Interpreting Diagrams from the Sefer Yetsirah and Its Commentaries 1
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NOTES 1 Word and Image in Medieval Kabbalah: Interpreting Diagrams from the Sefer Yetsirah and Its Commentaries 1. The most notorious example of these practices is the popularizing work of Aryeh Kaplan. His critical editions of the SY and the Sefer ha Bahir are some of the most widely read in the field because they provide the texts in Hebrew and English with comprehensive and useful appendices. However, these works are deeply problematic because they dehistoricize the tradi- tion by adding later diagrams to earlier works. For example, in his edition of the SY he appends eighteenth-century diagrams to later versions of this tenth-century text. Popularizers of kabbalah such as Michael Berg of the Kabbalah Centre treat the Zohar as a second-century rabbinic tract without acknowledging textual evidence to the contrary. See his introduction to the Centre’s translation of the Zohar: P. S. Berg. The Essential Zohar. New York: Random House, 2002. 2. For a variety of reasons, kabbalistic works were transmitted in manuscript form long after other works, such as the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, and their commentaries were widely available in print. This is true in large part because kabbalistic treatises were “private” works, transmitted from teacher to student. Kabbalistic manuscripts were also traditionally transmitted in manuscript form because of their provenance. The Maghreb and other parts of North Africa were important centers of later mystical activity, and print technology came quite late to these regions, with manuscript culture persisting well into the nineteenth, and even into the mid- twentieth century in some regions. Because of these trends, many kabbalistic works are only very recently avail- able in print, and only recently accessible to larger numbers of readers. 3. See the work of Giulio Busi, especially Qabala Visiva (Torino: Einaudi, 2005). 4. Daniel Abrams, “New Study Tools from the Kabbalists of Today: Toward an Appreciation of the History and Role of Collectanea, Paraphrases and Graphic Representations in Kabbalistic Literature.” Journal des Etudes de Cabale 1 (1997): 1–7. 5. Nicholas Sed, “Une cosmologie juive du haut moyen age: la Berayta di Ma’aseh Bereshit,” Revue de Etudes Juives 123 (1964): 259–305; Nicholas Sed, “Le texte, les manuscrits et les diagrammes,” Revue de Etudes Juives 124 (1965): 23–123. 156 NOTES 6. Nicolas Sed, La mystique cosmologique Juive (Paris: Editions de l‘École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales; Berlin; New York: Mouton: 1981). 7. Giulio Busi, Libri e Scrittori nella Roma Ebraica del Medioevo (Rimini: Luise Editoro, 1990). 8. Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead (New York: Schocken Books, 1991). 9. See Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead (New York: Schocken, 1991). See also Elliot Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Visions and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Wolfson speaks eloquently about noetic imaging of kabbalistic symbols, but does not discuss the graphic representations that accompany the manuscripts he studies. 10. These articles include: Nicolas Sed, “Une cosmologie juive du haut moyen age la Berayta di Ma’aseh Bereshit,” Revue de Etudes Juives 123 (1964): 259–305; Nicolas Sed, “Le texte, les manuscrits et les dia- grammes,” Revue des Etudes Juives 124 (1965): 23–123; Klaus Herrmann and Massakhet Hekhalot, Traktat von de Himmlischen Palaesten (Tübingen: Übersetzung und Kommentar, 1994) 11. Colette Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. Nicholas de Lange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 84–85. 12. Malachi Beit Arie, The Makings of the Hebrew Book, Gefen Books, Jerusalem: 1993. Malachi Beit Arie, Hebrew Manuscripts East and West, British Library, London: 1993. Joseph Gutman, Hebrew Manuscript Painting (New York: George Braziller, 1978). 13. Exodus 20:4–6. See Joseph Gutmann, The Image and the Word (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press for the American Academy of Religion, 1977) and Kalman Bland, The Artless Jew (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 14. See Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah, fols. 43 and 44. 15. See Kalman Bland, The Artless Jew (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Chapter 1 treats this issue at length. 16. Cosgrove writes that, “Maps are graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts conditions, processes or events in the human world.” Rather than emphasizing the content of maps, or the technical processes by which they are produced, this definition emphasizes the cognitive and conceptual aspects of mapping. Seen in this way, “mapping has affinities to planning, formulating idealized repre- sentations of the world which gesture toward action.” Denis Cosgrove, “Mapping New Worlds: Culture and Cartography in Sixteenth-Century Venice,” Imago mundi 44 (1992): 65–89. 17. See Kalman Bland, Artless Jew, ch. 1, “Modern Denials and Affirmations of Jewish Art,” 13–36. 