Leer — On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem

GERSHOM SCHOLEM Me a fh a pres ee tee 7 \ ey bout | Fa -ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD BASIC CONCEPTS IN THE KABBALAH On The MYSTICAL SHAPE of the GODHEAD Also by Gershom Scholem The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932-40 (Ed.) From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality On Jews and Judaism in Crisis: Selected Essays On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship Zohar—The Book of Splendor: Basic Readings from the Kabbalah (Ed.) Translated from the German by JOACHIM NEUGROSCHEL Edited and revised, according to the 1976 Hebrew edition, with the author’s emendations, by JONATHAN CHIPMAN Schocken Books N E W Y O R K Gershom Scholem On The MYSTICAL SHAPE of the GODHEAD Basic Concepts in the KABBALAH English translation copyright © 1991 by Schocken Books Inc. Foreword copyright © 1991 by Joseph Dan All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Con- ventions. Published in the United States by Schocken Books Inc., New York, and simultancously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Germany as Von der mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit: Studien zu Grundbegriffen d. Kabbala by Rhein- Verlag AG, Zurich, in 1962 and by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, in 1977. Copyright © 1962 by Rhein-Verlag AG, Zurich. This translation originally published in hardcover by Schocken Books Inc. in 1991. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Littman Library of Jewish Civi- lization and Oxford University Press for permission to reprint excerpts from The Wisdom of the Zohar, edited by Fishel Lachower and Isaiah Tishby, translated from the Hebrew by David Goldstein. This book is distributed in the United States by B’nai B'rith International. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Scholem, Gershom Gerhard, 1897-1982 [Von der mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit. English] The mystical shape of the godhead / Gershom Scholem ; translated from the German by Joachim Neugroschel ; edited and revised, according to the 1976 Hebrew edition, with the author’s emendations, by Jonathan Chipman. p. cm. Translation of: Von der mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit. Includes index. 1, Cabala—History. 2. God (Judaism) (3) Transmigration—Judaism. 1. Neugroschel, Joachim. I]. Chipman, Jonathan. III. Title. BM526.S836413 1991 296.1'6—dc20 90-52543 ISBN 0-8052-1081 -4 Book Design by Barbara M. Bachman Manufactured in the United States of America 6897 Contents FOREWORD BY JOSEPH DAN Shi‘ur Komah: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD Sitra Ahra: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH Tsaddik: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE Shekhinah: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY Gilgul: THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS Tselem: THE CONCEPT OF THE ASTRAL BODY NOTES INDEX 56 88 197 251 275 321 On The MYSTICAL SHAPE of the GODHEAD Foreword by Joseph Dan Gershom Scholem, when required to define his own scholarly enterprise, usually described himself as a historian of ideas—somewhat more specif- ically, as a historian of religious ideas, one whose expertise was the his- tory of Jewish mystical ideas. This volume contains six studies, which can unhesitatingly be described as the finest achievement in this field, and among the best examples of systematic studies in the history of ideas in the middle of this century. These studies pertain to some of the most basic and deep-rooted concepts in Jewish religion, such as the Shekhinah, the Tsaddik, and the anthropomorphic representation of the Godhead; here they are studied and elucidated in an exemplary methodology, ac- companied by profound insight into the dynamics of history on the one hand and the multilayered, constantly changing human craving for ap- proach to God on the other. The first part of this foreword is dedicated to a brief description of the evolution of this book out of Scholem’s lectures before the Eranos Society’s annual meetings in Ascona, Switzerland, between 1952 and 1961, and the second part, to a discussion of Scholem’s methodology. I The six studies translated into English in this volume comprise the sec- ond group of Scholem’s Eranos lectures to be published in book form. The first group, including five such studies, was published in the original German as Zur Kabbala und ihrer Symbolik in Zurich, in 1960, and in En- glish as On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism in New York, in 1965.' The six studies presented in this volume were published as a book in German in 1962’—-Von der Mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit—and this is its first appear- ance in English in book form. Most of these eleven studies were first published as articles in the Eranos-Jahrbuch, usually a year after Scholem’s lecture on the subject, and some of them were published in English sepa- rately.’ A Hebrew translation of these two volumes together, made by 4 * FOREWORD Yosef Ben-Shlomo and revised and updated by Scholem himself, was pub- lished in Jerusalem in 1976 under the title Elements of the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism.‘ It seems that Scholem regarded these eleven studies as one whole, and it is appropriate that all of them are available now, somewhat belatedly, to the English reader. It is important to understand the place of these studies within the framework of Scholem’s complete works, in order to explain both the author’s intentions and the structure and characteristics of this book. The studies were written during the most fruitful period of Scholem’s schol- arly life, between the years 1949 and 1962. It was in this period that he wrote his two major works: his great monograph Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, which was published in Hebrew, in two volumes, in 1957° and his history of the early Kabbalah, Origins of the Kabbalah, published in German, in 1962.° Scholem published in his lifetime about forty vol- umes,’ but only two comprehensive books, the ones on Sabbatai Zevi and on the early Kabbalah mentioned above. All the others are collections of studies and essays, Kabbalistic texts, letters, and an autobiography. The only subjects that he brought to completion are those two, and they express his sense of priorities as well as his preference; both of them were completed while he was working on the studies presented here. Scholem wrote three summaries of the entire history of the Kabbalah: the first was his article on the subject for the German Encyclopaedia Judaica published in the 1930s;° the second was his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, the best-known and most influential of his books,’ and the third was the series of articles on Kabbalah and Sabbatianism that he wrote for the Encyclopaedia Hebraica and the English Encyclopaedia Judaica (essentially the same material in both), which was published in the volume Kabbalah in Jerusalem in 1974. It seems to me that the studies published here reflect in part Scholem’s realization that he was not going to write a comprehensive history of Jewish mysticism as a whole. Though he was at the peak of his scholarly powers, his reputation, and his influence, the enormity of the two tasks to which he dedicated most of his efforts and which he felt compelled to complete, may have caused him to doubt whether he could add to them FOREWORD °* 5 another major undertaking, namely, writing a detailed history of Jewish mysticism in the same manner as he did concerning the early Kabbalah and the messianic movement of the seventeenth century. He may have regarded the monographic studies collected here as a substitute to such an integrated history. There is a clear analogy to this: after the publica- tion of the monograph on Sabbatai Zevi, Scholem did not hide his inten- tion to continue the work and to publish the history of the Sabbatian movement after the death of Sabbatai Zevi, and indeed he published many detailed studies about that period; he may have planned to continue it up to the beginnings of the modern Hasidic movement and write a book on the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, his life and teach- ings. In 1974, however, he published in Jerusalem a large volume of his previously published studies of the later Sabbatian movement;'° it was quite obvious that the publication of that volume indicated his realization that there would be no continuation of the Sabbatai Zevi volumes; the collection of studies became the substitute. In a somewhat similar way, his Eranos lectures may be viewed as his substitute for a detailed, com- prehensive history of Jewish mysticism. In the beginning Scholem may not have realized the relationship, and especially the difference, between the two collections—-On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism and the present one. Yet this difference is important to the understanding of the development of these monographs. The first Eranos lectures, which appear in On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, are dedicated to a completely different aim than the present ones."' They attempted to present some problems concerning Jewish mysticism within the framework of the study of religions in general. As such, they take up general themes, not necessarily intrinsic or central to Jewish mysticism, such as the mythical element in the Kabbalah (the first Eranos lecture), the relationship between mystics and society, and the interna- tional interest in the intriguing problem of the creation of a golem. But all the rest of his Eranos lectures after that—the ones collected in this volume, as well as others that were not collected, and some studies that he published at the same time in other journals—were dedicated to the elucidation of the most central and important topics in the Kabbalah, not 6 * FOREWORD only as viewed from without, by scholars and historians, but as viewed from within, by the Kabbalists themselves. Initially, Scholem made an attempt to conform to the Eranos frame- work, and thought that only general subjects would interest and be ac- cepted by the international community of scholars that assembled in Switzerland for the annual meetings. He soon changed his mind, and decided to present that group with the subjects that he believed to be important to his area of study and which conformed to his own blueprint of the general outlines of his work. It is evident that by 1950 he had decided to concentrate his efforts along two parallel lines: to definitively present his studies on the early Kabbalah and Sabbatianism, and to pre- pare brief histories of central subjects in the Kabbalah in the format of the six studies included in this collection. This, in fact, was the way he worked until his death on February 21, 1982, at the age of eighty-five. Why did Scholem choose the Eranos Society as the forum for the presentation of his series of studies in the history of Jewish mystical ideas? I believe that at least one of the reasons was the ease with which he expressed himself in German. In the post-Holocaust era, formal par- ticipation in a purely German forum was unthinkable. The small group of scholars assembled in the Swiss town of Ascona, with its international audience and humanistic attitude, suited him as much as any German- speaking forum could. He made no concessions to the prevailing scholarly atmosphere in those gatherings. Scholem never denied his res- ervations concerning the psychoanalytic schools (concerning Freud, he used to say, “I have read dozens of better mythological concepts of the soul than his”), and, especially, his views clashed diametrically with the Jungian approach, which was represented strongly among the Eranos participants. Carl Gustav Jung himself participated in some of the meet- ings. Mircea Eliade was also one of the dominant figures in the group; they were joined by some of the best-known psychologists of the time, as well as by historians of religion, art, and literature. The Jungian analysis of spiritual phenomena conflicted with Scholem’s for one cardinal reason: as a historian, he sought to understand the constant change and the variety in human religious experience and expression. The Jungians and their followers postulated the eternal, unchanging character of these phe- FOREWORD + 7 nomena; according to them, religious practices and symbols are universal and essentially unchanging, being the product of archetypical images deeply imbedded in the soul of every human being. They sought to dis- cover and describe unchanging, ahistorical archetypes, whereas Scholem sought the dialectics of a dynamic historical development. In this sense, his studies are exceptional and atypical in the volumes of the Eranos- Jahrbuch. The Eranos Society, which had begun its annual meetings in the early 1930s, therefore presented Scholem with a convenient forum: a gathering of mostly German-speaking intellectuals, many of them leading scholars in their fields, who shared a similar European philosophical and cultural background. It gave him the opportunity to address an international au- dience; indeed, there can be no doubt that his lectures there helped to make him a leading figure in the international community of scholars in the humanities. The specific characteristics of these gatherings, however, were not completely suitable to Scholem’s attitudes and preferences. He must have been aware that some of the participants in these meetings had less than perfect records concerning their stance toward Nazi ideol- ogy in the 1930s. At that time, around 1949, there was not yet a “new Europe”; there were only the scarred, tormented remnants of the old, the Europe of Scholem’s physical and spiritual roots, and the one to which he wished, to no avail, to return. Every individual in these gath- erings carried within him, in one way or another, the wounds of the Nazi upheavals and the Holocaust. American universities at that time had not yet accepted Jewish studies as a legitimate, integral part of the humani- ties; most of Scholem’s lectures across the Atlantic were given in the framework of Jewish institutions and societies. If he wished to address the international community of scholars, there were very few alternatives to Ascona. Yet it may be suggested that the change in the nature of his presentations, the one evident in the transition from On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism to the present collection, may be regarded as his assertion of his speciality, his decision not to conform to the accepted norms of his audience but to present Jewish mysticism on its own terms, with its own intrinsic emphases according to Scholem’s non-Jungian historical analysis. 8 * FOREWORD I] It may sound paradoxical, but an essentially Jungian approach and a Kab- balistic approach to the subjects presented by Scholem in this book may converge and present a united front against the historical analysis written by the scholar. This is a struggle that Scholem fought throughout his life, and in which he achieved only partial success. As this is, I believe, the basic conceptual and methodological problem presented in this book, | shall try to describe it briefly. Taking the example of the Shekhinah, the Kabbalistic symbol of the female element within the Godhead, a Jungian or Eliadean writer will unhesitatingly demonstrate that the image of the God-Mother is an an- cient, invariable archetype in the human soul; her worship can be found in “primitive” societies, in Indian mythology, in the Christian worship of the Virgin, and in countless other places. He will try to find similarities in detail, in practices, beliefs, and rituals associated with this hgure, mak- ing the Shekhinah just one more manifestation of this eternal human phe- nomenon, which here assumes a superficial, relatively meaningless, Jewish terminology. The Kabbalist, however, will completely ignore any- thing relating to non-Jewish sources and insist that everything concern- ing the Shekhinah is essentially Jewish, but also eternally so. The same Shekhinah is described, according to the Kabbalist, in the biblical and talmudic sources, as well as in the ancient, medieval, and modern Jewish mystical works. The interpretation of biblical verses and talmudic sayings concerning the Shekhinah found in the Zohar and other Kabbalistic works is the true, original meaning of the ancient texts; it is unimaginable to him that Moses could be ignorant of something that Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai (the sage to whom the Zohar is attributed) or the sixteenth-century Kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria knew. The Jungian writer will assume that the Shekhinah is an eternal human archetype; the Kabbalist will claim that it is an eternal Jewish one. They will agree, however, that all ancient sources should be interpreted in a way that will uncover in them the image of the Shekhinah as it is known in the later Kabbalistic sources. The historian will begin his investigation in a completely different way. He will analyze the image of the Shekhinah in the Zohar or in Lurianic FOREWORD °* 9 Kabbalah, and then ask, When, and from where, did these ideas emerge? He will study the biblical texts, the intertestamental literature, the Tal- mud and the midrash, and conclude, as Scholem and other scholars have, that these ancient sources do not contain any reference whatsoever to a feminine figure of a separate divine hypostasis. He will then try to trace the stages in which the Zoharic concept developed, through various ut- terances in the late medieval midrash, in the works of the Jewish philos- ophers of the High Middle Ages, and in the early works of medieval Jewish mysticism. Thus, step-by-step, the concept that was absent in ancient Jewish texts, emerges in the Middle Ages; it was certainly nour- ished on sources and hermeneutic interpretations of sources from an- tiquity, but the symbol itself is a purely medieval one. Only after this kind of analysis will the historian compare the concept of the Shekhinah to parallel phenomena in other religions, and even then his emphasis will be on the differences rather than the similarities. The difference between the historian and the Kabbalist writer (and the Jungian writer as well) is that the historian does accept “no” as an answer: some ideas simply do not exist in some texts and periods. The Kabbalist will never accept that; if he tries hard enough, he can find everything in everything. Examples abound in Jewish history; the two most obvious ones are the reinterpre- tation of the Old Testament to find in hundreds of its verses prophecies concerning the life and teachings of Christ, (an admirable feat of herme- neutics that can convince the most ardent skeptics, if they are not histor- ians), and the reinterpretation of the Zohar and other Jewish texts by the adherents of Sabbatai Zevi in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to prove that the Messiah must, as predicted in hundreds of ancient sayings and verses, be converted to Islam.'* A more specific, Kabbalistic example is the reinterpretation of the Zohar in the seventeenth century and later, up to the twentieth, according to the teachings of Lurianic Kabbalah, which emerged in Safed several centuries after the Zohar’s composition. The obviousness of these examples, which differentiate between the historical-philological approach and the archetypical-Kabbalistic one, should not deceive us as to the diffculties involved in achieving and maintaining the methodology of the history of ideas. Scholem himself did 10 * FOREWORD not make this distinction clearly in the first decade of his scholarly work. This is best demonstrated by his lecture, later published as an article, at the historic occasion of the opening of the Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, which was later to serve as one of the first two institutes (the other was Chemistry) of the newly founded Hebrew University of Jeru- salem. The young Scholem (twenty-seven years old at the time), pre- sented his views concerning the authorship and origins of the Zohar, and concluded that though medieval authors contributed to the work as we have it, much of the material, ideas and symbols assembled in it origi- nated in antiquity.'* In fact, according to Scholem at that time, the Kab- balah was essentially an ancient phenomenon, surfacing in the works of the medieval mystics rather than being their own original creation. In this Scholem was following the accepted views of scholars of his time, which were most clearly expressed by Moses Gaster, who treated many Jewish medieval works as remnants of known and unknown ancient texts. Gaster rejected the critical approach of the historian Heinrich Graetz and others, who saw Moses de Leon as the author of the Zohar in the late thirteenth century, and the Kabbalah, while absorbing and re- newing ancient ideas, essentially as a medieval phenomenon. It took Scholem another decade to distinguish between the two aspects of Graetz’s critical attitude to the Kabbalah: his enmity toward it, which Scholem completely rejected, and his historical-philological approach, which Scholem not only accepted but developed in a much more pro- found and systematic manner. His historical conclusions concerning the Zohar, presented in chapter 5 of Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism,'* were supplemented by many of his own subsequent studies and by other schol- ars; the most comprehensive presentation of this problem was made by Isaiah Tishby in his Mishnat ha-Zohar.'’ Although this question has been conclusively answered from a scholarly point of view, it is erroneous to think that by this major scholarly achievement, the historical-philological view of the medieval origins of the Kabbalah has been universally ac- cepted, or that Scholem’s scholarly approach has prevailed completely. There have always been, as there are now, writers who continue to seek proof for the Kabbalistic claim of the antiquity of the Kabbalah, moti- FOREWORD ° |! vated often by Orthodox concepts (Scholem had been identified with the secular and scientific study of Judaism). Thus, Professor Samuel Belkin attempted to prove that Philo of Alexandria (first century C.E., before the destruction of the Second Temple), knew and used ideas and symbols found in the Zohar;'* Dr. Israel Weinstock tried to prove that the “ancient Kabbalistic secrets” were transmitted by Aharon ben Samuel of Baghdad from the East to Italy in the eighth century, and that Kabbalah can be found in the works of Saadiah Gaon and other early Jewish philoso- phers;’’ and Professor Moshe Idel tries to prove that Kabbalistic concepts found in medieval texts can be “reconstructed” in talmudic and mid- rashic literature.'* It seems that the clash between the Orthodox- Kabbalistic and historical-philological study of the Kabbalah, which has persisted now for a century and a half (and was debated for a time even within Scholem’s mind), is a constant feature of Jewish culture, and should be regarded as a recurring phenomenon in the study of Jewish writings, supported by Orthodox religious concerns on the one hand and Jungian antihistorical drives on the other. The six studies included in this collection are Scholem’s finest rebuttal of these attitudes and a clear pre- sentation of the methodology of the history of ideas that he adopted. The basic structure of these studies, therefore, is almost constant: a survey of ancient Jewish texts concerning the subject, including a dem- onstration of the absence of the particular Kabbalistic symbol in them, (although the religious problem that the Kabbalists later confronted is present in one way or another); then comes a description of the first hesitant steps, often found in Sefer ha-Bahir, toward the emergence of the Kabbalistic symbol in the Middle Ages. This is followed by a full exposi- tion of the Kabbalistic symbol, based on the thirteenth-century Kabbalah in Spain and especially the Zohar; and finally, a survey of later develop- ments, especially in Lurianic Kabbalah and in Hasidism. Every section in these essays represents a difference, a change, a phase in spiritual devel- opment that sets it apart from what preceded it and what followed later. Concepts such as good and evil, the Shekhinah, the Tsaddik, gilgul, are marked by this constant change in the works of almost every thinker and every mystic, in every country and every period. Scholem always dem- 12 * FOREWORD onstrates the dynamic unfolding of the full force of an idea or image, as the result of the ceaseless creativity of every individual mystic, every school or group, every generation. In this, the historian and the philolo- gist differs most radically from the Jungian, the Kabbalist, and the Ortho- dox writer. He affirms the creative power of the individual, his ability to use old materials, sources, quotations, and to combine them into some- thing new and original. I believe that this element is expressed more clearly in this collection than in any other of Scholem’s voluminous publications. Scholem’s methodology is best demonstrated by the studies included in this volume. In some cases one can actually discern in his presentation the historian’s marvel and joy as he deciphers the dialectical develop- ments of an idea throughout the ages. The development of the idea of gilgul or reincarnation (metempsychosis) in the Kabbalah is such an ex- ample. The idea is completely absent in ancient Jewish sources, though some of them were ingeniously reinterpreted by medieval Kabbalists to demonstrate the antiquity of the concept. The first Jewish writers in the Middle Ages who mentioned it completely rejected it, while the Kabbal- ists in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries embraced it with enthu- siasm and made it a part, and later, in Lurianic Kabbalah, a cornerstone, of their concept of the human soul and its relationship with the Godhead. The intricacies of its historical development, and the intensely individual contribution of every mystic, combined here to create a picture of a spiritual phenomenon; only the full presentation of the different, individ- ual formulations of it can reveal its historical role in the structure of a great culture. One of the most vexing problems facing us in the preparation of this volume was that of updating. In the course of reviewing it, I was struck by the enormous amount of research published on almost all the subjects treated in these studies in the last fifteen years. Scholem’s notes in this volume, regarding for instance Rabbi Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi, Rabbi Joseph of Hamadan, Sefer ha-Peli°ah, Gallei Razaya, Rabbi Isaac of FOREWORD ° 13 Acre, Rabbi Isaac ibn Latif, Rabbi Abraham Abulafa, are out of date even from a strictly bibliographical viewpoint. On many of these and other subjects, doctoral theses have been written and published, plus dozens, if not hundreds, of scholarly articles. The more general subjects, like He- khaloth mysticism, Ashkenazi Hasidism, the Zohar, the Hebrew works of Rabbi Moses de Leon, Sabbatianism, and modern Hasidism, to name just a few, have been treated in new monographs; new texts have been pub- lished, and new approaches have been charted. Two or three dozen schol- ars, unmentioned in this volume, contributed meaningfully to the subjects discussed here. Updating the notes would require at least a five- fold increase in the number and length of the notes, which would change the whole character of the volume. There are even more fundamental problems. Scholem wrote these studies before the full impact of the renewed study of Gnosticism, fol- lowing the publication of the Nag Hammadi Library, was felt. The last twenty years witnessed an intensive development in the study of ancient Gnosticism, questioning some long-held concepts and presenting new ones. Scholem’s frequent reference to Gnostic ideas and studies of the subject would require an extensive revision in an updated edition (which itself would have to be revised at least every decade). Such a revision, again, would radically change the character of these studies. The text presented in this volume is a revised one, a revision done by Scholem himself prior to the publication of Professor Ben-Shlomo’s He- brew translation in 1976, that is, nearly twenty years after the first pub- lication of these articles in the Eranos-Jahrbuch. Scholem’s revisions were minimal. Some of them were minor additions or omissions, to emphasize or de-emphasize a point, and others—very few—updated the notes fol- lowing new scholarly publications. The chapters of this book, therefore, reflect the author’s views near the end of his active scholarly life. For this reason, no updating of the notes or the text has been attempted. The volume is presented to the reader as it is—a classic in the field of the history of ideas in general and in the study of Kabbalistic ideas and his- tory in particular. Anyone wishing to follow a particular detail will have to use current scholarly literature; these studies should not be regarded 14 * FOREWORD as a “last word” on a subject, even though in most cases it is Scholem’s last word. They can and should be accepted as a “last word” concerning the infinite dynamism of Jewish spirituality in its historical development, analyzed by a great master in the ceaseless quest for historical truth. Jerusalem, 1990 Shi-ur Komah: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD I The revolution wrought by biblical monotheism in the history of religion is tied to the imageless worship of God. The prohibition “Thou shalt make unto thee no graven image nor any kind of shape” stands at the beginning of a new revelation. It is associated with worship that abhors images and seeks to evoke the Holy in other ways. However, a question arises here whose answer is not at all self-evident: is this God, who may not be worshiped in the image “of anything that is in heaven or on the earth,” Himself without image or form? This question forces itself upon the reader of the Hebrew Bible, as it does upon any human discourse concerning God. Any discussion of God must necessarily use the imagery of the created world, because we have no other. Anthropomorphism— the application of human language to God—is as intrinsic to the living spirit of religion as is the feeling that there exists a Divine that far tran- scends such discourse. The human mind cannot escape this tension. In- 1S 16 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD deed, there is nothing more foolish than attacking and denigrating anthropomorphism—and yet, nothing forces itself more readily upon the sober and reflective consciousness of most theologians. The dialectics are unavoidable: it pertains, not only to the statements that corporealize God Himself, but also (as is often overlooked) to any discussion of the so-called “word of God.” Benno Jacob, an important commentator on the Jewish Bible, formulated the problem aptly: “ ‘God spoke’ is no less an anthropomorphism than ‘God's hand.” Of course, the anthropomorphic form of expression, freely used in the imagery of the Torah and the prophets, in hymns and in prayers, may not go beyond the realm of speech, it must not make the leap from the titurgical to the cultic. The question nevertheless remains: Does God, the source of all shape, Himself have a shape? Or more precisely: Under what conditions does He have a shape? What features of God actually appear in the theophanies? The realm of these questions is defined by the terminology of the Bible, which uses two different terms to speak of the shape of God. One term is temunah; the other is tselem. Temunah is derived from the Hebrew root min (“kind” or “species”). It refers to that which has a shape or is in the process of taking shape. The second commandment uses the term temunah when it forbids the making of the shape of any thing in heaven or on earth for cultic purposes: “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness of any thing that is in Heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down unto them, nor serve them” (Exod. 20:4). And Deuteronomy (4:12), when recalling the revelation on Mount Sinai, says: “And the Lord spoke unto you out of the midst of the fire; ye heard the voice of words, but ye saw no form, only a voice. . . .” It goes on to stress (v. 15): “Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves—for ye saw no manner of form on the day that the Lord spoke unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire.” This is the basis for the prohibition against using images in worship. Only the voice of God, and no other shape, reaches across the abyss of transcendence bridged by revelation. Theophany is an act of hearing: the most spiritualized of all sensory perceptions, but a sensory perception SHISUR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD ° 17 nevertheless! From here, as we shall see, the road leads to regarding divine speech and the Divine Name as the mystical shape of the Deity. The Bible, however, distinguishes between those images seen by the eye and those perceived through hearing the voice. When the voice of God warns Moses (Exod. 33:20), “for man shall not see Me and live,” this does not mean to imply that God is intrinsically devoid of shape—dquite the contrary! Indeed, in Numbers (12:8), God says of Moses—whom in the above-quoted passage has been prohibited from seeing Him—“with him do I speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of God? doth he behold.” These contradictory state- ments indicate that discussion of the divine form was not meaningless, even if later exegesis attempted to interpret it away. No less strange, in this respect, is the second term, which the Torah (Gen. 1:26—27; 9:6) uses only in connection with the creation of man and which, in a certain sense, is the key term for all anthropomorphic discussion of God: tselem Elohim. The Hebrew word tselem refers to a three-dimensional image or form. When God says, “Let us make man in our image (tselem), after our likeness,” and the following verse says “in the tselem of God He created him,” man, as a physical-plastic phenomenon, is placed in relationship to the primal shape reproduced in him, whatever that shape might be. God must therefore have something like an “image” and “likeness” (demuth) of His own. This “image” or “likeness” is not an object of cultic veneration, but is something that defines the essence of man, even in his physicality. This notion of tselem, as the likeness of a heavenly although not necessarily corporeal structure, undergoes all the stages of interpretation and reinterpretation required by the desire for an ever-stronger emphasis on divine transcendence and the conception of God as pure spirit. It is perhaps relevant to cite here two diametrically opposed views concerning the notion of tselem ?Elohim in Genesis, by two well-known modern exegetes. Hermann Gunkel writes: This similitude refers primarily to man’s body, although of course the spiritual is not thereby excluded. The idea of man as the Ely @v BEOV [imago dei] can also be found in the Greek and the Roman 18 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD tradition, where man is formed in effigiem moderantum cuncta deo- rum——“in the image of the gods, the master of nature” (to quote Ovid)—-as well as in the Babylonian tradition. . .. Modern man will probably object to this explanation by claiming that God has no shape at all, as He is a purely spiritual being. But such an incor- poreal God-idea demands a power of abstraction that was beyond the reach of ancient Israel, and attained only by Greek philosophy. The Old Testament instead constantly speaks, with great naiveté, about God’s form. ... God is thus conceived as a human being, albeit many times more powerful and more dreadful. ... Yet we already note another current in Israel during the ancient period: The prophets find it blasphemous to depict God in an image. God is far too enormous and glorious for any possible image to resemble Him (Isa. 40:25), nor dare we depict Him in words (Isa. 6). Already in the most ancient times, no once could behold His countenance. The more sublime the concept of God became under the influence of the prophets of Judaism, the more this awe increased. . . . Hence, that era would probably not have brought forth the idea that man carries the divine form.’ In Benno Jacob’s commentary, we find the exact opposite idea: There is no doubt that, throughout the Bible, so far as its leading minds are speaking, God is a purely spiritual being without body or form. . . . The strongest anthropomorphisms are to be found pre- cisely in the words of those orators and prophets who simultaneously, and with the most élan, proclaim God’s incomparable sublimity and absolute spirituality, such as Isaiah and Job. Thus, one can say that, the more spiritual the concept, the more anthropomorphic the expression, as these figures were concerned, not with philosophical precision, but with speaking about a living God. [t is not surprising that, for Benno Jacob, Gunkel’s above-quoted lines are a “monstrosity,” refuted by ethnological facts that Gunkel fails to take into account: namely, that “even primitive nations have achieved such an SHISUR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD + 19 abstraction (if it is one). ... Furthermore, this anthropomorphism (i.e., of the “image of God,” tselem ’Elohim) is found in P [the Priestly Codex, allegedly the latest written source of the Torah], for whom it would have been most repugnant, according to Gunkel’s characterization.” * One might say that the vehement opposition between these two pas- sages defines the climate in which our discussion still moves. Both au- thors are to a large extent correct, yet both distort their basic thesis through misleading generalizations. Benno Jacob quite properly felt that anthropomorphism does not exclude the conviction of God’s incorpore- ity, but his simultaneous goal of banning discussion on the form of God is in no wise confirmed by the biblical text. In any event, our own discus- sion below has nothing to do with what the authors of the biblical books meant by their utterances about God; the question is rather that of how these utterances were subsequently understood and what effect they had. In this respect it is obvious that the trend toward the pure spiritualization of God, as expressed in intertestamental and especially Hellenistic Jewish literature, is not the only one. It contrasts with another trend that ad- heres with absolute faithfulness to anthropomorphic discourse about God. The Jewish aggadah is the living and most impressive example of this mode of discourse, in which the sense of intimacy with the Divine is still sufhciently powerful for its authors not to flinch from extravagances that they knew were not to be taken literally. The metaphorical character of such utterances, which generally refer to God’s activity rather than to His appearance, is in nearly all cases quite transparent, and is often underscored by the very biblical passages quoted by way of support. But we are not concerned here with the aggadic worldview per se. What really concerns us is the following issue: in light of the hostility of rab- binic theology to myths and to imagistic discourse on God, as well as the tendency in Jewish liturgy to limit anthropomorphic depictions of God, why was the problem of Gods’ form not eliminated altogether? As against the rejection of mythical images in the exoteric realm, which tolerated these images only as metaphors, there was a renaissance of such images in the esoteric, where they were connected with mystical theological axioms. In other words, the mythical images became mystical symbols. 20 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD I] The development of mysticism in Judaism is linked to speculation con- cerning the first chapter of Ezekiel. Here the prophet describes a vision he had by the waters of the river Chebar during the Babylonian Exile: he saw a vision of the divine chariot, the Merkavah, the divine throne built upon it, and the creatures of the upper world, in animal and human form (who later become categories of angels), who carry it. The elaborate and rather obscure description of the details of the Merkavah was subsequently taken up by visionaries in the pre-Christian era, and particularly in the first two centuries of the Christian era, who sought to repeat the expe- rience of the vision of the Merkavah. Retaining Ezekiel’s terminology, while reinterpreting its meaning, his description was transformed by them into a depiction of the royal court of the divine majesty. This vision was revealed to the visionary upon ascent to the highest heaven: origi- nally, perhaps, the third heaven; later, when the number of heavens was increased, to the seventh heaven. In apocalyptic literature, descriptions of the celestial world include descriptions of the world of the divine throne and the Merkavah. But these same authors become extremely ret- icent when they reach the point of speaking about He who appears on the throne itself, the figure of the Godhead or its theophany: “And upon the likeness of the throne was a likeness as the appearance of a man upon it above” (Ezek. 1:26). Isaiah had already seen “the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and His train filled the Temple” (Isa. 6:1), while Ezekiel describes the light surrounding the figure seated on the throne “as the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about” (Ezek. 1:28). But for both prophets what is important is not so much the theophany itself as the voice that emerges and strikes the prophet’s ear. Needless to say, this vision of the shape of God on the throne, as of the other elements of the Merkavah vision, became an object of contemplation and speculation. The ascent of Merkavah mystics to heaven or, in a different version, to the heavenly paradise, was considered successful if it not only led the mystic to the divine throne but also brought them a revelation of the image of the Godhead, the “Creator of the Universe” seated on the throne. This SHISUR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD * 21 99 46 form was that of the divine Kavod; rendering this word as “glory,” “splen- dor,” and the like fails to transmit the true substance of the numinous conception. Kavod refers to that aspect of God that is revealed and mani- fest; the more invisible God becomes for the Jewish consciousness, the more problematical the meaning of this vision of the divine Kavod. We have thus reached the first major topic in our discussion: namely, the manner in which the Jewish Gnostics and Merkavah mystics conceived of the mystical form of the Godhead: the Shi‘ur Komah. This Hebrew term is often translated as “measure of height,” the noun komah being con- strued in its biblical sense as “height” or “stature.” Such a rendering is valid, particularly given the appearance of this word in the Song of Songs (which, as we shall see, is closely connected with these speculations). Nevertheless, komah most likely has the precise significance here that it has in Aramaic, where it quite simply means “body.” Indeed, the body of the Creator or Demiurge is also called the “body of the Godhead” (guf ha-Shekhinah), and is described in some highly peculiar fragments that have survived.* Some of the oldest texts containing these fragments understood the anthropomorphisms of the Shi‘ur Komah in terms of de- scriptions of the “hidden Kavod.” One of these fragments, Hekhaloth Zu- trati, is ascribed, no doubt pseudepigraphically, to Rabbi Akiva, the central figure in second-century talmudic Judaism. Akiva is presented as receiving such visions, saying that God is “virtually like us, but is greater than anything; and this is His glory which is concealed from us.”® Indeed, the notion of God’s concealed glory is virtually identical with the theo- sophic usage found in the oldest known traditions of Merkavah mysticism, which speak of the vision or contemplation of God’s glory as the deepest level of religious life. Thus, it is rhapsodically promised that, “Whoever knows this measure of our Creator and the glory of the Holy One, blessed be He, is promised that he is a son of the World to Come.” Considering the provocative extravagance of this anthropomorphous de- scription, this promise, uttered here by Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva, is extremely paradoxical. Nor should we forget that these men were not only the two most important rabbinic authorities of the first half of the second century, but were also viewed by the tradition of Merkavah mysti- cism as the true heroes of Jewish gnosis. The question emerges: Are we 22 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD dealing here with attempts of later heretical, sectarian groups to give themselves an Orthodox Jewish appearance? Or are these esoteric tradi- tions authentic ones, taken from the center of rabbinic Judaism in the process of its own crystallization? These questions occupied medieval Jewish writers passionately, no less than they do modern authors. The bizarre fragments that attempted to describe and measure the limbs of God’s body are, as we have said, pro- vocative in their solemnly arrogant boldness: they were bound either to arouse indignation or to be venerated as repositories of a mystical sym- bolism that was no longer intelligible. The surviving fragments of the Merkavah literature, which are largely incomprehensible and textually corrupt, are quite clearly related to the Song of Songs. Phrases from this biblical book, particularly the portrayal of the beloved (5:10—-16), appear repeatedly in various passages: My beloved is white and ruddy, Pre-eminent above ten thousand. His head is as the most fine gold, His locks are curled, And black as a raven. His eyes are like doves Beside the water-brooks; Washed with milk. And fitly set. His cheeks are a bed of spices. As banks of sweet herbs; His lips are as lilies, Dropping with flowing myrth. His hands are as rods of gold Set with beryl; His body is as polished ivory Overlaid with sapphires. His legs are as pillars of marble. Set upon sockets of fine gold; SHISUR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD * 23 This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem. During the first and second centuries, when the Song of Songs began to be interpreted as portraying the relationship between God and Israel, tremendous weight was given to the descriptions of the beloved, who was seen as none other than God Himself, as revealed in the Exodus, in the splitting of the Red Sea, and in the wanderings in the desert. The Shi‘ur Komah fragments followed these bodily descriptions and even sur- passed them. Enormous measurements are given for the size of the Cre- ator and for the length of each limb. As if this were not enough, unintelligible combinations of letters are given to indicate the secret name of each part. This technique is most probably linked to the sche- matic drawings of human beings found on Greek amulets and magical papyri of the same period, covered with secret names. These names, composed of Greek letters, obviously belong to the same cultural sphere as the secret names in the Shi‘ur Komah. As even its oldest extant manu- scripts do not date back beyond the eleventh century, and as the copyists of such enigmatic fragments no doubt corrupted any number of passages, there seems no hope of finding the key to this secret. Semitic- and Greek-sounding elements are tangled together, so that the Greek seems more like an imitation of the sound of Greek words than authentic Greek—just as one might expect from, say, glossolalia. Indeed, perhaps these names emerged from such ecstatic speaking in tongues. Thus, any translation of these passages is virtually doomed. The tremendous dimen- sions make any contemplation illusory; the original goal was presumably a certain numerical harmony among the various measurements, rather than a visual image of the individual numbers. The key Biblical verse for this tradition was Psalm 147:5: Gadol °ado- nenu ve-rav koah——“Great is our Lord and mighty in strength.” On the basis of the numerological computation (gematria) of the phrase ve-rav koah, this line was interpreted as, “the size of our Lord is 236.” The key figure in the measurements of the body of the Creator, which appears repeatedly, is 236,000,000 parasangs. But this does not tell us much, for “the measure of a parasang of God is three leagues, and a league has ten 24 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD thousand cubits, and a cubit three spans, and a span fills the entire world, as it is written, ‘who measures the sky with His span’ (Isa. 40:12).”” Another fragment reads: Rabbi Ishmael said: Metatron, the great prince of the testimony, said to me: I bear witness about YHWH, the God of Israel, the living and permanent God, our Lord and Master. From the place of the seat of His glory [that is, the throne] upward there are 118 myriads, and from the place of the seat of His glory downward there are 118 myriads. His height is 236 myriad thousand leagues. From His right arm to His left arm there are 77 myriads. From the right eyeball to the left eyeball there are 30 myriads. His cranium is three and one third myriads. The crowns on His head are sixty myriads, corresponding to the sixty myriads of the heads of Israel.