert A. Herrera (New York: Peter Lang, 1993): 123–58. This morecomplex approach has also been morerecentlyadopted in Haviva Pedaya, “TwoTypes of Ecstatic ExperienceinHasidism” [He- brew], Daʿat 55 (2005): 81. She is apparentlyunaware of my methodological claims to this effect and asserts that Ianalysed isolated concepts by themselvesand not their wider concatenation in the frameworkofbroader models.See also her “The Besht,Rabbi Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, and the Maggid of Mezeritch: Basic Lines for aReligious-Typological Approach” [Hebrew], Daʿat (2000): 71. Comparealso to the reference to the Gestalt-contexture in chapter 2note49aboveaswellasthe gist of my study, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic.  See Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic,45–145. 278 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

To be sure, Idonot denythe mystical aspects of the theosophical-theurgical Kab- balists, as some scholars mistakenlyassume,but Ipropose to seethem as being es- sentiallysubordinated to another goal, the unification of the divine sphere or its rep- aration, tiqqun,which Abraham Maslowcalled “means-experience,” thatthose Kabbalistsconceivedtobehigher thanadherence. Abulafia’sexperiences weretarget experiencesthat were, in manycases, conceivedasthe end of the mystical path.⁸⁶ Therefore, discussions about the existenceofecstasy alone without first defining what ascholarmeans by this termand addressingtheirconceptual context are rather futile. The two foci of Abulafia’sideal experiencesshould also be seen from another perspective.The revelations he describes gravitate around more than one basic vi- sion: the mystic maysee aggrandised letters or his own self conversing with the mys- tic duringthe experience,⁸⁷ or avision of acircle or globe,⁸⁸ or,inothercases, avi- sion of the human form, an old man, standing for the Agent Intellect,⁸⁹ or the revelation of the angel of Paradise.⁹⁰ In some cases, some form of speech emerges from the mystic’smouth without an accompanying vision.⁹¹ This means thatit would be erroneous to reduce Abulafia’sdescriptions to one single type of experi- ence, although he refers in manycases to the phenomenon he calls prophecy.Ava- riety of experiences that mayall be regarded as mystical, some having ecstatic over- tones,can also be found in the description of the experiences of Rabbi Nathan ben Saʿadyah.⁹² Therefore, the reduction of Abulafia to one type of experience,the ecstat- ic one, is just one step in identifying this alleged one type of experienceasthatal- legedlyfound in the Zohar—another even more diversified type of Kabbalistic litera- ture, as seen above.⁹³

 See also Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic,130,169,376,note 1.  See AppendixBnote 81 below.This view is described in Scholem, TheKabbalah of Sefer ha-Te- munah, 185, as some form of incarnation. It was also adopted by Wolfson, “Textual Flesh, Incarna- tion, and the Imaginal Body,” whofails to mention Scholem’sresort to the concept of incarnation in connection to Abulafia, though he refers to other discussions of ChristianityinAbulafia that appear in Scholem’swritings.See 195–96,note 24.However,what Abulafia means in these texts is the emer- genceofaconfiguration within the imagination of the mystic that has aform that differs from one case to another and that is not necessarilyahuman body, still less fleshly. This is the reasonwhy Ispeak about “informment” rather than incarnation. See Idel, Ben,60–61,101,note 182, 278, 420, 451, and compare to Wolfson’scavalier rejoinder, “Textual Flesh, Incarnation, and the Imaginal Body,” 200, note 41.Inany case, in order to understand Abulafia’smystical experiences,one should take into consideration the existenceofseveral modes of revelation and not reducethe wide spec- trum to one colour(the allegedly “incarnational” one) alone.  Idel, TheMystical Experience,109–11.  Idel, 112–16.  See the Untitled Treatise, Ms.Firenze, Laurenziana, Plut.II, 48, fols.69a, 71b, 89b–90a.  Idel, TheMystical Experience,83–86.  See Le Porte della Giustizia,478–79,and Scholem, Major Trends in JewishMysticism,150–52.  See Hellner-Eshed, ARiver Flows from Eden,318. FollowingElliot Wolfson to acertain extent, Pedaya claims to know,onthe grounds of sourcesunaccountedfor or at least unknown to me, 25 Individual versus CollectiveExperiences 279

My rather different proposal is based on the importance of the distinction be- tween various types of languageinJewish mysticismand their different conceptual sources and reflects different underlyingtypes of experiences. This variety mayeven occur in different works by the sameKabbalist.⁹⁴ It is onlyafter amore elaborate pic- ture of the varieties of mystical experiencesintwo vast corporaare recognised and analysed⁹⁵ that acomparison between them maybefruitful. Thehomogenisation of these corporaand then the homologisationbetween them in scholarship in the last two decades is too uncritical and, in anycase, too conceptuallyvaguetomean any- thing.Infact,itisamatter of manipulating terms that have not been sufficientlyde- fined, and which are thus problematic, in order to make them academicallyfruitful. In this context,let me point out that unlikethe Maimonideans, Abulafia did not abandon his involvement with at least some part of society,though he was full of contempt for the vulgus. As Aviezer Ravitzky astutelyremarks,Maimonides’sfollow- ers adopted an elitist approach, rejectingtheir master’sconceptual complexity, which combined philosophywith Halakhah in manyofhis writings.⁹⁶ Thisisalso the case with Averroes, who combined jurisdiction with philosophy. However,the de- votion to the two types of activity did not enjoy areal continuation because the Mai- monideans adopted amorecontemplative approach influenced by ibn Bāǧǧah and ibn Ṭufayl.⁹⁷ With all his emphasis on noetic activity,Abulafia was nevertheless more socially active thanthe other Maimonideans as both aprophet and aMessiah, though without endorsing the importance of Halakhic creativity.Though seclusion was important for him, it wasofshortduration and took place in aroom at night, not outside of society.Inother words, Abulafia onlyrequired seclusion for the mo- ments to be dedicated to attaining peak experiences and otherwise remained socially active. The approach to languageand to the sacred text as embodied in the type of dis- courses found in Abulafia’swritingsversus those found in the Zoharic corpus is an- other criterion for easilyand dramaticallydistinguishing between them.The perva- sive use of gematrias when combined with philosophicalallegorisation on an unprecedented scale either beforehand or afterwards in Kabbalah is marginal in the Zoharic literature,ifpresent at all. All of them point to mental activitiesthat dif-

that Abulafia’secstatic experience is similar to that of the Zohar,itself ahighlycompositeliterary cor- pus,although she recognises that they makeuse of different terminology.This is aclaim that is rem- iniscent of Wolfson, whoknows that the experience in the “Zohar” was “genuine.” See her “The Sixth Millennium,” 67–68. Formyapproach, which pays maximum attention to the literary expressions of the mystical experiences rather than proclaimingtheir authenticity or alleged identity with other ex- periences, see Kabbalah: New Perspectives,35–28,and Hellner-Eshed, ARiver Flows from Eden,383, note 1. Earlier in Pedaya’sworks, she resorts to adifferent approach that allows for amuch greater weightofthe linguistic expressions in her analysis. See, for example, her Vision and Speech,97.  See Idel, “On the LanguageofEcstatic ExperiencesinJewish Mysticism,” 43–84.  Hellner-Eshed, ARiver Flows from Eden,340–51.  Ravitzky, MaimonideanEssays,40.  See Holzman, “State, Religion, and Spirituality,inthe ThoughtofRabbi Moses Narboni,” 191–211. 280 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

fer from the symbolisation that is based on discovering or unveiling correspondences with ahigher,dynamic, and fluid level of the divine world and interactingwith it. No competent scholarwould ever mistake aZoharicpassagefor an Abulafian one, and vice versa;any claim to the contrary would, in my opinion, be asign of deep ignorance in matters of Kabbalah that would discredit such awriter as aserious critical scholar. Thisis, to be sure, not just amatter of the ZoharicAramaic versus the Tibbonian Hebrew,but also quite conflictingforms of imaginaire that operate in dif- ferent ways.AsScholem duly formulated this difference: “The truth is thatnotwo thingscould be more different than the outlook of the Zohar and that of Abulafia.”⁹⁸ Indeed, the Zoharic tone is much more descriptive,narrative,and essentiallycon- junctive—namely, it attempts to operate with the concept of Jewry as anational or- ganic unit—while the Abulafian approach is more prescriptive and disjunctive,orex- clusive,addressed as it is solelytothe elite as individuals and despising the vulgus, Jewishornot,and even Rabbis,part of an anti-clerical attitude.

26 “Phylacteries of the Holy One, blessed be He,” and Phylacteries of Man

Let me now discuss the special mannerinwhich Abulafia approached aparticular Rabbinic statement and compareittothat of the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalists. In aTalmudic tract,Rabbis portray God donning phylacteries and possessing a ṭallit.⁹⁹ To be sure, the biblical text in God’sphylacteries is different from that con- tained within the ordinary human ones: God was imagined as remembering not what He had done in illud tempus by rescuingthe people of Israel from Egypt,but rather the uniqueness of the people of Israel and its relationship to Him.¹⁰⁰ This dis- cussion represents an important instance of reciprocal remembrance thatoccurs when the two different personalities, the human and the divine, don reminders on which the other is inscribed in so that they mayperpetuallyremember each other.¹⁰¹ Various Jewish authorsattempted to obliterate the anthropomorphic image-

 Scholem, Major Trends in JewishMysticism,130.  See BT, Berakhot,fol. 6a. Forananalysisofthe relevant text and its later reverberation of this issue, see Arthur Green, Keter:The CrownofGod in Early JewishMysticism (Princeton:Princeton Uni- versity Press, 1997), 53–56,119–20,139–40,162.See also Raphael Loewe, “The Divine Garment and Shi‘ur Qomah,” HTR 58 (1965): 153–60;Raphael Loewe, “Apologetic Motifs in the Targum to the Song of Songs,” in Biblical Motifs:Origins and Transformations,ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press,1966): 159–96.  Berakhot,fol. 6a.  On the “envelope of reminders” in ancient Judaism and its later reverberations in Judaism, which includes the phylacteries, see Moshe Idel, “Memento Dei—Remarks on Remembering in Juda- ism,” in Il senso della memoria, Atti dei convegni Lincei (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2003): 143–94,especially152–56,172–74. 26 “Phylacteries of the Holy One, blessed be He,” and Phylacteries of Man 281

ry in the Rabbinic passagebyattributingittoasupreme angel or to an allegory of the entirety of reality;some even claim that it is not areasonable story at all.¹⁰² However,Abulafia has adifferent approach, which is related to esotericism. Let me present aquote that reflects the mannerofhis approach to this case of Rabbinic anthropomorphism:

They aresayingthat “the HolyOne, blessed be He,dons phylacteries” and they said “the phy- lacteries of the HolyOnes,blessed be He,whatiswritten in them? ‘And whoislike your people Israel, one nation on the earth.’”¹⁰³ Behold, they revealed that they were not phylacteries, since this [verse] is not written in our phylacteries,and if it was written there, they would indubitably be disqualified.And so also in all the places that youwill find this in the hidden [layer] in the WrittenorOralTorah, youwill immediatelyfind hints near to it that point to the truth of the issue and what the intention is in most places, or the author will relyonwhat is alreadywide- spread in tradition, such as “The Torahspokeinthe languageofhumans”¹⁰⁴ and “the Torah spokeinthe languageoffables,”¹⁰⁵ but the Torahdid not speak except in order to popularise. And these are rousing everyone, and manylikethem in the two true Torahs,and it is not appro- priatefor asage of our Torahtoerr concerning anyofthe vulgar, imaginary beliefs.¹⁰⁶

Abulafia’sapproach is so antagonistic towards the content of the Rabbinic depiction of God donning phylacteries that he claims thatthis is quite impossible even accord- ing to the waythe context should be understood. This means that by mentioning the biblical verse that the Rabbis attribute to the divine phylacteries, they are in fact in- validatingthem, since thatbiblical verse is not written in our phylacteries. This ab- surdity annuls the entire messageregardingGod’sdonning of phylacteries. It maybethat in addition to the problem of anthropomorphism, Abulafia also had aproblem with the collective imageofthe people of Israel as acompleteentity that should be remembered by God.Inother words, for this Kabbalist,the Rabbis werewritingfor an intelligent audience that would understand from the context that the content of their narrativewas,infact,deriding anthropomorphism. This in-