18. Avodah Zarah 43:a: “We have learnt elsewhere: R. Gamaliel had a picture of lunar diagrams in his upper chamber in the form of a chart hanging on the wall, which he used to show to the unlearned and ask then, ‘Did you see [the moon] thus or thus?’” NOTES 157 19. Genesis 1–2; 4; Job 26–8; Psalms, Isaiah 40:22, among others. 20. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1941), 44. According to Scholem, the earliest Hekhalot text dates to about the second century. However, the dating of these texts is hotly disputed. 21. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 44. 22. It is important to note here that this formulation does not apply to texts that are commonly classified as magical. These spells, incantations, amu- lets, and even magical bowls depend on their illustrations in combination with text for their power. As this study will show, however, the division between magic and mysticism is at times porous at best. 23. Titles were appended by later copyists and thus speak for their under- standing of the nature of the works. 24. There are a number of divergent opinions on the authorship of the Zohar, but the majority of scholars believe that it was created by Moshe de Leon’s circle. 25. Illuminated Hebrew Bibles such as the tenth-century Leningrad Codex existed much earlier than this, and they would seem to disprove this theory. But there is a major difference between illustrations and dia- grams: the first are aesthetic objects, while the second are technology for conveying information. 26. See Moshe Idel, “Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed and the Kabbalah,” Jewish History 18 (2004): 197–226. 27. The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Lurianic illustrations are an important exception to this. 28. Brian Lancaster, “On the Relationship between Cognitive Models and Spiritual Maps,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 7, no. 11–12 (2000): 231 [231–50]. 29. Lancaster, “On the Relationship,” 238. 30. Aryeh Kaplan, Jewish Meditation (New York: Schocken, 1985). See espe- cially chapters 5–8. 31. See Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Rebecca Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, Harvard Theological Studies, 1998). See also Filip Vukosavovic, ed. Angels and Demons: Jewish Magic through the Ages (Jerusalem: Bible Lands Museum, 2010), 12–33. 32. At the same time, others believed that the true path to uncovering the “original” text lay in excision, and they saw their work as corrective. For example, one commentator, Dunash ibn Tamim (10th c. Kairouan) observes, “But we have already established that there could be in this book other passages that Abraham the patriarch [never said] coming from the comments in Hebrew, to which ignorant people have added to the end, and the verity was lost meanwhile.” George Vajda’s French transla- tion reads: “Mais nous avons deja qu’il pouvait y avoir dans ce livre es 158 NOTES passages alteres que le patriarche Abraham [n’a jamais enonces] provenant des commentaires en hebreu, auxquels des gens ignorants ont ajoute pos- terieurement un autre commentaire et la verite se perdait entretemps.” Le Commentaire sur la livre de creation de Dunas ben Tamim de Kairouan (Xe Siecle). Nouvelle edition revue et augmentee par Paul Fenton, 2002, 129, Hebrew text, 242, and M. Grossberg, Sefer Yetzirah ascribed to the Patriarch Abraham with commentary by Dunash Ben Tamim, 1902, 65. See also Kaplan, who quotes Rabbi Yaakov ben Nissim, who also wrote in the tenth century: “People write Hebrew comments on the book, and other foolish people come later and comment on the commentary. Between them, the truth is lost.” Aryeh Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah (Boston: Weiser Books, 1997), xxiii. 33. Colette Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages. ed. and tr. Nicholas de Lange. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 34. Cosgrove defines maps as follows: “Maps are graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, pro- cesses or events in the human world.” Rather than emphasizing the con- tent of maps, or the technical processes by which they are produced, this definition emphasizes the cognitive and conceptual aspects of mapping. “Seen in this way, mapping has affinities to planning, formulating ideal- ized representations of the world which gesture toward action.” Denis Cosgrove, “Mapping New Worlds,” Imago Mundi 44 (1992): 65–89. 35. Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 68. 36. The best definition of the sefirot is probably one of the earliest. Scholem sees kabbalah beginning with the hypostasization of the sefirot, so that they act not only as part of God but in relation to God, to humans, and to one another. (Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, 68). 37. Ronald Kiener and Lawrence Fine, Early Kabbalah (New York: Schocken, 1985). 38. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, 68–80. 39. Moshe Idel, “Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed and the Kabbalah,” Jewish History 18 (2004): 197–226.