° This last sentence refers to an aggadic conception (as we find repeatedly in these fragments): the image of Sandalphon, the angel appointed over the prayers of Israel, who is a $00-years-walk tall. Thus, every individual in Israel who calls upon God in prayer places a crown on His head, for prayer is an act of crowning God and recognizing Him as king.’ These texts exude a sense of the world beyond; a numinous feeling emanates even from these enormous, seemingly blasphemous numbers and from the monstrous series of names. God’s majesty and holiness, the form of the celestial king and Creator, assume physical shape in these numerical proportions. What moved these mystics was not the spiritual- ity of His being, but the majesty of His theophany. Rabbi Ishmael reex- perienced Isaiah’s vision: “I saw the king of the kings of all kings sitting on a high and towering throne, and all the hosts of heaven stood before Him, at His left and at His right.” '° But it is not words of prophecy that reach the initiate here; instead, the highest of all archons shows him the dimensions of the shape appearing in this vision, and of all its individual physical parts, from the soles of His feet to His beard and brow. In reality, though, all measurements fail, and the strident anthropomorphism is suddenly and paradoxically transformed into its opposite: the spiritual. SHISUR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD + 25 Suddenly, in the middle of a description in one of these fragments, we read: The appearance of the face is like that of the cheekbones, and the appearance of both is like the shape of the spirit and the form of the soul, and no creature is able to recognize it. His body is like chrysolite, his brilliance breaks tremendously out of the darkness, clouds and mist surround him, all the archeons and seraphim vanish before him like a drained pitcher. That is why we have no mea- surement, and only names are revealed to us.'! Indeed, this ancient author is very chary with numbers, but all the more generous in listing the secret names of these parts in the “language of purity” !? However, the “language of the pure name,” in which the mystical form —that is, an esoteric language of the pure names. of the Deity in its concealed glory is revealed to the initiate, allows us to recognize a connection between this aspect of Jewish Merkavah specula- tion found in the Shi‘ur Komah and one of the most puzzling forms of second-century gnosis. The Gnostic teachings of Marcus, a disciple of Valentinus, had always been distasteful to scholars of Gnosticism because of the afhnity between his teachings and the linguistic mysticism and letter symbolism of the Kabbalah.'* Indeed, the point of departure for his teaching is a mingling of linguistic mysticism and Shi‘ur Komah notions. Despite the Christian interpretation of these ideas, the mixture points unmistakably to their origin in Jewish esoterism——a point first noted by Moses Gaster nearly a century ago.'* The Greek form in which these speculations are transmitted is merely Marcus’s adaptation of Semitic speculations, a point confirmed by the fact that the ritual formulae he employed in his mystical liturgy are indisputably Aramaic. The native soil of his gnosis was not Egypt, but Palestine or Syria, where he must have become acquainted with the oldest forms of Shi‘ur Komah imagery. The Merkavah mystics receive their revelation while rising to the throne, while Marcus received his when the supreme Tetras “descended to him from invisible and unrecognizable places in the guise of a woman, 26 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD since the world would have been unable to endure its male form, and revealed to him its own being and the genesis of the universe.” '> This genesis came about when the formless God assumed form: When, in the beginning, the fatherless father, who is neither grasped by the mind nor has a substance and who is neither man nor woman, wanted to express His ineffable being and make His invisible being visible, He opened his mouth and produced a word that resembled Him. In coming to him, it showed him that it was thereby becoming manifest as the shape of the invisible (YOV aopayou Lopgy).” Both Valentinus and Marcus subsequently connect this “word” with the logos and with Christ; but within the context of Marcus’s speculation per se, it was originally nothing other than the great name of God, in which the ineffable being of God becomes effable, assuming expression and shape. Marcus goes on to relate the origin of the pronunciation of this name. The first word of the great name consisted of thirty letters, each one of which has its own special being and shape, and does not recognize the shape of the whole, of which it is only one letter: With the sound that it itself produces, it believes that it can name the universe by its name, for each of the sounds regards it own sound as the totality, even though it is only a part of the whole. And it will not stop sounding until it has come to the last sign of the last letter... . The sounds, however, form the aeon, which is without form or beginning, and they are the shapes that the Lord called angels and that continuously behold the face of the father. Thus, each individual sign of the name is infinitely powerful, and the letters of the full name of the primal father are infinitely profound. “That is why the primal father, who knows His own ineffability, gave the letters (which he also calls aeons) the ability to sound their own pronunciation, as each individual [letter] was incapable of pronouncing the totality.” After thus revealing the secret of the supreme name, broken down SHISUR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD + 27 into its elements, Marcus receives the revelation of Truth itself from his female guide. “For I brought [Truth] down from her supernal dwelling, that you might see her nude and come to know her beauty, but also to hear her speak and to admire her understanding.” There follows a list of the parts of this mystical form, from head to foot, and of their secret names, each of which are nothing but combinations of the first and last letter of the alphabet, the second and penultimate, and so on in this order [the system known in Hebrew as ’atbash]. Thus, for Marcus, the alphabet as a whole constitutes the mystical shape of Truth, which he—quite in keeping with the Jewish terminology of the “body of the Shekhinah”— calls the “body of truth” (O@pa. THs aAntelas), and the form of the primeval, which, for him, is the primal human being, the Anthropos. “Here is the source of every word, the origin of every voice, the utter- ance of all that is unutterable, and the mouth of dumb silence.” We find in Marcus that the description of the origins of the mystical form of the primal human being is connected with language mysticism and a doctrine of secret names and letter combinations—much as we have found in the strictly Jewish, or more correctly Jewish-Gnostic, Shi‘ur Komah fragment. Marcus’s theory of language can also aid us in understanding and interpreting the Jewish text. The notion of the letters of God’s name as aeons is also a later Kabbalistic teaching. The secret names of the organs are combinations, into which the basic elements of the Primal Man, which is the great Name of God, subdivide. What Mar- cus refers to as the primal human being corresponds, in Shi‘ur Komah, to the human form seen by Ezekiel on the throne. The doctrine of the Shi‘ur Komah contains both a teaching of the name of the Creator—which is a configuration representing God's ungraspable, shapeless existence—and of the sensory shape in which the Creator appeared to Israel as a hand- some youth by the Red Sea, and in which He reveals himself to devotees of Merkavah mysticism at the end of the journey of the ascending soul. Marcus could therefore have received this teaching concerning the inf- nite power and depth of the letters from contemporary Jewish tradition, not just from the neo-Pythagorean tradition with which scholars used to link these speculations. In so doing they overlooked precisely those ele- ments lacking in the neo-Pythagorean, but present in the Jewish Shi‘ur 28 ° ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD Komah tradition. In my opinion Marcus was acquainted with both tradi- tions and synthesized them. The Shi‘ur Komah literature and that variant of this teaching that Marcus adapted to his purposes mutually illuminate one another. Perhaps it should also be noted that the mystical-magical character of the alphabet sequence, in the specific form mentioned above [i.e., ?atbash], is familiar to the Jewish tradition. In fact, a Greek-Hebrew amulet discovered in Karneol in 1940 contains on the Greek obverse an apostrophe to God, “Thou Heaven-Shaped, Sea-Shaped, Darkness- Shaped, and All-Shaped (pantomorphos), the Ineffable before whom myri- ads of angels prostrate themselves,” while on the verso of the amulet the Hebrew alphabet appears, in *atbash sequence, as the secret name of God.'* This sequence is transcribed into Greek on the Greek side of the amulet! We may therefore assume that the Deity has a mystical form that manifests itself in two different aspects: to the visionary, it manifests itself in the tangible shape of a human being seated on the throne of glory, constituting the supreme primal image in which rnan was created, aur- ally, at least in principle, it is manifested as God’s name, broken into its component elements, whose structure anticipates that of all being. Ac- cording to this doctrine, God’s shape is conceived of, not as a concept or idea, but as names. This interlocking of tactile and linguistic anthropo- morphism, which I consider characteristic of Shi‘ur Komah doctrine, per- vades the extant fragments. Hence, it is not surprising to see a sentence such as: “God sits on a throne of fire, and all around Him, like columns of fire, are the ineffable names.” '’ The two realms are not separated, and the names of God, which are the hidden life of the entire Creation, are not only audible, but also visible as letters of fire. Furthermore, according to an aggadah attributed to the Palestinian Merkavah mystics of the early third century, “The Torah given by the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moses was given to him in [the form of] white fire inscribed upon black hre—fire mixed with fire, hewn out of fire and given from fire. Of this it is written, ‘at His right hand was a fiery law unto them’ [Deut. 33:2]-”"* The Torah occupies here the same place as is occupied in Valentinus’s and Marcus's gnosis by the already Christianized logos, the primal name of God that constitutes the form of everything. SHISUR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD + 29 There thus exists a “body” of the divine Kavod which, as we have seen, was a symbol that was revealed to the mystics. Even the most tangible anthropomorphisms bespeak a language of mysteries.’” Just as there is a mystical body of God in which His image appears, so is there a garment (haluk) in which this body is wrapped. This garment is described, not only in the aggadah, but even more in the hymns of the Merkavah mystics, some of which are extant from the third century. According to one of these hymns, the heavens were radiated from this mystical “shape”; ac- cording to another, “constellations and stars and signs emanate from His garment, in which he wraps Himself and sits upon the throne of glory.” In yet another midrash (which makes use of the technical language found in these hymns), it is related that God opened the seven heavens on Sinai and revealed himself to Israel, “in His beauty, His glory, His shape, His crown, and upon the throne of His glorv” (the throne here replaces the garment mentioned in the hymns). It is obvious that this midrash finds nothing wrong with these notions from the sphere of the Shi‘ur Komah doctrine.”° In the above discussion I have assumed the doctrine of God’s form to be extremely ancient, hence one that could have been adopted in Gnostic circles that were joined by early Jewish converts to Christianity. This assumption is strengthened by an extremely interesting passage in the Slavonic Book of Enoch which, unlike the view of André Vaillant (the most recent scholarly editor, whose arguments on this score are quite weak), I cannot ascribe to a Christian author. Rather, I see it as a Jewish apocalypse written in Palestine or Egypt during the first century C.E. The Greek original has been lost, but it evidently used the term HOP? in the sense of “stature” or “form.” In chapter 13 of this book, Enoch says: “You see the extent of my body (shi‘ur komati) similar to yours, and I saw the extent of the Lord without measure and without image and without end.” Abraham Kahana’s Hebrew translation (in his edition of the Apoc- rypha) made use of this term, without his being aware of the possibility that the term shi‘ur komah in fact goes back to this period. The parallel between the contents of the Hebrew Shi‘ur Komah and the Book of Enoch is striking and thought-provoking. Similar images of God, as possessing a “form” or bodily shape, 30 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD LLOQ), were certainly known to Jewish-Christian groups and are as- sumed in the sources of the pseudo-Clementine Homilies, some of which may have come from the Jewish-Christian Ebionite sect. Here too, espe- cially in the seventeenth homily, the “beauty” of the father is emphasized and the parts of his body are described, as in the above-mentioned Shi‘ur Komah hymns. The seventeenth homily emphasizes (again, like one of the fragments | quoted earlier) that this body is “incomparably more lumi- nous than the spirit with which we perceive it, and is more radiant than anything else, so that in comparison with this body, the light of the sun must be regarded as darkness.””! All this suggests a connection with the Jewish Gnostic fragments extant in the Hebrew and Aramaic texts of the ShiSur Komah. This early dating, however, was by no means undisputed. The few nineteenth-century scholars who dealt with these concepts, above all Heinrich Graetz, committed the grave error of dating the Merkavah liter- ature far too late; its intimate and multiple connections with Gnostic literature and the syncretistic papyri therefore eluded them. Scholars dated those writings between the seventh and ninth centuries, tracing the anthropomorphisms of the Shi‘ur Komah to the influence of an Islamic anthropomorphic school, the Mushabbiha, when in fact the exact opposite was the case.”” According to this approach, these Jewish doctrines origi- nated among ignorant groups who were given to grossly sensual ideas, and were quite unknown to the Merkavah mystics of the tannaitic period attested to by the Talmud. The progress made in understanding and care- ful study of these texts has made such views untenable. Over and above everything said above, there is extremely important, albeit indirect, evidence regarding the age of the ShiSur Komah tradition connected to the Song of Songs. This evidence appears in a passage by Origen that has never been satisfactorily explicated. In the introduction to his well-known commentary on the Song of Songs—in which the Jewish reading, i.e., in terms of the relationship between God and Israel, is replaced by that between Christ and the Church—Origen writes: It is said to be the custom of the Jews to forbid anyone who has not attained a mature age to hold this book [i.e., the Song of Songs] SHISUR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD * 31 in his hands. Moreover, even though their rabbis and teachers in- struct their children in all the books of the Scripture and in their oral traditions,’* they postpone the following four texts until the very end: the beginning of Genesis, describing the Creation of the World; the beginning of the prophecy of Ezekiel, which relates to the cherubim [that is, the doctrine of the angels and the divine retinue]: the end [of the same book], which describes the future Temple; and this book, the Song of Songs.” There can be no doubt that this passage refers to the existence of esoteric doctrines connected with the four texts mentioned. We know from the Mishnah that the beginning of Genesis and the first chapter of Ezekiel were considered to be esoteric texts par excellence, and it was therefore prohibited to lecture about them in public. They could be stud- ied privately, but even then only by those who were worthy, mature, and held in esteem by their fellow citizens.** The reference to the concluding chapters of Ezekiel is presumably related to the association of these chap- ters with apocalyptic ideas concerning the rebuilding of the Temple. The fact that many details in these chapters openly contradict the Torah’s description of the same subject also naturally led to limitations upon their study. Indeed, there was a tendency during the first century to exclude the Book of Ezekiel from the canon of biblical Scriptures because of these very contradictions.” It may be that the contradictions between these two sources were resolved among certain groups by means of some kind of esoteric teachings, although we have no definite information on this matter. On the other hand, we know nothing about restrictions on the study of the Song of Songs. In fact, during the second and third centuries, the allegorical reading of this book in terms of the love between God and the Congregation of Israel was a favorite theme in the aggadic lectures of the rabbis. True, according to later testimonies, the Song of Songs was deemed unsuitable for public study because the servant—that is, the Christian Church—had usurped the place of the mistress—that is, the Synagogue. It has been justifiably argued that this would indicate that during the third century the Church allegorically reinterpreted the Song 32 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD of Songs in its own interests.*”? However, the state of affairs with which Origen was already familiar in the early third century (and we must not forget that he worked in the town of Caesarea in Palestine and was well acquainted with the Jewish tradition)—namely, that of an older Jewish tradition—cannot be explained in terms of this polemic. Jewish scholars prior to Origen’s time could not possibly have known about a Christolog- ical reading of the Song of Songs that would arouse their qualms about public study of this book for a simple reason: this reading first entered into the Church through Origen’s own commentary on it.”* Thus, the Jewish sages of the second or early third century would hardly have limited the study of a book due to a reinterpretation which they could only have known later. The true basis for Origen’s tradition lies in the fact that during the second century the Song of Songs was connected with the esoteric doc- trine of Shi‘ur Komah. Whether it originated from its interpretation or had earlier sources, the Song of Songs functioned as the biblical text upon which this doctrine was based. The Merkavah mystics most likely regarded the Song of Songs not only as an historical allegory within the framework of its aggadic interpretation but also as an esoteric text in the strict sense—i.e., as a text containing sublime mysteries, not universally accessible, concerning the manifestation and form of God in terms of the secrets of the Merkavah. The most profound of all the chapters of Merkavah mysticism is that concerning the shape of the Deity (extant in the Shi‘ur Komah fragments), which speaks not only about the Merkavah per se, but, as we read in Hekhaloth Zutrati, “the Great and Mighty, Awesome, Enor- mous and Strong God, who is removed from the sight of all creatures and hidden from the ministering angels, but was revealed to Rabbi Akiva in the vision of the Merkavah, to do his will’? As Saul Lieberman has cogently shown, it can be demonstrated that the second-century tannaim saw the Song of Songs in terms of a Merkavah revelation that occurred at the Red Sea and on Mount Sinai—a point made in a number of mid- rashim.” This conclusively proves the age of the Shi‘ur Komah idea, as | have already suggested on the basis of more general considerations. Ori- gen’s passage confirms that in his day, and probably some time before SHISUR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD + 33 him, the Jewish teachers in Palestine viewed the Song of Songs as an esoteric text concerning the manifestations and form of the Deity. One might even go further, and join Gaster in conjecturing that the prohibi- tion against public study of the Merkavah, a prohibition already operating in the first century, was primarily directed against the Shi‘ur Komah doc- trine.*! This dating of the Shi‘ur Komah is supported by a statement of St. Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Tryphon, chap. 114) that, according to certain Jewish teachings, God has human shape and organs. This statement can be adequately explained by a proper dating of the Shi‘ur Komah specula- tion. He presents these teachings not as heretical ideas but as the nor- mative rabbinic teaching of his time. It is hence quite understandable that such notions penetrated, with some variation, even into Ebionite circles. We may perhaps go even one step further. Mandaean writings fre- quently contain the designation of God as Mara de-Rabutha (the Lord of Greatness), referring to Uthras, the father of all celestial potencies. Scholars have thus far been unable to identify the origin of this term. It now appears that this designation, like so much else in Mandaean Gnos- ticism, derives from Judaism. The identical wording appears (strangely enough, unnoticed by scholars) in a fragment of an Aramaic paraphrase of Genesis discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, published in 1957; the text comes roughly from the first century B.C.E. There (col. Il, line 4), Noah’s father, Lamech, speaks to his wife about the “Mara rabutha, the king of all worlds.” This name is used quite naturally, as one obviously taken for granted in these circles. If the Mandaeans were orig- inally connected with Jewish baptismal sects near the Jordan (as many scholars tend to assume on the basis of their literature), then we are dealing here with the origins of a religious term that was first used in those circles and then moved eastward together with the early Mandaean groups. It is difficult to ascertain the exact image underlying this term. The “Lord of Greatness” may refer to He who possesses the attribute of greatness in an abstract sense, in which case it would hearken back to David’s prayer in I Chronicles 29:11. “Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, etc.” Indeed, in the Hebrew texts of Merkavah Gnosticism 34 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD we find a parallel name for God as “Lord of Strength.” *? However, this may also be a further development along the lines of the Shi‘ur Komah, which, as we have seen, concretely depicts the greatness of the “Lord of Greatness.” In this context the key verse that we have already discussed, Psalm 147:5, is particularly suggestive: the “greatness of our Lord” (as the verse was construed here) is alluded to in the words ve-rav koah. We thus find both the Hebrew word for “great” (gadol ) and the Aramaic rab, contained in the term Mara Rabutha. Perhaps the choice of this verse and its mystical, numerological interpretation as referring to the spe- cific measurement of God’s dimension are based precisely on this title of God. An important conclusion of our discussion is not merely the fact of the existence of such images as that of a shape of God in ancient Jewish esoterism, but also the fact that we are not dealing here with the ideas of “heretical” groups on the periphery of rabbinic Judaism. On the contrary: The close link between these ideas and Merkavah mysticism can leave no doubt that the bearers of these speculations were at the very center of rabbinic Judaism in tannaitic and talmudic times. We must revise forward many of the assumptions of earlier scholars who, finding this notion unacceptable a priori, attempted to relegate the ShiSur Komah to the fringes of Judaism. The gnosis we are dealing with here is a strictly orthodox Jewish one. The subject of these speculations and visions— Yotser Bereshith, the God of Creation—is not some lowly figure such as those found in some heretical sects, similar to the Demiurge of many Gnostic doctrines, which drew a contrast between the true God and the God of Creation. In the view of the ShiSur Komah, the Creator God is identical with the authentic God of monotheism, in His mystical form; there is no possibility here of dualism. Given the antiquity of these ideas, which we have tentatively traced back to the first century, we may ask whether this orthodox Shi‘ur Komah gnosis did not precede the dualistic conception of later Gnosticism, which emerged during the early second century. If so, the entire line of Gnostic development from monotheism to dualism must be understood in an entirely different way from that which scholars have thus far suggested. We likewise cannot ignore the possibility that the pronounced usage of the term Yorser Bereshith (De- SHISUR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD + 35 miurge) in those fragments (the oldest of which probably go back to the second or third century) might have been introduced in order to indicate the monotheistic alternative to the position of these sectarians—in other words, with a polemical aim against certain Gnostic groups in Judaism who had been exposed to the influence of dualistic ideas, which they tried to apply in heretical, Gnostic interpretations of the Bible. In any event, these or similar traditions were preserved in Palestinian Judaism and its aggadah. As late as the sixth century, the most important liturgical poet of Palestinian Jewry, Eleazar ha-Kallir, used the terms Shi‘ur Komah and Yotser Bereshith as perfectly acceptable, rather than he- retical, concepts.** In the ninth century, when the Karaites began their vehement attacks upon the talmudic aggadah and its anthropomorph- isms, the burden of their polemic was aimed against the Shi‘ur Komah fragments, which both enjoyed ancient authority and were already re- puted to be completely unintelligible.** However, the spokesmen of rab- binic Judaism in the Babylonian academies initially adhered to their tradition, and were unwilling to abandon even such extravagant lucubra- tions of the aggadic spirit as the Shi‘ur Komah. However, there were great figures who were not prepared to defend this tradition. Around the year 1000, Jewish scholars in Fez sent an inquiry concern- ing the Shi‘ur Komah to Rav Sherira Gaon, head of the Babylonian academy. Among other things, they wrote: And R. Ishmael said further: “I and R. Akiva are guarantors, that whoever knows the stature of our Creator and the praise of the Holy One, blessed be He, is assured a share in the World to Come, provided only that he repeat it in the Mishnah every day.” And he began to say, “His stature is thus and such... .” And we wish to know whether Rabbi Ishmael said what he said from his teacher, who heard it from his teacher, and so on going back to Moses at Sinai, or whether he said it of his own accord. And if he said it of his own accord, should one not apply the Mishnah (Hagigah 2:1): “Ifa man does not consider the honor of his Creator, it were better had he never been born.” May our master explain this to us clearly and fully. 36 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD R. Sherira replied: It is impossible to explain this matter clearly and in full, it can only be done quite generally. Heaven forbid that Rabbi Ishmael should have invented such things out of his own head: how could a man arrive at such utterances of his own accord? Moreover, our Creator is too high and sublime to have organs and measurements in the literal sense, for, “To whom then will ye liken God? Or what like- ness will ye compare unto Him?” (Isa. 49:18). Rather, these are words of wisdom that cannot be conveyed to everyone. Other versions of this responsum contain even sharper language: There are hidden therein profound reasons, which are higher than the highest mountains and exceedingly wondrous, and their allu- sions and secrets and mysteries and hidden things cannot be con- veyed to every one.” In other words, the secrets of the Shi‘ur Komah themselves allude to pro- found mysteries. R. Sherira thus has an opinion concerning this issue, but is not prepared to commit it to writing. Indeed, three generations earlier, Saadiah Gaon, under the impact of the Karaite polemic, held a far more reserved position: There is no agreement among scholars about Shi‘ur Komah, for it appears neither in the Mishnah nor in the Talmud, and we have no way of determining whether or not it comes from Rabbi Ishmael, or whether someone else composed it under his name. For there are many books which use the name of people who did not write them, but were composed by others who made use of the name of one of the great sages in order to attain prominence for their books. *¢ Maimonides expressed himself in more extreme fashion. During his youth, he still considered Shi‘ur Komah as a source deserving of interpre- tation, but he subsequently changed his mind, and could only view these SHISUR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD + 37 texts with horror. When asked whether it was a Karaite work or whether it contained “mysteries of our Sages, of blessed memory, concealing pro- found matters of physics or metaphysics, as Rabbenu Hai stated,” Mai- monides replied: I never thought that this came from the Sages. Heaven forbid our assuming that this kind of thing derives from their hands! Rather, it is undoubtably no more than the work of a Byzantine preacher. All in all, it would be a highly meritorious deed to snuff out this book and to destroy all memory of it.”’ These words indicate the embarrassment felt by Jewish rationalists upon being confronted with a text of this type. Some, of course, attempted to salvage it by means of philosophical, allegorical interpretation—as, for instance, Moses of Narbonne (d. 1362),*® or R. Simeon ben Tsemah Duran (14th c.). The latter explicitly challenges a certain opinion that seems to have been widespread during the Middle Ages, even by several Kabbalists: namely, that the measurements of the Shi‘ur Komah refer to the highest archons among the angels or to angelic beings. Rather, ac- cording to Duran, “the aim of this book is to maintain that everything in existence is God’s Glory, and that their measurements [i.e., that of the organs] is so and so much; or else they referred to the dimensions of the Kavod as it appeared to the prophets.” ” According to Duran, Shi‘ur Ko- mah may be interpreted in a visionary manner (which is not far from the literal truth) or in a pantheistic interpretation which asserts that reality itself as a whole is the mystical shape of the deity. A far-reaching thesis is thus concealed here in mythical images.*° In any event, the Shi‘ur Komah was not an object of reverent study for these medieval Jewish groups, rather, as I have said, it was an embarrassment. Il In the world of Kabbalah that developed in Western Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, nourished by ancient traditions of Jew- ish gnosis and the impulses of new mystical inspiration, the atmosphere 38 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD was altogether different. Medieval theology had already forgotten the original significance of the Shi‘ur Komah vision, and was hard set on abol- ishing any view that attributed to God any human attributes whatever. These philosophers sought to push the biblical concept of monotheism to its utmost extreme, and even outdid the Bible itself in removing any vestiges therein of mythical or anthropomorphic parlance. It is no coin- cidence that Maimonides began his philosophical magnum opus, Guide for the Perplexed, by turning the key word tselem on its head—although, in his opinion, of course, right side up. In the newly evolving Kabbalah, by contrast, we find the opposite tendency. Here, too, the spiritualization of the idea of God is an accepted fact, but in the reflections that took the place of the Merkavah visions, the ancient images reemerged, albeit now with a symbolic character. Unlike the philosophers, the Kabbalists were not ashamed of these images; on the contrary, they saw in them the repositories of divine mysteries. Shi‘ur Komah became the watchword of a new attitude, which was no longer interested in the details of the ancient fragments—neither those of the measurements and numbers, nor of the enigmatic names, all of which were consigned to obscurity. In their place the Kabbalists returned, in their own way and with their own emphases, to the fundamental idea of a mystical form of the Godhead. The underlying principle might be for- mulated as follows: Ein-Sof; the Infinite—that is, the concealed God- head——dwells unknowable in the depth of its own being, without form or shape. It is beyond all cognitive statements, and can only be described through negation——indeed, as the negation of all negations. No images can depict it, nor can it be named by any name. By contrast, the Active Divinity has a mystical shape which can be conveyed by images and names. To be sure, it is no longer a potential object of vision, as in Mer- kavah mysticism; the stature and value of such visions become greatly diminished. Prophetic visions are mediated by infinite levels of theophany originating in deeper regions, which are below the sphere with which the Kabbalists are dealing. However, the Godhead also manifests itself in symbols: in the symbol of the organically growing shape of the tree, in the symbol of the human form, and in symbols of the names of God. SHI'UR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD + 39 Both tendencies, which we have already encountered in the ancient Shi‘ur Komah texts and in Marcean Gnosticism, emerge with renewed strength from the Kabbalistic sense of the world, albeit in altered form. The Kab- balists found it an honor, rather than an embarrassment, to speak about the Shi‘ur Komah. Often enough, they paraded their own theologia mystica as the doctrine of the Shi‘ur Komah, in proud defiance and mocking scorn of the stutterings of the apologists. It is no coincidence that one of the boldest and deepest writings of the later Kabbalah, Shi‘ur Komah of R. Moses Cordovero of Safed (the most profound speculative mystic of the Kabbalah), bore the same title as that ancient work. In His active manifestations, the Godhead appears as the dynamic unity of the Sefiroth, portrayed as the “tree of the Sefiroth,” or the mystical human form (?Adam Kadmon), who is none other than the concealed shape of the Godhead itself. Let me briefly recapitulate what the Kabbalists mean by Sefiroth. These were originally the ten primal numbers in which all reality is rooted—an idea expounded in a Hebrew text roughly con- temporary with the ancient Shi‘ur Komah and heavily influenced by Py- thagoreanism: Sefer Yetsirah (The Book of Creation). However, the medieval Kabbalists changed its meaning when they adopted the term Sefiroth. For them the Sefiroth are the potencies constituting the active Godhead, and through which (to use Kabbalistic language) it acquires its “face.” ’Anpin Penima’in, the hidden face of God, is the aspect of the divine life turned toward us which, despite its concealment, seeks to take on shape. The divine life is expressed in ten steps or levels, which both conceal and reveal Him. It flows out and animates Creation, but at the same time it remains deep inside. The secret rhythm of its movement and pulse beat is the law of motion of all Creation. As the divine life reveals itself —that is, becomes manifest through its actions on the vari- ous levels of divine emanation—it assumes a different shape on each level or, speaking theologically, appears in different attributes. In its to- tality the individual elements of the life process of God are unfolded yet constitute a unity (the unity of God revealing Himself), together they are the shape of the Godhead. The plasticity of its being—which radiates in all directions and mani- 40 ° ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD fests the infinite goodness of God—is revealed in its manifold functions. Abraham Herrera, in his book Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim (ca. 1620), describes the various aspects of the Sefiroth as follows: The Sefiroth are emanations from the primal simple unity; making known His good which is without end; mirrors of His truth, which share in his nature and essence, which is above all, and that He is Himself the necessary being; structures of his wisdom and repre- sentations of His will and desire; receptacles of His strength and instruments of His activity; treasuries of His bliss and distributors of His grace and goodness, judges of His kingdom, bringing His judgment to light; and simultaneously the designations, attributes, and names of He who is the highest of all and who encompasses all. These ten names are inextinguishable: ten attributes of His sub- lime glory and greatness, ten fingers of His mighty hands, five of His right and five of His left; ten lights by which He radiates Him- self; ten garments of glory, in which He is garbed; ten visions, in which He is seen, ten forms, in which He has formed everything, ten sanctuaries, in which He is exalted; ten degrees of prophecy, in which He manifests Himself; ten lecterns, from which He teaches; ten thrones, from which He judges the nations, ten divisions of paradise or canopies for those who are deserving of it; ten steps on which He descends, and ten on which one ascends to Him; ten beauteous fields, producing all influx and blessing; ten boundaries, which all yearn for but only the righteous attain, ten lights, which illuminate all intelligences, ten kinds of fire, which consume all desires; ten kinds of glory, which rejoice all rational souls and in- tellects; ten words, by which the world was created; ten spirits, by which the world is moved and kept alive; ten commandments; ten numbers, dimensions, and weights, by which all is counted, weighed, and measured; ten touchstones, by which the perfection of all things is tested, by that which are drawn near and are repelled by them. And these are the ten utterances containing All; the genera in whose bosom everything is contained and from whose bosom everything emerges, the providence which extends from one ex- treme to the other, and by the awesomeness of whose providence SHISUR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD ° 41 all is prepared for their good and their benefit. ... The supreme unities, to whom all the initial multiplicities return, by its inter- mediacy, to the simple unity; and above all the simple unities is the Infinite, blessed be He.*! Of course, even this turning toward created beings contains the inef- fable that accompanies every expression, enters into it and withdraws from it. The awareness of this dual quality, this dialectic of manifestation within shape, is characteristic of the Kabbalist’s knowledge of divine mat- ters—a knowledge that was experienced in many ways. For example, the Tikkunei Zohar points out that God dwells both in the Sefiroth and between them: You are within all and outside of all, and to every side, and above all and beneath all.... And You are in every Sefirah, in its length and breadth and above it and below it, and between each and every Sefirah and in the thickness of the every Sefirah.*? The most precise formulation of this concept is in the writings of R. Moses Cordovero: The Infinite, the King, King of Kings, who rules all: for His essence penetrates and descends via the Sefiroth and between the Sefiroth, and between the Merkavah and within the Merkavah, and within the angels and between the angels, and within the celestial spheres and between the celestial spheres, and within the elements and between the lowly elements, and within the land and between the land and its offspring, down to the final point of the abyss—the whole world is full of His glory.*’ In other words, the formless substance of the *Ein-Sof is immediately present, in its full reality, in all stages of the process of emanation and creation, and in every imaginable shape. In this sense one may say that there is no thoroughly shaped image that can completely detach itself from the depths of the formless: this insight is crucial for the metaphysics 42 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD of the Kabbalah. The truer the form, the more powerful the life of the formless within it. To delve into the abyss of formlessness is no less ab- surd an undertaking for the Kabbalists than to ascend to the form itself; the mystical nihilism that destroys any shape dwells hand in hand with the prudent moderation struggling to comprehend the shape. One might say that both tendencies are peering out of the same shell. It is precisely in the doctrine of the Sefiroth, with its emphasis on the mystical shape which lies at the basis of every other shape, that the Kabbalist becomes aware of this danger, and tries to overcome it. The Divine is not only the shapeless abyss into which everything sinks, although it is that abyss too. In its turning toward the outside, it contains the guarantee of the exis- tence of form—precarious and elusive by nature, but no less powerful for that. This comment is perhaps not superfluous in terms of the thought processes we are dealing with here. But let us return to our point of departure: God’s potencies grow into Creation like a tree, nourished by the waters of divine wisdom.“ The Sefirotic tree, of which the Kabbalists spoke in Sefer ha-Bahir, preserves the image of the organic shape in which each thing is in its proper place, and where it partakes of the flow directed toward it from the union of the totality. The Sefrotic tree, in which God has implanted His strength (“the cedars of Lebanon which He hath planted,” to quote one widely used exegesis), is also the Tree of the World and, in a certain sense, the true Tree of Life. Its root is located in the highest Sefiroth; its trunk embraces the central and thereby conciliating forces, while the branches or limbs which grow out of it at various points encompass the contradic- tory forces of divine activity in Hesed and Din. All of these taken together constitute the primary form in which the divine image appears in the Kabbalah. The tree grows upside down—an image familiar to us from many myths. The three uppermost Sefiroth—Keter (crown) or, in the Zo- har, Ratson (will); Hokhmah (wisdom); and Binah (insight or discern- ment)—are the basic ground and roots of this tree. It is no coincidence that these determining forces are from the world of the intellect. In the next three Sefiroth, we find Hesed (grace or love), Din or Gevurah (severity or judgment), and Rahamim or Tif ereth (mercy, also known as splendor or beauty), in which the extremes are united and conciliated. Again, it is no SHI'UR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD + 43 coincidence that this sphere is defined by moral forces. The last triad consists of Netsah (endurance), Hod (splendor or majesty), and Yesod (the foundation) or Tsaddik (the Righteous One). This completes the picture of the creative forces, enabling them to operate together through the living force of God, by which everything finds its place and is maintained. As the living force par excellence, it is likewise the force of procreation, represented through svmbols of male sexuality. All these active factors are in turn united in the tenth Sefirah, Valkhuth or Shekhinah, God's roval rule, into which they flow as into the ocean. The living forces of the Godhead pass into Creation through the medium of the last Sefirah, rep- resented in symbols of receptivity and femaleness.