 See the comprehensive analysisofthe history of this theme in Rabbinic and Kabbalistic sources, most of them predatingAbulafia, in Adam Afterman, “The Phylacteries Knot: The History of aJewish Icon” [Hebrew], in Myth, Ritual, and Mysticism: Studies in Honor of Professor Gruenwald,eds.Gideon Bohak, Ron Margolin, and IshayRosen-Zvi (Tel Aviv:Tel Aviv University Press,2014): 441–80,and the importantsource discussed in Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah,212–14.  2Samuel 7:23.  Tosefta, BT, Babaʾ Meṣiʿaʾ,fol. 31b. This dictum is used quiteoften in Abulafia’swritings.  Sifri, Devarim,25.  See Ḥayyei ha-Nefeš, 94–95: מא םר הש בק " מה ינ תח יפ יל ן , מא ור פת לי ןי לש קה ב " מה כה ית בב ןה " ימו עכ ךמ שי אר גל יו חא בד רא ץ (" מש או בל ' ז : גכ .) נה גה לי לו שך יא ןנ פת לי ןי , הש יר יא זן כה ות בב פת לי ןי לש ונ לו נו תכ וב הב הן וי ספ לו ןי לב סא קפ . כו בן לכ קמ םו תש צמ זא ה לע נע יי נן תס בר ות הר בש תכ אב בו ות הר בש ע " פ , ימ תד צמ סא יב וב מר יז מם רו םי מא תי עת ינ ני וו המ כה וו הנ לע וי רב בו מה וק ומ ת . וא סי ומ הך חמ רב לע המ כש רב תה שפ בט בק הל , גכ ןו " בד הר ות הר לב וש בן ינ דא ם ". ו " בד הר ות הר לב וש ן בה יא ". לו דא רב תה רו ה , לא לא בש אר הת זא ן . עו אם ול מה וע רר תו וכ םל רו יב כם ומ םת שב ית ות ור הת מא יתי תו אל יה רה וא שי יה תה עו שה םו כח מם כח ימ ות תר ונ שב םו מא נו מה הן מא נו תו דה ימ נו וי הת מה נו וי ת . On Oral Torahinmedieval Jewish thought, see Dov Schwartz, “Some Brief Comments on the Oral Law and ItsTransmision in Jewish Thought” [Hebrew],inStudy and KnowledgeinJewishThought,2:79–94. 282 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

terpretation amounts to readingthe Rabbinic passageinaMaimonidean-Straussian manner: the Rabbis are conceivedaspremeditatedlycontradicting themselvessothat onlythe intelligent reader could discern their real intention. Interestingly enough, in order to reject the validityofthe abovepassage, Abulafia turns nomian and argues from the point of view of the Jewish lawbeing against the Rabbinic micro-myth. Let me compareAbulafia’sattitude to the micro-myth to that of other Kabbalists. The famous late thirteenth-century Catalan Kabbalist Rabbi Baḥya ben Asher wrote about the creation of the worldfollowing aPlatonic approach that sees the archetype or prototype for all that was createdbelow in the supernal world of forms. However, in addition to the structural correspondencesbetween the Temple on earth and the supernal world, envisioned as asupernal Temple, the Kabbalist also assumesthe possibilityofthe actual presenceofthe higher within the lower,apresencethat cre- ates aunion between the two worlds.¹⁰⁷ In this context,adescription of the unique- ness of the people of Israel is offered:

“This is the great degreeofIsrael; they have agreat adherence [devequt gadol]tothe Holy One, blessed be He.This is the reason whyitiswritten: “And youwill be aspecial treasure unto Me.”¹⁰⁸ The word “special treasure”¹⁰⁹ points to the very thingwithin which thereisahidden power,asthe “special treasure” is predicated on the power of grasses and pearls,within which thereisahidden power.And out of the strengthofadherence[rov ha-devequt][of Israel], God unifies and praises them as one nation. This is the reason whyitiswritten in the phylac- teries of God:¹¹⁰ “Who is likethe people of Israel, asingular¹¹¹ nation on earth”?¹¹² Just as they unify Him and praise Him saying:¹¹³ “Hear,Israel: The Lord, our God, the Lord is one,” etc. Itoo shall makeyou one unit in the world.”¹¹⁴

The importance of unity below,which is related to particularist chosenness, for ach- ieving astate of union with God is obvious in this passage, as well as in the lines that follow it.Onlybythe Jewish nation being or becomingamonos is it possibletoad-

 Cf. Rabbi Baḥya ben Asher, Kadha-Qemaḥ,Lulav, in Kitvei Rabbenu Bahya,ed. Chaim D. Chavel (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-RavKook, 1970), 234. See also Afterman, Devequt: Mystical Intimacy,89–92, whopointed out to the source in Rabbi Judah ha-Levi. ForAbulafia’saccount of the ascent to that Temple, see Idel, Ascensions on High,173–77.  Exodus19:5.  Segullah. In fact,Rabbi Baḥya refers to aconcept that is not biblical, but quitemedieval; it deals with special qualities inherent in afew objects that cannot be described by means of regular physics.  BT, Berakhot,fol. 6a.  Eḥad, “one.”  1Chronicles 17:21.  Deuteronomy16:4.  Kadha-Qemaḥ,234: וז יה מא לע גה וד הל יל רש לא הב וי לת םה םע שה י " דת קב תו גה וד הל הז לו ז רה זמ כה ות שב מא ר " יה תי לם סי וג הל (" מש תו טי : ה ) יכ למ סת וג הל אנ רמ עת על םצ בד שר וב כה הח סנ רת מכ שו וא רמ גס לו עה כל הח שע יב ום פה ינ ינ שם שי הב כם ח סנ רת . לו ור הב בד וק תת אצמ הש או תי רב מך חי אד תו ון קמ סל שן םה וג אי דח הו או דש שר זו " בל פת לי ןי מד רא עי מל מא ה תכ בי הב ו " ימ עכ ךמ שי אר גל יו חא בד רא ץ . שכ שם םה קמ סל םי וא ות תי ' או מו יר שם עמ שי אר הל ' לא יה ונ ה ' חא וד וג ' ףא נא אי שע אה כת חם יט הב חא בת וע םל ". 26 “Phylacteries of the Holy One, blessedbeHe,” and Phylacteries of Man 283

here to the divine Monad. The fact that the unity of God is mentioned in the human phylacteries just as the unity of the people of Israel is mentioned in the divine phy- lacteries allows areadingthat suggests that by remembering the one, it becomesone with the other. Iwonder whether the segullah is not onlyIsrael as anation, givenwhat they say about God, but also the phylacteries, whose hiddentreasures no one can see from the outside—that is, the formula of the divine unity.Inany case, it is clear that the affin- ity between the two types of what Ipropose to call reminders (the human and the divinephylacteries) represent aunion between Israel and God, who are reminded of each otherthrough the texts found in their respective phylacteries. This is an in- teractive vision, and it refers to areciprocal relationship between God and His chos- en nation. Accordingtoanother of Abulafia’stexts—which has several parallels in Kabba- lah,¹¹⁵ one of which mayserveasRabbi Baḥya’ssource—the divinity is portrayed as dwelling in someone who dons the phylacteries, aview that is consonant with the use of the term devequt in the abovepassage.¹¹⁶ Baḥya follows the gist of the Rab- binic passagenot onlywith his non-denial of the meaning of the mythical picture, but alsobymaintaining its nationalvalence. This is also the case in the Zohar, which represents astronglymythologisingtendencythat is part of aparticularistap- proach.¹¹⁷ Thismeans that the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalists celebratedthe de- tails of the Rabbinic micro-myth while Abulafia conceiveswhat he considers its exo- teric form as absurd, though in this case, he does not attempt to offer even an allegorical interpretation. Even aMaimonidean thinker was closer to the Rabbinic approach, as we maysee in one of the writingsofRabbi Levi ben Abraham,with his emphasis on God’sspecial relationship to the Jewish nation.¹¹⁸ Once again, Abulafia’sapproach differs not onlyfrom that of the theosophical Kabbalists, who werequite fond of the Rabbinic micro-myths and in some cases ela- borated them into broader myths: he is also more radical than the Maimonideans. To acertain extent,this approach can be seen as complementary to the critique of the Rabbinic myth of the serpentine pollution that we discussed in chapter 9above:the concrete languageofthe narrativesthat is so characteristic of the Rabbis is regarded as meaningless in favour of the more allegoricaland naturalist understanding that Abulafia offers. They are alsoseen as self-contradictory and as requiringesoteric in- terpretation.

 See, especially, Zohar 3, fols.262b–263a.  See Baḥya’s Commentaryonthe Pentateuch,onExodus13:16,ed. Chavel, 104–5, and compare also to 268inthe same work.  3, fol. 175b. In general, see Oded Israeli, TheInterpretation of Secrets and the SecretofInterpre- tation: Midrashic and Hermeneutic Strategies in Sabbaʾ de-Mišpaṭim of the Zohar [Hebrew] (Los An- geles: Cherub Press, 2005).  See Liwyat Ḥen: TheWorkofthe Chariot,ed. Kreisel, 187–88, in acontext where the author ex- plicitlyrefers to Kabbalists,and see also 287inthe same work. 284 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

Let me turn to acloselyrelated issue. Accordingtoanother statement in the same Talmudic treatise, God showed Moses the knot of the phylacteries as part of an interpretation of the biblical assumption that He had shown His backto Moses.¹¹⁹ This micro-myth was perhaps part of abroader myth that also included the micro-myth of the divine phylacteries. Naturally, this imagewas reinterpreted in avariety of ways;Jewish philosophers interpreted the knot as an allegory for the concatenation of reality from the divinity and thus as amannerofknowing God.¹²⁰ Abulafia also rejects the anthropomorphic micro-myth¹²¹ as he prefers amore unitive understanding of the event,since it originallytells us about aparticular rev- elation to Moses. In the vein of his theory that Ha-QeŠeR means “the knot,” while HeTeR means “unknotting”—both Hebrew terms amounting to 605¹²²—the Rabbinic statement is conceivedasanallegory for the soul’sadherencetothe supernal world after the knot,its connection to the material or the corporeal world, becomes unfet- tered.¹²³ Elsewhere, he adopts amore ontological view that interprets the knot of the head phylactery as referringtothe Account of the Chariot and the knot of the hand phylactery as referringtothe Account of Creation.¹²⁴ Again, Abulafia loads the exoteric passagewith an esoteric meaningaspart of what Icall his arcanisation of Jewish texts. This is alsothe case in another of his treatments of the phylacteries:

[T]he secret that they testify to youthe four witnesses¹²⁵ that areonyour head and they arouse you[…]. Know your head from your heart and also know your heart from your head. And this is the reason whyyour phylacteries were in two places on the body, on the head and on the weak- ened hand, which corresponds to the heart,and they areindubitablylike amulets.And youal- readyknow whatthose whodon the phylacteries say:¹²⁶ “[the letters of] Adonai areupon them, [and] they will live”¹²⁷ “and [the letters of] YHWH are on their head;”¹²⁸ afterwards, he said¹²⁹ “and their kingpassed beforethem.” ¹³⁰

 BT, Berakhot,fol. 7a.  See Afterman, “The Phylacteries Knot,” 457–60,and WarrenZev Harvey’simportantanalyses in his “Maimonides’sCritical Epistemology and Guide 2:24,” Aleph 8(2008): 216–19.  Sefer ha-Melammed,19–20.  See Idel, TheMystical Experience,134–37.  Oṣar ʿEden Ganuz,2:9,284,correctedaccording to the Ms.: או סי רו הו תי הר וכ הנ וב ככ נו צת רו קת רש לש פת לי ןי קש רש בו אר לש חא רו שק נר שק בר יל תה ר , שו יב לד נפ םי קנ רש עפ ם נו תי פר םע . ןכ קה רש עה יל ןו רצ ךי מה כש לי יש בד בק לע וי ינ ום קי רש םב דע לש יא ית בר מם םה על לו ם . הו שק הר חת ות פן םע די קב וב פל צי כר או יל וו עפ ים תו מר נמ לו יפ עמ תל צע ומ עב ךר לא וי .  Sitrei Torah,69. See also Oṣar ʿEden Ganuz,2:9,277.  The four biblical pericopes found within the phylacteries of the head.  Ihavenot found aRabbinic source for Abulafia’sclaim.  Isaiah 38:16.  Micah 2:13.  Micah 2:13.  Oṣar ʿEden Ganuz,1:3,127: 26 “Phylacteries of the Holy One, blessed be He,” and Phylacteries of Man 285

Twophrases should draw the attention of the careful reader of this passage: the com- parisonofthe phylacteries to amuletsand the phrase “those who don phylacteries.” The first phrase should be understood as part of Abulafia’smore comprehensive re- jection of all magic includingamulets (qameiʿin), again following Maimonides.¹³¹ Es- pecially telling is the term “indubitably” within this framework. It is aclearlynega- tive comparison. This seems to me to alsobethe point of the second phrase, “those who don phylacteries” (meniḥei ha-tefillin), which conveys some form of implicit dis- tance between himself and these traditionalperformances. Who exactlythese individuals are, literarysources or living Jews, is not clear, though the similaritytothe views of Rabbi Baḥya, written some few years after Abu- lafia’sdeath, is quite interesting.His explanation is thatthe two parts of the body that are pertinent for understandingthe donning of the phylacteries,the head and the heart,point to cognitive processes related to the brain and the heart.These two organs are understood to be related to the phylacteries in Rabbinic literature. This is also the case in another of Abulafia’sdiscussions concerning the phylacteries, wherewealso find an interesting gematria:

And the secret of tefillin,four,hints to four pericopes which areten,[namely] ABCD,¹³² and they cometostand against the evil inclination, born out of four luminaries¹³³ […]and the secret of the brain and the heart, Elohim,and within them the “light of Shadday” is emanatinga“light of the sense,” which is hot and humid in the blood.¹³⁴

הו וס שד עמ ידי עם יל זך אה בר הע דע םי עש רל שא וך עמ רו יר אם תו ך [ … ] עו כל אן הת עד אר ךש למ ךב םג עד בל מך אר ךש לו יפ ךכ יה הו פת לי ןי שב ינ קמ ומו הת וג בף אר וש יב כד הה נכ דג לה וב ןה דכ ומ קת ימ יע בן אל פס ק . כו רב די תע מוא םר לש נמ חי הי פת לי ןי ", הי ו " ה [ דא ינ ] לע הי ים יח ו (" שי יע לה ח : זט ") יו וה " בה אר םש (" ימ הכ ב : גי ) חא אר רמ ו " יו בע מר כל ם פל ינ םה (" םש .) See also Meir bar Ilan, “So Shall They Put My Name upon the People of Israel (Num 6:27)” [Hebrew], HUCA 60 (1990): 19–31.  See Idel, “Abraham Abulafia: Between Magic of Names and Kabbalah of Names,” 82–83; on Mai- monides,see Ravitzky, MaimonideanEssays,181–204.  In Hebrew 1+2+3+4=10.See also “We-Zot li-Yehudah,” 20,and Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia,149, note 153.This is an example of understandinganaspect of Jewish ritual (in this case, the four por- tions in the phylacteries) by means of resorting to its numerical structureand then to the Pythagorean theory of Tetraktys. This is describedasincluding “hints,” or,inother words,including some form of secrets.  It is not clear whothese luminaries are; however,wemay discern some form of cosmic approach based on non-theurgical types of correspondences.  Ḥayyei ha-Nefeš,134,amended according to Ms. Munich, 408, fols.87b–88a, and Ms.New York, JTS 1813,fol. 27ab: סו דו תה לפ י " ן , רא עב רה זמ םי אב בר הע רפ יש תו הש ים ' בא ג " ד . בו וא על ומ כד גנ יד צ " הר ר " נע לו וד אמ בר הע אמ רו םי [ … ] סו דו חומ לו ב , לא יה ום הב מם פש עי וא " שר ד " אי ו " חר ו " ש , הש או םח לו בח םד . The New York JTS manuscript is aseparate treatise that drawsonmaterial from Ḥayyei ha-Nefeš but is not identical to it,though it perhaps preserves abetter version of the text. The same gematria, togeth- er with the Pythagorean Tetraktys,isfound in adifferent version, Ms.New York, JTS 1813,fol. 27b. It is possible that Abulafia is referredtoonfol. 27basthe person whoinformedthe anonymous Kab- balist about the gematrias.Ihope to return to the Kabbalistic material found in this manuscript else- where. 286 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

This shortand compact passageisbased on four series of gematrias. Thefirst one, the Pythagorean, is decoded in the footnote. The second one is of special importance: ha-Tefillin = yeṣer ha-raʿ =575.The phylacteries are not conceivedasidentical to the evil inclination, as the gematria maybeinterpreted, but as standing against the evil inclination, reminiscent of the amuletic perception seen in the passagequoted above. However,the evil inclination is now considered to be an inner power, which means thatthe phylacteries are part of astruggle with the inner human incli- nation. This interpretation is corroborated by another important gematria found in the quoted text: moaḥ wa-lev =86=Elohim = ḥam we-laḥ. This means that the human body, especiallythe brain and the heart,isthe recipient of the “light of Šaddai” (or Šaddai)orthe “light of the sense” (or ḥuš), both amountingto521. Whyare these issues considered to be secrets?Itseems thatthe answer is quite simple: because the commandment of the phylactery is understood as referringtoan inner process that is similar to what is found in manyother cases in Abulafia,such as the secret of the reception of the Torahdiscussed above.¹³⁵ Abulafia interiorised the apotropaic function of the ancient ritual and this is also the caseinthe mannerin which he portrayedthe Sinaitic revelation as restraining the sexual impulse.¹³⁶ How- ever,this restraint should be understood as facilitating noeticactions rather than apotropaic ones. Let me turn now to Abulafia’sstudent Rabbi Nathan, the author of Šaʿarei Ṣedeq, who promises that “if youwill cleave to God, and link yourself to His power,your power willrule over the tefillin,which amounts in gematria to Yeṣer ha-raʿ.”¹³⁷ Does such atext mean that there was an antinomian approach regarding the tefillin? Ibelievenot.Thisgematria is simplypart of an interpretive game that can change direction justasapositive approach to the same topic maydousing another gema- tria. In more technicalterms,Iassumethat as in manycases in ecstatic Kabbalah, the evil inclination refers to the imaginative faculty that is contrastedwith the “good” inclination, the intellect.¹³⁸ Flexible interpretations of words, even when as- sociated with the commandments in Abulafia and his followers,donot automatically add to or detract from their behaviour.Did the Kabbalist who created the gematria for the evil instinct think that he was indeeddonning the evil inclination when putting on tefillin? By untying one’ssoul or intellect from corporeality,one binds it to the in- tellectual world.¹³⁹ This is afine example of what Icalled atype of spiritual allego- risation.

 See chapter 9above.  See chapter 9note 99 above.  See Rabbi Nathan, Šaʿarei Ṣedeq,465 and 476, to be quoted below on p. 288. Forother analyses of tefillin in ecstatic Kabbalah, see Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia,149–50,note 153.  See examples quoted in Idel, Language,Torah, and Hermeneutics,44–45;Idel, TheMystical Ex- perience,96–97,102–3; and Šaʿarei Ṣedeq. Cf. Le Porte della Giustizia,462–63.  Le Porte della Giustizia,464–65. 26 “Phylacteries of the Holy One, blessed be He,” and Phylacteries of Man 287

This theory about the tefillin recurs in Šaʿarei Ṣedeq in avariety of forms, but I refer the reader to my detailed discussion of this issue elsewhere.¹⁴⁰ Crucial for this book is the Neo-Platonic assumption that “nature” keepsthe spiritual power within its dominion and that “divestment” means “escape from nature.”¹⁴¹ In this book, the divestment is onlyonce attributed to the intellect,which is depicted as be- cominguniversal after separatingitself from matter.¹⁴² Especiallyinteresting is the mention of the divestment in quite an anomian context: “When she¹⁴³ enters and is immersed in its innermost [aspect] and divests herself of the knot of the tefillin, which is the evil instinct according to the gematria, and bindsit¹⁴⁴ […]and the secret that youshould receive from it is ‘because¹⁴⁵ the name is within it.’”¹⁴⁶ The divest- ment of corporeality or imagination, viewed as the evil instinct,isamatter of inte- riorisation. Thus, it is anomian approach thatinforms the description of the very highperception of God accordingtoRabbinic sources, envisioning Him as perform- ing acommon Jewish commandment. Abulafia recommends using the phylacteries as part of the preparations for per- forming one of his techniques that is to be carried out at midnight.¹⁴⁷ Donning phy- lacteries during the night was certainlynot anomian performance, accordingtoRab- binic instructions, though it is not asharp digressionfrom the norm. In two instances that are parallel to the other two, phylacteries are not mentioned at all.¹⁴⁸ Isuspect, to put it mildly, that no phylacteries wereused in the Fridaynight experience report- ed by Rabbi Nathan; at the very least,they are not mentioned.¹⁴⁹ This means that they were indeednot considered to be strictlynecessary for the technique. Interestingly enough,inthe earlysixteenthcentury,Rabbi Judah Alboṭini’sver- sion of the passagefrom Ḥayyei ha-ʿOlam ha-Baʾ contains the following formulation:

 See Idel, TheMystical Experience,134–37.The matter of the “fettering” and putting on of the spi- ritual form also appears in the Byzantine Kabbalistic book Sefer ha-Qanah (Koretz: 1784), fol. 106d: “And the intention is that Enoch divestedthe bodilyelement and put on the spiritual element and was fettered by aspiritual knot.”  Le Porte della Giustizia,467,475.Comparealso to 464–65.  Le Porte della Giustizia,468–69.Comparealso to Rabbi Judah Alboṭini, Sullam ha-ʿAliyyah,ed. Joseph E. E. Porush (Jerusalem:1989), 71.  The subject matter is not clear.Itisthe letter Yod,but my assumption is that it is also the soul, as both are, grammaticallyspeaking, feminine.  To the four biblical portions written in the phylacteries.  Exodus23:21.  Le Porte della Giustizia,476: כו הש אי כנ סנ ות וש עק לת נפ מי וי הת מו פת טש מת שק הר פת יל אן רש וה יא רצ רה בע יג טמ יר ' קו שו תר ו [ … ] הו וס קד לב זמ ה יכ מש בי רק וב .  This is the case in Ḥayyei ha-ʿOlam ha-Baʾ and in Or ha-S´ekhel. See Idel, TheMystical Experience, 38–39,120.  Sefer ha-Ḥešeq,16, translatedinIdel, The Mystical Experience,38; see also Oṣar ʿEden Ganuz, 3:10,365.  Le Porte della Giustizia,479. 288 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

If youcan,¹⁵⁰ wrap yourself in a ṭallit and don your tefillin on your head and your arm, so that youmay be fearful and in aweofthe Šekhinah,which is with youatthat time. And cleanse your- self and your garments,and if youcan, have them all be white,¹⁵¹ for all this greatlyassists the intention of fear and love.¹⁵²

Thus, phylacteries and the ritualistic shawl, the ṭallit,are conceivedasbeing helpful for inducingacertain state of mind rather than for keepingcertain commandments. They do not ensure the presenceofthe Šekhinah,but rather the appropriateattitude towards her presence, which is produced by the recitation of divine names or com- binationsofletters. In his Or ha-S´ekhel,Abulafia also recommends them as an op- tion: “And sit wrapped in pure clean white garments or new garments over all your garments or have your ṭallit and your head adorned with tefillin.”¹⁵³ The “or” here parallels the “if youcan” in the Ḥayyei ha-ʿOlam ha-Baʾ version and demonstrates thatfor Abulafia,whiteclothes are more essential than the tradi- tional ritual objects. In this case, onlythe phylactery of the headismentioned, not that of the hand!Interestingly enough, in aVatican manuscript of Or ha-S´ekhel,there is apainting illustrating Abulafia’stechnique wherethe figure dons the headphylac- teries:his left hand, quite visibleinthe picture, has no sign of phylacteries.¹⁵⁴ From the dark background that surrounds the figure, it is more than plausible that night is implied as the moment for the recitation of the combinations of letters.Not quite a hypernomian approach, to be sure. In the third case, when describingthe preparations for recitation, Abulafia ig- nores the issue of wearingphylacteries altogether.¹⁵⁵ In apassagefrom an unidenti- fied text that is most plausiblypart of ecstatic Kabbalah and preserved by Rabbi Ḥay- yim Viṭal, we read as follows: “Isolate yourself in ahouse and close your eyes, and if youcan wrap yourself in a ṭallit and tefillin,itwould be better.”¹⁵⁶ The explicitlyop- tional use of external accoutrements from the liturgical ritual helps to account for the absenceofṭallit and tefillin in Rabbi Nathan’sversion in Šaʿarei Ṣedeq. In anycase, both the absence of the recommendation to wear the tefillin when recitingthe divine name in solitude and the above gematria,tosay nothing of the optional formula-