** We thus arrive at a fixed canonic image of the Sefrotic tree, represented as shown on page 44. While the image of the Sehrotic tree is represented in other struc- tures, this one is the most widespread. The Sefiroth are thus not a series of ten emanations of aeons emerging from one another; on the contrary, they constitute a well-structured form, in which every part or limb op- erates upon every other, and not just the higher ones on the lower. The Sefiroth are connected with one another by means of secret “channels,” tsinoroth, whereby each radiates into the other and in which the other is in turn reflected. The specific nature of each potency is deeply rooted in itself, but every potency likewise contains some aspects of all the others. Moreover, each one repeats in itself the structure of the whole, and so on ad infnitum—a point elaborated by the later Kabbalah. It is through this process of infinite reflection that the whole is reflected in every member and thus, as Moses Cordovero explained, becomes a whole.“ However, the Sehroth do not appear only in the shape of the tree. They also appear in the form of Primal Man (?Adam Kadmon), which cor- responds to that of earthly man. The Sefiroth are the “holy forms,” first mentioned in Sefer ha-Bahir, in which these two symbolic representations appear one after another. In S §112 (M §166) the date palm is cited as a symbol of the procreative power of the Godhead, exactly as in the Man- daean writings. The “seventy palms” found by the Israelites at Elim (Exod. 15:27) during their wandering in the desert, indicate that “God has seventy shapes,” and every palm tree corresponds to one of these 44° ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD primal shapes. The Hebrew term komah, used here for “shape,” is the same as that used in Shi‘ur Komah. However, in S §§114 and 116 (M §§165, 172), the organs of man correspond to the “seven sacred forms of God”: The Holy One, blessed be He, has seven sacred forms, all of which have their counterpart in man, as said, “In the image of God He made him.” ... These are: the right and left thighs, the right and left hands, the torso, the phallus and the head. SHISUR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD + 45 In a different version, in which the torso and the phallus are not sepa- rated, the female is the seventh form that completes them. Above these seven bodily forms, corresponding to the seven lower Sefiroth, are the three upper Sefiroth symbolizing the spiritual forces: thinking, wisdom, and discernment. These are not conceived as bodily forms, but, at least according to the Zohar, are localized in the three chambers of the brain. There are, however, different developments of this symbolism, in which their correspondence to human organs is formulated in far greater de- tail.*’ In Sefer ha-Bahir, the oldest extant Kabbalistic text, these forms of God are explicitly identified with the tselem °Elohim of Genesis 1:27: “In the image of God He created him.” Sefer ha-Bahir adds: “in all his limbs and in all his parts” (S §55; M §82). These notions received their most decisive expression in the Zohar, which views man as the most perfect shape—‘“the form that contains all forms” or “the image that contains all images”—through which alone all things exist. The first worlds that were created were destroyed because this true shape had not yet achieved its perfection, so that the balance and harmony in which everything exists through the secret of this shape had not yet been established. The lower, earthly human being and the upper, mystical human being, in which the Godhead is manifested as shape, belong together and are unthinkable without one another in a well-ordered world. The perfection of the universe resides [or: appears] in this shape of man, it was this shape seen by Ezekiel on the throne, and of this that Daniel spoke when he said, “And, behold, there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man, and he came even to the Ancient of days, and he was brought near before Him” (Dan. TAZ) Thus, the Zohar returns to the same Biblical motifs found in the Shi‘ur Komah. In the boldest parts of the Zohar, the 7Idra Rabba, the ?Idra Zutta, the Greater and the Lesser Assembly, (which are a sort of Kabbalistic turba philosophorum), and the Sifra de-Tseni‘utha, “The Book of Conceal- 46 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD ment”—in which these ideas are summarized in solemn cadences—we find a version of the Shi‘ur Komah reconceived in the spirit of the Kabba- lah. This new version is in no way inferior to the ancient fragments, either in boldness or, if one may phrase it thus, Gnostic presumptuous- ness. However, in contrast with the Shi‘ur Komah, it does not conceal its metaphysical background. Every organ of *Adam Kadmon, nay, every last hair on his head, is a world unto itself; every detail alludes to configura- tions of the Sefiroth that unfold and reveal the infinite wealth contained in them. The details of the description reveal some acquaintance with medieval anatomy, and the author revels in the anthropomorphic para- doxes that supply the key words and mottos for the symbolic presenta- tion of his metaphysics. Daniel’s vision of “the Ancient of days” (Dan. 7:9), ‘Atik Yomin, whose head is as white as snow and whose hair is like pure wool, provides the author with a term uniting the graphic image of a man of hoary old age with the notion of God’s sheer remoteness and transcendence (‘atik means both “old” and “removed”). But it is not by chance that the notion of “Atika Kadisha, the “Holy Ancient One,” rever- berates with both these meanings, pointing also to the God who moves back from transcendence to shape. The */droth hardly speak about the *Ein-Sof, the infinite and formless God; in any event, they do not use this term. ‘Atika Kadisha, the Holy Ancient One, which serves here as the supreme symbol, does not refer to "Ein-Sof as such, but to ’Ein-Sof as it appears or, rather, is concealed in the highest Sefiroth. The concrete, vi- sual symbol of the Holy Ancient One thus contains the dialectics of this transition from formlessness to form. It seems obvious that the writer of these pieces was aware of the presumptuousness of his efforts. The hero of the mystical romance of the Zohar is the mishnah teacher Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai. He begins his dis- course in the */dra Rabba with a warning against the very anthropo- morphism in which he is about to indulge. His warning is framed in the words of Deuteronomy: “Cursed be the man that maketh a graven or molten image” (Deut. 27:15). The words that follow concerning the “se- crets of the Ancient of Days” are termed mysteries, and the speaker harbors no doubts about their merit: “I do not tell the heavens to listen, SHI‘UR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD + 47 nor the earth to hear, for we ourselves support the existence of the worlds.” He begins his interpretation of the Shi‘ur Komah as follows: Before the Ancient of Ancients, the Hidden of the Hidden, pre- pared the shapes of the king and the crown of crowns, there was neither beginning nor end. He sketched and measured and spread out a curtain, in which he drew and called forth the primal kings. But these shapes did not endure, as it is written, “These are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel” (Gen. 36:31): a primal king over a primal Israel. And all those who were inscribed [in the curtain] were given names, but they did not endure, for He left them and concealed them. After a time, however, he entered that curtain and gave Himself shape. And we learn that, when He made up His mind to create the Torah, which had been hidden for two thousand years [prior to the creation of the world] and He took it out, the Torah instantly spoke before Him: “He who wishes to shape and to have effect, must first shape his own shapes [that is: shape himself ].”’And we have learned in the Sifra de-Tseni‘utha: “The Ancient of Ancients, the Concealed of the Concealed, Mystery of Mysteries, took on a shape and it was given. He exists and yet does not exist, there is no one who can recognize him, for he is the Ancient of Ancients, the Elder of Elders, but in his shapes he becomes recognizable with- 9949 out being recognizable. Sifra de-Tseni‘utha uses the symbol of a scale to explain why the original shapes did not endure: For so long as the scale did not exist, there was no seeing from countenance to countenance, and the primal kings perished,*° and their species had no existence, and the earth vanished. ... This scale hangs in a place that is not; on it are weighed those who do not exist; the scale stands on itself; it is not attached [to anything] and it is not visible. Those who were not, who are and who will be, have ascended and do ascend upon it.*! 48 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD According to some, this scale is identified with the Sefirah of Hokhmah, divine wisdom, the principle of divine harmony permeating all worlds and all being. According to others, it represents the balance between the male and the female principle. In any event, the scale represents the principle of structure and shape. It is worth noting that the same symbol is used at the beginning of Dionysius Areopagita’s book on the holy names (1, §3), which is a fundamental work of fifth-century Christian mysticism. This author also speaks of “that primeval divine scale which regulates all of the holy orders, and reaches even unto the celestial cho- ruses of the angels.” The problem of the divine form is also posed in a precise formulation at the beginning of the ?*/dra Zutta (Zohar, II], 228a): The Holy Ancient One, the Most Concealed of all the Concealed, who is separated from everything and yet not separated, for every- thing is connected to Him and He is connected to everything. He is everything; the Ancient of Ancients, the Concealed of the Con- cealed, who has shape and yet has no shape. He has shape in order to maintain the universe, and yet has no shape because He does not exist. When He assumed shape, He produced nine blazing lights from His shape, and these lights shine out of Him and spread con- tinuously on all sides, like a lamp [or candle] from which light spreads on all sides; but when one approaches these lights in order to know them, there is nothing there but the lamp alone. Thus, the Holy Ancient One: He is a mystical lamp, Concealed of all the Concealed, knowable only through those lights which spread out from Him, reveal, and instantly conceal again. And these lights are called the Holy Name of God, and that is why everything is one. The image in which the Ancient of Ancients is embodied, meticulously described in the */droth as the shape of the Primal Man, is identical with the name of God. The close interrelationship between the two realms, which we already found in the ancient Shi‘ur Komah, is emphasized in this work too: that of the seemingly sensory contemplation of the parts of the body, and that of God’s name, which breaks down into holy names in the SHI'UR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD + 49 unfolding of the divine word. The Gnostic thinker Marcus describes in detail how the first word of His name—which, not coincidentally, is the first world of the Greek Bible, &Py7) (beginning)—is to be analyzed, applying the procedures of linguistic mysticism to the Greek words and letters. In this procedure the names of the Greek letters are written, and their component letters are in turn written out as full names of letters, etc. The Kabbalists employed the same method in their own mysticism of language, in which the Tetragrammaton is split and divided into other divine names. In discussing this the *Idra Zutta weaves together the themes of anthropomorphic and linguistic mysticism. What takes on form in God is that in which He reveals and announces Himself. Yet what would such a revelation be if not the name of God? Thus, the true elements of the divine form are the component elements of His name, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This idea is one that accompanies Kabbalah from its first emergence and throughout its his- tory. One of the earliest classical works of Spanish Kabbalah is entitled Sefer ha-Temurah (The Book of the Shape), the shape referred to being that of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which is the symbolic shape of the Godhead. One who is absorbed in contemplation of the Hebrew alphabet fulfills the verse mentioned at the beginning of this book: “And the shape of God does he behold” (Num. 12:8). These words refer to Moses, the receiver of the Torah; he was the great mystical adept, to whom this mystical form was revealed during his immersion in the Torah and its mysteries. Sefer ha-Temunah entirely avoids the forms of expression found in the Shi‘ur Komah literature; it only refers to the configuration of the letters, which may be described as symbols of the various Sefiroth. But generally speaking, both views exist side by side; for the Kabbalist, they are merely different fagons de parler. The first configuration of ten, presented at the beginning of the "/dra Zutta, is that of the lamp and its nine lights: while these form the shape of the divine name, they are still included in the unity of the Holy An- cient One, whose being is both transcendent and nontranscendent, and they are negated therein. It is not clear whether the nine lights corre- spond to the nine Sefiroth that emanate from the first and highest Sefirah and with it form a decade, or whether the author of the Zohar is speaking SO * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD of nine lights that shine within the first Sefirah itself and illuminate its various internal aspects, even before the transition to the next Sefirah. In this Sefirah of divine wisdom a positive factor is added, diminishing the mystical obscurity and ineffability prevailing in the Zohar’s remarks about the Holy Ancient One. For our purposes there is no need to decide between these two interpretations. This highest mystical form of the Godhead is also described in the *Idroth as the *Arikh °Anpin (literally, “the forbearing one”; the term was later construed as meaning “the large face”); it is likewise designated the “white head,” resha hivvera. The skull, cerebral chambers, forehead, eyes, nose, and beard of this face are meticulously described, together with statements of mystical theology. Keeping with the biblical description of the Ancient of Days, he is depicted as an old man, white-haired, harmo- nious, thoughtful, and sleepless: “His eyes are balanced as one, constantly look about and do not sleep, as is said, ‘Behold, the keeper of Israel neither sleeps nor slumbers.” ... “Therefore, he has no eyebrows, and there are no lids to his eyes” (Zohar, III, 289a). The body belonging to the white head is not described, but its existence is assumed. On the other hand, the parts of the head are described in great detail: This Holy Ancient One is entirely concealed, and the highest Wis- dom exists in his skull. Indeed, nothing of this Ancient is revealed except for the head, which is the supreme head of all heads. The highest wisdom, which is a [lower] head concealed therein, and is called the highest brain; the concealed brain, that is calm and pru- dent and of which no one knows apart from Himself. Three heads are carved out, one inside the other and one above the other. The first head [from below] is the concealed wisdom, which is concealed and not opened, and is the uppermost head for all other wisdoms [ie., the Sefiroth emanating from it]. [The second head] is the su- preme head, Holy Ancient One, the Concealed of all Concealed, the supreme head of all heads. [The third head] is a head that is not a head, and no one knows and it cannot be known what is in this head, for it is beyond wisdom or insight [i.e., this third head is the formless *Ein-Sof concealed within ‘Atika Kadisha, the Holy An- SHISUR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD ° 5! cient One]... And that is why the Holy Ancient One is called the nothingness, for the nothingness depends on him. And all those hairs and threads emerge from the concealed brain, and they are all smooth and even, and the neck [covered by the hair] is not visible (III, 288a-b). It is clear from this that the figure of the “Atika Kadisha also alludes to the *Ein-Sof, which transcends all “heads” and is beyond all shapes.*? One can see how problematical this most profound image of the Godhead is spe- cifically as a shape—and to what extent the dialectics I spoke of earlier is operative here—from the fact that the same shape could also be called the nothingness. This image that can be called nothingness is ineffably filled with the rooted in shapelessness. The problematical figure of *Arikh *Anpin, the first and highest Sefirah, becomes clearer when it is manifested in the continuous sequence of the divine manifestations, as the Ze‘ir *Anpin. Taken literally, Ze‘ir ’Anpin re- fers to God as the “Impatient One”—that is, exhibiting the forces of rigor and justice alongside those of mercy and infinite generosity. This configuration of the Sefiroth is the true shape of the Godhead, embracing as it does all the manifestations of His activity. According to the *Idra Rabbah, it includes everything from Hokhmah, the divine wisdom, down to Yesod, the foundation of the world. In another version, that of the 7/dra Zutta, this configuration embraces the six Sefiroth in two trios from Ge- dulah (Hesed ) to Yesod. Hokhmah and Binah are here conceived as distinct shapes through which the worlds of these two Sefiroth are shaped and constructed; in this capacity they are designated as “father” and “mother” of the lower Sefiroth. Each Sefirah has its own structure, by which it was built as a “shape within the shape.” Each one also has con- cealed worlds that are permeated with the structural laws of that Sefirah. For the Zohar, however, Ze‘ir ?Anpin is essentially God as He is revealed in the unity of his activity. The true name of God, the Tetragrammaton, befits this level of manifestation and expresses its special structure. The factor joining and complementing the Ze‘ir *Anpin is its feminine counter- part, the Shekhinah, the last shape of the Divine in this system. In reality, however, the concealed shape of which we spoke above, which is on the $2 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD frontier of shapelessness, and that of the Ze‘ir *Anpin, which can be ap- prehended through mystical meditation, are not two separate forms. Thus, we read in the 7/dra Rabba: The epitome of all these things is that the Ancient of Ancients and the Ze‘ir *Anpin are all one; everything was, everything is, everything will be in Him. No change takes place in Him, has ever taken place in Him, or will ever take place in Him. He has taken shape in these forms, and thus the shape that comprises all shapes in itself is com- plete; the shape that comprises all names in itself, the shape in which all other shapes appear; not that it is a shape, but that it has something of the shape. When the crowns and diadems [i.e., the Sefiroth] come together, the universal perfection comes about, for the higher ones and lower ones are combined in the shape of man. And because this shape embraces the higher and the lower ones, the Holy Ancient One has formed his forms and those of the Ze‘ir >Anpin in this shape. But if you ask: What is the difference between them? [The answer is:] Everything was in one equilibrium, but from here [i-e., the Holy Ancient One] there emanates the forces of Mercy, while from here [the Ze‘ir *Anpin] there issues severity [or justice]. And they are distinct [only] from our point of view. (Zohar, Ill, 141a-b) Israel, it claims, lost the battle against Amalek because the children of Israel made a distinction between the ‘Atika Kadisha, who is called Noth- ingness, and the Ze‘ir ’Anpin, called YHVH: They wished to know [i.e., to distinguish] between the Ancient One, the Concealment of all Concealment, who is called *Ayin (Nothing), and Ze‘ir ’Anpin, who is called YHVH. Therefore ... they asked “Is the Lord [YHVH] among us, or not [Heb.: ’ayin; literally, “nothing” }?” (Exod. 17:7). If so, why were they punished? Because they differentiated [between those primal shapes] and made a test, as it is written “because they tried the Lord” (ibid.). Israel said: “If it is this one [i.e., ‘Atika Kadisha], then we shall ask SHI'UR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD * 53 in one fashion; but if it is the other [Ze‘ir *Anpin], then we shall ask in another fashion.” (Zohar, II, 64b) In a brief passage, parallel to the */droth (Zohar, II, 122b~123a), we find a succinct description of the “countenance of the king”—that is, the Ze‘ir >Anpin—in which the anthropomorphic Shi‘ur Komah symbols are connected to theological motifs: It is taught in the Mystery of Mysteries: The king’s head is arranged according to Hesed and Gevurah. Hairs are suspended from his head, waves upon waves, which are all an extension, and which serve to support the upper and lower worlds: princes of princes, masters of truth, masters of balance, masters of howling, masters of screaming, masters of judgment, masters of mercy, meanings of Torah, and secrets of Torah, cleannesses and uncleannesses—all of them are called “hairs of the king,” that is to sav, the extension that proceeds from the holy king, and it all descends from Atika Kadisha. The forehead of the king is the visitation of the wicked. When they are called to account because of their deeds, and when their sins are revealed, then it is called “the forehead of the king,” that is to say, Gevurah. It strengthens itself with its judgments, and ex- tends itself to its extremities. And this differs from the forehead of Atika Kadisha, which is called Razon (“will or “pleasure”). The eyes of the king are the supervision of all, the supervision of the upper and the lower worlds, and all the masters of supervi- sion are Called thus. There are [different] colors joined together in the eyes, and all the masters of the supervision of the king are given the names of these colors, each one according to its way; all are called by the names of the colors of the eye. When the supervision of the king appears, the colors are stimulated. The eyebrows are called “the place,’which assigns supervision to all the colors, the masters of supervision. These eyebrows, in rela- tion to the lower regions, are eyebrows of supervision [that derive] from the river that extends and emerges, and [they are] the place which brings [influence] from that river in order to bathe in the whiteness of Atika, in the milk that flows from the mother; for when 54 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD Gevurah extends itself, and the eyes shine with a red color, Atika Kadisha illumines its own whiteness, and it shines in the mother, and she is filled with milk and suckles everything, and all the eyes bathe in the mother’s milk, which flows forth perpetually. This is [the meaning of] Scripture: “Bathing in milk” (Song of Songs 5:12)—in the milk of the mother, which flows forth perpetually, without cease. The nose of the holy king is the focal point of the countenance. *? When the forces of power extend themselves and are gathered to- gether, they are the nose of the holy king, and these powers depend upon the single Gevurah and emerge from there. When the judg- ments are aroused and come from their borders, they are tempered only by the smoke of the altar, and then it is written: “And the Lord smelled the sweet savor” (Genesis 8:21). The nose of Atika is differ- ent, since it does not need [the sweet savor], because the nose of Atika is called “long-suffering” in every respect; the light of the concealed wisdom is called his “nose.” And this is “praise” as it is written “My praise will I show you” (Isaiah 48:9), and King David was inspired by this: “Praise of David” (Psalm 145:1). The ears of the king: when the desire is there and the mother gives suck, and the light of Atika Kadisha is kindled, then the light of the two brains and the light of the father and mother are aroused—all of these are called “the brains of the king,” and they shine together, and when they shine together they are called “the ears of the king,” for Israel’s prayers are received, and then the movement begins toward good and evil, and by this movement the winged creatures are aroused who receive the sounds in the world, and all of them are called “the ears of the king.” *° The lips of the king and his palate are then portrayed in a similar fashion. It is clear that Shi‘ur Komah imagery is closely interwoven here with the author’s mystical theology concerning various foci of divine activity. Each of the “bodily parts” corresponds to a specific realm, which pro- vides the basis for a Kabbalistic thesis concerning the activity of the “Atika Kadisha and the Ze‘ir *Anpin. This is obviously a later approach, which reinterprets the biblical anthropomorphism and is already influenced by SHI-UR KOMAH: THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD ° 55 medieval theology.” The author of the Zohar, and the later Kabbalists who followed in his footsteps, adopted this symbolism in an astonishingly daring manner; their goal was to defend the doctrine of a mystical form of the Godhead in order to explain the secret of divine activity. It took courage to employ these daring and, often enough, grotesque images. But they were also inspired by the certainty with which, in the course of comparing the theory of emanation with the mystical linguistic theory of the name of God, they grasped the imagelessness which, as a great mod- ern thinker put it, is the refuge of all images.*’ Sitra Ahra: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH I Any discussion of the concepts of good and evil in the history of human thought confronts an enormous problem. Good and evil are rarely de- fined in the classical texts of most religions; instead, they are taken for granted as givens. It is therefore not surprising that the philosophers’ speculations upon the nature of good and evil often conflicted with those categories that the ancient texts had assumed as self-evident. This applies to the monotheistic religions, whose sacred writings establish—or, to be more precise, presuppose—as good those thoughts and deeds that ac- cord with God’s will, and evil as the defiance of His will. In any case, when the Hebrew Bible makes statements about what God loves and what God hates, it clearly operates on such premises. But the Bible also accepts another premise, with a simplicity astonishing to the modern reader who has been spoiled by metaphysical speculations. The Bible presumes that the antitheses of good and evil—which determine his 56 SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH * 57 values and in which man is so ineluctably trapped—both equally origi- nate in God’s will and creation. It does not matter whether we under- stand the Bible’s words as polemicizing against the dualistic religious attitude of the Persians or as an original conception. Either way, we are impressed by the unequivocal manner in which evil is accepted within God’s creation. “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; | am the Lord, that doeth all these things” (Isa. 45:7). Evil, however one conceives of it, is thus regarded as an entity delib- erately created by God. “The Lord hath made every thing for His own purpose, Yea, even the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov. 16:4). Evil exists and owes its origin to God’s creation and activity. This is the oldest an- swer to the question of the origin of evil; behind it, virtually at the next turn, lurks the doctrine of predestination. All monotheistic religions have struggled with this question desperately, summoning all the resources of the human intellect. The author of Lamentations cries out rhetorically, “Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good?” (3:38). As the question of the nature and origin of evil became more pressing, the wording of this sentence in the original Hebrew came to be construed in the opposite sense: namely, as a declarative statement rather than as a question. The entire problem of good and evil is immanent in such an exegesis. The Bible, in its unflagging naiveté, knew precisely where it stood with regard to good and evil. This unequivocal attitude was clouded by the intrusion of Greek speculation into the world of monotheistic religions. The question of how evil can emerge from God opened the most bitter and agonizing problems of religious thought. Platonic dualism most likely had a greater share in the severity of this question than the real or imag- ined influence of Persian thought; regarding this problem, all three major Mediterranean religions stand under the shadow of Plato. The antitheses of light and darkness, good and evil, spirit and matter, take on a com- pletely different meaning in Platonic thought than they do in the ancient texts; biblical faith and philosophy clashed violently here. We may recall the prayer of the “both pious and original” Lady Blanche Balfour, whose words could be the fervent prayer of countless faithful believers over the past two thousand years: “Lord, preserve us from the dangers of meta- 58 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD physical hair-splitting and unnecessary brooding on the origin of evil.” But the stubborn insistence of systematic thought rides roughshod over the prayers of pious souls. As the history of theology teaches us, the philosophical perspectives from which the theologians of the major reli- gions approached the tension of good and evil were all influenced by the same Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas; in this respect, the differences among them are far smaller than one might think. It is as through the only conceptual apparatus through which this basic problem could be approached was the Platonic, or its Aristotelian variant. For both philos- ophers, after all, the discussion of evil amounted to the metaphysics of privation, of nonexistence. The respective realities of good and evil are not equivalent, for evil, like matter and darkness, is merely a positive designation for a lack, for something that does not exist. This notion dominated European and Arabic thought for many centuries. To phrase it in Neoplatonic terms, evil is the nonentity at the frontier of being, at the extreme end of the chain of emanation. Unlike the luminous nature of the good, the dark nature of evil does not actually exist; it is presented as existent only by mythical speech, in a kind of metaphorical shorthand. This was one of the principal points in which the conflict between man’s “concrete” experience and its “theoretical” explanation literally cries to Heaven; in this respect, it resembles the conflict between the Ptolemaic and Copernican approaches to the movements of the earth and of the sun. The contributions of Kabbalah to this perennial theme are interesting for the following reasons: The Jewish mystics tried to break away from the tyranny of the Greek conceptual apparatus and, albeit at times awk- wardly and without being fully aware of their own boldness, they devel- oped ideas that in crucial ways refused to evade the reality of evil. Their approach reveals both their strength and their weakness. It shows their weakness because it led them from the world of concepts back into the world of symbols, which they were not yet capable of translating back into concepts. It also shows their strength, because they refused to go along with the ostrichlike position of the philosophers who, when con- fronted with the reality of evil, escaped into the theoretical dialectics of matter and form. Granted, these dialectics were better developed than SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH * 59 the concepts of the Kabbalists, and it is not surprising that the latter, in desperate moments, attempted to utilize them. This is of course no less paradoxical than, for example, Catholic theology resorting to Aristotelian concepts in order to prove the existence of Hell or of eternal damnation. What interest us, however, are the actual concerns of the Kabbalists, who profoundly transformed the biblical world with their interpretations while adhering to its essential elements. They thus rejected the two pri- mal principles of the metaphysical dualism of matter and form, on which Plato and Aristotle ultimately based good and evil, seeking instead to retain the monotheistic principle of God’s oneness. These Kabbalistic efforts have been recorded in extremely diverse forms, a few of which I will present here with the aim of progressively clarifying their struggle to understand good and evil in the world. | shall discuss and interpret some far from simple Kabbalistic texts, by which we shall come to know their peculiar and characteristic mode of commentary on the ancient texts, a form in which Kabbalistic thought is often at its most original. I] A few preliminary remarks are necessary for understanding these texts. Kabbalistic speculations about evil and its origin, its development and its consequences, operate on two levels. On one level they deal with events in the human world, as in the biblical tale of the fall of Adam and Eve, but on another level, they are concerned with the world of the Divine itself. Thus, from the very start, a significant duality is introduced into the view of good and evil. Did good and evil first emerge and become realized in human action alone, or is there something in the constitution of the world, independent of man, in the action of God Himself, that causes the existence of good and evil? On-the whole, the early Kabbalists stressed the latter aspect, finding a metaphysical foundation for evil in the very constitution of Creation, and from there drawing a connection between evil and the world of human action. On the other hand, we often find the opposite notion—i.e., that while good and evil may indeed have a metaphysical foundation in the nature of God’s activity as Creator, 60 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD it is only potential being and not real existence; they only become real through human choice and action. A certain basic vacillation, or one could say, a dichotomous stance regarding this issue runs through all of Kabbalistic literature. However, in the older texts the dilemma is never open and obvious, although it is implied in certain important utterances. It first emerges clearly and explicitly only in the writings of the later Kabbalists, beginning in the sixteenth century. The major opus of classi- cal Kabbalah, Sefer ha-Zohar, steered clear of this dilemma, as we shall see, unequivocally maintaining the metaphysical reality of the existence of evil. To understand the various attitudes that come to light here, we must recall the fundamental Kabbalistic teaching of the ten Sefiroth, the poten- cies of divine being. This doctrine states that God as Creator—that is, the living God in His activity, as opposed to the concealed aspect of God, existing for Himself beyond any possibility of our knowing Him—mani- fested Himself in ten utterances of His being, ten radiations of His crea- tive nature, ten emanations of His concealed essence, or whatever one of these ultimately symbolic descriptions is used. The Sefiroth, pulsating with the rhythm of the divine life and symbolically representing the life process of the Godhead, are in essence one in God, yet they reveal differ- ent aspects of God’s creative activity. As discussed in the previous chap- ter, they have something of the mystical shape of the shapeless God. In their harmony, in their constitution by and oneness with divine being, they are the foundation of all created things, which emanate from them and are fashioned by them. So long as they act in their original harmony and unity, they are good; after all, they express God’s will, which acts upon them in the form of the highest Sefirah. At the same time, the Kabbalists view the Sefiroth as constituting the scale of the highest spiri- tual and intellectual values that can be realized by human actions, by means of which human beings can bring about and maintain the blissful connection between Creation and its Creator. The primordial shape of man, rooted in the mystic primordial image of the Godhead, the Adam Kadmon, can reflect the ray of divine light that entered it at Creation. Everything that strengthens this contact and harmonious connection SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH ° 61! with the source of this primal shape comes from the world of good or, more precisely, reflects this world in human activity. However, there are also tensions in the world of the Sefiroth, aspects of divine action that seem to us to be in conflict with each other, although they each have their place, like notes in a melody, in the dynamic oneness of the Godhead. In these tensions are the ultimate foundation of what appears to human beings as evil. Various schools of the early Kabbalah located the origin of a dialectic that releases evil at three different points within the Sefirotic system. Common to all of these reflections is an emphasis on the activity of one or another of these ten Sefiroth. God possesses an attribute of love that manifests itself in His workings and in His creatures—indeed, in an infinity of realms in which this Sefirah op- erates without hindrance—as a basic power of Creation. This divine love is the freely flowing and freely given good; its Hebrew designation, not by chance, combines the nuances of love, grace, and charity in the term Hesed. Its opposite number in the Sefirotic system is the quality of sever- ity, self-containment, judgment, and therefore restricting power, in the language of the Kabbalists, this is known as Gevurah or Middath ha-Din. These two Sefiroth are the fourth and fifth in the structure of the Sefirotic tree but, from a different perspective, stand at the top of the seven lower Sefiroth. This latter grouping, which for the Kabbalists represents the primordial “seven days of Creation,” corresponds to the secret reality that was externalized during the seven days of Creation. Each one of these in its own way contains something of the two primal qualities of love and severity, which permeate them and are expressed by them in diverse ways. The three highest Sefiroth, to which there are no immediate counterparts in temporal Creation, represent the forces of divine plan- ning—will, wisdom, and discernment—fully expressed in the labor of the seven days, both in the esoteric work of the archetypal Creation of the world of the seven Sefiroth within God Himself, and in the exoteric sense of the Creation outside of God. In these three highest Sefiroth, love and severity are not distinguished or separated from one another, they still rest in the depths of the undifferentiated divine will and wisdom. Only in the third Sefirah does a certain element of differentiation begin 62 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD to occur in those essences that were undivided in the divine wisdom; however, these essences are not yet crystallized into distinct Sefiroth. Here in Binah we find the womb of all Creation, a womb that maintains har- mony in differentiation, the reconciliation of contradiction, the unity of conflicts that are about to erupt. Here, as the Kabbalists like to say, there are no severe judgments, yet it is here that we find the roots of severity in the powers of judgment. This point is related to one of the previously mentioned Kabbalistic theories, which finds the ultimate root of evil in the law governing the continuation of the process of emanation from this point on. This view occurs in particular in the writings of R. Isaac ha-Cohen of Soria, a Cas- tilian Kabbalist (ca. 1260), which were probably based upon earlier spec- ulations.’ According to this view, Binah released emanations in which the power of Din (severity) was released unmitigated, thereby breaking its connection with the other Sefiroth in which everything was mutually bal- anced. We find here the idea that such unrestrained and unmitigated action of Middath ha-Din must necessarily be expressed in realms and entities that are destructive by nature, and that by their nature cannot endure. According to his view, these are the destroyed primal worlds referred to in the midrash cited in the name of R. Abbahu from Caesarea: “The Holy One, blessed be He, created worlds and destroyed them, until He created this [present] one, and said: ‘This one gives Me pleasure, they did not give Me pleasure’ ”? R. Isaac ha-Cohen related this idea to the verse: “Who are snatched away before their time, whose foundation was poured out as a stream” (Job 22:16). After a quasi-demonic eruption, these primal worlds returned to their source in Binah, their purely nega- tive nature making it impossible for them to exist in a positive manner. There nevertheless remained vestiges of these destroyed and destructive primal worlds, which float about our universe like debris from extinct volcanoes. These, according to some Kabbalists, constitute the basis of evil in the Creation—that which has not reached its proper place, that which prematurely collapsed, an abortive start of Creation, so to speak. This concept recurs in several other parts of the Zohar, as well as in a slightly later, short text entitled Masekheth *Atsiluth (The Tractate on Ema- nation) that defines evil as a remnant of a being that was “initially rash”:* SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH °* 63 “An estate may be gotten hastily at the beginning; but the end thereof shall not be blessed” (Prov. 20:21). This teaches us that the Holy One, blessed be He, initially created worlds and destroyed them, trees and uprooted them, because they were hasty and jeal- ous of one another. This is comparable to ten trees planted in a field in one long row, in which there is not even a hair’s breadth left between one tree and the next. Every tree wishes to rule over all and to draw all the moisture from the soil, so that all of them thereby become dried out; so it is with the worlds. “But the end thereof shall not be blessed”—the Holy One blessed be He re- moved His light from them, and the darkness remained to punish therein the wicked. That is “but the end thereof shall not be blessed.” [Masekheth Atsiluth, §4] But the most important thinking on the position and nature of evil focused not on Binah but on the function of the Sefirah of Din itself. Here the Spanish Kabbalists returned to the earliest Kabbalistic texts, particu- larly Sefer ha-Bahir, at least one stratum of which explicitly identifies evil with Middath ha-Din—that is, with one of the modalities of divine activ- ity.* In principle, this view is not that remote from the attitude of the talmudic aggadah. The latter often goes so far as to personify God’s power of punishment, Middath ha-Din, as an autonomous entity: “The Quality of Severity spoke before God,” etc. It is clear here that Middath ha-Din plays the role of a prosecuting angel or, to put it tersely, Satan, who tries to arouse God’s punitive power by his accusations, and virtually represents it himself. Indeed, there are parallel passages in the aggadah in which the identical statements are attributed to Middath ha-Din and to Satan. Of course, one might argue that, in aggadic thinking, Middath ha-Din was a created being, distinct from God, so that its identification with Satan had no theosophic implication; that is, it does not pertain to the nature of the Deity. The case is rather different, however, for Sefer ha-Bahir, for whom God's Middath ha-Din is not an angel, but one of the divine logoi or potencies of God’s activity in Creation: in other words, a Sefirah. (1 have found no basis for the claim that the passages in Sefer ha-Bahir that identify evil, Middath ha-Din, and Satan with one another were not the 64 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD result of an internal development within Judaism, but instead were writ- ten under the influence of the Catharist doctrines widespread in south- ern France during the twelfth century.) There was a significant difference between the attitude of Sefer ha-Bahir and that of the Spanish Kabbalah which culminates in the Zohar: namely, the simple equation of God’s severity with the principle of evil was re- placed here by a more subtle and complex reflection. (I will return to this later.) It is not clear what the author (or editor) of Sefer ha-Bahir thinks about the connection between the divine attribute of severity— which both confronts man with the choice between good and evil and passes judgment on his choice—and the moral nature of man, with the duality of his good and evil drives. It is precisely this confusion that Sefer ha-Zohar tries to clear up. In any event, for the early Kabbalah, in all its varieties, the solution to the problem of evil and its effects was primarily linked to the Sefirah of Din. The pre-Zoharic Kabbalah knew of a third point in the Sefrotic sys- tem in terms of which the eruption of evil was understood: the final Sefirah, Malkhuth. Here, too, the fundamental thought is the same: so long as the Sefiroth, especially those representing the antithetical aspects of divine action, work together harmoniously, the element of divine severity has no separate, autonomous existence; the restrictive and limiting ele- ment is canceled out in the world of divine unity. This obtains both for the connection between the Sefiroth of Hesed and Gevurah (Middath ha-Din), as well as for the connection between the penultimate and ultimate Sefi- roth (Yesod and Malkhuth), which represent the connection between the male and female principles. It is only when these elements become iso- lated that severity appears, be it in its own Sefirah or in its activity within the last Sefirah, as a dark and dangerous element working evil.’ The earliest Spanish Kabbalists sought to express this idea in their reflections on the true meaning of Adam’s sin, through which evil en- tered the human world. Profound insight into their way of thinking is offered by a passage in which, using the symbolism of the two trees in the Garden of Eden and of Adam’s fall, it introduces what were to be- come central themes of the Kabbalah. We find here one of the most important formulations of the problem of evil in all of Kabbalistic litera- SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH * 65 ture. This passage, known as Sod ‘Ets ha-Da‘ath (The Secret of the Tree of Knowledge), deserves closer attention. Extant in several manuscripts, some anonymous and some attributed to R. Ezra ben Solomon of Gerona, it reads as follows:® Regarding the matter of the Tree of Knowledge, of which Adam was commanded not to eat: Fix your mind on this matter and as to why God kept him away from this tree more than from the others. Notice that, according to the wording in Scripture, He did not enjoin him against gathering [the fruit], but only against eating it. For Adam did not pluck and take the fruit, but the woman gave it to him, as is written, “And she gave also unto her husband” (Gen. 3:6). The Scriptural verse also only has Him saying: “Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?” (v. 11). Likewise, Scripture says about the Tree of Life: “... lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever” (v. 22). From here we may infer that it is the act of eating that causes sin, and indeed, this is so. Know that the eating of the fruits of the Garden [of Eden] provided nourishment for the soul; therefore, he was punished for eating, which involves both body and soul. But the soul has no share or benefit in gath- ering the fruit: even though [he thereby brought about] a separation in the lower realms, it does not cause separation in the upper realms, but the soul only partakes in the act of eating the fruit, and is nourished by its fruits. But damage is caused [to the soul] if the fruit contains damaging things, and [things that] stimulate the Evil Urge and diminish it [the soul] in its rank and its health, and re- duces its strength in the upper realm—and this was [Adam's] sin. You already know that the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowl- edge are one [tree] below but two [trees] above: the Tree of Knowl- edge is from the northern side, but the Tree of Life is from the eastern side, from whence light emanates into the entire world, and the potency of Satan is there. And it is written in the “Jerusalem Talmud” [i-e., in Bahir, S §109; M §162]: “What is Satan? This teaches that the Holy One blessed be He has a quality whose name is Evil, and it lies to the north of God, as is written, ‘Out of the 66 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD north the evil shall break forth’ (Jer. 1:14), and from the north it comes. And what is it? It is the form of the [left] hand, and it has many emissaries, and every single one of them is called Evil, Evil; however, there are among them lesser and greater ones, and they make the world culpable ... .” as it is written there. And it is also written in the above-quoted “Jerusalem Talmud” [Bahir, S §107; M §161]: “What is meant by, ‘And the Lord showed him a tree, and he cast it into the waters’ (Exod. 15:25)? This refers to that Tree of Life that Satan threw down, etc.,” as it is written there. Now this is the meaning: So long as the Tree of Life, which comes from the side of the east and is the Good Urge and the quality of peace [harmony], is connected with the Tree of Knowl- edge, which comes from the side of the north, from the side of Satan and evil, then Satan can do nothing, for the Tree of Life, which is the quality of peace [i-e., harmony], shall overwhelm him. But the moment it (the Tree of Knowledge] is separated [from the Tree of Life], its strength is freed and Satan is able to act. Therefore, when Satan wished to lead Israel astray [at Marah], he cast [the Tree of Life] away and separated it from them and tested Israel, and was therefore able to seduce Israel into sinning. And this is the matter known as “chopping down of the plantings” (kitsuts ba- neti‘oth), for had he been connected [with the Tree of Life], he would have been unable to do this thing. Moreover, had Adam not first separated the fruit, Satan would have been unable to separate him from the Tree of Life. And let the matter that he [Adam?] was not involved in the eat- ing [that is, that he did not participate in the eating with Eve] not seem difficult to you; for he performed separation in his thought, which is more a part of the soul. For you already know that a human being is composed of all things,’ and his soul is connected to the supernal soul, for which reason the Torah states, “Ye shall be holy, for I am Holy” (Lev. 19:2), as well as, “Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy” (Lev. 20:7). Therefore, the righteous man, who raises his pure and immaculate soul to the supernal holy soul, unites with it and knows the future; and that is the meaning SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH * 67 of the prophet and his path, for the Evil Urge has no power over him to separate him from the upper soul. That is why the prophet’s soul unites completely with the upper soul, and with his intellect fulfills the Torah, for they [the commandments] are incorporated within him [in his intellect]. That is why our sages said that the Patriarchs fulfilled the Torah in their intellect,® and they said that the Patriarchs are themselves the Merkavah,? and the same is also true of their children after them, and of every righteous man. About this, Scripture says, “And I will dwell among the children of Israel” (Exod. 29:45), for the Holy Spirit rests upon them and joins itself to them. But if a man walks in the path of evil, which is Satan, then he chops and separates his soul from the supernal soul; and concerning this it is written in the Torah, “and My soul shall abhor you” (Lev. 26:30)— that is, the soul is separated and distanced from the supernal soul, and this is like a chopping away. And that is why in the words “that ye should be defiled thereby” (Lev. 11:43), the 10 is written without an Hebrew word [for “defiled”] ve-nitmeitem “alef—signifying that they are not worthy to have the crown of God’s reign that animates everything [symbolized in the “alef] be on their heads, but they are culpable of death [because of their separation from the supernal soul and because they destroyed the divine unity]. It is written in the Prophets, “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God” (Isa. 59: 2, and similar verses. And the Talmud says: “It is not the Serpent that kills, but sin that kills.”"' Hence, when Adam ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, which is of the side of evil, and separated it [through his awareness or his contemplation] from the Tree of Life, the Evil Urge dominated him in his eating and in his soul, for his soul took part in the eating of the fruits of the Garden, as we said above. Thus, impurity and death and removal of the soul from the [supernal] soul took place [within Adam]. This explains that by his eating he caused destruction above and below in the plantings and separated the forces of the Tree of Knowledge by themselves, and separated them from the forces of the Tree of Life—and this is the great offense against both body 68 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD and soul, above and below, and that is why it is said of Adam that he chopped away at the plantings.'? For after he separated the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, which is of the side of evil, from the Tree of Life, and increased the strength of the Evil Urge and sated his soul with it, he separated the [lower] from the [upper] soul, and gave the emissaries of the Tree of Knowledge the strength to do evil, and he thereby separated the Tree of Knowledge from the Tree of Life, and also separated his soul from all the good qualities of the supernal soul, and united himself with the Evil Urge. . . . And the Sages expressly said: “He is Satan, he is the Evil Urge, he is the Angel of Death.”"’ For prior to his eating, Adam was completely spiritual and had the nature of the angels, like Enoch and Elijah; hence, he was worthy to eat of the fruits of Paradise, which are the fruits of the soul. And let not the expression “eating of the fruit” be difhcult to you, for “eating” signifies enjoyment or benefit, as in [their saying], “‘Its flesh shall not be eaten’ (Exod. 21:28): this implies both the prohibition of eating and the prohi- » 14___and this refers to the ben- bition of deriving benefit therefrom efit or enjoyment obtained by the soul. After that, it states— “Behold, the man is become as one of us” (Gen. 3:22). And the Sages said, “like the One of the world,”'* that is, he was composed of all [intellectual-spiritual] things and potencies. And the words “Behold, the man... ”” etc. refer to the time before he sinned; but now, in his sin, he has become mortal. Before sinning, he was wor- thy of eating of the fruits of the Garden, which were the fruits of the soul; therefore it was necessary to send him away from there. There was also another reason to drive him away from there: “lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the Tree of Life”—the Tree of Life which causes life, for it stems from the force of the “Bundle of Life’——“and eat, and live for ever’—for that is whence the strength of life comes from. And he was deprived of two things: the eating of the fruit of the Garden, which are life for the soul, just as the eating of [ordinary] fruit is life for the body; and the eating of the Tree of Life, which refers to eternal life. And it is to this that the two expressions refer: “He sent him forth” (v. 23), and “He drove out the man” (v. 24). SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH * 69 We learn from this passage something about Adam—that is, about human nature—and his connection to the Godhead and to the potencies of divine action, which are represented in the symbol of the trees of Paradise. The Sefiroth are often referred to among the Kabbalists as “plantings,” which grow, so to speak, out of the primal ground of the Godhead and of divine will. To “cause destruction” or to “chop down the plantings” is an allegorical expression used to refer to an act of con- templation whose practitioner does not embrace the totality of the Sefi- roth in their unity, but instead isolates individual Sefiroth, particularly the last Sefirah, from that totality. As Adam prior to his fall was “a purely spiritual being,” his actions likewise took place on a purely spiritual plane, described allegorically in the Garden of Eden story. It is Adam’s task to cultivate the garden of these plantings—that is, to maintain and strengthen his contact (or devekuth) with spiritual reality, with which he had been imbued by his nature. Man is conceived as a microcosm (‘olam katan) into which all the elements and potencies of Creation have been placed, receiving everything and acting upon everything; his decision to preserve this connection and to contemplate the Divine without limit would fulfill the purpose of Creation. The Creator would thereby not only be glorified through His creature, but also reveal to him the true unity of all being in God—that is, the pure spirituality of being. Thus, the world of reflection or contemplation is the true world of action de- manded of Adam in Paradise. Man's two urges or drives, for good and for evil, are implanted within him as possibilities of action, just as the qualities of love and severity are present in God Himself. Had Adam subordinated his will to that of God, in which all contradictions function in sacred harmony, then the restric- tive factor within himself, the Evil Urge, would have been nullified within the totality of his being, and evil would never have emerged as a reality, but only remained as a potential, to be defeated repeatedly within the totality of his being. We learn here that evil is nothing other than that which isolates and removes things from their unity, a process profoundly symbolized by Adam’s relationship to the two trees in the Garden. The author does not tell us directly what those two trees are, but places them in some kind of relation to divine love and severity, without their being 70 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD synonymous with these qualities. On the contrary, it appears—especially from the use of this symbolism among the earlier Kabbalists—that the Tree of Life, coming from the mystical East, is a symbol for the Sefirah of Yesod (the Righteous One or the foundation of the world, whose symbol- ism will be discussed in the next chapter),'® identified in Sefer ha-Bahir as the “East side of the world.” The Tree of Knowledge, by contrast, is a symbol of the final Sefirah, in which “good and evil,” Hesed and Din, are united, operating through it in all the lower Sefiroth. Herein lies the im- portance of the symbolism used in our fragment, which lends profound meaning to the imagery in Genesis. The two trees are fundamentally one: they grow from a common root, in which masculine and feminine, the giving and the receiving, the creative and the reflective, are one. Life and knowledge are not to be torn asunder from one another: they must be seen and realized in their unity. So long as the two trees are connected, the Tree of Life retains control over the power of severity, the harsh, critical power within the Godhead, which for this author, following Sefer ha-Bahir, is conceived in the image of Satan. Severity, as a restrictive qual- ity, tends to seek independent existence; however, this tendency is con- stantly overwhelmed by the flow of divine life and divine love, so that it remains a mere possibility—the “great fire of the Holy One blessed be He” (to employ the language of the Bahir), that only consumes when it is no longer confined within the framework of its original harmony. Satan’s independent being is thus a consequence of the decision made by Adam who, by his improper contemplation of the Divine, caused a separation within the Godhead that had a baleful effect on all of Creation. When he plucked and ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, he allowed the power acting in the Tree of Knowledge from the north (i.e., the principle of Severity) to operate upon it in isolation. This power was thereby removed from its position within the union of the Sefiroth and now gained control over Adam as the satanic principle of evil. The nature of evil is therefore the separation and isolation of those things that should be united. So long as man absorbs this separation into his being—this is the meaning here of the eating of the fruit, which belongs to the “fruits of the soul”—he creates inauthentic, false systems of reality, productive of evil—i.e., that which is separated from God. Both man’s experience of reality and his SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH * 71 moral nature are damaged by this misguided contemplation. Only through the acts of the righteous and the prophets, who annul this ille- gitimate separation of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, can man become reconnected to the original world of unity, in which evil will no longer be evil because it will have been restored to its proper place in the union of holiness. Even the Evil Urge within man, once marshaled in the totality of his struggle to restore his pristine unity, thereby loses its satanic element and itself serves the good. According to the early Kabbalists, this act of separation made the world of human experience become coarse and material. It is obvious that this conception transfers the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil entirely to the side of evil, which probably explains why such a profound and influential interpretation was often held by other Kabbalists to be too radical. The latter tried to posit this same primordial harmony in the Tree of Knowledge itself: a harmony that was only destroyed by the rash and untimely separation of the fruit from the tree, whose detachment from its source brought about its destruction. The symbolism perceived in the tale of Paradise varies from one account to another; what is com- mon to all these Kabbalists is the perception of evil as an entity existing in isolation, and evil action as the separation of being from its proper place. This tendency to separate that which by its true nature ought to be connected is paralleled by a corresponding tendency to combine that which ought to be separate by nature—that is, the creation of illegiti- mate unity. This, according to the Zohar, is the deceitful demiurgic pre- sumption of magic, a virtually inevitable consequence of the irruption of evil into the world.!’ I] We have thus far investigated the view that evil achieved reality only through human action, in which one sphere of the Divine Being was isolated and separated from the sacred union in which it had existed. This concept is certainly appropriate to the nature of moral evil. How- ever, the Kabbalists recognized an additional realm of evil beyond this, a 72 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD modality independent of man and his works, which they designated as the realm of Satan or of Gehinnom (Hell or Purgatory). The central source for this view, so crucial to Jewish mysticism, is Sefer ha-Zohar, where evil is understood as an entity with its own, preordained place. Other contemporaneous doctrines within the Spanish Kabbalah express different tendencies, in which the reality of evil is relative; evil is seen there as an entity that has been usurped to the wrong place, but that would be good in its rightful place—an idea similar to that cited from Sod “Ets ha-Da‘ath in the previous section. Let us examine these different views more closely. Their common de- nominator seems to me to be the assumption that, fundamentally, all of the divine potencies wish to operate in the existential realms of Creation. A multitude of worlds are attached to each and every Sefirah, filled with its potencies, that break out of the divine realm and realize the particular essence of that Sefirah in descending degrees. This doctrine is presented most clearly in the Hebrew writings of Joseph Gikatilla; thus, his Sha‘arei Orah offers a detailed description of the emanations and worlds flowing from the Sefirah of Hesed.'* According to this view, one might easily as- sume the emanation from Middath ha-Din of ever lower and coarser man- ifestations of the power of severity; it would be consistent with its intrinsic nature, as with that of each of the lower seven Sefiroth operating in the world, to become manifested in such externalizations. This ten- dency is inherent in the creative exuberance in the nature of the Sefirah itself, and is not the result of some unique catastrophe or dramatic event which inhibits the unfolding of pure goodness. Applied to our problem, all this means the following: divine severity, expressed in the biblical image of the fire of wrath burning in God (an image taken up much later by Jacob Boehme in a similar context), is a holy quality within the divine totality. So long as it operates within the union of all the Sefiroth, it is not evil, although it is the source of evil (as Boehme put it, the Urqual, the primal source of evil). However, in its exuberance this fire bursts outward, becoming independent in a surge of strength; in this new modality, severity is no longer mitigated or balanced by the other forces within the divine dynamic, but operates as the power of evil in Creation. Moreover, the author of the Zohar specifically imputes SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH * 73 a special meaning to this process within the Sefirah of Gevurah. He hardly speaks about the independence of the other Sefiroth, the Sefirotic system remains closed within itself until it is manifested within the hierarchy of the created worlds through the medium of the last Sefirah. Only at this one point, that of the fire or Severity within God, is there any mention of an exterior outburst of power, Tokpa de-Dina. This is no doubt con- nected to characteristic Zoharic notions of the Godhead as an organism. In numerous passages and in the most diverse images, evil is conceived of as a product of separation and excretion, facilitating the maintenance of the organism in its original structure. The fire of divine severity melts and refines the power of judgment, known as the sacred gold; however, the dross is externalized, becoming the “shells” (kelippoth) in which the holy is either nonexistent, or present only as a spark, concealed and glowing within the dross. In the language of the Zohar, this is the Sitra Ahra, the “Other Side,” which is the opposite of the holy and schemes to seize it and draw it over to its own side. Thus, both the nature and the origin of evil are explained in terms of one unified view. The Other Side is the fire of divine severity, externalized and made independent, where it becomes an entire hierarchical system, a counterworld ruled by Satan." The details of this system, as they are expressed in the Zohar and other Kabbalistic writings, belong to the realm of the mythology and demon- ology of the Kabbalah, with which we are not concerned here. Indeed, the Zohar passages concerning the Sitra Ahra have a clearly mythological stamp. The reason for this is not to be sought in the historical origins of the Sefirotic doctrine and demonology as such, but rather in the fact that genuine evil, the evil that can be experienced, cannot be explained and broken down by speculation. From the myth of the Tree of Knowledge down to the present day, evil imposes itself upon us in mythical images. The image of the “Other Side” as an imitation of the side of holiness, which entered Kabbalistic thought through the Sefer ha-Zohar, belongs to this realm. The above exposition assists us in understanding a significant passage in the Zohar (1, 17a—b), which infers this connection between good and evil from the story of Creation and from a reading of the biblical account of Korah. The passage reads as follows: 74° ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD “And God said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters’ ” (Gen. 1:6). Here, there is an allusion to the separation of the upper from the lower waters, through that which is called “the secret of the left (hand)” [i.e., the attribute of judgment]. For up to this point the text has alluded to the secret of the right, but now it alludes to the secret of the left; and therefore there was an in- crease in discord between this and the right. It is the nature of the right to harmonize the whole, and therefore everything is written with the right [hand], since it is the source of harmony. When the left awoke there awoke discord, and through that discord the wrathful fire was reinforced and there emerged from it Gehinnom, which thus originated from the left and adheres to it. Moses in his wisdom pondered over this and drew a lesson from the work of Creation. In the work of Creation there was an antagonism of the left against the right, and the division between them allowed Ge- hinnom to emerge and to fasten itself to the left. Then the Central Column, which is the third day, intervened and allayed the discord between the two sides, so that Gehinnom descended below, and the left became absorbed in the right and there was peace over all. Similarly, the quarrel of Korah with Aaron was an antagonism of the left against the right. Moses, reflecting upon what had hap- pened during the Creation, said: “It seems proper to me to settle the difference between the right and the left.” He therefore tried to effect an accord between the two. The left, however, was not willing, and Korah proved obdurate. Moses thereupon said: “Surely Gehinnom is embittering this quarrel. The left ought to strive up- wards and absorb itself in the right. Korah has no wish to attach himself to the higher realms and to merge himself in the right. Let him, then, descend below in the impetus of its wrath.” The reason why Korah refused to allow the quarrel to be settled by the inter- vention of Moses was that he had not entered upon it for a truly religious motive, and that he had scant regard for the glory of God, and refused to acknowledge His creative power. When Moses per- ceived that he [Korah] had thus placed himself outside the pale, he “was very wroth” (Num. 17:15). Moses was “wroth” because he was not able to settle the quarrel.... Korah denied this power SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH * 75 wholly, both in the higher and lower sphere ... [Korah] fought against heaven itself and sought to deny the words of the Torah. The conflict was certainly of the following of Gehinnom, and there- fore Korah remained attached to it. All of these secrets are revealed in the Book of Adam. It says there that, when Darkness asserted itself, it did so with fury, and created Gehinnom, which attached itself to it in that quarrel we have mentioned [between light and darkness]. But as soon as the wrath and the fury abated there arose a conflict of another kind, to wit, a quarrel of love .. . which ob- tained the approval of Heaven. This is indicated by our text. It says first: “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide, etc.” This refers to the beginning of quarrel, the outburst of passion and violence. There was a desire for reconciliation, but meanwhile Gehinnom arose before the wrath and passion had cooled down. Then “God made the firmament, etc.”—that is, there emerged a quarrel of love and affection, which made for the per- manence of the world. And in this category is the dispute between Shammai and Hillel, the result of which was that the Oral Torah approached in a loving mood the Written Law, so that they mu- tually supported each other... . Separation is thus associated . . . with the left, at its first impetus, when it first enters on a quarrel in wrath and violence, giving birth to Gehinnom before the fury subsides.”° The author of the Zohar associates the doctrine of evil as a metaphysi- cal reality with his other speculations concerning moral evil and the Evil Urge in man by identifying it with one of the forces of the Other Side. Adam did not cause evil to be aroused by his sin, but merely allowed it to enter; he did not produce evil, but enabled it to adhere to him. Since that time, man has lived in this tension of opposites, and his choice, rather than establishing harmony between them, has actually exacerbated them. Every human action since then has entailed a decision in favor of one side or the other: man may seek to join himself to the lost unity and harmony of the Divine by obeying the divine will revealed in the Torah, or else may follow the path of the Other Side, thereby repeating the primordial sin and strengthening the power of evil, which is seen by the 76° ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD Zohar as hostile to life itself. The commandments of the Torah, according to many Kabbalists, are opportunities for this decision. Evil, insofar as it is separated from God, is unfruitful per se, and only human sin, which diverts the vitality of the world and the influx of the good and the holy to the realm of the Other Side, provides it with its demonic power of fertility.” Indeed, once removed from its joint root with the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge itself becomes a “Tree of Death.” We thus come to a notion that played a major role, not only in Sefer ha-Zohar, but in later Kabbalah and in Hasidic thought: namely, that a spark of the divine light shines even in evil. There is no complete sepa- ration between the two realms: evil has no existence as pure evil, as the polar opposite of the good; on the contrary, the two realms are inter- laced. This point is sharply underscored in the Kabbalists’ reflections on evil, and sharply underscored in the Kabbalists’ reflections on evil, and holds true not only for the metaphysical view of evil discussed thus far, but also for the domain of human action, the two drives of good and evil ultimately entering into every human action. This interlacing is what makes man’s own unprejudiced analysis of the morality of his conduct so endlessly difficult; it also (and this point is emphasized in the ethics of the later Kabbalah) facilitates the chance of bringing all deeds back into the sphere of the good. There is nothing so depraved that it cannot be returned to its source, thanks to this spark of the divine within it. This basic idea was clear to the Kabbalists, and closer to their hearts than the answer to the obvious question: how did this spark from the world of good come to have wandered into the sphere of evil? Here we again encounter the same two fundamental motifs found in our previous dis- cussion. One theory states that, independent of human conduct, such a spark from the primordial light fell into the so-called “Emanation of the Left Hand”—the system of the Sitra Ahra—and is still glowing within the slag of evil. It could be argued that this spark was drawn there during the eruption of that emanation, and is now held captive, so to speak, awaiting its redemption to be returned home. This was the theory of Lurianic Kabbalah: upon the “Breaking of the Vessels,” that great drama in the Sefrotic world that constituted the turning point in the theosophic process, elements of the Sefirotic configuration were swept along in the SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH + 77 downward plunge. The vessels formed within these supernal structures in order to contain the light of the divine essence broke asunder as a result of their own immanent law, in which was inherent the possibility of transformation of the internal into the external—that is, an outward turning of the force of divine Creation. Along with the shards of these shattered vessels, from which the “shells” or kelippoth were thereafter formed, a few sparks of the inner light from the world of Adam Kadmon likewise broke away and descended. It is these sparks (nitsotsoth) that now shine even in those spheres over which evil gains control. There activity is strangely ambivalent: on the one hand, these sparks animate evil, guar- anteeing its existence and its power of action; on the other, they are like captives, awaiting their own redemption from evil. The Kabbalists dis- agreed as to whether the removal of these sparks would destroy the sphere of evil, by depriving it of its vitality, or whether it would redeem evil as well, transforming it and returning it to the reconstituted harmony of things. These two opinions coexisted alongside one another. The question of the eschatological destiny of Creation—an issue that played such a tremendous role in the Kabbalah of Safed and its off- shoots—is related to this issue. This is likewise the source of the Hasidic doctrine that strongly emphasized the “bringing back” of evil to its source within holiness at the time of the Redemption. A mystical pun served as a vehicle for this ancient idea: God’s creative power is expressed in His seventy-two “names,” already known to the Babylonian Ge’onim, one of which, according to ancient tradition, was Sa’el. Only when evil became independent (as discussed above) and the principle of death pen- etrated into Creation was this aspect of the Divine transformed into Samael, Satan’s name in Jewish literature, in which the consonant m al- ludes to the principle of death (maveth). But the strength of that primor- dial holy name still shines within the satanic, and will regain its original power at the time of the Redemption, when the principle of evil will reintegrate into holiness. It is not clear whether the principle of evil would be annihilated completely or “suspended” (in the dual sense of being “terminated” and also “elevated”). In any event, both answers were plausible ones in the Kabbalistic tradition. The other motif associates this influx of light, which burns even in 78 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD darkness, with human deeds. Sin is that which brings evil to life; man’s transgression against the divine will diverts these sparks of the Holy away from the place where they really belong. In Kabbalistic theory, this prox- imity and interlacing of good and evil finds its classical expression in the notion of a sphere in which these two emanations are blended, and which has special significance as the source of souls—namely, kelippath nogah, the “brilliant shell.” This conception originated in a mystical reading of Ezekiel’s vision of the Merkavah, in which the prophet saw “a stormy wind come out of the north, a great cloud, with a fire flashing up, so that a brightness was round about it; and out of the midst thereof as the color of electrum, out of the midst of the fire” (1:4). This world of kelippath nogah is actually a Luciferian world, belonging to the domain of shells and hence of evil, but is penetrated by a brilliance from the world of the Sefiroth that shines within it, so that the realms of good and evil appear uncannily blended. The souls that originate in this realm bear the stigma of this unresolved essential conflict. According to Lurianic Kabbalah, man’s natural soul, with all its powers, derives from this source of kelip- path nogah, and hence enjoys the possibility of choice between good and evil that is the lot of every human being, even without the influence of the divine soul within him stemming from the light of the Sefiroth. The doctrine of kelippath nogah, particularly as developed at the end of R. Hayyim Vital’s ‘Ets Hayyim, is the classical form in which the Zoharic doctrine, according to which the world of evil is independent of man but rooted in the dialectics of emanation itself, became most widely known and influential. IV In contrast with these ideas, in other Kabbalistic writings we find a fur- ther development of the motif with which we have already become ac- quainted in R. Ezra ben Solomon of Gerona’s Sod ‘Ets ha-Da‘ath. The most impressive formulation of this trend, under a new guise, appears in R. Joseph Gikatilla’s brief treatise, Sod ha-Nahash u-Mishpato (The Mystery of the Serpent and its Sentence), in which we find a doctrine competing SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH : 79 with the contemporaneous doctrine of the Zohar. Using a bizarre linking of the two elements, Gikatilla writes about the origin of evil: Know that there are thirty-five princes of the left holding onto Isaac, by means of Edom and by means of Amalek; and know that Amalek is the head of the primeval serpent, and he holds fast unto the serpent, and the serpent is his chariot.... And in the same place (“Refidim”) the serpent and Amalek are found mating as one, as is written, “The way of a serpent upon a rock” (Prov. 30:19)... . And know that from the beginning of his creation, the serpent served an important and necessary purpose for the harmony of Cre- ation, so long as he remained in his place. He was a great servant, created to bear the yoke of mastery and service, and his head reached to the heights of the earth, and his tail reached into the depth of Hell. For he had a suitable place in all the worlds, and constituted something extremely important for the harmony of all levels, each in its place. And that is the secret of the heavenly ser- pent, known from Sefer Yetsirah, who sets all the spheres of Heaven into motion and makes them orbit from east to west and from north to south.2* And without him, no creature in the entire sub- lunar world would have life, and there would be no sowing and no growth, and no inducement for the procreation of all creatures. Originally, this serpent stood outside the walls of the sacred pre- cincts, and was linked from the outside to the outer wall, for the back of his body was connected to the wall, while its face was turned toward the outside. He did not have the right to go inside, but his place and law was to see to the work of growth and pro- creation from the outside, and that is the secret of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, God warned Adam not to touch the Tree of Knowledge—so long as good and evil were both connected in the tree, for one was inside and the other was out- side—until he waited to separate the ‘orlah, which constitutes the first fruit [of the tree] (Lev. 19:23ff)—“ye shall count the fruit thereof as forbidden” (Lev. 19:23). But Adam did not wait, “and he took of the fruit” (Gen. 3:6) prematurely, and thus brought “an idol into the Holy of Holies,””’ so that the force of impurity came 80 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD from the outside into the inside. ... Know that when all of God’s works are each in its place, they are good in this place of their creation, as assigned to them and predetermined for them; but when they rebel and leave their legitimate places, then they are evil, and that is why it is written in Isaiah 45:7: “I make peace and create evil.” 24 This passage is a remarkable one. On the one hand, we learn of the existence of Gehinnom or the sphere of evil, which is no more than an empty framework, a potential which, had the processes of Creation been left to follow the undisturbed course of life, would not have begun func- tioning at all, but would have remained indolent in its own hidden exis- tence. The serpent itself represents the evil inherent in the Tree of Knowledge, indeed, God’s creative power in the process of devolving outward. But for Adam’s interference and rash action, the serpent [i-e., the manifestation of God’s creative power] would never have become evil, as it would not have lost its unmediated connection with the “walls of the sacred precincts.” Put differently, the serpent is the “genius of na- ture.”*> Adam’s sin, the perversion of human will, twisted the direction of the serpent so that, instead of doing justice to its task of “the service of growth and procreation from the outside,” it tried to penetrate into the realm of the sacred precincts. He usurped a position that was not befitting to him; it was this perversion of the direction of his activity that turned the benign genius of nature into the satanic bearer of the de- miurgical arrogance of evil. This was the paradoxical answer to the old question of how the serpent came to enter Paradise, where he had no reason to be.” In the oldest illustrations of the scene of Genesis 3 (dis- cussed by Luise Troje in a fine paper),’’ the serpent is seen curling over the wall of Paradise. Gikatilla’s mythic description sounds like a later theosophic reading of such a depiction. If one brings something that belongs outside into the precinct of the Holy, he destroys the innate harmony of things; it is this disruption of the proper order of things that this Kabbalistic myth associates with the nature of evil.” This tendency clearly runs counter to the doctrine of the separation of the emanation of the left side from the holy. However, this latter theme SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH ° 81 became a vital one in Kabbalistic literature alongside the former one, even though in principle the two motifs run counter to each other. They both appear, for example, in the writings of R. Meir ibn Gabbai who in 1531, on the eve of the new Kabbalistic developments in Safed, made an especially impressive summary of the teachings of the earlier Kabbalists in his work ‘Avodath ha-Kodesh. Underlying the polarity of good and evil is not only the separation of things that are meant to be connected, but also the mingling of those realms meant to be separate. The goal of Jew- ish religious life, according to these Kabbalists, is to do away with this polarity and to abolish the infinite tension inherent therein. We have seen how the Zohar posits the actual existence of evil as emerging from the fire of God’s wrath and its residues, from which it turns outward and becomes independent. Gikatilla, by contrast, views evil as having only a potential existence, which is actualized and becomes real through human action. Without this latter action, the entire hier- archy of the Left Side remains pure potentiality. This notion was subse- quently adopted by R. Israel Sarug (ca. 1600), to whom we owe one of the most influential presentations of the Lurianic Kabbalah, albeit totally inconsistent with Luria’s original teachings.” This notion is reiterated in all of the writings influenced by Sarug during the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries.*? Naftali Bacharach, author of ‘Emek ha-Melekh (Amster- dam, 1648), states concerning the world of the demonic: Before Adam sinned, good overcame evil, and the powers of evil had not yet crossed over from potentiality to actuality, but were still concealed in a subtle potentiality and did not give birth to demons, spirits and sucubii—like a wick in oil, which one draws with its light into the oil, so that it burns there and illuminates only itself and does not go outside. [p. 121b] This image first appears in the Spanish Kabbalist Isaac ha~Cohen regard- ing the primal worlds that were annihilated and returned to the Sefirah of Binah, like a wick returned to the oil. The author of ‘Emek ha-Melekh goes on to say that it was Adam who, in his sin, 82 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD kindled the fire of Judgment everywhere and corrupted all the worlds with it, so that even the air of the lands of the nations was corrupted by the host of the princes of impurity, who are literally objects of pagan worship; and each one took his portion and his land ... and we have an absolute obligation to repair the external air.... And particularly because we are learned in Torah, we are obligated to repair the air of the lands of the seventy nations with the breath of Torah which emerges from our mouths. And when that air is repaired to its limit, the Messiah will come to redeem us and will conquer the entire world under his dominion, and then good will overcome evil, as it was. (“Emek ha-Melekh, p. 121b) V We have now become familiar with the main answers given by the earlier Kabbalists to questions about the existence and nature of evil. These notions, of the most diverse forms, essentially boil down to the view of evil as a disturbance of the harmony of the world, or as originating in human conduct. In terms of Kabbalistic symbolism, evil is always linked to the emanation of God’s creative power. The same holds for the idea of the destroyed primal worlds (briefly touched on here), which was trans- formed by the Lurianic Kabbalah into the doctrine of the Breaking of the Vessels. According to this view, evil arose as a residue of the forces re- leased by this breaking, which then took shape as the independent, life- hostile realms of the “Other Side.” But R. Isaac Luria and his closest disciples took a step toward an even bolder conception when they introduced an entirely new element into Kabbalistic thought: the idea of tsimtsum, God’s self-contraction, as the primal act occurring prior to any emanation.*' This doctrine perceived the totality of the processes of emanation from *Ein-Sof as intending from the start to remove the forces of severity and evil from the sacred union of the Godhead, from whence they sprang into existence. Prior to the act of tsimtsum, the “roots of severity,” the potencies of the fire of divine wrath, were hidden within the infinite essence of the Godhead itself. SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH °* 83 They were swallowed up within the light of the infinite, indeed, were themselves infinite light, yet they contained the seed of all dark things. From the moment of tsimtsum on, the process of Creation was meant to carry out in full this immanent dialectics, in accordance with the law that everything concealed within God must achieve its complete realization. The goal of all those processes that began with tsimtsum—i.e., the con- centration of these seeds, the “roots of severity,” in the center of ?Ein- Sof—was to make the light of the Infinite ever clearer, purer, and more harmonious. The very thought of Creation disturbed the harmony of the potencies within the Ein-Sof; tsimtsum, as it were, upset the inner equilib- rium of the *Ein-Sof. The forces of Din concentrated by means of tsimtsum gathered extra force, which could only be balanced by developing these forces and excreting their dross in order to restore the harmony of Cre- ation within which °Ein-Sof is reflected. The progressive purification and refinement of these dark powers of judgment, and the liberation of their residues, is the ultimate purpose of all the events of Creation. But the act of tsimtsum itself, in which God limits Himself, requires the establishment of the power of Din, which is a force of limitation and restriction. Thus, the root of evil ultimately lies in the very nature of Creation itself, in which the harmony of the Infinite cannot, by definition, persist; because of its nature as Creation—i.e., as other than Godhead— an ele- ment of imbalance, defectiveness, and darkness must enter into every restricted existence, however sublime it may be. It is precisely the rigor- ously theistic tendency of Lurianic Kabbalah that requires evil as a factor necessarily inherent in Creation per se, without which Creation would instantly lose its separate existence and return to being absorbed in the Infinite. The stronger the manifestation of this element of darkness in the World of Emanation—as a result of tsimtsum and the Breaking of the Vessels—the greater the chance of subduing, refining, and purifying it. The existence of evil in potentia, indeed, of Satan himself, is rooted in God; but whereas prior to tsimtsum it was included in the light of the Infinite, which contains the seeds of darkness, evil becomes progressively more independent during the course of a dialectic process in which, on the one hand, God continually restricts Himself through repeated acts of tsimtsum and, on the other, He manifests His potencies by means of the 84 ° ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD Sefirotic system. The question as to why God did not create a perfect world, Himself being perfection, would have seemed absurd to the Kab- balists of the Lurianic school: a perfect world cannot be created, for it would then be identical to God Himself, who cannot duplicate Himself, but only restrict Himself. The naive expectation that God would repro- duce Himself is alien to the Kabbalists. Precisely because God cannot reproduce Himself, His Creation must be based upon that estrange- ment—one might indeed employ the Hegelian term Entfremdung—in which evil is embodied within Creation so that it may be itself. The continuity of this dialectic process, from the first act of tsimtsum on down, is repeatedly emphasized in the authentic presentations of Luria’s doc- trine. In this respect Luria clearly took a significant step beyond the intellectual world of the Zohar, in that he found the starting point of evil not in one or another point in the Sefrotic structure but in the very act of God’s self-contraction within His own being. Kabbalistic thinking went astonishingly far without becoming hereti- cal. However, a further step was taken by the heretical Kabbalah of R. Nathan of Gaza, both in his Sefer ha-Beri’ah (The Book of Creation; 1671) and in his other writings.