 Here and again below the Hebrew phrase is im tukhal.  See Ecclesiastes9:8.The sourcesfor white clothes arenumerous and include manymagical texts. The closest, however,isRabbi Eleazar of Worms’s Sefer ha-Šem. See Wolfson, Through aSpec- ulum That Shines,237,note 195,and Rabbi Judah ben Nissim ibn Malka, KitābUns wa-Tafsīr,ed. Ye- huda A. Vajda (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1974), 53.  Alboṭini’s Sullam ha-ʿAliyyah,73. ComparetoḤayyei ha-ʿOlam ha-Baʾ,Ms. Oxford, Bodleian 1582, fol. 51b.  Or ha-S´ekhel,Ms. Vatican, 233, fol. 109a, 105.See Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia,223–24.  See Ms.Vatican, 597, fol. 113a.  See the passage in Sefer ha-Ḥešeq mentioned in chapter26note 148below.ComparetoWolfson, Abraham Abulafia,209.Wolfson contends that the donningofthe ṭallit and tefillin are “essential” for the recitation because the latter arenomorethan “an extension of traditional prayer.” See also Ap- pendix Enote 219below.  Šaʿarei Qedušah (Jerusalem:1973), 7. 26 “Phylacteries of the Holy One, blessed be He,” and Phylacteries of Man 289

tions, are farfrom suggesting thatthis Kabbalist believed thatecstatic Kabbalah was closer to the ritual coreofJudaism than philosophy, as ahypernomian might think.¹⁵⁷ Interestingly enough, the onlyinstance, to my knowledge,wherethe donning of the ṭallit and tefillin is not presented as optional is in the version copied from Or ha- S´ekhel by the earlysixteenth-century Kabbalist Rabbi Judah Alboṭini, who was active in Jerusalem.¹⁵⁸ Alboṭini was aHalakhic figure, unlikeAbulafia and Rabbi Nathan, a fact that mayaccount for the changehemade in Abulafia’sadvice. Reading the anomian framework through the lens of anomian figure like Alboṭini does not,how- ever,make the anomian hypernomian. Clearly, ecstatic Kabbalah’sapproach to mystical techniquescan be categorised as anomian rather than hypernomian in that—with duerespect to Wolfson’sclaims¹⁵⁹ —neither Abulafia nor Rabbi Nathan attempted to expand the rangeofritual, but they rather strovetovalidatetheir own (anomian) techniques that were derived from Sefer Yeṣirah,itself an anomian text,and from the combinatory techniques found among the HasideiAshkenaz. These linguistic methods are askeleton onto which Abulafia incorporatesoptional technical elements that are designed to inspire aweand asense of mysteriousness in the atmosphere that surrounds the perfor- mance of their combinatory techniques. The auxiliary status of the phylacteries becomes especiallyclear when we realise that there is no synchronicity between the ritual acts thatare regularly performed in the morning and the mystical techniquesthat form the coreofthe ecstatic method. The liturgical artefacts constituteornaments, as Abulafia himself states,and are not accompanied by anyspecial consideration related to their religious meaning. In order to better understand their role in Abulafia’stechnique and its psycho- ritual background, his advice needs to be compared to amagicalformula attributed to the thirteenth-centuryRabbi Elijah of London: “When youwish […]toformulate your question, turn your heart away from all other involvements, and unify your in- tention and your thoughts to enter the Pardes.¹⁶⁰ Sit alone in awe, wrapped in ṭallit

 See Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia,227,onthe basis of Šaʿarei Ṣedeq, Le Porte della Giustizia,477. The hypernomian implication this scholar finds thereisunwarranted by the material. Foranexample of hypernomianism, see the assumption of asomewhat later Kabbalist,the author of Tiqqunei Zohar, whospeaks about the Šekhinah donningthe phylacteries.Cf. Roi, “The Myth of the Šekhina in Tiqqu- nei ha-Zohar,” 280–82. See also chapter16note 118 above.  See Sullam ha-ʿAliyyah,ed. Porush, 69.  See Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia,209–10.For an earlier use of the term “hypernomism” in the contextofKabbalistic material, see TalyaFishman, “AKabbalistic Perspective on Gender-Specific Commandments: On the InterplayofSymbols and Society,” AJS Review 17 (1992):199–245. Unlike my view of Abulafia as auniversalist versus Wolfson’sview of him as aparticularist,which I based on texts that have been ignored, in the case of the natureofthe technique, the difference be- tween us is amatter of differinginterpretations of, roughly speaking, the same texts.  Namely, the orchard described in manyJewish texts as asupernal level of reality that can be experienced. 290 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

and with tefillin on your head, and begin [to recite the] ‘Mikhtamfor David,’¹⁶¹ the entire psalm […]and read them with their melodies.”¹⁶² This passageiscertainlyin- fluenced by Kabbalistic thought, but Iwould not date it to the thirteenth century, even though it is attributed to Rabbi Elijah of London.¹⁶³ Nevertheless, its similarities to Abulafia’stechnique are fascinating,especiallythe mention of melodies. It can serveasafoil for what we learn from the ecstatic Kabbalist.¹⁶⁴ First and foremost, the recited text is anomian one, aPsalm,and not adivine name.Moreover,the ṭallit and tefillin are not means to induceawe,asthis is astate of mind alreadymen- tioned beforehand. There is nothing optional here: this technique is formulated in a non-conditional manner. In another formula from the same codex, which is one of the most important He- brew magical manuscripts, we find:

Youmay picturethe Ineffable Name likethe white flame of the candle, in absolutewhiteness, and [like] the light when lookingatthe candle, and even when thereisnocandle, remember the flame, and thereyou maysee and look at the light,[which stems] from the purewhitelight.And youmust always imagine that youare asoul without abody,¹⁶⁵ and the soul is the light,and you arealwayswithin the flames,inthe pureclouds.¹⁶⁶ And strive to be pureand complete[or per- fect], and if it is daytime, wear ṣiṣit and tefillin and the ring upon your finger, and at night as well, [wear] the ring upon your finger.And be accustomed to cleanliness in that house where youstand in the sanctuary of God,¹⁶⁷ within His precious,holy, and purenames.¹⁶⁸

Here, the anonymous author is well-aware that one does not wear phylacteries at night.This ascensiononhighhas bothamystical and amagical component,as the referencetoaring shows. However,unlike the attitude in the twolatertexts, Abu- lafia’sisnot sacramental. The details he recommends are intended to changeone’s psychological atmosphere before beginning the recitations of the combinations of letters.

 Ps.16. This psalm had aprofound impact on Jewish mysticism, especiallyverse 8.  Ms.Sassoon 290,381.  On this figure,see Amos Goldreich, Automatic WritinginZoharic Literature,especiallythe index entry for Eliyahu Menahem ben Moshemi-London.  On music as part of Abulafia’stechnique, see Idel, TheMystical Experience,53–71.  See Vital, “The Fourth Part of Šaʿarei Qedušah,” in Ketavim Ḥadašim me-Rabbenu Ḥayyim Viṭal, ed. Nathanel Safrin (Jerusalem: Ahavat Shalom, 1988), 10;LawrenceFine, “Recitation of Mishnah as aVehicle for Mystical Inspiration: AContemplative Technique Taught by Hayyim Vital,” REJ 141 (1982):197.  See the Abulafian description of the continuum of God as intellect,the separate intellects,and the human intellect as lights within acandle, quoted in Idel, TheMystical Experience,130–31.  On the metaphorical resort to terms related to sanctuary,see also chapter25above.  Ms.Sassoon 290,648. This manuscript was mainlycopied beforethe peak of Safedian Kabbalah, although its later parts reflect the impact of Safedian theories. 27 Some MethodologicalRemarks 291

27 Some Methodological Remarks

Let me compareAbulafia’sthoughttothe approach of the Maimonideans, as well as to the approach(es) of most of the other Kabbalists. In the case of the former, his thoughtdivergesinhis strongnaturalist approach to language, which is conceived as anatural phenomenon related to speech. It is aspecificallyhuman feature: hu- mans are speaking and intelligent beings. Abulafia’semphasis on the superiority of the divine namesasbeing conducive to aform of sublime intellection is hardly approximated by the Maimonideans, whose approach to languagewas essentiallyin- formedbyits conventionality.Moreover,unlikethe more scholasticapproach of the Maimonideans, Abulafia developed amuch more spiritualistapproach that con- cerned his life and thoseofhis students and not merelytheoretical discussions about prophecy or the allegoricalexegesisofancient texts.Finally, his strong escha- tological propensities,either individual or collective,are hardlyparalleledbyany of the followers of the Great Eagle. Abulafia’spointed critique of theosophical Kabbalah is unparalleled by any other polemicwithin the Kabbalistic camp in the entire thirteenth century; it is one of the sharpest assaults on this type of Kabbalah ever given. In my opinion, it is not just amatter of an attitude adopted in amoment of intense controversy.On the contrary:his critique of those Kabbalists as being worse, theologicallyspeaking, than Trinitarian Christians would have been counterproductive for someonewho was attemptingtofind away to mitigate the critique of ibn Adret,asisobvious from his epistle to the latter’scolleagueinBarcelona, Rabbi Judah Salmon.¹⁶⁹ Moreover,also in other contexts, and not just polemicalones, Abulafia rejects theosophy.¹⁷⁰ This is alsothe case with his attitude towardstheurgy,asIdiscussed above.¹⁷¹ His explicit critique of symbolism as practised by the theosophical Kabbalists touch- es another major topic on the manner in which the Kabbalists in Spain elaborated their discourse.¹⁷² Thistopic also links to his special type of esotericism, most of which is closer to the philosophers and to Ashkenazi thought.Inshort,all of these critiquesshould be seen as part of the intellectual philosophical mould that informed Abulafia as amatter of principle, not just as amatter of historical conjec- ture. Abulafia’sacquaintance with the thought of the falāsifah is one of the reasons behindhis approach, which caused ashift in the centreofthe human ideal activity that was decidedlydifferent from the theosophical Kabbalists.Following aMaimoni- dean, ultimatelyGreek, propensity,heshifted the emphasis from what Icall the per- forming bodythat concerns the Rabbinic tradition and the integration of the perfor-

 Ed. Jellinek, 19,quoted below in Appendix C.  See Oṣar ʿEden Ganuz,1:1,40.  See chapter 17 note 154 above.  See the passagetranslatedabovefrom Imrei Šefer,18. 292 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

mance of bothbodyand soul thatconcerns most of the Kabbalistic traditions¹⁷³ to intellectual operations or,more rarely, to processes in the external reality.Heconsid- ered them as secrets on the one hand and as sublimeideals to be attained on the other. These differences and others separate Abulafia from the two main alternative camps to which he should be compared: the Maimonideans and the theosophical- theurgical Kabbalists.Hewas asignificant memberofthe former,but was acquaint- ed with and critical of the latter,which is evident not just from his biography, but also from the content of his books, when understood as he would have liked them to be. Nevertheless, givenhis synthetic approach, he differed dramaticallyfrom both. At least in the case of the theosophical Kabbalists,the rejection was quiteex- plicit and sharp,aswelearn from ibn Adret’sinfluential attitude and from the more elaborate attack by Rabbi Judah Ḥayyaṭ made at the end of the fifteenth century.¹⁷⁴ Thus, bothconceptuallyand socially, Abulafia remained outside the Spanish Kabbalists’ camp for two full centuries afterhis death. Thisreciprocal rejection is un- paralleledinthe case of anyotherKabbalist from those centuries and it was only through the restructuring of the Spanish Kabbalah after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain that the enmity of the Spanish Kabbalists towards his sort of Kabbalah was mitigated. The modern scholarlyattemptstoreduce the gapbetween the two forms of Kabbalah ignorethe importance both of the historiesofKabbalah and of its phenomenological variety,asScholem and Ihaveproposed by elaborating on Abulafia’sown typologytoagreat extent.However,Abulafia’sesotericism should be seen as part of amuchbroader phenomenon which included Jewish philosophy, Kabbalah, and Ashkenazi literature: what Icall the profound arcanisation of Juda- ism. Though there wereplentyofsecrets in Qumran, Rabbinic, magical, and Hekha- lot literatures,those secrets werenevertheless contained in onlyafew areas.Howev- er,from the twelfthcentury, an accelerated process of more comprehensive interpretations of Judaism as constituted by secret messages, and more rarelymyste- rious ones, took place, with the late thirteenth century as one of the peaks of this processthat would develop for four further centuries. Though much more amatter of rhetoric than of practice, the vector was definitely in the direction of aproliferationofsecrets in general, includingareas of secrecythat earlier had not been conceivedasesoteric. The founder of ecstatic Kabbalah was ac- tive at the intersection of most of these types of esotericism and his approach, though profoundlyinfluenced by philosophical esotericism, did not exclude the astral one

 See Idel, “On the Performing Body,” 251–71,and Idel, “Nišmat Eloha: On the Divinity of the Soul in Nahmanides and His School.” Letmepoint out the differencebetween the theosophical Kabbal- ists’ assumptionthat the soul is divine, has descended here below,and is strivingtoreturn to the supernal source versus Abulafia’semphasis on the intellect that grows from its potential to actual status.Thus,evenwhen the two types of Kabbalah discuss the same issue, such as devequt,the issue means quitedifferent things in the different systems of thought.  See Idel, Kabbalah in Italy,221. 27 Some MethodologicalRemarks 293

as advocated by Abraham ibn Ezraorthe Ashkenazi one, and he mentions the the- osophical-theurgical issues onlyrarelyand rhetorically. Moreover,unlike other medieval authors, Abulafia is one of the very few whose rhetoric includes the assumption that secrets maybeinsertedinto the interpreted texts through aconscious process of secretive eisegesisthatIcall comprehensive ar- canisation, which meansthat secrets were not onlyelicited from the interpreted texts,but also projected into them by means of avariety of exegetical methods that he described.¹⁷⁵ By unveiling the dominantlypolitical nature of those secrets whose importance Abulafia deemed worthwhile either to put into relief or to hide,wemay have amore solid insight into the specific nature of his speculativeaxiology. Natural processes and natural linguistics, envisioned as conducive to sublimenoetic processes, are the clues for understanding his esoteric axiology. This is the reason whyitisdifficult for me to understand whysome scholars attempt to mitigate the central role the noet- ic processes playedinhis writingswhile blurringthe phenomenological divergences between his writingsand those of the theosophical Kabbalists whose conceptual worldviews weresodifferent on this point. It is Neo-Aristotelian philosophythat serves as the main sourceofthe herme- neutical grid for reinterpretingthe earlier layers of Judaism in amanner that gravi- tates around noetic processes. This means that Abulafia possesses anaturalistic un- derstandingofreligion that brings together the Neo-Aristotelian intellectual apparatus, non-linguistic in nature, with the cosmology and linguisticsofSefer Yeṣ- irah,whose worldview he interprets in astronglynaturalisticmanner.AsAbulafia indicates, these two sources should be seen as coefficient but insufficient if separat- ed from one another.¹⁷⁶ It is here that the originality of Abulafia’swritingscan be dis- cerned because unlike the other Kabbalists,hedoes not betray his earlier adherence to Maimonides, and unlike the Maimonideans, he does not remain imprisoned in a scholastic approach basedonArabic-JewishNeo-Aristotelianism and its application to the religious texts by means of allegories and homonyms. Abulafia’sapproach is ahybrid approach thatbringstogether these disparate realms—linguistic speculationswith intellectualistic ones through modifying each of them, especiallythe former—despite their significant conceptual dissonance. Forexample, he insertedlinguistic elements into Maimonides’sphilosophical defini- tion of prophecy on the one hand and loaded these elements—namely, the Hebrew letters and the divinenamesand their combinations—with an intellectual cargo on the other.¹⁷⁷ This more philosophicallyorientedconceptualisation of the sources of Abulafia’sthoughtisalso true in the caseofthe extant lists of the books he claims to have studied;weare indeed able to definitively ascertain that he used them in his

 This process is describedinIdel, Absorbing Perfections.  Oṣar ʿEden Ganuz,1:1,33. On Abulafia’spreferenceofthe phonetic over the graphic elementsof language, see my Language,Torah, and Hermeneutics,135,note 11.  See, for example, Sitrei Torah,160,and Oṣar ʿEden Ganuz,Ms. Oxford, Bodleian 1580,fol. 90a. 294 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

writings. His claims are not justboasting,asisthe case of Rabbi Hillel accordingto Joseph B. Sermoneta. With this approach in mind, the more specific analyses of topics aboveallow for the understandingofAbulafia’sworldview as presupposingarather stable universe within whose framework it is possiblefor aman to achievesome form of sublime noetic experiences through resorting to techniques Abulafia articulatedstarting from 1280.¹⁷⁸ This naturalstability should be seen against the background of its au- thor: an itinerant thinker,often in motion from one country to another,who believed that he wasliving in atime of dramatic transition and who interpreted the words of the texts as having been manipulated in avariety of ways so thatthrough new com- binationsofletters,hecould introduce avariety of meaningsstemmingfrom his own mind. On the grounds of the materials adduced above, some of which have not yet been discussed in scholarship, it seems quite plausible thatAbulafia was inclined to amore universalistic conception of man (within the constraints of his time and place) than most of his thirteenth-centurycontemporaries, with the possibleexcep- tion of Rabbi Menahem ha-Meʾiri. Even the Ancient Greek philosophers who contrib- uted so much to the emergence of the universalist approach had their prejudices,as the use of the word “barbarian” shows. Especiallysurprising are the recent depictions of Abulafia’sthoughtasparticu- larist and the assumption that he adopted theosophical views.¹⁷⁹ These descriptions are missing an accurate understanding of the main point of his Kabbalistic enter- prise: in some instances, he allegorises Kabbalistic symbolism, justasheallegorises biblical verses or Rabbinic legends. Without seeing amore comprehensive and com- plex picture basedonthe entire rangeofpertinent discussions, the scholarand the reader are lost in details that maynot fit the more complex intention of the author or the general picture as it emergesfrom the specifics of its literary presentation. There- fore, they generate some analyses of details in arather surprising manner. It is particularlyimportant to decode the specific types of discourse,repletewith both allegoriesand gematrias that are hardlyfound in Kabbalistic literature before Abulafia and the circle related to him, as well as the content of his secrets. No doubt this is one of the most complex types of discourse, which necessitatesmuch more than just decodingnumerical equivalences: it also requires an attempt to un- derstand the types of narrativesheuses, either alone or together. Through the unnecessary efforts to reduce the importance of the philosophical dimensions of Abulafia’sthought that are tooobvious in almost all of his studies on the topic along with an overemphasis on afew theosophicalthemesfound in some of his writings—which, in my opinion, Abulafia often reinterpreted in anew,

 See Appendix Bbelow.  See the subtitle of Wolfson’sbook on Abraham Abulafia in which both theurgy and theosophy arementioned. 27 Some MethodologicalRemarks 295

non-theosophical mannerthatwas essentiallyaphenomenon of allegorising symbol- ism¹⁸⁰—Elliot Wolfsonhas striventosoften the phenomenological gapbetween the two major forms of Kabbalah in the thirteenthcentury.¹⁸¹ In this context,let me note thathehas alsooveremphasised the impact of Maimonidesonthe theosophical Kabbalists, again blurringthe sharp divergences between the two forms of Kabba- lah.¹⁸² There is no reason not to highlight the profound affinities between Abulafia’s theories and various forms of philosophy, especiallyMaimonidean ones. Otherwise, the coreofhis messageremains solelywithin the second narrative,asisindeed the case in some of Wolfson’sparticularist readingsofthis Kabbalist.This amounts to an exoteric understanding of aperson whom Iconsider to be an esoteric Kabbalist.Abu- lafia has therefore been judgedbyscholars on the level he wantedtoproject for the unqualified readers, the vulgus, while the secrets that he wanted to hide have re- mainedhidden in the recent scholarship on his thought.¹⁸³ At the same time as he tries to uncover the phallocentric “secret” of Kabbalah, envisioningthe divineperfec- tion as amale androgyne and imaginingthat this disclosure of his well-kept secret transforms Abulafia into aheretic in the eyes of other scholars of Kabbalah, Wolf- son¹⁸⁴ reads Abulafia, who was banned and deemed heretical in his lifetime and also for manyyears afterwards, in quite aharmonistic manner,asaparticularist Kab- balist like all the others. The question that should thereforebeasked at this stageofour discussion is: if Abulafia resorts to more traditionalexplanations of topics in manyplaces in his writ-

 Ihaveprepared aseparate studyonthis phenomenon.  Forthe assumption of asubstantialbifurcation in the phenomenology of Kabbalah as pointed out by Abulafia himself, see my Kabbalah: New Perspectives;Idel, TheMystical Experience,7–10;Idel, Language,Torah, and Hermeneutics,xii–xvii; Idel, “The Contribution of Abraham Abulafia’sKabba- lah,” 117–43;and Idel, “On the Meanings of the Term ‘Kabbalah,’” 40–52.Ihope to return to this issue in amoreexpanded manner based on some texts that have not yetbeen taken into consideration in another study.  See, morerecently, Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow and Temporal Transcendence.” This is also the case in the studybyLachter, “Kabbalah, Philosophyand the Jewish–Christian Debate,” 1–58, who, in my opinion, overemphasises some themes as if Gikatilla’s “immersion” in theosophical imagery is al- readypresent in his earlywritings.Inthis case, just as in Wolfson and Sagerman’sapproach, we may discern the same sort of effort to “theosophise” material that is not concerned with theosophy through assuminganesoteric theosophical level. In these cases,the scholars analyse onlydisparate themes of these materials rather than their profound structures, and then some form of implicit con- clusion as to ahidden layerofthoughtisdrawn. Though different from Abulafia’smorenaturalistic approach and his moresympatheticattitude to philosophy, Gikatilla’searlyworldview also differs dramaticallyfrom the Kabbalistic theosophy that he would so magnificentlyexpose in his later Kab- balistic books.See Scholem, TheKabbalah of Sefer ha-Temunah, 108–10.  This,inmyopinion, is also the case in Wolfson’sdiscussion of the rationales of the command- ments,where he distinguishes between esoteric and exoteric levels.See his Abraham Abulafia,186– 97,and see, for the time being, my “On the Secrets of the TorahinAbraham Abulafia,” 430–51.  See Elliot R.Wolfson, “Gender and Heresy in the StudyofKabbalah,” Kabbalah 6(2001): 231–62. 296 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

ings, but in one or more cases offers secret views that contradict the former, are the formerexoteric expressions acover for the esoteric ones?This is acrucial issue that cannot be answered in general terms without adetailed analysis of the meaningof the various secrets themselves. However,onthe grounds of Abulafia’sresort to the phrase “HolyLanguage” in both the traditional sense and in its esoteric and natural- ist sense, which differssosignificantlyfrom its exoteric understanding,ashas been presented above, and of the secret of the divine choice, Iaminclined to offer apos- itive answer. This is also the casewith the interpretationIhavegiven of the parable of the pearl, as well as that of his reinterpretation of popularmessianism as ultimately speakingabout an individualistic kind of redemption. In some cases, though not all, the secrets thatAbulafia conceivesasimportant are highlighted with terms like “wondrous” and other similar adjectives. My assumption as to the importance of these secrets is not asubjective evaluation. In other words, we should take Abulafia’sindications as to what is important much more seriously thanthey were taken in the past.Toput it another way: in my opinion, Abulafia was aMaimonidean not just in what he said or in his resort to Neo-Aristoteliannomenclature, but alsointhe manner in which he hid matters, both through the strategyofhomonyms and,which seems to me to be even more im- portant,inthe nature of the matters he decided to hide themselves. Such Maimoni- dean esotericism, which is essentiallypolitical in nature, is even more surprising for aKabbalist who claimed that the time of the end had arrivedand that the secrets should be revealed; that is, he claimed that the stark distinctionbetween the vulgar and the elite had been mitigated. Iwould alsolike to point out the differencebetween Maimonides’seconomyof esotericism and Abulafia’s. The Great Eagle assumedthathis book, TheGuide of the Perplexed,was aself-contained unit that served as the sole container of his secrets. They are spread and hidden within the contradictions and hints found in this single and very carefullywritten book.This does not mean thathis two earlier major books are not mentioned or thatthey cannot help us to understand his secrets.However, these bookswerebuilt on other strategies of hiding secrets to those adopted in the Guide,and secrets were not the author’sprimary intention for writing them. In this book, Ihaveculled passages from around threedozen of Abulafia’stexts. From these passages, it is clear that Abulafia adopted adifferent strategythat neces- sitated not onlyconsideringthe different wavelengths or registers for different audi- ences,aswas also the case for Maimonides himself, but also developments in his own thought over the course of twenty years. Moreover,Abulafia wrotehis numerous books under the impression (or in the confidence) thathewas living and acting dur- ing aspecial moment in history,aswellasthat he was playing aunique, redemptive role, at least accordingtothe historical narrative. It should be mentioned thatAbu- lafia could not have imagined that his most avid reader would have possessed all of his writings, which werecomposed in different countries and for different audiences. Therefore, contradictions maynot onlybeamatterofdeliberate authorial decisions, 27 Some MethodologicalRemarks 297