*? Nathan was the prophet and theologian of the Kabbalistic Messiah Sabbatai Zevi; his entire daring and eccentric system of thought is devoted to explaining the paradoxical messianic mission of the “holy sinner,” Sabbatai Zevi, in terms of the constitution of the Cre- ation itself—a doctrine developed by Nathan based upon his bold devel- opment of and innovation upon Lurianic ideas. I cannot discuss this aspect of his thought here,’? which is highly significant for the most recent phase of Kabbalah. However, I would like to show how Nathan went beyond Luria in his attempt to fathom the nature of good and evil. According to R. Nathan, not everything concealed within *Ein-Sof is ultimately meant to be expressed in Creation. According to him, there have always been two lights burning in the >Ein-Sof and filling its being, somewhat analogous to the attributes of the Spinozan God. Nathan refers to these as “the thought-filled light” and “the thought-less light” (or she- yesh bo mahshavah and or she-ein bo mahshavah). The former is an aspect of the divine light, containing the thought of Creation from the very outset. But together with this there exists in God a light in which this thought SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH * 85 was absent; instead, the entire nature of this light was to rest in itself and to emanate unto itself, without leaving the realm of *Ein-Sof. It consti- tutes, so to speak, that attribute of God that is hidden from us; whatever it may actually be or in whatever hidden manner it may express itself there, from our point of view it is passive, restrained, and self-absorbed. For Nathan this latter aspect of the Divine is by far the dominant one. The thought-filled light has, from the very start, an element of form, while the thought-less light negates all forms and wants nothing but its own essence. The acts of tsimtsum only took place within that light which contained the thought of Creation, allowing that light to actualize its thought, to project it onto the primordial space of Creation (tahiru), and to erect there the structure of Creation. Once this light retreated from the primordial space released by the tsimtsum, however, the thought-less light, which had no part in this act, remained there. Since this light wanted nothing but itself, it exerted passive resistance against the ema- nations created by the thought-filled light in "Ein-Sof, and thereby became eo ipso the source of evil in Creation. The idea of the dualism of form and matter as being good and evil here assumed a highly original form. The primary source of evil is an element opposed to Creation within God Himself; an element that wishes to prevent the completion and forming of Creation, not because this element is evil, but rather because it wants nothing outside of ’Ein-Sof itself to exist. The thought-filled light thus enters into a primal conflict with a realm in *Ein-Sof that does not wish to be penetrated by it and, in resisting this formation, tries to destroy the structures created by it. When the thought-filled light penetrated into primordial space, it only penetrated (according to this conception) into the upper half of the realm freed for Creation by the tsimtsum. The lower half, called Golem or ‘Umka de-Tehoma Rabba (“Formless Matter” or “The Depths of the Great Deep”), however, remained entirely filled by the thought-less light which, through its effect upon Creation, became the destructive principle and the root of evil. This struggle takes place on every level of the cosmogonic process: it is not perceived as a struggle between two hostile principles, but rather as one between two aspects of one and the same Godhead. All the structures and images of Creation are brought into existence by the thought-less light, at that moment when it 86 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD is forced by thought to raise its potentiality into actuality. To the extent that the “Formless Matter” does agree to acquire form, it becomes a principle of construction, while insofar as it refuses to do so it is the root of evil.** This conception approaches dualistic thinking, insofar as one can do so within the framework of monotheism. One might say that, in this conception, two aspects of the Godhead, His creative will and His self- contemplation and absorption, were separated from one another by the act of tsimtsum. This division brought about the essential conflict whose unfolding constitutes the drama of the world, and also provides the key for the understanding of good and evil. By its resistance to the structures of the thought-filled light, the thought-less light fashions its own struc- tures, which for us represent the Sitra Ahra. But even if this system is of a destructive nature, this is so due to the positive wish that nothing exist but the self-absorbed, balanced light of the *Ein-Sof, whose primal thought revolves, not around Creation, but upon Itself. Creation could not proceed without this substratum. The further the process of the world’s coming about proceeds, the deeper the interpene- tration of these two lights—one of which, because of its resistance to the brightness of thought, appears as darkness—and the more acute the conflict between them. These two developments go hand in hand. The ultimate goal is a state in which the shaping will of Creation, the thought-filled light, will permeate the tahiru, the space vacated by the tsimtsum, and will fashion and form every element of the thought-less light, thereby bringing about an equilibrium between the two. Here, too, the world process is conceived as a harmony of the two basic powers, rather than as the final victory of one element over the other. At the time of the Redemption, the rays of the thought-filled light will penetrate to the dark “lower half” of the scene of Creation, the abyss whose depths contain the thought-less principle, lacking in shape. At the Redemption, all shapeless things will be shaped. But, at this point, there enters into the heart of this entire conception the highly bizarre thesis that the soul of the Messiah derives specifically from the thought-less light—that is, from that element within Godhead that is lacking in all form and wishes to dissolve all structure. This antagonistic element, albeit transfigured SITRA AHRA: GOOD AND EVIL IN THE KABBALAH ° 87 and incomprehensibly purified, is concealed within the Messiah himself. Therefore, Nathan could advance the bold thesis, highly significant in the history of religion, that the root of the Messiah’s soul stems from the abyss of evil and formlessness, as well as the idea that, even when it comes into contact with the thought-filled light, it still manifests its original nature in strange outbursts of antinomianism. But as interesting and un- usual as this facet of Sabbatian speculation may be, I do not want to go into it here, as our present concern is with understanding the basic ideas of the Kabbalists concerning the age-old problem of good and evil. The tremendous agitation that came into the world with the Book of Job and its daring questioning of God led Jewish mysticism to examine the problematics within the Godhead itself and its ways of working, as we have tried to present them here. One of the great questions of philos- ophy is whether an answer can be given to this problem on a purely human level—precisely when philosophy seeks to comprehend the real- ity of evil and not evade the issue—without entering into the paradoxi- cal universe of theosophic thinking. Tsaddik: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE I In the sources of the Jewish tradition, the religious ideals of Judaism have crystallized around three ideal human types that carry special signif- cance: the Tsaddik, the righteous man; the Talmid Hakham, the scholar of sacred texts; and the Hasid, the pious person.' For the present discussion we must distinguish between the scholar and the other two types. The position and function of the scholar was of paramount importance in a religious society that saw the study of the divine word and its transmis- sion by the living carriers of tradition as among its supreme values. The esteem for the concentrated spiritual effort entailed in the elucidation of the divine word placed intellect at the summit of the scale of religious values. It is difficult to overestimate the significance given to such intel- lectual effort in the context of a society that was intent not on originality and innovation but on grasping the truth of the Revelation and develop- ing its continual application to the behavior of the individual and of the 88 ITSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE : 89 community. There thus arose the ideal—fascinating in its rationality and its sobriety—of the scholar as the educational ideal of rabbinic Judaism, an ideal that restrained and pushed aside the demands of the voluntaristic and emotional spheres of life. The impact of this ideal was so powerful and enduring that the other ideal figures, the righteous and the pious individuals, tend to be associated with it, even though in terms of their own natures they are quite independent. The Tsaddik and the Hasid are ideal types defined, not in terms of their understanding of the Torah, but of the efforts they make toward its ful- fillment. Granted, meeting the demands of the Law ipso facto compels one to make an effort to understand it and—one could argue—even presupposes such an effort: “A boor cannot be fearful of sin, nor can an ignorant man be a Hasid.” Nevertheless, we are dealing here with a sepa- rate sphere, in which the moral and religious strength of the personality ultimately counts for more than its intellectual rank. In the following discussion, we shall deal with concepts and notions from this sphere. Hebrew literary usage, especially popular usage, tends to confuse or even conflate the terms Tsaddik and Hasid, which are often used together as if they were synonyms. Basically, however, when used accurately, “righteous” and “pious” connote very different concepts in the Jewish tradition. The righteous man, no matter how elevated his position may be, exists on a lower level than the pious one, although already in the talmudic literature some features of the latter are combined with those of the former. A comment such as that in Avoth de-Rabbi Nathan (end of chap. 8, ed. Schechter, p. 38) that the “early Tsaddikim” (as opposed to the later ones) were Hasidim presumes a clear distinction between the two categories, which became connected over the course of time. Rudolf Mach’s book offers a wealth of material, both about the exact definition of the Tsaddik, as well as the extension of the concept, which often brings it so close to the figure of the Hasid as to be virtually indistinguishable from it.” In classical rabbinic usage the righteous person, like the scholar, is viewed with great sobriety. He is one who strives to fulfill the Law and who succeeds, at the very least, in making his merits outnumber his transgressions. There is often a legalistic nuance involved, whereby “righ- 90 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD teous” has the specific sense of one found innocent by a court of law.’ “A man is judged by the majority of his deeds”*—the righteous man being the one who passes the test of this judgment. Even one who is completely successful in meeting the demands of the Torah would be considered no more than a righteous man. The attainment of this level requires no more than a decision of the will and exertion of human effort; no special grace is necessary. It is an ideal accessible to all. The Hasid, the pious man, is an altogether different matter. For rab- binic Judaism, whereas the righteous man is the ideal embodiment of the norm, the pious man is the extraordinary type. He is the radical Jew who goes to an extreme in attempting to realize his destiny. This extremism— as inseparable from the nature of the pious man as it is alien to that of the righteous one—may assume the most diverse forms, which have indeed been practiced by devotees of pietistic ideals over the centuries.* However, its essential nature is always the same: the Hasid carries out not only what is demanded of him, that which is good and just in the eyes of the Law, but goes beyond the letter of the Law. Just as God “strengthens His mercies over His anger and behaves with His children according to the Attribute of Mercy, and goes with them beyond the letter of the Law,” and hence is called Hasid, so does the earthly Hasid behave, with God’s help. He demands nothing of his fellow, and everything of himself. Even when carrying out a prescription of the Law, he acts with such radical exuberance and punctiliousness that an entire world is revealed to him in the fulfillment of a commandment, and an entire lifetime may be needed to carry out just one commandment properly. In Hasidic terms such a “proper” fulfillment is a charisma, an act of grace; indeed, the Hasid is described in Jewish tradition as a charismatic figure.’ He is clearly distinguished from the sober, balanced figure of the Tsaddik, who acts in accordance with the strict letter of the Law, giving each person his due. This extremism, which is never in equilibrium, contains an anarchistic element. There is something deeply “non-bourgeois” in the Hasid’s way of life; the stories told in the Talmud about such Hasidim nearly always have something absurd about them, and are sometimes repellent to the ordinary, bourgeois mentality. In order to obey a commandment, such as that of charity, the Hasid may ruin himself, and even sell his own wife TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE + 91 into slavery. In brief, nothing prevents him from following his path to its end. Sooner or later, his deeds are bound to conflict with the demands of society—a conflict that never surfaces for the righteous person. The righteous person, who seeks to meet the demands of the Torah, is caught in a never-ending struggle with his Evil Urge, which rebels against these demands; he must constantly wage battle with his own nature.’ But even this struggle between the Good Urge and the Evil Urge, in which he emerges as the “hero who conquers his own drive,” never goes beyond the demands placed upon every human being. Even though the struggle with the Evil Urge generally includes the righteous man’s resistance to sexual temptation, such resistance does not play a crucial part in the rabbinic definition of the Tsaddik. Joseph, the prototype of such steadfast- ness, is often referred to by the title “Joseph the Righteous” (Yosef ha-Tsaddik), but this epithet is likewise applied to many other biblical characters, in whose lives such sexual trials were not a factor.!° I have prefaced my discussion with these remarks because of their importance for understanding the development of this concept in Jewish mysticism. In the final part of this presentation, | will attempt to show how the image of the Tsaddik was profoundly transformed under the in- fluence of new, mystical definitions, acquiring features that were far re- moved from the original notion. It is nevertheless possible to discern a certain continuity of development, in which the charismatic traits of the later Tsaddik in large part derive from the tradition of the Hasid in the Talmud. But before focusing upon this development, we must make some com- ments about the use of Tsaddik as an attribute or name of God in talmudic literature. Biblical statements about the righteous man or Tsaddik are here also applied to God, He is the truly righteous, and is frequently referred to as “the Righteous One of the World” (Tsaddiko shel ‘Olam) or “the Righteous, Life of the Universe” (Tsaddik Hai ‘Olamim).'' Why is God the Righteous One? The reason given for this epithet is entirely different from that found later in Jewish mysticism: “Because You test the heart and kidneys [i.e., He is able to penetrate into the innermost recesses of the heart by dint of His omniscience], we know that You are a righteous God.” '? Hence, God is righteous by virtue of His penetrating knowledge, 92 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD which humans lack by their very nature. It is nevertheless worthy of note that the rabbinic tradition speaks about the earthly righteous man far more than it does about God with this term; among the names and attri- butes of God, Tsaddik is used relatively infrequently. I] How did the notion of the Tsaddik change in Jewish mysticism? Surpris- ingly enough, the legal element of judgment or law was eliminated from this concept. The Righteous One is no longer the righteous judge; in the Kabbalah, God as Judge constitutes an entirely different aspect from that of God as the Righteous One; they reflect two different sides of the Godhead.'* The newness of this concept is most evident when the Kab- balists discuss not the earthly righteous but the Tsaddik as a symbol of an aspect of God; it is a particular one of the ten Sefiroth, generally the next to last. For the Kabbalists the Sefiroth are—to put it succinctly—identi- fied with the totality of the manifest or the active Godhead; they express the fullness of His omnipotence and all the aspects of His divine nature. Each of these potencies appears in a wealth of symbolic representations, but as different as they may be, the most important symbols of each individual Sefirah are inherently interconnected. The symbols in which God appears as the Tsaddik are thus vastly illuminating for our problem and deserving of close analysis. The writings of the earliest Kabbalists, in particular, from Sefer ha-Bahir to the Zohar, shed much light on this topic. The hypostatization of the notion of the earthly righteous man into a symbol of the corresponding Sefirah introduced several of his character- istics into the symbolism of this Sefirah, which in turn influenced the understanding of its earthly representative. In the Kabbalah the Tsaddik is first and foremost a mystical symbol, deriving from many different sources; he is also the image of the perfect human being, an image deter- mined and fashioned by this symbolism. Molded in this way by Kabbalis- tic Musar (ethical-homiletical) literature, the Tsaddik is a constitutive and decisive element in the Hasidic movement. TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE * 93 Sefer ha-Bahir, which undoubtedly incorporates notions and traditions that predate the twelfth century, contains many formulations that pre- suppose the doctrine of Sefiroth. We find here the oldest form of this symbolism, in which cosmological, moral, and other biblical conceptions are employed to describe the ten divine “words” or logoi—God’s aeons and mystical attributes.'* We likewise find here the earliest list of these ten potencies, which introduces us to the motifs that were linked by the earliest Kabbalists to the concept of the Sefiroth.'* [ have already stated that the image of the Tsaddik as a mystical symbol is connected to the penultimate Sefirah; this indeed does hold true for the classical depictions of the Sefirotic tree. However, in Sefer ha-Bahir and some of the earlier texts of the Spanish Kabbalah influenced by it, Tsaddik assumes the position of the seventh Sefirah; in this tradition, the Sefiroth of Netsah and Hod follow the seventh Sefirah instead of preceding it.'® The reason for this is doubtless the fact that these older schema knew nothing of the sexual symbolism of these Sefiroth, which (e.g., in numerous places in the Zohar) correspond to the male testicles, from which the seed flows. In Sefer ha-Bahir, these Sefiroth merely represent the two legs. However, the location of Tsaddik as the seventh Sefirah explains certain important symbolic elements that appear in this connection in the Bahir. There are five sections in Sefer ha-Bahir that deal in particular with the symbolism of the seventh Sefirah (S §39, M §§57—58; S §71, M §102; S §§ 104-105, M §§155-159; S §114, M §168; S §§123-126, M §§180- 184), and it is also implicit in a number of other statements. The seventh logos is defined here as the mystical East, standing opposite the Shekhinah, which is the West: The seventh is the east of the World, from whence comes the seed of Israel, for the spinal column draws down from the brain of the person and goes to the membrum virile, and from thence comes the seed, as is said, “I will bring your seed from the east” (Isa. 43:5). . . . And why is it written, “and gather you from the west” (ibid. )? From that attribute which always tends toward the west. And why is it called west? Because there all the seed blends [mit‘arev; a pun on 94 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD ma‘arav, west].... This teaches that he brings from the east and sows in the west, and thereafter [that is, in the time of the Re- demption] he gathers what he has sown."’ Surprisingly, no mention is made here of a “sacred marriage” between these two Sefiroth, despite the rather obvious symbolism of this notion.'® Further on we encounter an extremely bizarre passage (S §105; M §157), which seems to talk about the eighth logos, but immediately iden- tifies it with the previous one, the seventh; this identification matches precisely the corresponding symbols in the other passages in the Bahir. We read: What is the eighth? The Holy One, blessed be He, has one righteous man in His world, and he is very precious to Him, because he maintains the whole world and he is its foundation. He [God] pro- vides for him and lets him grow and cultivates him and guards him. He is loved and treasured above, loved and treasured below; feared and sublime above, feared and sublime below; comely and accepted above, comely and accepted below, and he is the foundation of all souls. You say that he is the eighth [logos] and that he is the foun- dation of all souls? Is it not written, “And on the seventh day He ceased from work and rested”'? (Exod. 31:17)? Yes, he is indeed the seventh [logos], for he conciliates between them, for those six [subdivide] into three below and three above, and he conciliates between them. And why is he known as the seventh? Did he only come into existence on the seventh [day]? No! But because the Holy One, blessed be He, rested on the Sabbath, it is said of that aspect, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the sev- enth day He ceased from work and rested” (ibid.).”° The Tsaddik is thus portrayed as an aeon in God’s world—that is, within the Sefirotic world—and as a cosmic potency; he is both the foundation of the world and the foundation of all souls. He is also the Sabbath, the seventh “primal day,” mediating among the other six days, which correspond to the six preceding Sefiroth, among whom there is a certain inner tension. A talmudic dictum concerning the earthly righ- TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE * 95 teous man states (Hagigah 12b): “The world rests upon one column, whose name is the Righteous One, as is written (Prov. 10:26): ‘the righ- teous is the foundation of the world [literally, “everlasting foundation”)? ” The Tsaddik is thus conceived as a cosmic potency, supporting and main- taining the world both above and below. The connection with this tal- mudic motif is expressly emphasized in another Bahir passage (S §71; M §102): A column goes from the earth to the heaven, and its name is Tsaddik, after the [earthly] righteous. And if there are righteous men on earth, then it [the column] grows strong, but if not, it grows weak; and it bears the entire world, as is written: “the righteous is the foundation of the world.” But if [the column] is weak, then the world cannot survive. Hence, even if there be only one righteous man in the entire world, he sustains the world (after Yoma 38b). The symbol of the column in this passage corresponds to the Tree of Life, growing from earth to heaven which, as we shall see below, becomes the cosmic tree for the authors of the Bahir. The symbolism of the column may likewise include an element of phallic symbolism. As the foundation of the world, Tsaddik constitutes the harmonious conciliation of all the potencies located above it; the symbol of the Sab- bath provides a link between the themes of conciliation and repose, in which “all effects are fulfilled” (S §105; M §157), and that of the source or foundation of all souls. From this mystical Sabbath, which is identified with the cosmic column that sustains the world, “all souls fly out” (S §39; M §58). This image of flying souls brings us back to the motif of the cosmic tree, from which the souls fly out as birds or on which, in a different symbolism, thev are the fruits of the tree.?! The Tsaddik thus appears as the foundation of all the souls of the world, all individual souls emerge from this “treasury of souls.” This motif seems as well to involve notions about the Soul of the World; in fact, we find symbols related to this idea in another section of Sefer ha-Bahir (S §§123-126,; M §§180- 184). We previously encountered the Tsadd:k as the mystical East; here (S 96 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD §123, M §180), drawing upon a different tradition, he is specifically iden- tified as the Southwest.” That potency of the Southwest is the foundation of the world, as is written, “the righteous is the foundation of the worlds.” A second [potency] stands behind the [divine] chariot, and a first potency before it, while the Righteous One who is the foundation of the world is in the middle [i.e., between Netsah and Hod], and it emerges from the South of the world [i.e., apparently, the direction of Hesed, God’s grace], and he is the prince [i.e., ruler] of both. And in his hand he holds the souls of all living things, for he is the Life of the World, and every term of Creation spoken about [in Scrip- ture] takes place through him. And of him it is written: “and he ceased from work and rested” (Exod. 31:17), for he is the principle of the Sabbath. The term Hai ‘Olamim, “the Eternally Living One,” based upon Daniel 12:7, appears in the Talmud as one of the names of God, and is used likewise by the old Merkavah mystics in their hymns.”? In Sefer ha-Bahir, the term shifts its meaning to “the Life of the Universe.” We find here for the first time the symbolism of life—a symbolism that from then on remained associated with the figure of the Tsaddik, life is connected with the master of souls. This source, from which all souls come, is also the primal ground from which the life of all worlds derives. This “life” is the mediator by which God’s strength operates in all things, for which reason this foundation is repeatedly designated in Sefer ha-Bahir as “All” or “the All” (kol or ha-kol ): “We bless the Holy One, blessed be He, who fills the Life of the Worlds with His Wisdom, and gives all . . . and in His hand is the treasure house of all souls” (S §§ 125-126; M §§ 183-184). Just as the earthly righteous man strives to fulfill the divine commandments and virtually embodies in his own body the commandments that he observes, so the mystical site of all the commandments is to be found in the super- nal Tsaddik, the Life of the Worlds.”4 This Sefirah, which mediates and harmonizes all the other forces, is also the “channel” by which all the brooks and rivers of the upper Sefiroth TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE + 97 pour into the sea of the Shekhinah.** What is still absent here is the phallic symbolism that was later connected with this theme. To be sure, the statement in S §71 (M §102) concerning the column which “strengthens and slackens” would seem to suggest such a phallic interpretation, but in a different passage—which clearly seems to have once been a continua- tion of the above-quoted S §105 (M §157)—this motif appears quite explicitly: And why is it called the eighth? Because the eight begin in it, and in it is completed the counting of the eight; but in its action it is seven. And in what way do the eight begin in it? The eight days of circumcision. ... And what is the reason for the eight? Because there are eight extremities in man. And what are they? The right and left hand, the right and left foot, the head and the torso, the [organ of] circumcision which mediates, and his wife who is like his body; as it is written, “and he shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). These are eight. [Bahir, S §114, M §168] Despite the fact that no explicit mention is made here as to which Sefirah corresponds to which part of the human body, it seems quite clear that the seventh is the sign of the covenant, i.e., the phallus, while opposite it is the female element, which is the eighth.’* This may allude to an early notion, in which the male and female constituted the seventh and eighth Sefiroth, rather than the ninth and tenth as in the later, more thoroughly formulated systems, as well as in some passages in the Bahir. The meta- phor of the phallus as a mediator in the center of the human body origi- nates in Sefer ha-Yetsirah (I, 3; II, 1). As the source of mediation is always connected in the Bahir with the symbolism of the Tsaddik, we are entitled to assume the same here; indeed, the entire drift of this passage justifies such a conclusion. We therefore have important clues here for the under- standing of the Tsaddik as a mystical symbol, connected to the center of life as well as to other realms. These metaphors were developed and strengthened in subsequent stages of the Kabbalah. To conclude this discussion of Sefer ha-Bahir, | would like to return to 98 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD the symbol of the cosmic tree, which appears in a passage of archaic, mythical character (S §14; M §22): It was | who planted this tree, so that all the world could delight in it, and I engraved all within it, and called its name “the All”; for all hangs from it and all comes from it and all need it, and all look upon it and set their hopes upon it, and from thence all souls emanate. This tree is never mentioned before, but suddenly appears in a mythical reading of Isaiah 44:24: “I am the Lord that maketh all; that stretched forth heavens alone; that spread abroad the earth by Myself” It is obvious that everything said about the symbolism of this tree fits neatly with the cosmic column representing the righteous and the foundation of the world. We have already mentioned the understanding of this Sefirah as the All, from which everything emanates because everything has its foun- dation within it, as well as being the source from which souls derive. The tree is planted and rooted in the soil of the Divine, and both delight in one another, as stated further on in this passage. If we may assume that this applies to the Sefiroth of Tsaddik and Shekhinah, which is found in the symbolism of the Bahir as “God’s earth,” then we may see in this mutual delight the first allusion to the later Kabbalistic symbolism of a sacred union between these two Sefiroth. What we read about the aeon of “All” in this indubitably Jewish- Gnostic fragment seems to me to bear a striking resemblance to one of the enigmatic passages in the Slavonic Book of Enoch. This previously unnoticed connection seems to me to be quite important and significant, and may reflect a common source in a very ancient Orthodox Jewish- Gnostic tradition. The Slavonic Book of Enoch was probably written by a first-century Jewish author, either in Egypt or the Land of Israel.’’ In two places (chaps. 11 and 17), he speaks about a primordial “great aeon,” bearing the thus far inexplicable name of Adoil:”* For before all things were visible, I alone used to go about the invisible things, like the sun from east to west and from west to TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE + 99 east.... And I conceived the thought of placing foundations and of creating visible creation. | commanded in the very lowest parts, that visible things should come down from invisible [i-e., the chaos], and Adoil came down, very great, and | beheld him, and lo! he had a belly of great light. And I said to him: “Become undone, Adoil, and let the visible come out of thee.” And he came undone, and a great light came out. And I was in the midst of the great light, and there is born light. And from light, there came forth a great age, and showed all creation which | had thought to create. And I saw that it was good. And | placed for myself a throne, and took my seat on it, and said to the light: “Go thou up higher and fix thyself high above the throne, and be a foundation to the highest things.” ”” Without specifically mentioning the name Adoil, the second passage has a new and more precise wording: prior to the Creation, God established the “World of Creation (aeon)” as the foundation of all created things. This “aeon” is the primordial time of Creation, which does not divide into fixed units of time—years, months, hours, etc.—until much later. This idea is quite similar to the Bahir’s notion of the primal Days of Creation, which are synonymous with the Sefiroth. This primordial time will return in the eschaton, and will forever remain indivisible. When all creation visible and invisible, as the Lord created it, shall end, then every man goes to the great judgment, and then all time shall perish, and the years, and thenceforward there will be neither months nor days nor hours, they will be stuck together and will not be counted. There will be one aeon, and the righteous who shall escape the Lord’s great judgment, shall be collected in the great aeon, for the righteous the great aeon will begin, and they will live eternally.*° Similarly, in the Bahir we saw the All upon which the entire Creation depends: All come from it ... and all look upon it and set their hopes upon it (eschatologically). The righteous unite with this aeon and it unites with them—an inverted formula of the type that is highly popular both in Christian and Jewish-Gnostic literature. One might say that the 100 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD righteous unite with that Sefirah which constitutes their own primordial image. As in Sefer ha-Bahir, this chapter of the Slavonic Book of Enoch explains that God did not even reveal to His angels the secret of how He created being out of nonbeing—i.e., the secret of the formation of the Great Aeon, the instrument for all creation. The relation between these two images strikes me as demanding particular attention: just as the righ- teous, in Sefer ha-Bahir, originate in this aeon, so are they able, in the Slavonic Book of Enoch, to ultimately reunite with their source. One may even ask whether the name Adoil might not be a corruption, via a long development to the Slavonic, of Tsaddok-el, God’s righteous: to wit, [ Ts kaddo[k fel. The remarks of the Slavonic Book of Enoch concerning this aeon that “carries all Creation” may shed light on a curious utterance of the Bahir (S §123; M §180), according to which all Creation takes place through the Sefirah of Tsaddik: “And every language of Creation is performed through it.” These words do not square at all with the Kabbalah’s other theses about Creation; as we shall see, the writings of the early Kabbalists ascribe to the Tsaddik the function of sustaining the worlds, but not that of Creation. This latter function originates in a higher Sefirah—i.e., in the transition from the first (ayin) to the second Sefirah (Hokhmah, the divine wisdom), which correspond to nonbeing and being.’! In this older tradition of the Bahir, the Sefirah of Tsaddik Yesod “Olam is apparently per- ceived as a medium by which the Creation was activated, albeit not the Demiurge itself (which in Gnosticism bears a certain pejorative sense, as the God of Justice). In several later Kabbalistic traditions, the notion of the Righteous One as the First Created Being is linked to the aggadic motif of the primordial light created on the first day of Creation, which was thereafter hidden away for the righteous in the future aeon because it was too good for this world (Hagigah 12a). This talmudic image is certainly reflected in chapter 11 of the Slavonic Book of Enoch. In Midrash ha-Ne ‘elam, a relatively early section of the Zohar, we read: The Holy One, blessed be He, saw and considered that the world cannot exist without the Foundation. And what is the Foundation upon which the world rests? The righteous, as it is said, “The righ- TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE * 10! teous is the foundation of the world.” And this is the primordial foundation which the Holy One, blessed be He, created in His world, that is called “light,” as is written, “Light is sown for the righteous” (Ps. 97:11). The hypostasis of the Righteous One as one of the cosmic aeons in- volved in the beginnings of Creation may very well be older than the specific medieval form in which this Kabbalistic speculation has come down to us, a point supported by the above analysis. Jewish Gnostics of a monotheistic tendency seem to have specifically emphasized the symbol of the Tsaddik as a supernal aeon and a creative potency operative throughout the cosmos. This emphasis may well have had some polemical point against the dualistic Gnostic depreciation of the Creator as the God of Justice alone. The more scornfully the Gnostics spoke of the God of Justice, the more powerfully and exuberantly the positive character of this title of God was underscored in the earliest forms of Jewish Gnosti- cism, fragments of which came down to the early Kabbalists. II] In thirteenth-century Spanish Kabbalah, the ideas found in the older fragments of Sefer ha-Bahir were developed into an elaborated schema. Here, the divine Sefirotic world and the concrete world of creation deriv- ing from it were more and more firmly connected through symbolism. The more the Kabbalists meditated upon this world of Sefiroth, the richer and more detailed each particular Sefirah became. First and foremost, of course, the biblical text provided an inexhaustible treasury of images and metaphors for the symbols of the Sefiroth. It was the unique achievement of this Kabbalistic gnosis to select and arrange these symbols, each one of which was opened for contemplation of its endlessly rich aspects. The esoteric exegesis and primal spiritual images of the Divine and of the Creator, which resurface repeatedly in the consciousness of these Kab- balists, combine in the extant works of Kabbalistic theology. Sometimes it is easy to identify what derives from the Kabbalists’ intuition and seeks 102 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD justification in a biblical verse as a kind of afterthought, and what is authentic exegesis, albeit rooted in a basic mystical stance. Often enough, however, these two elements merge into a new totality, in which the role played by either factor can no longer be determined. The most important crystallizations of Kabbalistic symbolism indicate that these are no arbi- trary combinations of diverse ideas; rather, a profound and highly signif- icant bond exists between the basic symbols of each individual Sefirah. The Kabbalists are guided by an inner law, which allows them to see these and no other context for a given symbol. At times, a particular symbol may fluctuate or be applied to several different spheres. This should come as no surprise, given the infinitely varied and fluid nature of the Sefiroth concept, but even here the fundamental unity of the basic themes is always discernible. We find examples of such differences in the detailed working out of symbolism in the writings of the Kabbalists of Gerona, in those of Joseph Gikatilla, and in those of R. Moses de Leon (both in the Hebrew texts published under his own name and in his pseudonymous Aramaic-language Zohar). None of these works is so illuminating for understanding the nature of the symbolism of each individual Sefirah as Joseph Gikatilla’s Sha‘arei Orah (The Gates of Light), written around 1290. The author subsequently treated the same theme in a shorter work, Sha‘arei Tsedek.*? In these two works Gikatilla offers a detailed presentation of each of the ten Sefiroth, using numerous quotations and interpretations of biblical passages, each one of the Sefiroth appearing under the aegis of one of God’s names. As already mentioned above, the Sefirah which appears as the seventh in Sefer ha-Bahir assumes the ninth position in these classical systems; hence, Gi- katilla, proceeding upward from the Shekhinah, the most revealed aspect of the Godhead, to its more concealed strata, treats this ninth Sefirah in the second chapter of his book. Several basic themes of his symbolism are important for our discussion. The Tsaddik is understood in Gikatilla’s discussion, first and foremost, as a mystical symbol of the Lord of Life. The essence of this Sefirah is symbolized by the divine name El Hai, “the living God” (cf. Josh. 3:10; Hos. 2:1; Ps. 84:3): TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE * 103 It is called the Living God because it is at the end of the nine levels, which are called nine mirrors [in which the Deity is reflected]. And He draws the attribute of grace and love from all the Sefiroth into [the last Sefirah, which is under] the attribute of the name Adonai { Lord]. The life that flows from the higher Sefiroth is “gathered” into this realm; the positive life force is channeled via this last, passively receptive Sefirah, into all the creatures of the world, from the angels down to the earthly beings. This Sefirah is the source of the souls of all living things, each with their respective inherent nature (such was the reading of Gen. 1:24), even the soul of the Messiah and the souls of the angels. According to Gikatilla (unlike the philosophers, who view the angels as pure form), even the angels consist of both soul and—albeit extremely subtle— matter: All of the souls, above and below, are drawn down from the name Adonai, which is called “the Land of Life” (a symbol common to both of the last Sefiroth), by means of the potency of E/ Hai, which channels the vital force by the name Adonai from the Source of Life through the medium of the Tree of Life.... And it was for this that King David was longing and yearning when he said (Ps. 42:3), “My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.” * The symbols of the Source of Life and the Tree of Life (which ordinarily correspond to Binah and Tif?ereth) are applied, both by Gikatilla and the Zohar, to the Sefirah of Tsaddik. The tenth Sefirah, Shekhinah (which Gika- tilla generally prefers to designate as Adonai), is the pool into which life flows, from which it then disperses to all the lower beings according to their natures and needs. However, the infinite fertility of living things is rooted in the ninth Sefirah. Gikatilla knows of two “primal sources of living water”: one in the highest Sefirah, in the Source called Ein-Sof, the concealed Godhead itself; and the other here, in the realm of Tsaddik. But that which flows freely and unhampered from the highest source is sub- 104 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD jected here to certain predetermined laws and limits, depending upon how capable and worthy the creatures are of receiving its flow. The cre- ated world only receives the stream of life within the limits of the divine law governing all things; that is why this Sefirah bears the biblical name of God, Shaddai, which is explained, in terms of a talmudic exegesis, as the potency that sets limits for Creation with the call “Enough!” (Dai!). The long mystical journey of the Kabbalists to the Source of Life follows this symbolic path: He who seeks true life before God will have his place shown him by these waters. And when man walks along the bank of this river and does not depart from its banks, he will be shown the place from which it flows and taken to the source from which the waters come. And the sign of this is: “from Mattanah to Nahaliel; and from Nahaliel to Bamoth (Num. 28:8).” * The vitality concentrated in E/ Hai is the foundation that supports the orderly house of Creation, and is synonymous with Tsaddik Yesod ‘Olam, the Righteous One upon whom the world rests. The symbolism of Sefer ha-Bahir clearly merges here with that of classical Kabbalah. But this mystical Tsaddik is the foundation of a house that is built, not from the ground up, but from the roof down; and Gikatilla explains, the founda- tion of the world operates like a magnet: “Does one not see that a lode- stone pulls [things] to itself while it is above, and that which it lifts is below.” Hence, this Sefirah is the true symbol of peace; it sustains the harmonious equilibrium of upper and lower, and regulates the distur- bances that interfere with this harmony. Just as the earthly righteous “corrects” the flaw in things and establishes peace and harmony in the world by means of his actions, so is the cosmic function of the Sefirah of Tsaddik: As the Tsaddik awakens the world to repent or to fix that which is not whole, this attribute is called Peace, mediating for good be- tween YHVH and Adonai, making peace between them and bringing them near to dwell together without separation or breaking up in the world; and at that hour we find that God is one.*¢ TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE * 105 Likewise, in Sha‘arei Tsedek, he writes: Know that for this reason the righteous are called righteous (Tsad- dikim): because they set all the inner things in their place within, and all outer things in their place without, and nothing leaves the boundary set for it. And that is why they are known as the righteous. 7 We find here the first major definition of the new understanding of the ideal figure of the Tsaddik, as it was later formulated in Kabbalistic ethical literature: the righteous man is he who sets everything in the world in its proper place. But the simplicity of this definition should not deceive us as to its messianic significance and utopian explosiveness. A world in which everything is in its proper place would be, in Jewish terms, a redeemed world. The dialectics of the Tsaddik thus flow into and merge with the dialectics of the messianic; if there is peace and harmony in the divine world, “so that God is truly one at that moment,” this oneness would also be manifested undisguised in our world.” As in Bahir, Gikatilla also develops the symbolism of the Sabbath as the principle of resting harmony within the dynamics of the Sefirotic sys- tem.*’ One is tempted to say that the famous Hegelian definition of the nervous system as “the repose of the organic within its movement” is no less appropriate to the Kabbalistic symbol of the Sabbath. The Tsaddik is also the Law, by which all things receive the influx due to them, by which they exist. The statements in Sefer ha-Bahir about the command- ments found in the Sefirah of Tsaddik are transferred by Gikatilla to the realm of the Aukkim: statutes, i.e., those laws of the Torah for which there is no rational explanation—such as the proscription against mixing spe- cies when sowing and in garments, the use of the ashes of a red heifer to purify persons contaminated by contact with the dead, etc.—which, ac- cording to the Kabbalists, can only be grasped in terms of the hidden meaning of the entire cosmos. The effusion of life-vitality of the Tsaddik is thus confined by the limits of the Law to activity within the sacred boundaries.