as is explicitlythe case with Maimonides’sesotericism, but alsoofconceptual fluid- ity,which should be taken into consideration when dealing with his thematic ap- proach. What cannotbedenied, however,isthe fact thatAbulafia repeatedlypointed to the existenceofsecrets,includingextreme epithets that refer to his emphasis on the special importance of some of them in particular. He also provides expressions of heterodoxideas, sometimes in aclear manner, in his rebuttal of the Rabbinic theory of pollution and his rather convoluted treatments of the problems of the nature of the choosing of the Jewish people and the freedom of the divinewill. Though these is- sues are different themes, they are all related to each other,and they are part of the profound structure of Abulafia’steachings. These are questions, tensions, and frictions thatgenerated starkopposition through the introduction of naturalist themesinto aparticularistreligion; the tensions found in Abulafia’stextsweretrans- lated in the public arena through his banishment by ibn Adret. In more general terms,the question is: to what extent were the contents of Abu- lafia’swritings, which he would call Kabbalah, identical to his ownesotericism?In my opinion,the answer is complex. At least in one case, Abulafia distinguishesbe- tween the Kabbalistic interpretation, seen as the plainsense, and the secret meaning of acertain commandment.¹⁸⁵ Though he envisioned ecstatic Kabbalah as the path leading to what he conceivedasbeing the highest experience, be it prophetic or mes- sianic, this is not necessarilyanesoteric issue, though the identification of the prophet or the Messiah with acertain specific person mayindeedbepartofescha- tological esotericism. The highest experience, that of mystical union in itself, does not have to be related to esotericism, which, in my opinion, should be essentiallyun- derstood in apolitical manner; namely, as being intended to hide the religious framework which frames the experience: the naturalist-inclinedreligion that is an importantregister,which includes the centrality of the noetictransformation, in stri- dent opposition to the traditional forms of Jewish religion, with its emphasis on the centralityofthe performance of rituals. This conclusion can be formulated in more general categories: the religious framework (Abulafia’stheologyand cosmology) is essentiallynaturalistic, afact that allows for the accomplishment of the highestexperience through amental proc- ess. The two intertwined aspects, the naturaland the mental,belong to the third nar- rative.These two elements, bothbytheirnature and by the sources thatinspired Abulafia, are rather universalist.Inmyopinion, the anomian character of Abulafia’s techniques assumes the possibility of attaining these experiences in ashort time by resortingtolinguistic repetitions and bodilyacts that are not dependentonthe Rab- binic rituals. These practicesare reminiscent of Hindu, Hesychastic, and perhaps

 See Sitrei Torah,44. 298 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

also Sufi techniques.¹⁸⁶ The role of the divine will in preventing the achievement of prophecyisnegligible in Abulafia’swritings, thus allowing the performance of his techniques to be the main meansofobtaining aprophetic experience,though it would ideallybepreceded by some form of philosophical education. In general, Wolfson’sapproach to Abulafia as aparticularist and his more con- cretereadingsofAbulafia’sstatements—taking as he does the national-historical nar- rative of the parable of the pearl as if it werethe main message thatAbulafia intend- ed to convey—differsfrom my emphasis on the centralityofthe metaphorical and allegorical aspects of his texts.Myapproach is much more inclined towards the uni- versaldimension of his thought,which is either onlysuccinctlymentioned or is care- fullyhidden in his works.This dimension informs the manner of reading his writings Ihaveprovided above. Our approaches also differ insofarasthe attitude towards commandments is concerned: my assumption is that Abulafia’stechniquesare anomian, and subse- quentlyless dependent on Rabbinic rituals, if at all, while Wolfson assumes that they are “hypernomian” and thus that they strengthenthese rituals. These substan- tial differences have had an impact on our general understandingsofKabbalah: Ias- sume agreater polarisation of camps or schools and see amuch less homogeneous view of the field, while Wolfsonblurs some of what Isee as the most vital differences between them, offering amore theosophicalunderstanding of all Kabbalistic phe- nomena.Indeed, these two readings still deserveadditional special, critical, and de- tailed studies that discuss the appropriateness of these twodiverging scholarlyanal- yses of and approaches to these specific texts. My call for acomprehensive understanding and attentive readingofdetails and discerningcontradictions, based on weighing the nature and continuingimpact of Abulafia’sphilosophical sources, is indeedone of the reasons whyIdecided to pro- vide most of the original Hebrew textsinthe footnotes of this book: in this way, a more informed type of argumentation can be undertaken by scholars. The fact that some of the texts dealt with here are onlyavailable in manuscript form has also en- couraged me to provide the Hebrew originals.From perusing scholarship in this spe- cific field, scholars do not turn to the manuscripts often enough in order to ascertain the accuracyofatranslation or interpretation, and seldom search for yetunidenti- fied texts in manuscripts belongingtoecstatic Kabbalah. Even supposing the mere existenceofsuch textsbarelysurfacesinrecent scholarship. Let me point out thatsince my description of Abulafia’sliterary corpus in my PhDdissertationsubmittedin1976, scholars writing entire books have not found

 See my TheMystical Experience,13–52,and Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah. Letmepoint out that the Sufi impact on Abulafia has been exaggerated in recent years on the basis of very scant grounds;I hope to return to this issue elsewhere.See Pedaya, Vision and Speech,195–98;Hames, “ASeal within aSeal,” 153–72; Hames, LikeAngels on Jacob’sLadder,34–35;Idel “Definitions of Prophecy: Maimo- nides and Abulafia,” 33,note 21;Idel, “Sefer Yetzirah and ItsCommentaries,” 492, note 59;and chap- ter24note20above. 27 Some MethodologicalRemarks 299

even asingle previouslyunknown pagebelongingtothis Kabbalist,eveninthe case of an industrious scholar like Elliot Wolfson, who has published agreat deal about Abulafia and regularlyreads manuscripts. This is arather surprising situation, given the fact that it is still possibletofind new materials belongingtoAbulafia and his school in manuscript (and even in print) thatwereunknowntomeatthat point in time.AsIhave done in several of my earlier studies, in my discussions aboveI have brought forth manuscript materials from texts thatIdid not deal with in my dis- sertation,¹⁸⁷ and Ialso hope to do so in additional studies concerning several uniden- tified texts in the near future. Unfortunately, recent studiesofAbulafia rely—with manyomissions and with what Iconsider to be bibliographical mistakes—on onlyasmall portion of the mate- rial Ialreadyoutlined in 1976 and in some studies written afterwards.The authorsof these studies onlyseem to use the recent printed editions of his works,which are not always reliable, and neglect new material thatisstill extant onlyinmanuscriptform. Although access to hundreds of unknownmanuscriptsismore facilitatedthanithas ever been in Jewish history,the study of the rangeofmaterial found in these manu- scripts has been surprisingly limited, even more than in the very beginning of the studyofKabbalah by the likes of Adolph Jellinek and Gershom Scholem, who did not enjoy the technological possibilities available today. However,what seems to be more problematic is not just the sometimes lazy resort to printed works (often without anyreference to my 1976 identifications of manuscript texts and sources be- longingtoAbulafia): rather,some scholars’ selective readingofhis texts is causedby their selective manner of treatingthe pertinent material and aboveall their ignoring of the content of the esoteric dimensions of his writings. The selective manner in which the content of these printedbookshas been pre- sented is often informed by amore comprehensive agenda, as we have seen abovein the case of the treatment of the pollution myth. The impression these scholars give is that they are less committed to aserious acquaintancewith the details of the complex field in which Abulafia wrote than what would be expected.The manner in which Abulafia’streatment of the Rabbinic statement on the primordial pollution and the cathartic Sinaitic experience has been discussed is based solely on one discussion among manyothers, and Pedaya’streat- ment of Abulafia’sinterpretations of the phrase “end of time” are examples of afrag- mentary and sometimesimpressionistic presentation of the rich material available in print,tosay nothing of the need to peruse unknown material in manuscripts. Let me clarify my approach here: Iamnot concerned with the lack of exhaustive scholarlytreatments of topics related to Abulafia—Iamsure, for example, that par- allels to some of my discussions abovecan be amplified by additional passages—but onlywith instanceswheresuch alack has causedmideleading presentations and sometimeseveninversions of Abulafia’sviews. However,what is even more disturb-

 See also my Ben,324–26. 300 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

ing is the fact that on the grounds of these impressionistic treatments,comparisons with other Kabbalistic writingshavebeen drawnand much broader conclusions about the nature of Kabbalah in the thirteenthcentury,and sometimesits nature in general, have been presented and then accepted and repeated by other scholars in acringinglyobsequious manner.Though Iamreadytoadmit that my presentation is based on textsIhave selected and that another scholar could draw upon another selection of texts,the extent of the pertinent material adduced in order to make a certain point and the correctness of its understanding willdetermine what serious scholarship will adopt or abandoninthe future critical work in the field. Ihope that anyfurther studywilldemonstrate the centrality of what Abulafia would consider the higher,individualistic-spiritual register in his esoteric thought, though other registers that wereless important for him as an esotericist and that wereintended for otheraudiences are also to be found in his writings. Foramore accurate understanding of the uniqueness of Abulafia’sthought,itisnecessary to uncover his profound conceptual structure (withinwhich there are fluctuations relat- ed to conceptual fluidity) and to compareittothose of the other Kabbalists.Itisalso necessary to avoid drawing conclusions on the basis of comparing onlyisolated and marginal themesorterms.After all, meaning stems from the natureofthe compre- hensive structures that should be understood as informing the particularthemesthat constitutethese structures and their valences.Ihave attempted in this book to show that this profound structure stems from philosophical Neo-Aristotelian noetics. Though Abulafia most probablyadopted acomplex philosophical theology drawingfrom avariety of Neo-Aristotelian sources that in principle does not allow changes within the divinerealm or of the separate intellects induced by human ac- tivities, his emphasis on the positive role of languageisfar from anything we may find in the philosophies available to him, with the possible exception of Rabbi Judah ha-Levi, whose book Kuzari he never mentions. It is the manipulation of lan- guagethat ensures the acceleration of acts of intellection and thus the attainment of experienceshebelieved to be sublime: prophecyand, even higher,aunion with the separate intellects or with God. The combination of the mentalistic philosophical ap- proach and the linguistic techniquesrepresents an original achievement that starkly distinguisheshim from the camps of the Maimonidean philosophers, as well as from the vast majorityofthe other Kabbalists. However,for abetterunderstanding of Abulafia’sideal experiences, it is impor- tant to recognisethatheadopted the Avicennian and Averroistic ideals of intellectual conjunction and that he not onlydramaticallyreinterpreted some aspects of Maimo- nides’sapproach as to the limitations of human cognition of the spiritual world as found in the Guide,but also introducedamore universal ideal into Kabbalistic liter- ature. Thisintroduction has been ignored, or at least underestimated, in scholarship and requires more attention. Understanding(in scholarship as well) should be pre- occupied with discerning what is unique, new,and idiosyncratic, dependentasit maybeonavariety of other sources that weredigested, reinterpreted, and sometimes even openlycriticised.The scholarlyturn to Abulafia’swriting in the mid-nineteenth 27 Some MethodologicalRemarks 301

century in the pioneering studies of Meyer H. Landauer and Adolph Jellinek is inter- esting.Jellinek’spublication of some of Abulafia’sepistles and afew extracts from his booksinsome of his more open-minded studies produced in Germanyinthe sec- ond part of the nineteenth century was paralleled by an interest in Averroes’snoetics in Jewishscholarlystudies. This parallel is evident in the contemporary Jewishschol- ars’ publication of the medieval Hebrew translations of the Cordovan commentator’s treatises,¹⁸⁸ as well as avariety of otherMaimonidean authors such as Samuel ibn Tibbon, Hillel of Verona, ibn Falaquera, ibn Kaspi, and Narboni. Some of these au- thors werecontemporaries of Abulafia. However,these two lines of scholarlyinterest did not then meet,¹⁸⁹ and onlyrarelydid so in subsequent generations. Ihaveattempted to draw material pertinent for the interpretation of Abulafia’s parable from its immediate literary context—namely, the book in which it is embed- ded, Or ha-S´ekhel—as well as from his other Kabbalistic treatises written shortlybe- forehand, such as Sitrei Torah,and his commentaries on his prophetic books, as well as Rabbi Nathanben Saʿadyah’s Ša‘arei Ṣedeq. Rabbi Nathanisone of the two Kab- baliststowhom Or ha-S´ekhel was dedicated. This seems to me to be the best meth- odological approach in order to understand his views, which changed over the years as part of his conceptual fluidity.Likewise, Ihavetried to rely as much as possible on the philosophical sources that he expressly asserted that he had read, sometimes commented on, and sometimesquoted, such as Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed and Averroes respectively.Ihave tried not to indulge in speculations about the per- tinence of other sources thatare not expressly mentioned. Giventhe fact that we have arather detailed list of the books that Abulafia read (indeed, there is more that can be added to these sources, but this is not the place to do so), which is information that is incomparablymore detailed than is the case with anyotherKabbalist,scholarship would do better to attempt to address possibilities found in these sources first before indulging in anyfurther speculations as to types of sources that are merelyconjectures. Instead of perusing the available books, scholars choose to analyse the content of lost booksthat no one can read or even non-existent ones as possible sources for Abulafia’sthought.¹⁹⁰ Indeed, it is much easier to do so than to actuallyread the manuscripts by Samuel ibn Tibbon or Jacob Anatoli’stranslations of Averroes’sbooksthat Abulafia read and, in some cases, alsoquoted. My insistenceonthe relevance of the sources that are explicitlyquoted or at least mentioned constitutes amorecautious approach to Abulafianscholarship. However, Idonot intend to prevent the discovery of the possibleimpact of otherunnamed sources in the future, especiallyifadditional sources are referenced in Abulafia’s writings. However,methodologicallyspeaking,itiswiser to make aserious effort