*' Again, as in Sefer ha-Bahir, this Sefirah is known as “the All,” albeit in Gikatilla this term refers to the totality of things maintaining 106 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD themselves within their own laws and limits. The abundance of life, which seeks to flow as freely moving creative power, is limited and struc- tured by the Law. We now come to the problem of the sexual symbolism which, throughout the Kabbalah, is inseparable from the image of the Tsaddik. In terms of the mirroring of the structure of the ’Adam Kadmon in the human body, the ninth Sefirah not only corresponds to the phallus; it is also, by reason of this allocation, the site of the circumcision, the sign of the Covenant. The vital force concentrated here is externally expressed in the world of creatures as sexual energy; however, the unrestrained power of the procreative drive, as the creative element in the cosmos, is har- nessed and restricted within sacred boundaries. The Tsaddik is the one who guards and keeps it within these boundaries; he chains this drive, which flows from the river of life, within the limits of the Law, thus maintaining its sacred nature. Hence, this Sefirah in particular was linked to “Joseph the Righteous,” who in Gikatilla, and especially in the Zohar, represents the ninth Sefirah of Yesod. Bold sexual symbolism plays a dom- inant role in many passages of the latter that speak of the divine attribute of Tsaddik.** The Zohar sees the Tree of Life itself as the phallus, while the “Life of the World” (Hai ‘Olamim) is the procreative power of the righ- teous man, in which the vital power of the divine organism is concen- trated and intensified.*? While the sixth Sefirah, Tifvereth, represents maleness as an active principle in a general way, in the ninth Sefirah this maleness is emphatically transposed into procreative power. Under the impact of this notion, a whole series of concepts that had previously been linked to Binah or to Tifereth were now transposed to the ninth Sefirah. The stream of emanation flows from all the higher Sefiroth into this sphere, where it becomes the procreative force. Hence, the river of life, flowing from this Sefirah into the female element, the Shekhinah, thereby bringing blessing and harmony to the lower worlds, is frequently de- scribed in images of sexual union, which were particularly favored by the author of the Zohar. Images in which this Sefirah is seen as concentrating the stream of emanation, such as “the Source of Life,’ “the Source of the River,” frequently occur in this context; in Sefer ha-Zohar, as in the Bahir, this Sefirah is the “Life of the Worlds.” But it is also called Musaf (“excess” TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE + 107 or “added” element): that is, the constantly strengthening flow of light, the “one place” to which all “the water which is under the heavens” (the heavens being a symbol for the male power in general, i.e., Tifereth) flows—that is, in which all the potencies acting within the World of Emanation are gathered. But even when such erotic mysticism takes on a more spiritualized form, it nevertheless exhibits traits of its original form. This is shown, for example, in the Zohar’s interpretation of Genesis 1:5, which begins with a reading of the verse that is at once literal and mystical: “And God called. . . .” What does “and He called” mean? He called and summoned the perfect light, which stands in the center, to produce a light, which is the foundation (Yesod) of the world, and upon which worlds rest. And from that perfect light, the central pillar, there was drawn forth, from the right side, Yesod, the life of the worlds, which is “day.” “And the darkness He called ‘night’”—-He called and sum- moned that from the side of darkness there should be produced a female, the moon, which rules by night and is called “night,” the mystery of Adonai, “Lord (Adon) of all the earth” (Joshua 3:11). The right entered the perfect pillar that is in the center, which comprises the mystery of the left, and ascended aloft to the primal point, and it took and seized hold of the power of the three vowel- points: holem, shurek, hirek, which are the holy seed—for there is no seed sown except through this mystery—and all was joined together through the central pillar, and it produced the foundation (Yesod) of the world, and it is, therefore, called “all” (Kol), for it holds all through the light of desire. The left flamed strongly and exuded odor. Throughout all levels it exuded odor, and from the fiery flame it produced the female, the moon; and this flame was darkened, because it came from darkness. And these two sides pro- duced these two levels, one male and one female. Yesod took hold of the central pillar through the additional light that it contains, for when this central pillar was perfected, and it made perfect peace throughout the extremities, an additional amount of light was immediately accorded it from above, and from 108 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD all the extremities in an all-inclusive joy, and from this addition of joy the foundation of the worlds emerged, and it was called Musaf (addition). All the hosts emerged from here into the realms below, and holy spirits, and souls, through the mystery of YHVH Tseva‘oth, Elohei ha-ruhoth (““God, the God of the spirits’—Num. 16:22).“ It is no coincidence that this potency of Yesod is referred to in the Zohar by the term or ha-teshukah (“the light of desire”)—the same term as is used for the desire of the male for the female.** Thus, the sacred marriage of male and female potencies, consummated by means of the Tsaddik, the Sefirah of Yesod, lies at the very center of this symbolism.“ The ancient problem of the tension between the Creator God and the Procreator God, reemerges here quite naturally at the center of Kabbal- istic theosophy, namely, in the symbolism of the Tsaddik. In contrast with the gods of myth, the biblical God is often described as being creative, yet not engaging in any sexual activity—precisely what the Tsaddik of the Kabbalah exhibits in His union with the Shekhinah. This brings us to a further crucial point. The Kabbalistic texts con- stantly use the term shefa‘ (literally, “overflow”) whenever discussing this Sefirah or attempting to describe it in images and symbols. The term is used in two different senses: in that of an overflowing stream, and in that of active inflow or influx. This influx flows from the Tsaddik into the Shekhinah, and from thence into all the worlds. The Kabbalists are fond of such usages as shefa‘ ha-berakhah (abundance of blessing) and similar phrases that suggest the giving nature of the divine fullness. Such phrases are associated with the sexual nuance of “inflow.” Nevertheless, the term requires closer definition. R. Asher ben David, nephew of R. Isaac the Blind (ca. 1235) already conceived of this wealth of blessing as a creative act independent of the act of Creation itself: Because there is nothing new under the sun, only the abundance of blessing which come from the Source of Life and from the Spring which blesses all things, every day and every hour and at every time, in order to establish and sustain them in the proper way. ... And this is what is said in the liturgy: “In His goodness he renews every TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE * 109 day the Works of Creation.” “His goodness” refers to the drawing down of blessing, which is the attribute of His goodness which ceaselessly comes from °Ein-Sof to sustain the works of Creation, for were it to cease for an hour or even a moment, it could not exist. *’ The shefa* entering the world through the Source of Life sustains the world, but did not in itself bring about the Creation. This view is clearly expressed by Gikatilla who, in his lengthy discus- sions of the functioning of the ninth Sefirah, never speaks of any creative function, but emphasizes its sustaining function. Creation itself is rooted in a deeper level of the Godhead, in the transition from the first to the second Sefirah through which divine nonbeing is transformed into divine being. All created things came into being and continue to exist by means of the externalizing of the innermost realms. However, there is a certain unmistakable dichotomy here among the Kabbalists. On the one hand, the transition from nonbeing to being that takes place in the highest Sefirah is the decisive step, on the other hand, Creation as such is only revealed upon the completion of the entire structure of all ten Sefiroth. This latter event may be simultaneous with the completion of this struc- ture, as its external expression, or it may come about thereafter, as a further structure completing the inner structure of the Sefiroth and re- flecting it. In any event, the preservation of Creation is rooted in a differ- ent process than its genesis. This process of continuous awakening arouses the passive creature to a state of active, vital life; it is this very process that is connoted by the shefa‘, which flows into all created beings from the ninth and tenth Sefiroth, and especially from their union. Gika- tilla always takes pains to distinguish between the two above-mentioned aspects, and nowhere as clearly as in his chapter on the symbolism of the ninth Sefirah. Franz Josef Molitor perceived this in his brilliant 1834 essay “On a Speculative Development of the Basic Universal Concepts of Theosophy according to the Principles of the Kabbalah.”** He writes: As none of the creatures, neither the individual ones nor the ob- jective natural elements, have the ability to arouse themselves or to 110 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD exert an animating effect on one another, they would have remained purely ineffective potencies if the Godhead had not, after creating them, awoken them to physical and mental life by dint of a special inflow. This influx is distinct from the act of Creation, but it con- tinues as steadily as creation itself. Hence, the Godhead is not only He who constantly produces and renews, but also the eternal An- imator, Mover, and Guide of the world. For were this enlivening inflow to be interrupted for even a moment, the beings, although not ceasing to exist, would sink back into the state of their original potentiality and passivity and thus lose the power to spontaneously act upon and mutually arouse one another. . . . But since the crea- tures are not dead machines, but living creatures made in the image of the living Godhead, they are able, by means of their own actions only, by conducting themselves in internal regularity and harmo- nious agreement with the Godhead, to arouse the divine love to be known in their own lives, and in such a manner to partake of the life of the infinite primal image in whose likeness they are made. We find here an explanation of the Kabbalistic symbolism of Tsaddik as that which brings about true harmony within all of existence. This defh- nition derives directly from the meaning of the Jewish symbol. The way of the Righteous One, according to this symbolism of giving and sustain- ing life, consists in the establishment of harmony or peace—concepts that overlap in the Hebrew word shalom. Strictly speaking, shalom repre- sents a state of completeness or integrity, and it is only in these terms that it also refers to peace. Molitor’s remarks likewise incorporate the Kabbalistic principle that awakening and influx from above presuppose awakening down below, a thesis repeatedly emphasized in the Zohar. The higher attempts to sustain the lower, in which it recognizes itself; it is drawn to the lower, wishing to unite with it and channel their influx into it, because the life and harmony of the creation are based upon the life and harmony of the Creator. But this influx presupposes the receptivity of the created being, and can only perform the “arousal from above” where the creaturely “arouses itself from below.” In this way the lower world can transform TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE * 1/11 the influx from above into a living, active structure, and thereafter to return it as the reflection of its own existence. Such is the dialectical relationship of mutuality and magical rapport existing, in the Kabbalistic view, between the active Godhead and all created things.*? But the quin- tessential symbol of this rapport is the union of Tsaddik and Shekhinah, based upon the arousal of procreativity in sexual union between male and female. Portrayals of this symbolism of the sacred marriage and its inherent dynamics have always aroused vehement and understandable protest from the opponents of the Kabbalists. Eliezer Zvi Zweifel, who compiled an enormous quantity of such passages from later Kabbalistic and Hasidic literature in his magnum opus on Hasidism,*° complains about the sexual metaphors and descriptions of God and the Sefiroth with the words “They make the reader’s hair stand on end.”*! Indeed, these quotations are pref- aced with a sigh: “Woe to me if I copy it; woe to me if 1 do not copy it.” Yet it is precisely this attempt to deal with the profundities of the sexual sphere inherent in this symbolism that renders the Kabbalistic treatment of it so serious.’ Indeed, such symbolism harkens all the way back to rabbinic literature itself—namely, to an important talmudic passage (Yoma 54a-b) which was quite appropriately chosen by Jiri Langer as the epigraph of his book, Die Erotik der Kabbala: Rab Katina said: When the Israelites entered the Temple in Jeru- salem [during the three pilgrimage festivals], the curtain [to the Holy of Holies] was opened and they were shown the cherubim in intimate embraces, and they were told: Behold, the love between yourselves and God is like the love between man and woman... . Resh Lakish said: When the Gentiles conquered the Temple, they saw the cherubim in intimate embraces. They hauled them out into the marketplace and said: “Behold! Israel, whose blessing is a bless- ing and whose curse is a curse, concerns itself with such things?! Then they reviled them, as is said, “All that honored her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness” [Lam. 1:8]. It is quite clear that there was a willingness to accept the mythical image of the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage; without this it is obvious that this 112 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD sphere could never have been brought within the purview of the Kabba- lah. The fact that this was brought within the rubric of the specifically moral category of the Tsaddik, the Righteous One, indicates how serious this effort was. Other, less emotion-laden images presented themselves to the Kabbalists, and were indeed employed by them. Instead, however, in the very heart of Kabbalistic concerns and its problematics, we en- counter the sexual symbolism of the Tsaddik as the principle of procrea- tion within sacred limits, which preserves and spreads harmony in the world.*? What happens when this activity is disturbed and degenerates? Gika- tilla discusses this question at some length: Know that the attribute of the Living God (EI Hai) called Tsaddik is ready to look and to see and to gaze upon human beings. And when it sees that human beings are engaged in the Torah and the com- mandments, and that they wish to purify themselves and to behave with purity and innocence, the attribute of Tsaddik extends itself, and expands and fills with all kinds of influx and emanation from above, to pour out upon the attribute of Adonai, in order to give a goodly reward to those who hold fast to Torah and mitzvoth and who purify themselves. Thus, we find that the entire world is blessed by those righteous people, and the attribute of Adonai is also blessed by them; and this is the secret of “the memory of the righ- teous shall be for a blessing” [Prov. 10:7]. But if, Heaven forbid, human beings contaminate themselves and remove themselves from Torah and the divine commandments, and perform evil and injus- tice and violence, then the attribute of Tsaddik is prepared to look and to see and gaze upon their deeds. When it sees that human beings are contaminating themselves, rejecting the Torah and com- mandments and performing evil and injustice and violence, the at- tribute of Tsaddik is gathered into itself and withdraws high above; then all the channels and streams drawing down cease, and the attribute of Adonai remains as a dry and empty earth and lacking in everything. And this is the secret of “the righteous is taken away from the evil to come” [Isa. 57:1]. ... He who understands this secret will understand how great is man’s power to build and to TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE + 113 destroy. Now come and see how great is the power of the righteous who adhere to Torah and the commandments, who have the power to unite all the Sefiroth and to let peace reign in the upper and lower realms; for the pure and upright man unites the qualities of righ- teousness and justice (Tsaddik and Tsedek). God is then called One, and he brings harmony to the supernal family and to the earthly family. Heaven and earth are thus united by this man; happy is his portion and happy is she who gave birth to him.” The function of the lower Tsaddik is described in a similar manner in Meir ibn Gabbai’s ‘Avodath ha-Kodesh (1531), II, 2. His commentary proceeds from a midrash on the Psalms: They stated in Midrash Shoher Tov,** in a passage on the psalms, “When Israel went out of Egypt”: “Said R. Pinhas ha-Kohen bar Hamma; The Holy One blessed be He sows the deeds of the righ- teous in that heaven whose name is ‘Aravoth [the uppermost of the seven heavens], and it bears fruits.” This Heavenly “Aravoth is equated with the “Righteous One of the World and of its Foun- dation, for all the good oil flowing from the “white head” [i-e., Kether; cf. Ps. 133:2] to all sides mingle therein, and the deeds of the righteous are emanated from there, and the seeds of peace are sown there. For [in terms of its substance] the seed is drawn from the brain and reaches the tip of the phallus, and is emptied into its mate; and this is the secret of its bearing fruits, by way of the mys- tery of true union and unification. And the cause of all this lies in the deeds of the righteous, who ascend upwards with the perfection of their mediation, and are reflected and absorbed in that firma- ment; and this is the sowing of which we have spoken [in that midrash}°*° The Zohar likewise discusses the “sowing of light” by the righteous in its explication of Psalm 97:11, “Light is sown for the Righteous One.” The Holy One, blessed be He, sowed this light in the Garden of Eden, and He arranged it in rows with the help of the Righteous 114 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD One, who is the gardener in the Garden. And he took this light, and sowed it as a seed of truth, and arranged it in rows in the Garden, and it sprouted and grew and produced fruit, by which the world is nourished. This is the meaning of the verse “Light is sown for the righteous .. .” (Psalm 97:11). And it is written “The garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth” (Isaiah 61:11). What are “the things that are sown in it”? These are the sowings of the primal light, which is always sown. Now it brings forth and produces fruit, and now it is sown as at the beginning. Before the world eats this fruit, the seed produces and gives fruit, and does not rest. Consequently, all the worlds are nourished through the supply of the gardener, who is called the Righteous One, and who never rests or ceases, except when Israel is in exile. You might object that it is written, concerning the time of the exile, “The waters fail from the sea, and the river is drained dry” (Job 14:11). How then can it produce offspring? But it is written “sown”—it is continually sown. From the time that the river ceases, the gardener does not enter the Garden. But the light, which is continually sown, produces fruit, and it is sown of itself, as at the beginning, and it does not rest at all, like a garden that goes on producing, and some of the seed falls in its place, and it continues to produce by itself, as at the first. You might say that the offspring and the fruit are the same as when the gardener is there. But it is not so. On the other hand, the seed is never absent.°*’ Thus, the garden in which the gardener sowed his seed is in a state of exile; it is no longer in its original state of harmony, and wild plants grow from those seeds that had been planted there earlier—and from these seeds the world is nourished. But the author of the Zohar does not always go so far in detracting from the gardener’s function. In many other pas- sages, the activity of the divine Tsaddik remains connected to that of the earthly righteous man even during the period of Exile, and the hidden light sown in him continues to bear fruit and to sustain the world. The general function of the Sefirah of Tsaddik—namely, to maintain the existence of Creation—is joined by a second function. One might ask: what comes into being from the sacred marriage of Tsaddik and the She- TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE * 115 khinah? The Zohar’s answer is: the souls of the righteous. Thus, a unique element is emanated into the substance of life—the Tsaddik procreates the righteous. While the souls of the righteous, as the bearers of the harmony and the “seed of peace,” may not literally be created in this process of sacred marriage (in terms of their innermost being, they were already hidden away within the divine wisdom, and they reach the Sefirah of Tsaddik in the form of seed, with the stream of emanation); at this point, however, they begin their road to individual existence. Yet they strive to return to the place from whence they have come. Every individ- ual holy soul is like a spark of the all-encompassing “Life of the Worlds,” whose law each one carries within himself.*® IV In the preceding sections I have tried to understand the Tsaddik as a symbol within the world of Kabbalah; indeed, the basic images and char- acteristic thematic connections with which we have become acquainted here recur again and again in all later Kabbalistic writings. The symbolic image of the Tsaddik as one of the aspects of the Sefirotic world also affected the understanding of the earthly righteous man. Even though the divine status of the Tsaddik may have derived from the hypostatizing of the human Tsaddik, this projection acquired its own dynamic and in turn affected the original. Inspired by the Kabbalists, a rich literature emerged dealing with the problems of conduct in life and the ethical ideals of Judaism. At this point we must ask whether the mystical symbol of the Tsaddik, as we have come to understand it, expresses itself in the ideal figure of the Tsaddik in Musar literature (the ethical writings of the Kab- balists) and, in its footsteps, in Hasidism? Is there a link between the Hasidic Tsaddik and these Kabbalistic images, and how did the Hasidic image of the Tsaddik acquire its final form in intellectual and social history? As deeply committed as the followers of both Kabbalah and Hasidism were to the concepts of Kabbalistic theosophy, there nevertheless seems to be an important difference between the two levels of meaning of the 116 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD Tsaddik: the mystical and the social. The procreative element that struck us in the symbol of the Tsaddik and that could, in a modern (albeit non- theological) sense, be designated as the creative element therein, encoun- ters a difficult set of problems in the transition from the mystical to the social level. Could the sexual character of the symbol of the Tsaddik, its element of creative influx, be preserved following its passage to the social sphere—as applying even to the concrete reality of the earthly Tsaddik? Could the dynamics of this symbol survive its transposition to the histor- ical plane, or was its essence bound to disappear? Did this transition perforce turn mysticism into an ideology, in which authentic symbols could no longer carry out their function? But I am getting ahead of myself; before discussing these problems, let us return to our point of departure. We began by drawing a distinction between the Tsaddik, the righteous person, and the Hasid, the pious man, as two basic prototypes in rabbinic typology. This distinction is still ex- ceedingly sharp in those medieval ethical Musar writings not yet influ- enced by the Kabbalah. The Hasid’s radical behavior arouses opposition; indeed, he must be prepared for this from the very start, because of his very nature, because he reflects the nonconformist element in society. No such opposition is aroused by the Tsaddik, who would never dream of practicing this kind of extremism. But a certain tendency to blur the terminological distinctions is discernible early on; when these medieval writings speak of the Tsaddik and the Hasid, it is not always clear whether or not these words are synonymous. Particularly the charismatic element, originally an attribute of the Hasid, is transposed more and more to the Tsaddik. Nevertheless, there is still a clear sense of the distinction between the two, which is not yet blurred in the Kabbalistic Musar literature, especially in its classical form. The definitions of the moral ideal of the Righteous One vacillate between the original sobriety that characterized it, anda mystical exuberance. R. Bahya ben Asher, a contemporary of the author of the Zohar, can already state that the Tsaddik has achieved “the perfection of protection and [Divine] Providence, and he is deserving to encompass the totality of all goodness in the world, known as ‘the sewn light; because he is in communion with God, and the Divine Providence is in Communion with the Tsaddik.” 5? Yet the same author also offers the TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE * 117 following sober definition: “The chief principle of the entire Torah and its foundation is that man should break his passions and subjugate and humble them, until he brings them under the control of the rational soul. One who does so, making his reason dominate his passion, and breaking and subjugating his animal soul, is called a righteous man.” We are likewise already familiar with Gikatilla’s definition of the Tsaddik as one who puts everything in the world in its proper place. Even Luria’s disciple, R. Hayyim Vital (1543-1620), in his highly influ- ential treatise on the ethical teachings of the Kabbalah, explained these concepts in a manner that still assumes the superiority of the Hasid: The man whose spirit moves him to become pure and holy and to truly take upon himself the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, will prepare himself with all his strength to fulfill the 613 command- ments [of the Torah], for by their fulfillment he will perfect the 613 organs and sinews of his rational soul. For if he yet lacks any one of the 248 positive commandments, he lacks an organ of his soul, and of him is it said, “That which is wanting cannot be numbered” [Eccles. 1:15]. And this is more severe than the rule, “For what- soever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach” [Lev. 21:18]. But one who has fulfilled them but violated one of the 365 negative commandments is literally called “one who has a blemish,” for the vessel and sinew that draws the influx through the organs has been distorted, and concerning him it is said, “That which is crooked cannot be made straight” [Eccles., ibid.]. That is, after his departure from this world; for there is neither performance of the lacking commandments, called “deed,” nor repentance to correct sins, save in this world, as is written, “for there is no work nor device”—neither performance of positive commandments, nor ac- counting of negative commandments, nor knowledge of Torah it- self—“in the grave, whither thou goest” (Eccles. 9:10]. Therefore, so long as he did not perform the 613 commandments, he is called an imperfect Tsaddik, for it was not for naught that Moses our teacher recited prayers corresponding to the number [i.e., gematria of] Va-ethanan {“and | besought”; Deut. 3:23], merely in order to enter the Land, but to perfect his soul with the performance of all 118 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD 613 commandments. But one who has fulfilled all of them, but has not yet made his good qualities an integral component of his nature, but still needs to struggle with his evil drive in order to give them control—such a person is called a perfect Tsaddik who controls his drive. But when all the good qualities have become an integral part of his own nature, so that he observes the commandments of the Torah in joy and with love of God, without any provocation of the Evil Urge, because the corporeality within him has become com- pletely refined, as King David said, “My heart is empty within me” [Ps. 109:22]. And he also said, “Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty . . . | have stilled and quieted my soul like a weaned child with his mother” (Ps. 131:1,2]. It then appears as if goodness has been his nature since he came out of his mother’s womb— such a person is called a perfect Hasid.°! (It is interesting to note that the terminological distinction made at the end of this passage is taken from Maimonides’ Eight Chapters!) For Vital, the Hasid occupies the first rung of the hierarchy of piety, at whose pinnacle is the saint or holy man (kadosh). Here, too, the Tsaddik is the ideal representative of the observance of the norm. By contrast, be- coming a pious man or a saint is not contingent upon the person's own will, but depends upon factors outside his control. In his systematic pre- sentation of the Kabbalah, Vital formulates the rank of the Tsaddik as that in which one has achieved the taming of the passions, bringing about the purification of the physical matter of the body and its transformation into pure form: “This is the level of the righteous, to refine their bodies and to make it into form.”® This suggests that the Hasid succeeds in turning matter into form without needing to struggle with his impulses. In Hasidic discussions this definition of the Tsaddik as “the man of form” plays an important role. In the history of later Kabbalah, particularly following the great mes- sianic shock of Sabbatianism, there repeatedly emerged groups of Hasidim who hoped to attain charismatic gifts by means of radical commitment and extreme enthusiasm. This is not the place to discuss the history of such groups; it is, however, important to emphasize that they encoun- TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE ° 119 tered widespread opposition. The most important author of later Kab- balistic Musar literature was the Italian mystic, Moses Hayyim Luzzatto (1707-1747), whose handbook, Mesillath Yesharim (The Path of the Up- right), became a classic work of Hebrew literature and exerted immense influence. Luzzatto was the first Kabbalist to attempt to describe the path to the ideal of Hasiduth in a way that would not arouse hostility. His tragic life suggests that such an undertaking was doomed to failure. In his book he describes the road leading man in a steady ascent to the highest de- grees of spiritual perfection and sanctification. But Luzzatto also clearly distinguished between two different realms. The former is accessible to all, and leads to the ideal prototype of the perfect Tsaddik: “The majority of the community are unable to be Hasidim, and it is sufficient that they be Tsaddikim.” The transition to that realm that leads to the path of the Hasid, which is the path of man’s devekuth with God, depends upon a special divine gift: The highest level of holiness is a gift; all that man can do is to attempt it, through the pursuit of true knowledge and constant concentration of the intellect upon the holiness of one’s acts. But it is attained when the Holy One blessed be He will guide him in the way that he wishes to follow, and bring upon him His holiness and sanctify him. He will then succeed in this thing, so that he may continue to commune with God, may He be blessed, continu- ously. ... until there rests upon him a spirit from on high, and the Creator, blessed be He, will cause His name to rest upon him, as he does to all His holy ones, so that he will literally be like an angel of God.® The highest rung on the path of Hasiduth is devekuth, communion between man and God, which is impossible without a special charisma; this is the ultimate ideal of the Hasid, which is only attainable within the realm of mysticism. One must adhere to the ideal of the Righteous One in build- ing a community of God-fearing people. Moreover, Luzzatto polemicizes against false notions of Hasiduth widespread among the public, especially the educated strata, which led them to identify Hasidic conduct with practices contrary to reasonable behavior. 120 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD Many customs and ways are known among many people under the name of piety (Hasiduth), and they are naught but images of piety, without shape or form and without correction; these result from a lack of true reflection and enlightenment among those who have these attributes, for they did not trouble or labor to learn the way of God with clear and straight knowledge, but became pietists and followed that which came their way upon first thought, and did not profoundly examine these things or weigh them upon the scales of wisdom. And these people made the name of piety contemptible in the eyes of the masses of the people and the learned among them, as one would already think that piety is dependent upon vain mat- ters or things which go against reason or proper knowledge, and that all piety depends only upon the recitation of many petitions and lengthy confessions and weeping and prostrations and afflic- tions by which a person tortures himself to death, such as immer- sion in snow and ice and the like.” Luzzatto’s book was written in Amsterdam in 1740; at the same time, in the small towns and villages of East Galicia and Podolia, there were taking shape under the inspiration of R. Israel Baal Shem Tov those groups from which there would emerge the great religious movement which, in the mind of posterity, was to monopolize the name Hasidism. Their religious enthusiasm led them to establish groups that became de- voted to the very practices rejected by Luzzatto, or admitted only with reservations. In particular, these groups reversed the order and priority established by Luzzatto regarding the ideal of devekuth. Whereas he had placed man’s communion with God at the pinnacle of the path toward Hasiduth, they placed this communion at its outset.® One of the most striking paradoxes of this movement was the com- plete reversal of the above-mentioned linguistic usage. Those figures who were the spiritual leaders of these groups, who were committed heart and soul to the full realization of the demands of this movement and thus rightfully viewed as its true representatives, were called—surprisingly— Tsaddikim, the righteous. Their adherents and admirers, on the other TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE + 12! hand, who placed themselves under their leadership while being unable to themselves fulfill the ideal demands, were known as Hasidim. The im- ages of the true Hasid and of the true Tsaddik found in the ancient defini- tions were hence joined together in the new figure of the Hasidic Tsaddik. This was indeed a very odd development: an admirer of the earlier Ha- sidic ideals who had not attained them personally would never have dreamt of calling himself a Hasid. Indeed, a certain semantic wavering is still apparent at the beginning of the Hasidic movement; the Baal Shem Tov himself was not referred to by his followers as a Tsaddik. In his own statements—so far as these are recognized as authentic—he used vari- ous terms to denote the ideal representatives of his doctrine. In those passages where his grandson, rendering the Baal Shem’s words, uses the word Tsaddik, older formulations of the same or similar utterances employ such phrases as “a fit person” (adam kasher), “a wise man” (hakham), “a true scholar” (talmid-hakham amiti), or even “the perfect man” (ha-adam ha-shalem) or “the head of the generation” (rosh ha-dor).% Tsaddik is only one of these terms, and by no means the most frequent or obvious; in- deed, the very oldest Hasidic writings contain references to the same careful distinction between the terms Tsaddik and Hasid as we have seen above, in which Hasid always designates the higher rank. Such differentia- tions were only possible if the term Tsaddik had not yet taken on the fixed meaning of a Hasidic leader.®’ This terminological unclaritv disappeared only when the Baal Shem’s disciple, Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezhirech, and especially the latter’s disciples, established the Tsaddik as a necessary in- stitution of Hasidic life. It is highly significant that the more modest term, Tsaddik, gained acceptance to designate the ideal prototype, not- withstanding the extravagant and exaggerated claims made on his behalf. Hardly coincidentally, the same restraint is shown in the popular term used in the vernacular Yiddish in lieu of the Hebrew term Tsaddik: a gitter- yid, literally “a good Jew.” A gitter-yid is a Jew who behaves as he ought to, one who tries to live his life by the standards of Judaism. The Yiddish term corresponds to the Hebrew Yehudi kasher, a recurring phrase in the ethical writings of those generations. The use of these modest terms to describe the highest spiritual level of a human being recalls a similar 122 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD linguistic development among the medieval Catharists of southern France: their leaders were simply called les bonshommes—literally “the good men”—even though they were the true representatives of the highest ideal. In order to understand the Hasidic concept of the Tsaddik and its last- ing importance in this movement, we must note those elements that combined to form something new without going into the details of these terminological changes per se. The Hasidic Tsaddik is heir to everything the Talmud has to say about the Righteous One—from the simplest to the most rapturous descriptions—as well as of the characteristics of the talmudic Hasid. Moreover, the Hasidic Tsaddik incorporates those attri- butes that the Kabbalah ascribed to the Tsaddik, as we tried to present more precisely above. These characteristics, especially in the forms they assumed in the Zohar and in Gikatilla’s writings, appear throughout Ha- sidic literature. In this respect, the Hasidim relied extensively upon the Kabbalistic tendency to link, or even to identify, the earthly manifestation of the Tsaddik, the Righteous One, with the Tsaddik as symbol. Numerous passages in the earliest Hasidic texts indicate that their authors were fully aware of the connection between their own and the older Kabbalistic concept. However, two additional elements were needed in order to make the Hasidic Tsaddik what he was. One element is highly visible in Hasidic writings; the other is concealed. The Hasidic Tsaddik incorporates the older figure of the mokhiah, the preacher of morals. This element entered Hasidism, not so much from the theory of earlier Kabbalah, as from the practical life of Polish Jewry during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The mokhiah was a per- son who took upon himself the task of teaching others the path to be followed in order to fulfill the ethical ideal: this was generally an ethic with a strongly ascetic and “Hasidic” tone (in the older sense of the word used by medieval Ashkenazic Pietists, as represented in the thirteenth-century Sefer Hasidim). These teachers of morality (literally, “admonishers” or “reprimanders”) or itinerant preachers (maggidim) were propagandists who made radical demands on the individual. Although as itinerant preachers they spoke to the community, their true concern was TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE + 323 to arouse each individual Jew. They rarely had a fixed home or ofhcial position in the larger Jewish community, thev were often highlv learned and profoundly restless men who wandered from place to place, calling for penitence. The very presumption involved in the act of preaching in public must have kindled resentments; in order to overcome this, thev needed minimally to embody their radical demands in their own persons. Even so, a tangible antagonism frequently existed between the talmudic scholars and these preachers of repentance, a hostility that is well docu- mented even prior to the time of the Baal Shem Tov. These mokhihim attacked the scholars, in whom intellect had stifled all religious feeling; one of them even castigated the scholars as “Jewish devils.” The preacher of ethics hence needed to answer the same question as the later Hasidic Tsaddik: why should one bother to listen to his teachings and reprimands, when anyone could read and reflect upon works of eth- ics at home? One such wandering preacher, Abraham ben Eliezer of She- breshin in Volhynia recorded a discussion held in 1714 with several scholars who opposed his activities. | do not see it as a coincidence that his response was based upon the identical argument that was offered later on in Hasidic literature to justify the necessity of the Tsaddik: There are books on medicine filled [with information] like the stormy sea, yet one who is not expert in them and their terminol- ogy through what he has learned from others could not use them to heal his severe illness, even were he to read everything written therein, for their benefit is in what he has learned through the actions of his teacher, for action is the greatest example. ... And after receiving that from an expert physician, he may read. So it is in the wavs of repentance: a person will not be so aroused from a book as he will be aroused and awakened by one who preaches with weeping and a loud and bitter voice, reminding him of incidents and occurrences that break man’s heart.°’ In this context, we must not forget that the majority of early Hasidic leaders, particularly the most important ones, held the position of mo- 124 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD khiah rather than that of rabbi in their communities. Hence, in Hasidism, the mokhiah and the Kabbalistic Tsaddik were merged into one figure.” The transition is clear: the educational and inspirational function of the mokhiah was combined with an intensely personal embodiment of reli- gious life to form the image of the Tsaddik. Indeed, this is how, for ex- ample, R. Nahum of Chernobyl, who was himself a mokhiah, described the Tsaddik's function: It is an everyday experience that, even though one may study Torah and [writings concerning] the fear of God, he does not observe them or take them to heart. But when he comes to the Tsaddik and hears his remonstrance, his words pierce into him like a burning fire, inspiring him with awe of God, which is expressed in practice. The reason for this is that, even though he has studied Torah, his vitality is not purified so long as he is absorbed in his passions. Hence, when he “learns” [i.e., studies the holy writings] and speaks out of that self-absorbed vitality, he cannot rise above his self- absorption. The Tsaddik, however, who has cut himself off from cor- poreality and the passions and speaks with a clear and refined vitality that flows into him from the Creator, may He be blessed, gathers within himself all those [as yet unpurified] words and ties them to the Creator. Thus, every positive quality present in the Tsaddik is purified and radiant, so that the Tsaddik can find an en- trance for this quality in every human being who listens to his words about the practice of such a quality and its ethics.” But another element also contributed to the development of this new image of the Tsaddik as the central figure in the Hasidic community— albeit an underground one and, unlike the previously discussed elements, one never admitted to in any Hasidic writings. This element is the legacy of the Sabbatian movement, both in terms of its own innovative concepts of pneumatic and prophetic leadership, and the paradoxical and heretical developments of its theology. Sabbatai Zevi’s messianic movement, which shook the very foundations of seventeenth-century Judaism,” sought to break open the gates of salvation; in so doing, it deeply transformed the TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE + 125 prototype of the societal leader. This is not surprising: a movement that announced the coming of an entirely new and transformed world, ‘Olam ha-Tikkun, in which all things would be changed and reintegrated, natu- rally rejected the traditional figure of the rabbi as talmudic scholar. The living core of the group, the bearer of messianic hope and tidings, was to be found in the prophet and visionary, whose heart had been touched by God. A new kind of spiritual authority necessarily had to emerge here, which was bound to conflict with the older rabbinical authority. Once the movement was banned, the underground sectarian mood that devel- oped prevented any compromise between these two types of leadership. The basic thesis upon which the Sabbatian heresy was based—the paradoxical and shocking doctrine of the Messiah’s necessary apostasy in order to bring salvation—could only result in a dialectical destruction of any notion of true spiritual authority. In these circles everything hinged on the personality and charisma of the man recognized as a prophet or representative of the apostate Messiah. The ineluctable result of this ex- plosion of intense feeling unparalleled in Jewish history since the Bar Kokhba rebellion was an irrational, highly emotional attitude. Much as the theologians of Sabbatianism sought to rationalize it, there was some- thing essentially irrational in their defense of the basic doctrine, that is, the paradoxical idea of apostasy as a camouflage for the Messiah’s re- demptive mission into the depths of impurity. No doubt influenced by its contact with pre-Hasidic pietist groups, which were filled with crypto-Sabbatians,’’ Hasidism adopted the prin- ciple of pneumatic leadership, which was intrinsically opposed to tradi- tional rabbinic leadership. Men of prophetic quality, who were seen as living on a different plane from ordinary mortals, were now recognized as the central figures. This notion was absorbed in the new concept of the Tsaddik that developed within the Hasidic movement. The mystical symbol of the Kabbalah and its earthly representative, the popular preacher of awakening, and the living prophet who announced a life filled with paradoxes (a Sabbatian legacy), were here fusec into one image. On a new level and under new circumstances, the Hasidic Tsaddik was con- stituted of those elements that each of these types, taken separately, had 126 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD represented in their own time in the consciousness of their followers. It is in vain that even in our time there are those who attempt to obscure this central fact. The connection between the heretical groups of Sabbatian mystics and the earliest bearers of Hasidic teachings is admittedly not based on any doctrinal similarity. In this respect, everything was transformed. Yet nearly all of the characteristic themes of Sabbatian paradox reappear in one form or another in the writings of the earliest Hasidic theologians, R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye and R. Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezhirech, men who by no stretch of the imagination can be viewed as Sabbatians. Yet during the early and middle eighteenth century, this type of thinking was widespread in Podolia, the center of Polish Sabbatianism; the leaders of Hasidism used these ideas in their own creative fashion, giving them a constructive and positive twist within the context of their own move- ment. This cannot, however, obscure the true origin of some of the most popular and important theses of this movement regarding its new doc- trine of the Tsaddik. This applies, above all, to the central notion of the necessary descent of the Tsaddik and the positive meaning of this descent for the structure of the Hasidic community. Nowhere does such a thesis appear in any earlier rabbinical or Kabbalistic Musar works; it is astonish- ing that earlier scholars of Hasidism, no doubt largely for apologetic rea- sons, ignored the obvious genealogy of such a thesis. The need for the true Tsaddik to disguise himself in order to conquer the realm of evil follows the same reasoning and employs the same metaphors in Hasidic writings as were offered by the Sabbatians in apology for the mystical apostasy of their own Messiah. The antinomian sting born by this paradox in its Sabbatian form has been carefully removed, but the idea itself re- mains: that by his very nature, the Tsaddik’s path is fraught with peril and skirts abysses. These dangers cannot be pushed aside or avoided by some clever maneuver, but are a substantive part of his task and must be con- fronted head on—as is done in “the elevation of alien thoughts” and their correction in their source. After all, it is this unique combination of unshakable and unlimited trust in God, together with the demand (tersely put) “to live dangerously,” that provides the most salient charac- teristic of the figure of the Tsaddik in Hasidism. TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE + 127 V What, then, is the Hasidic concept of the Tsaddik, as it took shape under the influence of the creative amalgamation of all these elements, and as it developed in Hasidic writings itself before it became a subject for legend and hagiography?” The statements of the Baal Shem Tov and of his major disciples are quite clear about this matter, even though the writings on this subject of the Maggid of Mezhirech and his disciples were character- ized by extravagant formulations of a mystical nature that were quite alien to the utterances of the Baal Shem himself. For the Baal Shem Tov, the ideal figure is the man who fulfills the one central, basic demand placed upon him: to live in constant communion with God (devekuth), so that even his active life will be filled with the intention to raise the holy sparks that, according to the Lurianic Kabba- lah, are scattered in all things and in all realms of being. The soul of the Tsaddik is itself rooted in the World of Divine Emanation, ‘Olam ha- *Atsiluth, so that he is subject to the spiritual law of this sphere, which is “above the law of nature.” His mission is to fight against evil: “When- ever a proper and righteous man is to be created, there is a protest in heaven before the soul descends into the body. Satan rages against it because this one will lead his contemporaries back to the good path.” ”® The Baal Shem Tov focuses directly upon the Tsaddik’s activities on behalf of his generation. The figure of the Tsaddik who remains hidden does not much interest him, even though his followers speak a great deal about the special class of the “hidden righteous” who operate anonymously, in solitude or unrecognized by society.’’ The Baal Shem Tov is concerned with the Tsaddik who goes out and exposes himself to struggle; the Tsaddik is not an isolated figure: The entire world constitutes a unity, a complete structure (komah shlemah) [i.e., reflecting the totality of the Sefiroth|—this one is the head, this one the eye, that one the leg. If, therefore, a man com- mits a sin, something of that sin is mirrored even in the Whole Ones of Israel [i.e., the Righteous]. If [the Tsaddik] eradicates and erases the stain that he finds in himself and does penitence before 128 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD God, because of this that sinner will also repent. ... And this is what is meant by “peace be upon Israel” [Ps. 128:6]—when the faithful in Israel, the heads of the generation, are whole, then the masses of the people are also humble.” This basic idea is the key to understanding the subsequent hypertrophy of the doctrine, which scholars of Hasidism have rightly dubbed “Tsad- dikism.” The Tsaddik certainly has extraordinary powers as an envoy of the spiritual world and a helper of mankind—and the Baal Shem Tov’s statements allow no doubt as to this power.” Nowhere in his thought do we find the concept of the Tsaddik as a fixed institution; however, the enthusiastic and sublime utterances about the ideal figure of the move- ment could easily be transposed to the practical establishment of this institution, which was bound to evolve from the application of the doc- trine regarding the function of the Righteous One. The Baal Shem frequently speaks of the Rosh ha-Dor, the leader of the generation, in the spiritual sense of the person who lives in communion with God, but utilizes his power in order to draw his contemporaries upward with him. Thus, the Baal Shem Tov (or his early colleague and disciple, R. Menahem Mendel of Bar) describes the path of the true mo- khiah who, in his eyes, obviously belongs among these spiritual leaders: I heard from the Rav and Maggid, our master and teacher R. Me- nahem Mendel, concerning that which is stated in the Zohar [Il, 128b]: “He who takes the hand of the wicked and attempts to make him abandon the path of evil, ascends three ascents.” . . . If one says words of rebuke and morality to the people of his town, he should first strive to bind himself to God, may He be blessed, and then bind and connect himself to them, and form a unity and totality with them. For the leaders of the generation and their contempo- raries have a common root for their souls. If he acts thus, the Lord his God will be with him, and he will ascend with them to bind them to God. And that is why the Zohar speaks of “taking their hand to raise them up.” ... And I also heard this from my master [i-e., the Besht] concerning the elevation of the matter of prayer as wel].®° TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE + 129 Moreover, “the leader of the generation is able to ennoble all of the speech and idle talk of his contemporaries, to unite the material and the spiritual, like the two pranksters” mentioned in the Talmud.*! The tal- mudic anecdote alluded to here, which the Baal Shem Tov evidently found especially appealing and which indeed has an authentically Hasidic tone, explains that Rabbi Beroka was in the habit of going to the market- place of his town in Babylonia, where the Prophet Elijah visited him. R. Beroka asked him whether there were any “children of the World to Come” [i.e., people who would enjoy everlasting bliss] in the market- place. Elijah pointed out two brothers who were walking by and said, “These two.” The rabbi asked them: “What do you people do?” They said, “We are jesters. If someone is feeling sad, we try to cheer him up, and if we see people fighting, we try to make peace between them.”®” These jesters are righteous men after the Baal Shem’s own heart: they do not sit at home thinking about their own salvation, but work in the dirty bustling marketplace, as he himself loved to do. The strength of their communion with God is proved in their ability to permeate coarse matter and raise it to the level of spirituality. The most humble and routine activity thus serves as an instrument for supreme achievement. The above statement that the true leader can even elevate the everyday small talk of his fellow men indicates that the Baal Shem Tov himself did not balk at extravagant utterances on this subject. The Tsaddik himself participates in this everyday conversation, to which he gives a spiritual aspect by his contemplative activity. This paradox doubtless had its dan- gerous Side, no less than the similar thesis, which also had its root in the Sabbatian tradition, that one can virtually detoxify and transform sin and evil by contemplative absorption. By means of this contemplation one transforms (“sweetens”) them at their very roots—albeit not by living them out in actuality, as was done by the Sabbatians, but by binding them to their root in holiness.** In this version of the paradox the social sphere is seen as the proper medium for expressing the pneumatic power of the Tsaddik. The righteous man originally enters the social sphere in order to spiritualize it and to restore active life to its spiritual roots; in so doing, however, the Tsaddik is himself transformed. The true friend of God be- comes the true friend of man, and the accent shifts imperceptibly. One 130 ° ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD of the main terms of Hasidism is hayyuth, vitality, identified in Hasidic writings with the concept of shefa‘, the divine influx that, as we saw earlier, flows from the Sefirah of Tsaddik to the lower worlds, particularly to the earthly Tsaddikim who represent the light of this Sefirah in their own lives. The two notions—the influx flowing into the Tsaddik through his own communion with God, and the spiritual vitality always spoken of here as his dynamic essence—become unified in a single concept of vital energy flowing from the Tsaddik to his contemporaries."* Thereafter, of course, this general claim was applied to the specific leader and the mem- bers of his group, who received their shefa‘ from him. The Lurianic doctrine of the uplifting of the sparks, which constitute the spiritual vitality of the world, demands a separation between the spiritual and the material, which had come to dominate the former. If carried to its logical conclusion, the world would ultimately be emptied of its pneumatic element, and the raising of the holy sparks would serve a destructive rather than a corrective, world-sustaining function. The Baal Shem Tov was well aware of the destructive aspect of this teaching, which he accepted, as illustrated in an important dialogue recorded by Rabbi Ze’ev Wolf of Zhitomir.** This point throws into question the existentialist reading of this doctrine, such as is found in Martin Buber’s later writings on Hasidism. The notion of the overflowing quality of the divine influx may run counter to the notion that the world is emptied by the raising of the sparks (a far cry from Buber’s glorification of the “con- crete”); yet these two notions are actually coupled in Hasidic writings, and constitute a new development of the doctrine of the hayyuth vivifying the worlds. The Tsaddik, rather than drawing vitality from the material sphere, adds to it something of the spiritual power emanating from within himself, or at least maintains that sphere in an uneasy equilib- rium—renewed from moment to moment—between the sparks raised upward by his activity and the vitality that streams downward from him. The contradiction between these two basic conceptions was never fully resolved in Hasidic teaching. But there are many ways to affect other people and to connect with them spiritually, and direct social contact is not always judged as sympa- thetically as it was by the Baal Shem Tov himself. Naturally, everything TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE + 131 depends upon the personality of the Tsaddik. At times, the ideal method for leaders to attain their “ascent” seemed to be through retreat from society: If it is agreed and room is allowed for the leaders of the generation, who seek isolation, to attach themselves to God, may He be blessed, through prayer and study, and that they be free of communal con- cerns, this solitude will be of benefit for him and for them, that they may thereby also connect to Him, may He be blessed.*° But even in this case, retreat and isolation are usually seen as only the first step, a preparatory stage for subsequent activity within the frame- work of the community. One might note that it is precisely the Rabbi of Polonnoye, who is an advocate of this idea, who also formulates his no- tions of the Tsaddik’s social function with considerable lucidity and pre- cision. These notions occur repeatedly, and many of the Baal Shem Tov’s authentic utterances indicate that these are indeed a legitimate develop- ment of his own teachings. The Hasidic doctrine of the social function of the Tsaddik is illustrated by an image found frequently in the earliest Hasidic writings on this subject: that of the duality of matter and form, which are simultaneously opposed and interconnected. This image was already used in this way by R. Moses Alshekh, the sixteenth-century preacher and Kabbalist of Safed, whose writings were extremely popular among the early Hasidic authors. Every community is composed of two elements: the people of form and the people of matter—i.e., the scholars and the uneducated vulgus, who are better off economically but also removed from the spiri- tual. These two types are mutually dependent, and ought to constitute an organic whole. Form tries to imprint itself upon matter and raise it to a higher level, while matter has a natural yearning to be raised up or transmuted into form. At times this correlation appears in the metaphor of body and soul, while at others it appears as a process in which the corporeal element within society is constantly transfrmed into form: Man is created out of matter and form, which are two opposites, for matter follows the obstinacy of bodily matter, which is the ke- 132 + ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD lippoth, while the form craves and desires spiritual things. And the purpose of man’s creation is to make of matter form, and that they be one unity, and not separate things. And just as this is the purpose of the individual man, so it is in the totality of the Israelite nation, who are called “the people of the multitude of the House of Israel,” because their main involvement is with the earthiness of matter, and therefore they are [likened to] matter. This is not the case of the righteous ones, who engage in Torah and the service of God, who constitute form, for the main aim is that matter become form. ... And then they, the Israelite nation, are attached to His great Name.*’ For this conception of the function of the perfect man, i.e., the Tsaddik, the author quite justifiably relies upon Maimonides’ teachings in Guide for the Perplexed. hs The figure of the Tsaddik is thus seen in terms of his mission among his fellow men. Nevertheless, the essentially contemplative orientation of the Hasidic scale of values—i.e., toward the goal of devekuth—is preserved within this framework; in fact, one may say it is precisely this social framework that lends it its special character. We could not speak of a specific world of Hasidism were it not for this attempt to define the role of the saint, and of the Tsaddik as a saintly figure, within the framework of an organic, functioning Jewish group. Compared with Tsaddikism, all other Hasidic teachings, as bizarre or as important as they may be, could not serve as the basis for a social phenomenon of a distinct physiognomy. Contrary to the accepted view, R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, the chief advocate of this idea, did not envision a special class of Tsaddikim, each of whom “served” on behalf of their individual group. Indeed, many state- ments of the Baal Shem Tov himself indicate, in an even more pointed and penetrating fashion, that he was concerned simply with a spiritual reform of the traditional rabbi, preacher, and Talmud scholar; his main goal was simply to arouse among them a sense of mystical responsibility for the totality of the community—a feeling that, in Hasidic opinion, was evidently lacking in many of these people. The Tsaddik is thus deline- ated here, not as an adversary of the traditional rabbi, but as an improved TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE * 133 version. If things did not develop this way historically, it was due to the other elements in this new ideal, and the fact that its most effective champions were too much rooted in its legacy to easily integrate into the traditional rabbinic ideal. The prophetic and enthusiastic impulses were simply too powerful. What happened may have been unintended, but followed a certain inner logic: the pious scholar, who felt himself destined to spiritually uplift the community, became a rival, endangering the po- sition of the old-fashioned and—if one may phrase it thus—unawak- ened rabbi. Highly illuminating in this regard are two popular definitions of the Hasidic Tsaddik—or, as he was known in the Yiddish vernacular, the rebbe, in contrast with the purely rabbinic scholar, the rov. The difference in spelling of the two Hebrew words consists of an additional yod, or “point,” in the word rebbe. The rebbe, says one definition, is a rov with a yod; that is, a rov who has attained that hidden point where he touches the Divine. The second definition interprets the numerical value of the Hebrew letter yod, ten, as alluding to the ten men that constitute a min- yan, a religious community, according to Jewish law. Thus, says the sec- ond definition, a rebbe is a rov with a yod, i.e., with a living community— in other words, a community of people who have been awakened and touched by the divine spirit. The ideal advocated by the Rabbi of Polnn- oye and the Maggid of Mezhirech was that one be at once both a rov and a rebbe; however, this ideal was only realized sporadically in the course of the Hasidic movement. Essentially, the two types remained separate, and the Tsaddikim became a special type of essentially spiritualistic and char- ismatic figures. The writings of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezhirech are particularly rich in mystical definitions of this prototypical Righteous One. The quality of extremism, which at the beginning of our discussion we saw as an essen- tial quality of the Hasid, is now transferred in certain respects to the Tsaddik. The Tsaddik stands in the realm of nothingness; this paradoxical statement, inconceivable before Hasidism, combines a purely mystical element with a moral one, fluctuating in emphasis toward one side or another. This nothingness is the divine nothing (Ayin): it is that sphere within the Godhead from which all true Creation springs. It is also the 134 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD end of the road that the Kabbalist traverses during his absorption in the Sefiroth.™ On his road toward the divine nothing, he must cast off all individual qualities and distinctiveness, making himself infinitesimally small, indeed, nothing, in order to pass through the “Gateway of Noth- ingness” (Sha‘ar ha-Ayin or Sha‘ar ha-Nun) of which the Maggid of Mezhi- rech speaks. But the “casting off of physicality” attained in prayer also belongs to this nothingness,”’ identified with the state of pure spirituality. It is in this way that the paradoxical utterances about the rank of the Tsaddik are explained: because he himself exists in Nothingness, wanting nothing for himself and having nothing that is his own, he becomes purely a medium or vessel through which flows the shefa‘, the divine influx of vitality, proceeding from him to all beings. Because he has placed himself on the lowest level and regarded himself as nothing, he reaches the center. Because he has nullified himself, becoming a pure medium, “the Tsaddik is called a mirror, for everyone who looks at him sees himself as in a mirror.””’ The talmudic saying “Greater are the deeds of the righteous than the Creation of heaven and earth” is applied to the Tsaddik standing at this point of nothingness: For the Creation of heaven and earth was an act of creating some- thing out of nothing, while the deeds of the righteous create noth- ing out of something. For all the things which he does, even corporeal ones such as eating, elevate holy sparks of this food to the divine realm. Thus, from every thing, we find that he makes something into nothing.” But alongside this definition linking the Tsaddik to the highest Sefiroth, we also find a wealth of utterances concerning the Sefirah of Tsaddik, which are now transposed to the function of the Hasidic Tsaddik. All the symbols of this Sefirah are transferred to him, but reinterpreted in terms of his function as mediator between heaven and earth. This characteristic passage shows how closely these Kabbalistic sym- bols were connected with the new Hasidic idea: The true Tsaddik must attach himself to all levels, even the lowest ones, corresponding to the letter rav, and to bring himself up, level TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE *° 135 after level, in the mystery of TaShRoK [i.e., the reverse sequence of the Hebrew alphabet] to the letter alef, which is the Master (Alufo) of the World. For as even the lowest levels were created with the letters of the Torah, even the letter tav [the last of all letters] con- tains the revelation of the Godhead, which is the alef of the world—albeit in restricted form, at the end of the levels, remote from the alef. Hence, the righteous man who binds himself to the Creator must do so with all the letters of the Torah, from last to first (tav to alef), to carry all the levels close to the alef of the world. For the essence of the perfect service of God consists in raising all the lower levels upward. And that is the meaning of the talmudic saying: “There is one column in the world, and what is it? The Righteous One.” For the Tsaddik is called One because of the unity by which he unites himself with all the levels from earth to heaven; that is, from the end of all levels, which is earthly materiality, correspond- ing to the letter tav, to the heavens, which is the highest level, corresponding to alef. And that is why the Tsaddik is also called the All (Kol), as in the verse “for all that is in the heaven and in the earth” [I Chron. 29:11], which Onkelos rendered [in his Aramaic translation] as “who is one in heaven and earth,” because he is in- cluded in all the levels, and is one in heaven and earth. Therefore, the Tsaddik is called “the Foundation of the World,” like the meta- phor of a building that rests upon its foundation, when one wishes to lift it, one must do so from undemeath its foundation, and thereby the entire building built upon those foundations is lifted up. Likewise, when the Tsaddik connects himself with all the levels, when he rises up, so do all the other levels ascend, as in the above metaphor. And this is: “For one Tsaddik was the world created.” .. . For the world was only created because of the righteous, who are counted as one—for they unify themselves with all the levels, and by their means all the levels ascend. How much more so must every Tsaddik connect himself with all the other Tsaddikim, as he must even combine himself with all the other lower levels. Therefore, it says, “one Tsaddik”: for even though they are many, they count as one in terms of the oneness [which they together form]. . . . For this rea- 136 °* ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD son it is written thereafter: “The world is sustained for the sake of even one righteous man, as is written, ‘The righteous is the foun- dation of the world?” For the world could not survive without the Tsaddik even for a moment, because of the actions of the wicked that bring down the world and tear asunder the divine letters, sepa- rating the tav from the alef. But by the action of the Tsaddik in combining and uniting with all the levels, he raises the world above the level of its fall, and it rises and is united in the state of alef, which is the Master of the World; and because the foundation is lifted, the entire edifice rises. That is why Torah scholars are called builders, as in [the talmudic wordplay on Isa. 54:13], “Do not read here ‘your sons’ (banayikh) but ‘your builders’ (bonayikh).”™ The strong note of sexual symbolism in the Kabbalistic conception, survives in hundreds of Hasidic dicta,?*> but now tends to refer to the Tsaddik’s activities in the community of which he is the center, or to his activity in the community of all living things. The mystical symbolism of life, which we have noted above, is here given free rein. The Tsaddik is the Living One, who transcends death and aging; he exists in a state of con- tinuously renewed communion with the source of all life and thereby sustains the balance, harmony, and peace of the world. In this sense the Tsaddik is the constantly changing one,”* whose essence is flowing and original Judaism, like all religious communities based upon tradition, does not see originality as a particularly important or praiseworthy value; but Hasidism places the figure of the truly original man in the center, as the one who bears the burden of the community. Because he opens the springs from whence flows the stream of life, hayyuth, others too can reach those springs.”’ Their emulation of the Tsaddik’s ways allows them to likewise partake in his originality. The Baal Shem Tov loved to quote a talmudic saying concerning one of the so-called “early Hasidim,” Hanina ben Dosa, of whom a celestial voice said: “The entire world is nourished because of my son Hanina.””* The word here translated as “because of” (bishevil ) can also be understood in the sense of “path” (shevil ); the Besht thus meant to say that the entire world was nourished and maintained by the new path opened by Hanina. Every Tsaddik finds his own way or path, TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE * 137 and is himself transformed into a path through which the vital strength flows from above to below; the path he opens can then be taken by others. Yet one must remember that the emulation is not as authentic as the original thing. The rabbinic dictum, “many have done . . . as Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, but did not succeed,” is frequently quoted in this connection. This conception of the Tsaddik is not too distant from that which views him as the “living Torah.” The holy letters of this Torah, in which the hidden light shines and refracts in an infinity of meaning, themselves become the foundation of life. The Tsaddik combines with the spirituality hidden within the letters—a concept much loved by the Besht—which also shines in him, thereby everything he does becomes infinitely significant, like the Revelation itself. In Hasidic literature, this entire complex of ideas is connected with the doctrine of the descent of the Tsaddik, an idea that was developed in the most diverse directions and which, as I have said, was unknown in pre-Hasidic Jewish ethics—either in regard to the Tsaddik or to the Hasid. It is not always possible to attain the same degree of intensity of devekuth, of communion with God; there are periods of ascent and of descent, corresponding to the pulse of life generally. The higher state could easily be seen as one of pure absorption, or even of ecstasy, while the lower state is one in which the tasks of active life are performed, with ceaseless consciousness of the Holy. The Baal Shem was fond of saying that “con- 1”! and that permanent rapture is stant pleasure is no pleasure at al impossible. Such fluctuations are a continuous part of the Tsaddik’s life with God, even when his life is not viewed in relation to its function for his fellowman. At times there arises the question, How can the Tsaddik make this state—which is described in the most disparate terms, even to the point of the remoteness or seeming absence of God—fruitful for his own road? Where is the Tsaddik, if he no longer stands in nothingness, and what is he, if he no longer ascends but sinks? For the disciples of the Maggid, this state is first and foremost connected with the social function of the Tsaddik, however metaphysically it may be understood. Whether or t,'°' or whether not this fall is a necessary precondition for his own ascen it is undertaken or submitted to voluntarily out of a sense of mission, in either case the fall of the Tsaddik is connected with the life of the com- 138 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD munity; the attainment of his true goal is utterly unthinkable without this fall. This paradox is a dangerous one, rooted in the legacy of the Sabbatian messianic doctrine, albeit one that here assumes a positive and constructive meaning, despite its paradoxical nature. The descent is no longer a matter of treachery, apostasy, or demonic preoccupation with evil; it now involves the performance of a task essential to the survival of society. The Tsaddik encounters evil by means of his descent, which he transforms by taking it and permeating it contemplatively. This change can take place in the purely mental sphere, or in any other. In order to redeem the wicked, the righteous man does not need to speak to him face to face, to seek his company and to arouse him (the Hasidim were quite imbued with the belief in the magic power of goodness to operate from a distance)—but that, too, is possible. These direct relationships were part of the lives of the great Tsaddikim who were the centers of their groups. The Hasidic community is based upon the mystery of the descent of the Tsaddik. “A righteous man falleth seven times and riseth up again” (Prov. 24:16), as the biblical verse says, but when he rises, he raises the community along with himself. The descent of the Tsaddik is the great adventure, without which he cannot perform his mission. His descent or fall is portrayed in the Hasidic texts with all the dark devotion and ardor, indeed with the very same images and arguments, as were mustered by the Sabbatians to explain the fall of their Messiah, who converted to Islam. The Hasidic teachers were well aware of the dangers of this under- taking, many remained below, as is frequently emphasized: “The descent is sure, while the ascent is uncertain.” '°? Nevertheless, this is a task to which the Tsaddik must submit if he wishes to be true to himself. This is the “descent for the sake of ascent” referred to by the now classical formula.!°? The Tsaddik is similar to the red heifer, whose ashes “render the impure pure, but the pure impure”—an image applied repeatedly to the Messiah in the Sabbatian writings.'* According to the Hasidic read- ing, this was the mission carried out by all the great figures of the Bible. It is what Abraham and Moses did, and, according to a statement from the Tikkunei Zohar frequently quoted by the Hasidim,'® every Tsaddik con- tains a spark of Moses in him. The path to community involves the re- TSADDIK: THE RIGHTEOUS ONE + 139 nunciation of mystical isolation with God; however, this renunciation is rooted in the very nature and position of the Tsaddik. The Hasidic authors well understood that the relationship of the Tsaddik to his contemporaries has its own dialectics. He not only gives freely and generously (a notion that might be suggested by the above-mentioned metaphor of matter and form); he also receives no less than he gives. By attempting to lift up his contemporaries, he himself is raised; the more he fulfills his function as the center and head of the community, the more his own spiritual stature grows. By becoming a medium and vessel for others, the stream of life flowing through him endlessly heightens the intensity of his own life.'* We have traveled a long road, showing how the mystical symbolism of the Tsaddik developed, and how the wealth of meanings in this symbol changed and combined with new elements. Through the biblical and talmudic history of the term, we have seen the range of meanings present in this concept, its transformation in the Kabbalah into a symbol, to once again become a historical factor in the establishment of the central figure of the Hasidic Tsaddik. We have come to know the Tsaddik as the man totally rooted in God, whose mind is focused upon God in all things. Hasidic writings also contain the notion of the unconscious, which pre- cedes all conscious action and thought, from which the latter arise and upon which they draw. Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezhirech coins his own term for the notion of the unconscious: Kadmuth ha-Sekhel.'°’ | have found no terser, finer, or more exhaustive definition of the nature and function of the Hasidic Tsaddik than an utterance made by the Maggid in 1770: “The Tsaddikim make God, if one may phrase it thus, their unconscious.” !°* — Shekhinah: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY I How fortunate we Kabbalah scholars are! When I compare the efforts of present-day biblical scholars to shed new light on the true, i.e., mythical, character of certain central images in the Hebrew Bible, | see how much of their work is based upon arduously constructed yet highly precarious hypotheses. I then breathe a sigh of relief about my own discipline, in which things are, if | may say so, so much more concrete—or would be, if the Kabbalah were to attract the solid reasoning of scholars rather than the extravagant fantasies of charlatans. At times the Bible scholars are able to advance in their intellectual endeavor only at the price of accept- ing a dubious alteration in reading or by violating the exact wording of a text. Basically, (and certainly unfortunately), their achievements will seem highly questionable to anyone approaching the biblical text with an impartial mind. In the Kabbalistic writings of medieval Judaism, all those things that 140 SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY * 141 in the Bible must be forceably wrenched and twisted out are evident here for all to see. With regard to the survival or revival of mythical notions, which modern biblical researchers must strive so hard to clarify, the texts with which the scholar of Kabbalah is concerned allow him to proceed with far greater methodological confidence than do those of the scholars of the religion of ancient Israel or of Judaism after the Babylonian exile. The latter must move across the fertile but shaky ground whose bound- aries were first staked off by the brilliant but misleading hypotheses of Hermann Gunkel or Sigmund Mowinckel. The Shekhinah—which we shall for the present define in the most general way as the personification and hypostasis of God’s “indwelling” or “presence” in the world—is a concept that has intimately accompa- nied the Jewish people for some two thousand years, through all phases of its turbulent and tragic existence. The nation expressed the impact of its history in its spiritual and intellectual life in the most diverse forms— in halakhah and aggadah, in philosophy and Kabbalah, in messianic move- ments and Hasidism. The concept of the Shekhinah accompanied them throughout this history, itself undergoing manifold developments and transformations. I] Do Kabbalistic images of the Shekhinah have a prehistory in the biblical text or the Apocrypha? Two questions must be asked here, concerning which at least a few brief remarks would be appropriate. First, does this literature contain any hypostases of divine forces and qualities that are not merely literary personifications or poetic metaphors? Second, does one already find there personifications that are of an essentially feminine character? These two questions have been intensely discussed, and just as vigorously debated, in a voluminous body of writing, which has grown considerably in recent years. Undoubtedly, there are some personifica- tions that are not merely conceptual abstractions, but which are pre- sented in concrete imagery, as if they were independent, self-contained entities. Yet it is extremely difficult to determine where the borderline of 142 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD metaphor is crossed: where we are dealing with mere survivals or rem- nants of older, perhaps ancient Near Eastern mythologies, and where these same ancient images are cloaked in a new guise, in a more moderate form, rendered harmless because of Judaism’s hostility to myth. 1 would not care to join battle with those already struggling in this arena, but I must confess—to cite only the most renowned and outstanding ex- ample—that many of the statements made about biblical “Wisdom” and its alleged mythical background strike me as highly hypothetical and ten- uous. However, the first of my two questions may already be answered in the afhrmative—so long as we are speaking of hypostases of forces, with- out necessarily seeing them as divine forces, that is, without seeing them (as many people do) as aspects of the Godhead itself. One needs to undergo considerable convolutions in order to interpret, for example, the descriptions of Wisdom, or Sophia, in chapters 1 through 10 of Proverbs and chapter 28 of Job, as a hypostasis bearing a divine character. In these effusive descriptions, with their far-reaching impact on the history of religion, Wisdom always quite clearly remains the first of the created beings; it may be older than all visible Creation, but, however ancient, it is always thought of as younger than God and never as coeternal with Him: The Lord made me as the beginning of His way. The first of His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning. Or ever the earth was. (Prov. 8:22—23) Here Wisdom was God's “confidant” or “craftsman” at the time of Cre- ation, but was not identified with God Himself; it is a denizen of the invisible world, but hardly an aspect of the one God, much less His spouse. If the corresponding figures of Wisdom in other religious systems ap- pear as goddesses (some truly ancient if not entirely convincing material has been adduced in this connection), it is here deliberately and reso- lutely demoted from that rank and stripped of its divine character. From a psychological point of view, it seems unlikely that we would find here SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY * 143 the rebirth or reemergence of that mythical character whose rejection was such a central even in the world of biblical religion. There is a certain impatience in these efforts to discover that which had just been overcome and defeated in these new shapes, as if nothing had ever happened. We now turn to the second question, concerning the appearance of female hypostases: to the best of my knowledge, pre-Philonic literature contains only a single passage in which Wisdom is spoken of as a bride or spouse, without our needing to resort to forced or distorted interpre- tations. In the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, we read: Her I loved and sought out from my youth, And I sought to take her for my bride. And I became enamoured of her beauty. She proclaimeth her noble birth In that it is given her to live with God, And the Sovereign Lord of all loved her. (Wisd. of Sol. 8:2—3) The meaning of these words, however, can only be understood within the context of the entire chapter and in terms of its linguistic usage. Reference is made to Wisdom’s “symbiosis” with God throughout this chapter, not only in the generalized sense of intimacy, but in the clear sense of shared conjugal life. The feminine names for Wisdom, which can be quite simply explained as resulting from the feminine gender of the corresponding nouns in Hebrew and Greek, cannot ultimately be cited as proof of the female character of the figure itself. In Jewish thought the figure of Wisdom first appears in an unequivo- cally female form in the writings of Philo of Alexandria. In his work on drunkenness, he states: And thus the Creator [Demiurge] who created our entire universe is rightly called the Father of all Created Things, while we call Knowledge [Episteme, identical in Philo with Sophia] Mother, whom God knew and procreated [i.e., through her] Creation, albeit not in human fashion. However, she received the divine seed and bore with labor the one and beloved son ... the ripe fruit that is this world.’ 144 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD We find here a genuine “sacred marriage” (hieros gamos), a metaphor that seems singularly out of place in the ancient Jewish tradition—so much so that some scholars (beginning with Richard Reitzenstein) sought here echoes of Hellenistic myths taken from Egypt.’ It is difficult for me to accept this premise, if for no other reason than that Philo’s image of the Father and Mother creating the universe is in large measure shaped by the biblical verse he is interpreting—i.e., that of the rebellious son, whose father and mother should be trying to save him (Deut. 21:20), but instead bring charges against him. This imagery is virtually dictated by the hermeneutics.‘ In other passages, too, Philo speaks of God as “the Father of all things ... and the Husband of Wisdom, who sows the seed of eudaemonia in the good and virginal earth.” ° These lines speak of a marriage to a Mother Wisdom, who constantly renews the mystery of her virginity. Hence, she is at once both a virgin bride and a mother—an image that will again appear in highly significant contexts in Kabbalistic symbolism. Wisdom likewise appears as God’s daughter, in an image fusing allegory and arche- type in an interpretation of the biblical name Bethuel: “because she is the true daughter [i.e., of God] (bath el) and eternally virginal (bethulah).”® But in the same passage we immediately find a statement that negates any archetypal understanding of this image: Now Bethuel is the father of Rebecca [see Gen. 22:23]. But how can Wisdom, God’s daughter, be called a father? Precisely because, although her name is feminine, her nature is masculine. . . . There- fore, we do not concern ourselves with names, but simply declare God’s daughter, Wisdom, to be masculine; for she is the father who sows and breeds wisdom, insight, and virtuous deeds in the souls. This problem—namely, the male aspects within the female character of Wisdom—will recur in the Shekhinah in different but not altogether dis- similar contexts. I have gone into some detail here about Hokhmah, or Sophia, because its connection with the Kabbalistic idea of Shekhinah has long drawn scholarly attention. However, we should also mention some other per- SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY * 145 sonifications that were subsequently combined with the image of Shekhi- nah or, like Sophia/Wisdom, linked to it. First and foremost is the maternal image of Rachel, which has appeared repeatedly since the fa- mous image in Jeremiah (chap. 31) of Rachel weeping for her children as they go off into exile; or the personification of Zion as a maternal figure, in contrast with the phrase “daughter of Zion” that alone appears in Scripture. “Mother Zion” is first mentioned in the Septuagint’s reading of Psalms 87:5, whose original text speaks only of Zion:’ “But of Zion it shall be said: ‘This man and that was born in her’”” The image was most probably inspired by the verse in Isaiah 66:8: “For as soon as Zion tra- vailed, she brought forth her children.” This image reappears in the later apocalypses, such as IV Ezra, unquestionably the most important Jewish apocalypse, which speaks of Zion as “the mother of us all” (10:7; Kahana, 8:7). Likewise, long before the emergence of the Kabbalah’s symbolic language, talmudic literature occasionally employed the image of Jerusa- lem or Zion as the Mother of Israel.? But nowhere is Zion used as an expression for any power or quality of God Himself. It may appear as a figure whose home is in the supernal worlds, in a similar way to the ancient Near Eastern notions of a correspondence between the lower and higher worlds. However, in the ancient Jewish writings, Zion has nothing to do with the mystery of the Godhead itself; nor does the “heavenly Jerusalem,” which is already linked by the New Testament to the above- mentioned image of “Mother Zion,” have any presence in the Godhead. The same holds true for the widespread personification of Kenesseth Yisra’el, the “Community of Israel,” employed almost exclusively by rab- binical literature instead of the rare image of “Mother Zion.” This term personifies the collectivity of the nation as a religious figure; it appears in any number of rabbinic statements in the Talmud and the midrash as an active, speaking figure, a spiritual entity having a real existence in the sacral and historical sphere. No wonder this hypostatized image of the “Synagogue” was transformed by the fathers of the ancient Christian community into the image of the “Church” (Ekklesia). The Talmud itself already applies biblical phrases that speak about father and mother to the concepts of God as the Father and the Community of Israel as the Mother. Thus, in Berakhor 35b: 146 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD He who enjoys anything of this world without a blessing is as if he has robbed God and the Community of Israel, as it is written: “Whoso robbeth his father or his mother” [Prov. 28:24]. His father is none other than the Holy One, blessed be He, of Whom it is written: “Is not He thy father that hath gotten thee?” [Deut. 32:6], and his Mother is none other than the Community of Israel, of whom it is written: “Hear, my son, the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the teaching of thy mother” [Prov. 1:8]. In the allegorical reading of the Song of Songs, Kenesseth Yisra’el is thought of as being married to God, and it assumes the undeniable char- acteristics of a female figure. Neither does the aggadah make any attempt to obscure its image as a bride, matron, noble princess, and the like; on the contrary, whenever it discusses the relationship between God and His people in covenantal terms, it invariably uses metaphors and parables (and parable is, after all, the central means of expression in the aggadah) that depict Israel as the female partner in the Covenant. In this respect no text is more informative, or more valuable and impressive, than Song of Songs Rabbah. In this midrash Kenesseth Yisra’el is adorned with all the attributes of gracious femininity, while the biblical images are read as allegories of historical situations—that is, without their mythic “charge” (assuming they have one, a possibility not to be rejected out of hand in light of contemporary scholarship). Again, it is even plainer here than in the above-mentioned cases (if only because of the great wealth of mate- rial available to us) that the authors did not have in mind any image of a divine power. The realm of God never mingles with the realm of Kenesseth Yisra’el in which He acts and which is subject to Him. The abyss between the bride and the bridegroom is never bridged, and any sexual imagery that might suggest otherwise is meticulously avoided. But one thing can be said with certainty (and this is no small thing, to be sure!): that all these passages about Wisdom, Zion, and the Community of Israel created a rich treasury of images. Over the course of time, as the power of these images proved to be stronger than the conscious intention of their au- thors, this treasury was able to nourish an old-new level in the percep- tion of the Divine. This is apparent in Gnosticism, in the Sophia theology SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY * 147 of Christian sects,’ and in the Russian Orthodox Church no less than in the Kabbalah. But our knowledge of this historical process, which | would like to refer to as the “Rebellion of Images,” should not induce us to rashly date it to an earlier period, in which it could not have really taken place. However, there is no doubt that such images did appeal to the mystics, who sought to hypostatize such images, so that all they now had to do was to pull them out and use them for their own purposes. IT] Unlike the above-mentioned images, the term Shekhinah refers to some- thing that clearly belongs to the divine realm. The term is extremely common in talmudic literature from about the first century B.C.E. or the first century C.E., but does not appear in either the Bible or in nonrab- binic writings, despite some abortive efforts to discover it, disguised, in translations, especially in the New Testament (as in the first chapter of John). Neither is this term found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, insofar as they have been published. In the sources this term refers exclusively to God's “dwelling” or “presence” in a particular place, but not to any specific dwelling place. This latter notion is expressed in the Hebrew word mish- kan, used frequently in the Old Testament for God’s dwelling in the Tab- ernacle or the Temple. In the literal sense, God’s dwelling or Shekhinah means His visible or hidden presence in a given place, his immediacy. This presence may be manifested in a supernatural glow of light, known as the “radiance (ziv) of the Shekhinah.” It is also depicted in various im- ages, such as the “wings of the Shekhinah” under which the pious or proselytes take shelter; the “countenance of the Shekhinah” beheld by the righteous (perhaps parallel to the “countenance of the Lord” found in the Bible?); and the “feet of the Shekhinah,” which are pushed out of the world by those who sin in secret. But the Shekhinah can also exist without any particular manifestation of this sort, simply as the presence of God and the awareness of His presence. The Shekhinah, as portrayed in the Talmud, the midrash, and the Ara- maic translations of the Bible, is not perceived as a distinct hypostasis of 148 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD God Himself. It differs in this respect from such qualities of God as His wisdom, His goodness, or His severity, which are unhesitatingly personi- fied in the aggadah, to the extent that they are able to appear before Him and argue with Him, as if they were personifications of moral aspects of Him which had become independent of His own all-transcendent being. It is by no means self-evident that God’s presence in the world was to be identified with His qualities. Thus, the Shekhinah is always God Himself, insofar as He is present in a specific place or at a specific event. In other words: we are dealing with an expression—dqualified in hyperbolic im- ages—for God Himself, one verging on hypostatization. I would there- fore not subscribe to the opinion of such an outstanding scholar as George Foot Moore, who describes the Shekhinah as “a kind of verbal smokescreen to conceal the difficulty presented by the anthropomorphic language.”'