 See chapter 6note 244 aboveand the Hebrewtranslationsprinted in Über die Möglichkeit der Conjunktion oder über den materiellen Intellect,ed. Ludwig Hanne (Halle: 1892).  The onlysignificant exceptionisWerbluner’sfootnotementioned in chapter5note 200above.  See Idel, “Sefer Yetzirah and ItsCommentaries,” 492. 302 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

to first exhaust the possible contribution of what Isee as the cluster of Andalusian sources thatare evident in Abulafia’sconceptual horizon before turningone’sgaze to hypotheticalpossibilities and their presumed impacts. It is not thatthese speculative attempts are problematic, but they should be made onlywith the caveat that their results must be clearlypresented in amanner that willbeproperlyunderstood in scholarship as what they indeed are: conjectures or workinghypotheses. Acautious scholarshould not build additional hypothetical constructs upon those conjectures, which are sometimes quite shaky,given by other scholars. Giventhe non-critical approach of some younger scholars to such hypotheses, sometimesaccepted as if they wereproven (and there are even attempts to elaborate and build further speculations upon them),there is acertain burden of responsibility in the very articulation of these conjunctures. Thus, the proliferation of conjectures by atoo-easy resort to formulating possibilitieswithoutaproper perusal of the entire rangeofextant material is prone to creating even more speculative proposals by later scholars, who build upon earlier speculations without critically examining the earlier proposals.Itisacase of repeatingsomeone’selse communication, arepetition and a much less critical account of what the medieval author under scrutinyhad to say. Such amirror vortex is evident in Haviva Pedaya’srecent description of Abulafia as being influenced by aSufi approach that can allegedlybefound in abook that he studied written by Rabbi EzraofGerona. However,the sourceactuallystems from Rabbi Judahha-Levi’s Kuzari. HarveyHames accepted the “Sufi” theory without anyhesitation. He then attributed aSufi influencetoalost text by Rabbi Ezra(Com- mentaryonSefer Yeṣirah)that no one has seen since 1270 or 1286,when its existence was brieflymentioned by Abulafia.¹⁹¹ In her turn, Pedaya adopted Hames’shypoth- esis as to the Joachimite-Franciscan impact on Abulafia as if it constituted awell-es- tablished fact.She took no precautions, qualifications, or even doubts, transforming it into aproven thesis (as Sagerman also did)¹⁹² without being aware of the biblio- graphical problem behind the claim of the “Sufi” nature of Rabbi Ezra’slost Com- mentaryonSefer Yeṣirah,which to my best knowledge,noscholarhas ever read.¹⁹³ Nor have Iseen anyawareness in scholars writing about Abulafia of the fascinating phenomenon of ascholarinventing acommentary on Sefer Yeṣirah,which was alleg- edlywritten by Abulafia’sformer student Rabbi Moses of Burgosand which has been understood as containingtheosophical material that could have influenced Abula- fia’salleged tendency towards theosophy.¹⁹⁴ In fact,such acommentary never exist- ed. It is much easier,asmentioned above, to speculate on the contents of lost Kab-

 Hames, LikeAngels on Jacob’sLadder,35; Pedaya, Vision and Speech,191–97;and some other cases that Iamnot discussinghere.  Sagerman, TheSerpent Kills,354,note 288.  See Pedaya, “The Sixth Millennium,” 66–68, 74–75,85, where she refers to various parts of Hames, LikeAngels on Jacob’sLadder.  See Pedaya, “The Sixth Millennium,” 67–68;see moreinmy“Sefer Yetzirah and ItsCommenta- ries,” 492. 27 Some MethodologicalRemarks 303

balistic books or thosethat never existed than to carefullyperuse manyofAbulafia’s extant treatises or the studies concerning them before ventilating impressionistic theories. To the best of my knowledge,mistaken claims in this mirror vortex of reciprocal quotations have never been checked. They are part of some scholars’ uncritical reli- ance on the shaky hypotheses of other scholars, which in turn generate additional shaky hypotheses. The great problem in scholarshipis, however,not with the exis- tenceofthese mistakes, but their endurance. There are examples of uncritical ap- proaches in scholarship in the last decade that represent not onlyaregress from the goal of introducingunknown textsbyAbulafia into the discussion, but also a passive acceptance of hypotheticalsuggestions madebyscholars as if they werein- deed proven. They then build new hypotheses on these original, but untested hy- potheses. The later proposals turn out to be even less plausible, formulatedas they are without fresh textual resources that are not known to scholars, with quota- tions from sources deemed to have influenced Abulafia, or even without mention of those alleged sources; they are produced withoutfirst consideringthe entire rangeof possiblesources before choosing the best ones for the task. This is the reason whyawider acquaintance with the pertinent backgrounds would address,for example, the possibility of the impact of the Averroistic trends in Italyinthe second part of the thirteenth century that has alreadybeen studied by Joseph B. Sermoneta, whose unpublished PhD dissertation has not attracted its due attention from anyofthe scholars writingentire books on Hillel’sformerstudent Abulafia. In general, let me point out that while the more matureAbulafia spent a little less thantwenty of the most important years for his intellectual development and career (ca. 1261–ca. 1268 and 1279–91) in Italyand Sicily, he spent onlyaround three to four years (ca. 1269–73)inthe Spanish provinces. However,those Spanish years weredecisive ones for his Kabbalistic career.This is the reason whygreater im- portance should be attributed to the Italian periods for his studies in the first period and for his teachingand writingsinthe second. The studies in the Italian period pro- vided the matrix for interpreting what he learned and taught after 1279. Some of Averroes’sbooks wereavailable in Hebrew duringAbulafia’slifetime due to translations made by some of the Maimonideans (Samuel and Moses ibn Tib- bon and theirrelative Jacob Anatoli); asignificant portion of his works was studied by the young Abulafia himself, most probablyinCapua. This is the reason whyIin- sisted on surveyingthe Maimonidean movement as arelevant intellectual structure that parallels the profound philosophical structure of Abulafia’sthought on both its esoteric and exoteric levels. Morethan anyother type of source, this is the most rel- evant type of literature for understanding the starting point of this Kabbalist’s thoughtrather than sources that are Sufi, theosophical, Franciscan, Joachimite, or others, even if one is able to show philologically, not onlyconjecturally, that he was indeed significantlyinfluenced by anyofthem. Iwould saythat even if we look at all the suggestions made by scholars as to his possible sources, they do not explain the coreofAbulafia’sintellectual concerns in the waythat his Maimoni- 304 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

dean background and Arabic philosophydo. Iwould also saythatagood acquaint- ance with medieval Hebrew in general,¹⁹⁵ and especiallywith the particular Tibboni- an philosophical dialect, is indispensable for understanding the Maimonideans and Abulafia. Interestingly,traces of the specific Hebrew style of Rabbi Hillel,heavilyin- fluenced by Latinscholastic sources, are absent in Abulafia’swritings, which resort to Tibbonitenomenclature. Let me repeat what Iwrotemanyyears agoinapassageabout the studyofeight- eenth-century Hasidism that was quoted in part by Hames in his book on Abulafia, since it is indeed alsorelevant for the manner in which this Kabbalist should be stud- ied:

In lieu of relyingonthe findings of others,the studentofJewish mysticism might better inves- tigateindepth the kind of material that we mayreasonablyassume were seen, quoted and though sometimesmisunderstood by the mystics, were neverthelessformative with regardto their religious worldview¹⁹⁶ […]inmanycases “history” stands for the shaky pictureaccepted by one scholar on the basis of the writings of another […]collected sometimes accordingtoa preconceivedtheory about the social, political, or economic situation.¹⁹⁷

Ihavemore to sayabout thosehistorical issues in Appendices Cand Dbelow. This is the reason whyIconsider it to be incumbent on each scholar to checkall the crucial data and claims that weremade before him or her and, more importantly, not to build new speculations or hypotheses on others’ older speculations or hypotheses, ashaky edifice to be sure.¹⁹⁸ Let me add now that this is also the case in anyintel- lectualhistory that rarelytakes the full rangeofmanuscript materials we have into consideration. As mentioned above, abetter approach consists in first specialising in aseries of writingsthat werestudied by Abulafia himself or ones that are parallel to the topics of his earlier studies, like the books writtenbythe Maimonideans or the voluminous Ashkenazi sources, some of which he mentions or even quotes,before trying to guess what his sources could have been. Nor am Iaware of effortstoread other pertinent

 See my detailed analyses of the quiteproblematic understandings of different medieval Hebrew texts found in Idel, Rabbi Menahem Recanati the Kabbalist,1:217–19,and, morerecently, Idel, “On the Identity of the Authors of TwoAshkenazi Commentaries to the Poem ha-Aderet we-ha-Emunah,” 141– 42,and below in Appendix E, and ch. 21 above.  That is what Ihaveattempted to do abovewithout relyingonthe available historical reconstruc- tions,which areoften no morethan hypothesesorconjectures that arenot sustained in the material with which Iamacquainted.  Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic,22–23,cited in part by Hames, Like Angels on Jacob’s Ladder,108, note 8. Formyreasonsfor questioningthe contribution of historians to the studyofAbu- lafia, see AppendixC.Mycritical approach has not changedsincethen, judgingfromthe discussion of the historical mistakes in recent scholarship on the topic in manyofmyfootnotes in this study. For example, see Appendix D.  See, especially, chapter 4note 32, chapter4note42, chapter5note 190,chapter13note 26,chap- ter16note 97,chapter21note 328, chapter21note329 aboveand Appendices Cand Dbelow. 27 Some MethodologicalRemarks 305

manuscripts of this period that still await serious perusal,oreventexts by Abulafia that remain in manuscript,tosay nothing of identifying new texts written by him. The philosophical sources Ihavediscussed were studied and quoted—some- times at length—and werecertainlypartofthe intellectual ambience of afew Jews in Abulafia’sgeneration. Their priority as reliable sources is incomparably greater than that of anyofthe othertype of sources one mayimagine, if no significant dis- covery of new Abulafian material unknown to me is made. They account,asmen- tioned above, for the two main forms of ideal attainments: Maimonides’sbook for his definition of prophecyand its sourceinal-Fārābī and Avicenna, and Averroes for his account of mystical union, both cast in the noeticterms used by these philos- ophers. At the sametime,Hames dulyrecognises thatthere are no direct quotations of or references to what he conceivestobethe Christian sources of Abulafia’sescha- tology.¹⁹⁹ But alas, for the time being,eventhe Kabbalistic material that was identified as belongingtoAbulafia and his circle forty years agohas been read onlyinpart in re- cent scholarship, and in quite asurprising manner: sometimessuperficiallyand quite selectively.Atthe same time, some of his views have been presented in arather inverted manner. Another phenomenon that has been generatedbythe recent interest in Abulafia is the exaggeration of his impact.Hehas become,out of the blue, asource, and

 See Hames, LikeAngels on Jacob’sLadder,104.However,his complaint on 4–5and 104 that Abu- lafia’seschatology has not been studied against its historical contextis, in my opinion, morethan surprising; also surprising is that he considers that my approach is not historical, but phenomeno- logical. Letmenote my discussions of the possible impact of the Mongolinvasion, which was known in Catalonia and most probablyalso to Abulafia beforehearrivedinItaly. See, for example, my Messianic Mystics,8,58, 81, 124; my “On Apocalypticism in Judaism,” in Progress, Apocalypse, and Completion of Historyand Life After Death of the Human Person in the WorldReligions,ed. Peter Ko- slowski (Dordrecht: Kluwer,2002):49–54,73; my “The Beginnings of the Kabbalah in North Africa? The Forgotten DocumentofRabbi Judah ben Nissim ibn Malka” [Hebrew], Pe‘amim 43 (1990): 4–15,9; and, morerecently, my “MongolInvasions and Astrology:Two Sources of Apocalyptic Elements in 13th-CenturyKabbalah,” Hispania Judaica Bulletin 10 (2014): 145–68. This approachisashistorical, or even moreso, as the hypotheses of aJoachimite influence that has not been demonstrated, but rather supported solelythroughthe mentioningofcircumstantialpossibilities and without the anal- ysis of asingle textbyAbulafia that compellingly reflects specific Joachimite or Franciscan terminol- ogies. As to the other inadequateaccusation that my approach is merelyphenomenological, see what Iwrote in Kabbalah: New Perspectives,xix, 210–13,250–60,which states that phenomenology and history should be used together,unlikethe misunderstandings of my approach by scholars who aremuch less historicallyoriented than me. Simplyput,they mistakemycritique of historicism, which Icalled proximism, as if it wereacritique of history! ComparetoRon Margolin, “Moshe Idel’sPhenomenology and ItsSources,” Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 6, no. 18 (2007): 43,orBoaz Huss, “The Theology of the Research of Jewish Mysticism” [Hebrew],inJewish Thought and JewishBelief,53. The assumptionthat it is necessary to choose between history and phe- nomenology as if they areexclusive approaches is afalse presentation of the practice of my studies. See also Appendix Bnote 82 below. 306 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

sometimesaclue, for understanding,for example, Castilian messianism,²⁰⁰ Ramon Llull,²⁰¹ Dante Alighieri,²⁰² Meister Eckhart,²⁰³ Johanan Alemanno,²⁰⁴ Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,²⁰⁵ Judah Alboṭini,²⁰⁶ Moses Cordovero,²⁰⁷ Ḥayyim Viṭal,²⁰⁸ Spino- za,²⁰⁹ and Leibniz,²¹⁰ to saynothing of the Besht,²¹¹ Rabbi Shneor Zalmanof Liady,²¹² the Gaon of Vilnius, and his student Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Shklov.²¹³ More recently, Ipointed out Abulafia’simpact on UmbertoEco and JacquesDerri- da.²¹⁴ As someone who has been accusedofpan-Abulafianism in the past—namely, of findingtraces of this Kabbalist everywhere—Ifeel rather uneasy about some as- pects of this proliferation of the impact of his rather complex thought,inmany cases studied without aproper historical or philological analysis.Ihave attempted to do so in my studies mentioned above, but Ihavemygreat doubts as to the impact

 See Pedaya, “The Sixth Millennium.”  Idel, “Ramon Lull and Ecstatic Kabbalah.”  Eco, TheSearch for the Perfect Language,32–33;Debenedetti Stow, Dante elamistica ebraica; DanteAlighieri, De l’éloquence en vulgaire;chapter4note 49 and chapter 14 note 42 above.  Scholem, Major Trends in JewishMysticism,126;Schwartz, “To Thee Is Silence Praise,” 162–64, especiallynotes 253, 331, 333; Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah,17, 30,157,158.  See Idel, Kabbalah in Italy,343,462,note46.  Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’sEncounter with JewishMysticism;StefaneToussaint, “L’indi- viduoestatico. Tecniche profetiche in Marsilio Ficino eGiovanni Picodella Mirandola,” Bruniana & Campanelliana, Ricerche filosoficheemateriali storico-testuali 6, no. 2(2000): 351–79; Idel, Ben,510– 11.  Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah,122–26,134–35,158–59,164–65.  Idel, 136–40.  Idel, 135–36.  See Idel, “Deus sive Natura” and Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah,66–67.  Susanne Edel, Die individuelle Substanz bei Boehme und Leibniz (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag,1995), 163–205.  Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic,53–60.  See Bezalel Naor, “The Song of Songs:Abulafia and the Alter Rebbe,” JewishReview 3(1990): 10–11, and Bezalel Naor, “Ḥotam BoleṭḤotam Šoqeʿa,inthe TeachingofAbraham Abulafia and the Doctrine of Habad” [Hebrew], Sinai 107(1991): 54–57.  Moshe Idel, “Rabbi Menahem MendelofShklov and Rabbi Avraham Abulafia” [Hebrew],inThe Vilna Gaon and His Disciples,eds. Moshe Hallamish,Yosef Rivlin, and Raphael Shuhat (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2003): 173–83.For the impact of Abulafia on Rabbi David ha-Nazir,see my studymentioned in chapter5note 204above.  See Absorbing Perfections,91, 416–19.See also the different pictureofscholarship as drawnby Boaz Huss, “The Formation of Jewish Mysticism and ItsImpact on the Reception of Rabbi Abraham Abulafia in Contemporary Kabbalah,” in Religion and Its Others,eds.Heicke Bock, Jorg Feuchter,and Michi Knechts (Frankfurt: Campus,2008): 142–62.Huss’spictureisdependent on the assumption that scholars use acertain term likemysticism or ecstasy in the same way, as if there is onlyone meaning of these terms in the mind of scholars and across all religions,and thus operates with some form of mystica perennis. However,this assumption is not necessarilythe case and in order to prevent such an essentialist view,Irecommend distinguishingbetween different sub-categories,models and differ- ent types of order,tosay nothingofvarious Kabbalistic schools and manydifferent geographical cen- ters of Kabbalah. 27 Some Methodological Remarks 307

of Abulafia’sthoughtonDante or Leibniz, for example. However,further serious studies are necessary in order to proveordisprovesome of these claims. Scholars have recentlybecome ecstatic about Abulafia’secstasy and have found ecstasy,sometimesunderstood as identical to his, even in the Zoharic literature.²¹⁵ We are witnesses to amystification of Kabbalah²¹⁶ that depends on anew and splen- did career for the ecstatic Kabbalist who, afterquite along period of ostracisation and oblivion, is now understood as evincing views also found in the Zohar. Let me, however,finish on amoreoptimisticnote: if this studyprompts scholars to return to readingmanuscripts, including those of Abulafia and the Maimonideans, there is some hope that more serious scholarshiponthe topic will eventuallyemerge that deals not with imaginary “grosslymisleading” presentations, but with amore controlled type of analysis of all the pertinent texts belongingtoagiventopic in their proper contexts without generalising as to the relevanceofspecific findings to the entirety of the literature written by manyKabbalists in manycountries over manycenturies. Otherwise,aperennialist approach mayovercomeacritical attitude towards the variegatedand complex developments in the history of Kabbalah. If we can learn something more general from the methodological point of view of the abovestudy,itisthat awider spectrum of ideas should be allowed from remark- able individual thinkers like Maimonides,the Maimonideans, and Abulafia, and cer- tainlyfor wider literatures such as philosophyand Kabbalah. Interested as Iamin figures who wereactive at the intersections of avariety of intellectual trends (such as Rabbi Isaac of Acre,Rabbi Johanan Alemanno, and Solomon Maimon in addition to Maimonidesand Abulafia), Iammoreconcernedwith the details and the reasons for the complexities that naturallyemerge in such aminuteous type of scholarship than in ventilating abstract systems that can be easilyand convenientlysummarised for the sake of wider,though less informed audiences. The present analysis of Abulafia can help by promotingsuch an approach in a less dogmatic waythatisless prone to producing simplistic generalisations about the nature of Kabbalah and is more attentive to the details, texts, specific terminologies, and contents of the texts underscrutiny. Such an analysis of Abulafia’swritings shows thathewas attemptingtopromoteavision of Judaism (as he understood it) thatwas moreopen to philosophical inquiry and prophetic and ecstatic experien- ces and thatisnot represented by the main paragons of Rabbinic Judaism before the HighMiddle Ages. Abulafia onlyrarelyelaboratedonRabbinic Judaism, his attitude being more explicitlycritical than that of most other Jewish thinkers in the Middle Ages. The aboveanalyses show that the stark distinctions between Kabbalah and phi- losophyasideal types collapse when consideringecstatic Kabbalah in amore sub-

 See the views of Wolfson and Pedaya mentioned earlier in this chapter.  Huss, “The Formation of Jewish Mysticism”;Boaz Huss, “The Mystification of the Kabbalah and the Myth of Jewish Mysticism” [Hebrew], Peʿamim 110 (2007): 9–30 (English version in BGUReview; A Journal of Israeli Culture 2[2008]: 9–30). 308 VAbulafia’sKabbalah versus other Kabbalists

stantial manner.The spectrum of phenomena mentioned abovedoes not allow for a simple distinction between the two different camps (the philosophicaland the Kab- balistic). Rather,the present studyproposes to add athird camp that is considered to be Kabbalistic and yetisdramaticallycloser to the Maimonidean camp than to the- osophical-theurgical Kabbalah, and sometimes even critical of the latter.Again, Ido not propose to adopt the description of acontinuous spectrum within the ecstatic Kabbalah found exactlyinthe middle between Jewishphilosophyand theosophi- cal-theurgicalKabbalah. Iseek to open aspacefor amore complex imageofinter- secting circles, with this type of Kabbalah having abroad surface that coincides with the falāsifah as well as asmall one thatscarcelytouches the circle of theosoph- ical-theurgical Kabbalah. Especiallyprominent would be the overlappingofthe eso- teric segment of the ecstatic Kabbalist circle within Maimonidean-oriented esoteri- cism. Let me emphasise that these imaginary circles represent literatures; from this point of view,the phrase “ecstatic Kabbalah” is usedhere in order to refer to aspe- cific literature that is explicitlyintended to induceecstatic experiences,not justto refer to momentary forms of experience to be found sporadicallyinaliterature whose main purpose differs from that of Abulafia.Neither the other Kabbalists nor the Maimonideans interested in the concept of prophecy wroteliterature aiming to systematicallyachieveprophetic experiences. From this point of view,the resort to the general term “mysticism” and the different distinctions in the field, like the resort to “rational mysticism” mentioned above, does not sufficientlycover the main con- cerns of Abulafia’swritings,which include several detailedhandbooks describing various techniques for reachingprophetic experiencesand instances of meetingone- self as part of an experience.By“ecstatic Kabbalah,” Imean aliteraturethatwidely differs from the two other main forms of speculative literature in thirteenth-century Judaism mentioned earlier.Moreover,the literature Idesignateasecstatic Kabbalah includes also treatises by Kabbalists who confessed their ecstatic experiences, though at the sametime they denybeing prophets. Last but not least: we cannot avoid asking whether Abulafia, as Ihaveportrayed him, wasaheretic. He testifies thathewas accused of being one earlyinhis career as aKabbalist,and he was laterbanned by afamous Halakhic authority,ibn Adret.His critiquesoftraditionalJudaism and Rabbis are rather sharp, as seen above. However, he did not consider himself to be aheretic, but,onthe contrary,asthe custodian and representative of the true Judaism as he understood it; namely,aspiritual type of re- ligiosity.Not being atheologian myself, Idonot believethat the answer to such a question is relevant from ascholarlypoint of view.AssumingasIdo that Judaism was and still is amultifaceted religious phenomenon, which includes—both dia- chronicallyand synchronically—avariety of religious phenomena, Abulafia’s thoughtand practicesare avariant,radical as they maybe, of the broad Maimoni- dean spectrum, combined with atraditionaltheory of combinations of letters and discussions of the divine names. The fact thathis books, in full form or in fragments, are extant in approximatelytwo hundred manuscripts, and have more recentlybeen 27 Some MethodologicalRemarks 309

printed, distributed, studied, and even practised in some communities in the strong- hold of Jewish ultra-orthodoxy,Meah Shearim in Jerusalem, to saynothing of many New Agecircles, is aparamount event to be taken into consideration for amore com- plex understandingofJudaism as adynamic religious phenomenon, atopic that de- serves amoredetailed inquiry.