° There are no doubt many passages in which the word Shekhinah could be substituted by “the Holy One blessed be He” without any change in meaning. “Two people who sit together and engage in words of Torah, the Shekhinah is with them”; “The evil-doers remove the Shekhinah from the world,” and similar epigrams are discussed in detail by Joshua Abelson in his comprehensive study.'' Indeed, for many utterances about the Shekhinah, one in fact does find parallel passages that use the name “the Holy One, blessed be He”; the two terms may even occur in the very same passage with no discernible difference in meaning. This is ex- cellently illustrated by one of the strangest statements in the tannaitic midrashim, an utterance that originated during the period of sharp con- flict between rabbinic Judaism and second-century Gnosticism: “... Thy people, whom Thou didst redeem to Thee out of Egypt, the nations and their gods” [II Sam. 7:23].... Rabbi Akiva said: Were this not a verse written in Scripture, it would be forbidden to say it. Israel says to the Holy One blessed be He, so to speak: “You have redeemed Yourself.” Hence we find that, wherever Israel was exiled, it is as if the Shekhinah was exiled with them." This image of God’s self-redemption from His own exile was inferred by, of all people, Rabbi Akiva, the outstanding representative of an esoteri- SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEVWENT IN DIVINITY * 149 cism strictly rooted in Jewish Law, while expounding an obscure biblical verse whose very obscurity invited bold speculation. Yet for all the ex- travagance of his interpretation, Rabbi Akiva does not vet draw anv dis- tinction between God and the Shekhineh, as this mishnaic utterance clearly shows. Other statements and exegeses. which were subsequently given an entirely new meaning in light of Kabbalistic linguistic usage, did not have this specific tone in their original context. “There is no place that is empty of the Shekhinch, not even the thornbush.”’ stated in connection with the divine revelation trom the burning bush, simplv means that God can manifest Himself evernwhere—even in the lowliest thing, such as a briar. Here too, the Shekhinah is nothing other than God’s presence. with- out anv further qualification. But it is quite understandable that this omnipresence of God would be interpreted in a nonliteral fashion as one of His qualities, similar to His mercifulness or His strictness. It is difhcult to unambiguously state when and where this signifrcant change came about in ancient Jewish litera- ture. Some scholars, such as Abelson, and to some extent Goldberg. have felt that certain talmudic passages in which God Himself speaks of “Mv Shekhinah” (as in “] remove mv Shekhinch from among them”) force the reader to construe the Shekhinah as a distinct quality of God’s.'* But this seems to me by no means certain: this phrase mav also simplv mean “Mv presence.” One can definitely sav that in all the passages analyzed bv Abelson the Shekhinah never appears opposite God, and nowhere in the ancient exoteric aggadah does it speak of “God and His Shekhinah,” as two distinct entities. God frequently speaks about the Shekhinah. but never to it; never does the expression “I and Mv Shekhinch™ appear. The notion of the Shekhinch as appearing next to God and at His side is simply inconceivable to the ancient aggadists. We should also add at this point that, to the best of our knowledge, the aggadic figure of the Shekhinah is never identifted with or associated with Divine Wisdom (Sophia). Thus, when O. S. Rankin states that the Shekhinah is “a kindred figure to wis- dom,” '> this holds true only for the much later Kabbalistic symbol of the Shekhinah, which we shall study below, never for the ancient rabbinic sources. 150 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD We can nevertheless state that, already in the world of aggadic thought, the personification of the Shekhinah advanced quite far in several directions. Among those passages whose texts can be fairly and incon- testably established, that which goes furthest is the description in Lam- entations Rabbah: When the Shekhinah left the Holy Temple [after its destruction], she turned around and embraced and kissed the walls and columns of the Temple, wept and said: “Greetings to you, house of my holiness; Greetings to you, house of my kingship; greetings to you, house of my glory; greetings to you, from now on, peace be with you.” '® But even here, there is no personification of a female figure, but only an admittedly bold personification of God’s presence. This is clearly shown by the preceding allegory, in which the Shekhinah in this dismal state is compared, not to a princess or to a queen, but to a king, as these sources always do whenever they allegorize about God. Not once does this older literature ever really liken the Shekhinah to a woman. The personification would be even sharper in another passage—one frequently quoted in later Jewish literature—could we be certain that the text is correct (itself a highly controversial point). This mishnaic passage'’ concerns those sentenced to execution and God’s commisera- tion with the torments of the criminal about to be hanged: “When a human being suffers torment, what does the Shekhinah say? ‘My head is heavy, my arm is heavy.” Unfortunately for this theory, several important early manuscripts and numerous quotations lack here the decisive word Shekhinah, and what eventually became a widely known epigram as the utterance of the Shekhinah may have originally been merely a proverbial expression of the human feeling of suffering, which God makes his own.'* But as early as the talmudic period, Jewish linguistic usage concerning the Shekhinah left room for transition to a Gnostic hypostasis—one never documented in any Jewish sources of that period. In this Gnostic usage the Shekhinah appears as a separate hypostasis, albeit an ethereal one that dissolves in vagueness. This appears more clearly in Mandaean literature, in which the Shekhinah is spoken of in the plural. Only once does the SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY ° 151 Talmud mention a plurality of Shekhinahs, and that in an ironic sense and a polemical context: “A heretic [the emperor?] asked Rabban Gamaliel: [You Jews claim that] the Shekhinah is present in every gathering of ten. How many Shekhinahs [Aramaic, shekhinata] are present? How many She- khinahs exist?!’”!? The Mandaeans, however, unhesitatingly went along with this pluralistic rendering of the Shekhinah, which necessarily distin- guishes it from the supreme God, just as they used many other terms from religious language. Their literature repeatedly speaks about myriads upon myriads of worlds, treasure-houses of riches (Uthras, more or less equivalent to thesauroi), and Shekhinahs, without ever pinpointing the meaning of this latter concept. These Shekhinahs are evidently palaces or dwellings of light, themselves brilliant, but without any obvious function in the Mandaean pantheon. On the other hand, in the writings of those Gnostics and mystics who remained within the framework of rabbinic Judaism, and in the literature of the Hekhaloth and the Merkavah school, the term Shekhinah is used no differently than in the contemporary aggadah. These esoterics, the direct heirs of the ancient apocalyptical literature, likewise adopted their overall linguistic usage, in which the Shekhinah was to a large extent identified with the glory of God. The Merkavah world is the place of “His Shekhinah, which is hidden from human beings in the supernal heights.” ”° Instead of the standard talmudic term “throne of glory,” these writings speak of the “throne of the Shekhinah”—that is, the hidden Shekhinah is revealed here to the Merkavah initiate at the height of his vision.”! From this Shekhinah, seated on the throne, there emanates a voice that speaks to the lower beings.” All this strikes me as comprehensible within the context of the above-mentioned conception, which identifies the Shekhinah with God Himself, such that there is no need to assume any further developments here. The subject of the anthropomorphic descriptions of the Godhead found in the extant Shi‘ur Komah fragments is the Creator God (Yotser Bereshith), the Demiurge. In other versions, however, the subject of the Merkavah visionaries is designated as the “Body of the Shekhinah.”?? Here, too, there is still no clear difference between God and the Shekhinah; the latter is not an independent personification of one of His qualities. But perhaps there is already some Gnostic distinction between the hidden 152 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD essence of God and His revealed image, which appears to the prophets and the Merkavah mystics (albeit that image in itself is likewise hidden from human eyes). The voice emanating from the Shekhinah does not speak upward to God but, as in all other such passages, to His creatures alone. A crucial new development begins in the latest stratum of the midrash as we know it. In a passage overlooked, oddly enough, by Abelson and other scholars, the midrash on Proverbs 22:29 speaks of the Shekhinah for the first time as facing not only human beings but God Himself! When the Sanhedrin wished to designate him [King Solomon] along with three kings and four private individuals [as ones who have no share in the World to Come], the Shekhinah stood before the Holy One, blessed be He, and spoke to Him: “Lord of the Worlds! ‘Seest thou a man diligent in his business?’ [Prov. 22:29]— they wish to count him [Solomon] among the darklings [i.e., those to be damned].” At that moment a heavenly voice went out and said, “‘He shall stand before kings’ [ibid.]—and he shall not stand 99 24 before darklings. This is the first time that a clear division is drawn between God and the Shekhinah, in which the two of them face one another in dialogue. Indeed, during the twelfth century, Judah he-Hasid of Regensburg had given an even bolder reading of this text: “The Shekhinah threw herself down before the Holy One blessed be He.” It is surely not surprising that R. Moses Taku was shocked by these passages when he cited them in the early thirteenth century,’* noting correctly that this passage, so crucial for us, does not appear in the Talmud or in the older aggadic works. Indeed, we can see how the talmudic statement was transposed from its originally innocent context to that of the Shekhinah. The Talmud (Sanhed- rin 104b), without mentioning Solomon's name, tells us: They wished to include one more [i.e., Solomon]. The image of his father [David] came and threw itself down before them, but they ignored it. . . . Fire descended from heaven and lapped around their SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY * 153 benches, and they paid no heed of it. A heavenly voice came forth and said to them, “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings” [Prov. 22:29]. The variant found in the later midrash, which is alien to the parallel ancient passages, could only have emerged after the Shekhinah had already been hypostatized as a quality of God, by groups of unknown later aggad- ists. In light of the strong tendency of the midrash on Proverbs to lean heavily on anthropomorphic Merkavah mysticism, we cannot assume that this variant was due solely to the speculations of medieval Jewish philosophers. We find similar points of transition in other passages, although the exact reading in those cases is uncertain and needs further study. In Midrash Konen, a work composed of various fragments from the “Acts of Creation” literature, and whose first section contains unknown specula- tions from another source concerning Wisdom, we find an interpretation of the verse, “and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). The author begins by mentioning various activities of God, and continues: What did He do? He took a name from the Torah and opened it, and took from it another Name, which has not been conveyed to any person .. . and poured and sprinkled three drops into the sea, and it was completely filled with water, and the Holy Spirit and the Holy Shekhinah (Shekhinath ha-Kodesh) hovered and blew over it.”® On the same page we read: “The Holy One, blessed be He, began to stand in the light, and His Shekhinah was in the upper realms.” It is not at all clear whether a distinction is drawn here between these two concepts. As far as I know, the term “His Holy Shekhinah” does not appear in any other early texts; it would be worthwhile examining the extant manu- scripts of Midrash Konen.”’ In Pesikta Rabbati,’* following the well-known statement “When Israel went into Exile, the Shekhinah was also exiled with them,” we hear the following complaint of the angels: “The angels said to Him: ‘Your Glory 154 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD is in its place; do not abase Your Shekhinah!’” But again, the continuation of this statement does not suggest any distinction between God and His Shekhinah. In Targum Jonathan to the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy 31:3—8, a nearly identical expression is repeated three times, in a rather surprising man- ner. In verse 3, “The Lord thy God, He will go over before thee,” the Targum reads: “The Lord your God and His Shekhinah go before you,” while in verse 6, “For the Lord thy God, He it is that doth go with thee,” the Targum reads, “because the Lord your God, His Shekhinah speaks before thee.” Likewise, in verse 8, “the Lord, He it is that doth go before thee,” is translated, “And the word of the Lord, His Shekhinah, speaks before you.” In fact, in medieval Jewish philosophy, the Shekhinah clearly appears as a manifestation of God, quite distinct from God Himself. In keeping with the rationalistic tendency to assure a pristine monotheism, which domi- nated medieval Jewish philosophy, this hypostasis, although sharply dis- tinguishable from God, assumes a character that is still a far cry from the Kabbalistic understanding of it. All philosophers, from Saadiah Gaon through Judah Halevi to Maimonides, unanimously agree that the She- khinah, which is for them identical with the biblical concept of God’s glory, is a freely willed creation of God’s. Even if it is His first creation, and far more sublime than any grossly material creation, as a created being it has no part in the divine essence or unity. The divine glory is a “created form” made by the Creator in order that this light would give his prophet the assurance of the authen- ticity of what has been revealed to him ... it is a more sublime form than that of the angels, more enormous in its creation, bearing splendor and light, and is called “the Kavod of God” [in the Bible] ... and Shekhinah in the rabbinic tradition.”? Henceforth, as has been correctly stated,” this theory constituted a basic tenet of the philosophical exegesis of the Bible. This primordial light is explicitly defined as the first of all created things by Judah ben Barzillai SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY <= 155 al-Bargeloni, writing shortly before the emergence of the early Kabbalah in Provence. He states: When the thought arose in God of creating a world, He first cre- ated the Holy Spirit, to be a sign of His divinity, which was seen by the prophets and the angels. And He created the image of the Throne of His Glory, to be a throne for the Holy Spirit, called the Glory of our God, which is a radiant brilliance and a great light that shines upon all His other creatures. And that great light is called the Glory of our God, blessed be His Name. ... And the Sages call this great light Shekhinah. ... And no creature can behold this great light in its primal existence, whether an angel or a seraph or a prophet, because of its great power at the beginning. And were a prophet to behold it, his soul would immediately separate itself from his body and he would die. . . . For any “seeing” that is spoken of regarding an angel or a prophet, concerning this created light that the Holy One blessed be He created, that he showed to the angels or prophets, refers to the Holy One blessed be He showing them the end [or “back”] of that light to whom He wishes, but no man can see the beginning of the primordial light and the content of his glory and the image of his brilliance.*! Judah Halevi likewise believes that the Shekhinah (i.e., the divine glory) is a “fine substance that follows the will of God, assuming any form God wishes to show to the prophet,” and therefore ipso facto creaturely.* Maimonides likewise speaks of the Shekhinah as the “created light, that God caused to descend in a particular place in order to confer honor upon it in a miraculous way.” *° These respected authors could hardly have ignored the fact that this conception of the Shekhinah as a being completely separate from God was entirely alien to the talmudic texts, and could only be made compatible with them by means of extremely forced interpretation of these texts. Nevertheless, these philosophers preferred “cutting the Gordian knot” in this way rather than endanger the purity of monotheistic belief by rec- ognizing an uncreated hypostasis. Nevertheless-with the exception of Ju- dah ben Barzillai—these philosophers avoided applying their new 156 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD principle to concrete exegesis of talmudic passages about the Shekhinah. As for the female character of the Shekhinah, nowhere do they say any- thing about it. The Kabbalists never tired subsequently of protesting against this phil- osophical doctrine of the Shekhinah. Even Abraham Miguel Cardozo, the great representative of the heretical Sabbatian Kabbalah, rebukes the Jewish philosophers soundly; he says that when the Messiah comes, they will be made to answer for this theory, which obscured or even ruined true knowledge of God during the time of Exile by separating the She- khinah from the realm of the Godhead! Another passage from a very late midrash indicates that such a division between God and the Shekhinah was envisaged in southern France during the eleventh century, long before the emergence of the Kabbalah. This midrash, which has been overlooked in earlier discussions of the subject, appears in Bereshith Rabbati by R. Moses ha-Darshan of Narbonne: “Rabbi Akiva said: When the Holy One blessed be He contemplated the deeds of the generation [of Enoch] and saw that they were corrupt and evil, He withdrew Himself and His Shekhinah from their midst.” * This is a nearly verbatim paraphrase of a passage from the pseudepigraphic Othi’oth de- Rabbi “Akiva, which says only, “I removed my Shekhinah from among them.” ** Clearly, for the later writer it is possible to distinguish between God’s Self and His Shekhinah. This is consistent with the above-mentioned midrash on Proverbs. However, the source of Moses ha-Darshan’s state- ment may be Oriental, as indicated by the late addendum to Othi’oth de- Rabbi “Akiva. In this addendum, which most likely also derives from the Orient, we find the same distinction drawn: “At that hour, the Holy One blessed be He looked and beheld His Throne and His Kavod and His Shekhinah.” *© On the other hand, the Rabbi of Narbonne already shows the influence of the philosophical exegesis. In another passage he states that the angels were created from the “brilliance of the Shekhinah.” In the older literature this term appears only in connection with theophanies or eschatological visions; here it is understood as the primal matter of Cre- ation—a reading more consistent with the philosophical speculation that emerged during the ninth and tenth centuries than with the prephilo- sophical aggadah. SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY * 157 There may be a hint of criticism aimed at the frequency of hypostati- zations in the aggadah itself in a passage from the thirteenth-century Yemenite compilation known as Midrash ha-Gadol. The passage, itself rel- atively late (eighth to tenth century?), reads as follows: “And they saw the God of Israel . . .” [Exod. 24:10] Rabbi Eleazar said: Whoever translates a verse literally is a liar, and whoever adds to it commits blasphemy. Thus, one who translates the verse, “and they saw the God of Israel” literally is a liar, for the Holy One, blessed be He, sees but is never seen. But one who translates, ‘and they saw the glory of the Shekhinah of the God of Israel” blas- phemes, for he is constructing here a trinity: the Glory, the She- khinah, and God.*? The translation of Exodus 24:10 criticized here appears in one of the ancient Palestinian paraphrases, extant in manuscript, the so-called Frag- ment Targum.** The objection to the possible trinitarian exploitation of this paraphrase is admittedly rather farfetched, nevertheless, it is evident from this that such groupings of hypostatized appellatives for God could be regarded as dogmatically questionable, even before the emergence of the Kabbalah. It is also clear that the author of this critique knew nothing of the philosophical downgrading of the Shekhinah to a created being. IV The Shekhinah appears in an altogether different light in the earliest sources of the Kabbalah, in which, albeit in a halting and clumsy manner, a new concept of the Godhead begins to be developed. To be sure, this new concept often takes up old themes of the rabbinic tradition, combin- ing them rather peculiarly into a new understanding, reinterpreting them, and placing them in unexpected contexts. The Shekhinah thereby acquires a new meaning, of paramount importance for the vision of the early Kabbalah; here we shall explore at least the essential elements of this new meaning. 158 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD It is not merely chance that the clearest contribution to the new understanding of the Shekhinah appears in those texts that contain the most decisive breakthrough of mythical consciousness into the sphere of rabbinic Judaism (albeit in very different ways): namely, Sefer ha-Bahir and Sefer ha-Zohar. The Bahir is a collection of short fragments, remnants, and reworkings of ancient fragments originating in Oriental gnosis, as well as fragments of theosophic aggadah. On the basis of philological analysis, the Bahir can hardly be ascribed to a single author. In the Zohar, on the other hand, we confront a document of an astonishingly personal char- acter. In this book we see the breakthrough of the mythic unconscious in the soul of an author of considerable literary talent; this individual took the esoteric tradition of more than a century of intense Kabbalistic de- velopment, recast it in an unusually personal manner, and succeeded in transmitting these very personal images to posterity. Of course, this was possible only because later generations were intrigued by something that so obstinately and resolutely demanded its right to exist within the pre- cincts of Judaism, without relinquishing its own essentially mythical character. The essence of the Kabbalistic idea of God, as we have already stated, lies in its resolutely dynamic conception of the Godhead: God's creative power and vitality develop in an unending movement of His nature, which flows not only outward into Creation but also back into itself. Obviously, a fundamental contradiction was bound to arise between, on the one hand, this dynamic conception, which sought and found God’s unity precisely in the secret life of His nature and, on the other hand, the Jewish tradition. After all, God’s immutability and “unmovedness” was one of the bases upon which the prophetic perception of God seemed to coincide with the Aristotelian doctrine of the “unmoved Mover.” In any event, the concept of an unchanging God had long since enjoyed a posi- tion in the foreground of Jewish monotheistic belief, and was particularly accentuated in the rationalistic formulations of Jewish theology by the Jewish-Arabic philosophers. The popular utterances of scholars and pious men, however, did not always meet the rigorous demands of precise formulation, in which there is no room for misunderstanding; on occa- sion, they even expressed opposition to the severity of this formulation, SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY + 159 although this opposition did not take place as part of an explicit and conscious effort to crystallize their views. It was precisely this that made the utterances of the Kabbalists so provocative: they gave shape to all that was nonconformist when speaking about God. Moreover, during the period of hegemony of Aristotelian philosophy, thev did not have at their disposal a conceptual apparatus capable of formulating their intuitions and visions of God. The only language available in this sphere was one that opposed everything the Kabbalists wanted to sav. Thus, they often enough found themselves helplessly entangled in a net of contradictions between the rigid and undialectical concepts that thev, as men of their time, had to use, and the images and symbols that lived within them, that they had brought to life but could not adequately express in the termi- nology imposed upon them bv their adversaries. Hence, the Kabbalists resorted to the expedient of differentiating be- tween two strata of the Godheaa: one, its hidden being-in-itself, its im- manence in the depths of its own being, and another, that of its creative and active nature, thrusting outward toward expression. The former is indeed lacking in all motion or change and may be described or, better, circumscribed in negative terms, following the concepts of traditional philosophical theologians. The other stratum is the dynamic aspect of infinite life, of potencies in which the process of God’s creative and world-maintaining activities are realized. The former stratum is desig- nated in the language of the Kabbalists as *Ein-Sof, the undifferentiated unity, the self-contained Root of Roots in which all contradictions merge and dissolve. The latter stratum is the structure of the ten Sefiroch, which are the sacred names—i.e., the various aspects of God—or the ten words of Creation (logoi) by which everything was created. One can indeed savy about this world, in contradiction to the dogmatic dictum of the theologians: “But it does turn!” *Ein-Sof is only seldom conceived of as energy or power,” It (in the spirit of the Kabbalists, one should use the neuter gender) is purely and simply concealed and transcendent; no statement can be made about It. However, the Sefiroch, while part of the divine essence (albeit as stages of His revelation, aspects of His nature through which He manifests Himself to us), are primarily bearers of His active and creative force. The word 160 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD “forces” (koah), found so often in Kabbalistic writings, is not to be con- strued in the sense of the medieval distinction between actus and potentia; the Sefiroth are not merely potentialities, but are real, existence beings. They are hypostases that have become independent; charged with and emanating energy, they empower and advance the process by which God reveals Himself and makes His great name known. In line with this, Sefer ha-Bahir refers to the Sefiroth as “kings,” in whom the one and only hidden King manifests Himself; they are also called “voices,” through which the one ineffable word, the holy name, spoken not only in the Torah but in all of Creation, is given expression. In this world of Sefiroth, each of which can be viewed as a hypostasis of a particular facet of God, the Shekhinah receives its new meaning as the tenth and final Sefirah. The crucial factor in its new status is unquestion- ably its feminine character, which, as mentioned above, is not found in any pre-Kabbalistic source, but which now absorbs everything capable of such an interpretation in biblical and rabbinic literature. This presenta- tion of the Shekhinah as female element—simultaneously mother, bride, and daughter—within the structure of the Godhead constitutes a very meaningful step, with far-reaching consequences, one which the Kabbal- ists attempted to justify by Gnostic interpretation. It is not surprising that the opponents of Kabbalah reacted to this idea with great suspicion. The enormous popularity enjoyed by this new mythic understanding of the concept is illustrated precisely by the fact that it filtered down in the form of confused, apologetic distortions in which the Shekhinah was iden- tified and compared with the Divine Providence itself. This fact is undis- putable proof that the Kabbalists here touched upon a fundamental and primal need, uncovering one of the perennial religious images latent in Judaism as well. There are two ways of explaining the emergence of the female Shekhi- nah. One possibility is that, when these ideas were originally conceived, the final Sefirah was already conceived as a vessel receiving all the other Sefiroth; it was consequently understood by the Kabbalistic mind as a feminine element, and hence naturally drew to itself the female symbols present in religious language. The other possibility leads us in a different direction. When the medieval Jewish Gnostics took the decisive step of SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY * 161 identifying the Shekhinah and Kenesseth Yisra’el—two hypostases that had thus far been distinct in the rabbinic tradition—this necessarily triggered an eruption of the feminine into the sphere of the Godhead; the rest followed automatically. The state of our earliest extant texts does not allow us to choose between these alternatives—if, indeed, these are mu- tually exclusive. The former view is based upon a psychological assump- tion that precedes the exegeses in which it is confirmed: namely, that when the image of the Great Mother resurged, it found itself appropriate Jewish symbols. The second alternative, by contrast, takes as its point of departure a certain historical statement: because a powerful national symbol, the Congregation of Israel (Kenesseth Yisrael ), was incorporated within a new, dynamic conception of the Godhead (perhaps as a result of the profound shock caused by the persecutions associated with the Cru- sades, or perhaps far earlier, under Gnostic influence), and because Ke- nesseth Yisra’el itself was understood as constituting the body of the Shekhinah, in which and through which the Shekhinah acts and suffers together with the people of Israel (perhaps somewhat parallel to Chris- tianity’s notion of the Church as Corpus Christi, the body of Christ)— because of these factors, the archetypal, primordial image of the female took shape, its resurgence being rooted in these specific historical expe- riences. But this explanation presupposes that no vestiges of premedieval Gnostic thinking remain in the pertinent fragments of Bahir—even though such a possibility, as far as I can judge, is imposed upon us by a philological analysis of the work. In any event, Sefer ha-Bahir (and we have no older extant Kabbalistic texts) already contains a crystallized symbolic system. Furthermore, it may well be that there is a basis in historical reality for both explanations, and that they need not exclude one an- other. Touching upon this topic elsewhere,” I have already expressed my doubts as to whether we can say anything meaningful concerning the question as to which of the two factors in the birth of a new conception of the Shekhinah was primary, the historical or the psychological: i.e., the exegetical identification of Kenesseth Yisra’el with the Shekhinah, or the resurgence of the idea of the feminine within the Godhead in the hearts of the earliest Kabbalists. But I must admit that, if we knew more about the historical circumstances of the origins of the Kabbalah, we might 162 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD have less need of the psychologists, even though their contribution in this area is not to be denigrated. In any event, one may state that the decisive step in the emergence of the Kabbalistic theosophy was the unique inter- twining of these two processes. The character of the Shekhinah as a female principle, as one of the middoth or qualities of God, is entirely consistent in Sefer ha-Bahir, al- though we cannot expect systematic uniformity among all of the highly disparate fragments scattered throughout the book. In all of the portray- als of the Shekhinah, both direct and in parables, one thing stands out: several of these parables (appearing precisely at the most fundamental points), which seem to be of strikingly Gnostic character, are in fact no more than conscious reworkings of parables found in rabbinic sources, where they appear in utterly innocuous contexts, remote from any Gnosticism. Thus, in an early midrash,*! we read: A parable is told about a king who entered a certain land and issued an edict, saying: “Whatever lodgers are staying here may not see my face until they have first seen the face of the Matrona [i.e., the queen].” Likewise, the Holy One blessed be He speaks thus: “Do not bring before Me a sacrifice until one Sabbath has passed.” This parable about the Sabbath,*? which is also compared to a princess in other texts, appears in a highly interesting passage of the Bahir (S §43; M §63), in which the bride mentioned in the Song of Songs is compared to a “field” and a “chest”—that is, vessels into which the upper Sefiroth flow. She is also the “heart” of the Godhead; the author expounds the numerical value of the Hebrew lev (heart), thirty-two, as corresponding to the thirty-two paths of wisdom with which the world was created, according to Sefer Yetsirah, which tells the following parable in this connection: This is like a king who was in the innermost chamber of his apart- ments, and the number of rooms was thirty-two, and there was a path to every room. Did it behoove the king to allow everyone to enter his rooms by these paths? No! But did it behoove him not to SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY * 163 show his pearls and jeweled settings and hidden treasures and beau- tiful things at all? No! What did the king do? He took his daughter and concentrated all paths in her and in her garments [i.e., her manifestation], and he who wishes to enter the interior must look at her. And she was married to a king, and she was given to him as a gift. At times, in his great love for her, he calls her “my sister,” for they come from one place; sometimes he calls her “my daugh- ter,” for she is his daughter, and sometimes he calls her “my mother.” The concluding sentence of this interesting passage, which expresses a clear concept of the function of the last Sefirah, is taken from an older midrash, in which the “Community of Israel” is identified with the bride in the Song of Songs: This is compared to a king who had an only daughter, whom he loved very greatly and would call “my daughter.” And he did not leave his love for her until he called her “my sister.” And did not leave his love for her until he called her “my mother.” *? We find here the most significant imagery of the symbolism of the feminine gathered in one piece. Only one thing is lacking: except for a single passage, (S §90; M §131), Sefer ha-Bahir avoids referring to the daughter as wife. The explicitly sexual sphere of female symbolism is here quite clearly and visibly rejected, certainly not by chance; otherwise, all of the essential motifs are expressed here. The daughter actually has little of her own: she is merely the totality of the paths that lead to her, the vessel that gathers them, the robe on which the jewels appear. But as such, she is the medium through which it is possible to reach the king himself. This “daughter” is clearly identical with the “lower Hokhmah,” known in Bahir as “the wisdom of Solomon”; it stands at the end of the divine pleroma, being at once both above and below. All this is clearly stated in another passage (S §44; M §65): 164 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD What wisdom did the Holy One blessed be He give to Solomon? Solomon bore the name of the Holy One, as is said [in the talmudic tradition]: “Every ‘Solomon’ mentioned in the Song of Songs is holy [i.e., refers to God], save one. The Holy One blessed be He says: “Because your name is like the name of My Glory, I wish to wed my daughter to thee.” And is she married? Rather, he gave her to him as a gift, as is written: “And the Lord gave Solomon wisdom” [I Kings 5:26]. The final Sefirah descends to the earthly realm in the guise of the Shekhi- nah mentioned in the Talmud and the “Wisdom” of the Bible. She is no longer merely God’s presence, but is now a specific factor in His self- manifestation. A similar line of thought appears in the exegesis of the first letter of the Torah, beth, as a symbol of the lower wisdom: What is its function? It is comparable to a king who had a daughter who was good and comely, graceful and perfect. And he married her to a prince, and gave her garments and a crown and jewelry and great wealth. Can the king live without his daughter? No! But can he be with her all day long? No! What did he do? He built a window between himself and her, and whenever the daughter needs the father and the father the daughter, they join one another through the window. Of this is it written: “All glorious is the king's daughter within the palace; her raiment is interwoven with gold” [Ps. 45:14].” The king’s daughter here dwells below, in the corporeal world, but remains connected with her father by means of a “window.” What she has is “within,” deriving from the upper world and fundamentally within it. In brief, what characterizes the Shekhinah is her transitional position between transcendence and immanence. Here, as in the previously men- tioned passages, she has purely feminine characteristics, and must be adorned and presented with gifts in order to have something of her own. Our author is fond of this image of gifts of jewelry and wealth, to which SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY * 165 he returns repeatedly rather than employ images of conjugality and im- pregnation. Nevertheless, the Shekhinah is not always thought of as purely receptive and passive. This comes out very clearly in the one passage in the Bahir where she appears as a “king”: He was asked by his disciples: What does the letter dalet mean? He replied with a parable: There were once ten kings in a certain place, all of whom were rich; but one of them was not so rich as the others. Hence, even though his wealth was great, he was called poor (dal) in relation to the others. [S §19; M §27] The Shekhinah is not utterly poor and destitute; she has some wealth, a positive strength of her own. The problem raised here concerns the re- lationship between active and passive elements in the Shekhinah—a prob- lem that was henceforth to occupy the Kabbalists for quite some time— as we shall see, for a long time. Sefer ha-Bahir never defines the nature of this positive property of the Shekhinah. In some fragments, which may come from a different source-stratum of the Kabbalah, the passive, re- ceptive quality is so strongly emphasized that the question does not even arise. The significant point for our discussion is that the king’s daughter, in those Bahir fragments that seem to be the oldest, occupies a position analogous to that of the “soul” in Gnostic thought. What the Gnostics say about psyche is stated in the Bahir about the Shekhinah. In one very strange passage (S §36; M §53), we can even find some traces of this Gnostic connection, which does not really fit later Kabbalistic doctrine: Why is it called zahav [gold]? Because it includes three principles— the male, which is [the letter] zayin; the soul, which is [the letter] heh ... and [the letter] beth is their existence, as is said, “In the beginning God created . . .” [Gen. 1:1]. The unified existence of both letters within the letter bezh—which is the first letter of the Torah—is clearly understood here as the union of male 166 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD and female, which is evidently regarded here as the primal act of Crea- tion. While in the very next passage (already discussed above) the female principle is clearly designated as the princess, in the present text the “soul” appears instead of the princess! We find other Gnostic themes parallel to this passage, in which images of the psyche are applied to the Shekhinah. In this context the most inter- esting, and oddest, fragment is probably Bahir, S §90 (M §§130-133, with corrections based upon MS. Miinchen 209), containing three par- ables I would like to quote in extenso: What is meant by “The whole earth is full of His glory” [Isa. 6:3]? That the entire land [erets; also “earth”] that was created on the first day, which corresponds above to the Land of Israel, is full of the glory of God. And what is it [this earth or this glory]? Wisdom, of which it is written, “The wise shall inherit honor” {or “glory”; Prov. 3:35]; and it is also said: “Blessed be the glory of the Lord from His place” [Ezek. 3:12]. And what is “the glory of the Lord”? A parable: This matter is comparable to a king in whose room the queen was, and all his hosts delighted in her, and she had sons, who came every day to see the king and who blessed him. They said to him: “Where is our mother?” He said to them: “You cannot see her now.” They said: “Blessings to her, wherever she is!” And what is meant by “from His place”? Because there is no one who knows His place. A parable: There was a king’s daughter who came from a faraway place and no one knew whence she had come, until they saw that she was capable, beautiful, and excellent in everything she did. They then said: “She is certainly taken from the form of light [or “the side of light”], as her deeds brighten the world. They asked her: “From whence have you come?” She said: “From my place.” They said: “If so, the people of her place must be great. Blessed be she and blessed be her place!” But is not this glory of the Lord one of His hosts? Did He not take it away from them? Why then do we praise it [as if it were something separate or distinct] A parable: This is comparable to SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY * 167 a man who had a beautiful’ garden and, outside of the garden, close to it, a stretch of good field. He made a beautiful garden therein, watering the garden first, so that the water spread over the entire garden, but not over that stretch of field, which was not adjacent, even though it was all one. Therefore, he opened a place for it and watered it separately. This passage, with its almost palpably Gnostic language, is surely one of the most suggestive and revealing fragments for understanding the change wrought by Kabbalah in the concept of the Shekhinah. If we con- nect this passage with those quoted above, we find that the Bahir quite directly identifies the divine glory, the Kavod, with the “lower wisdom,” which is identical to the “supernal earth”—that is, the Shekhinah, which is at the border of the supernal world. It is at once hidden and visible, according to the phases and stages of its appearance. Only once in the Bahir (S §139; M §198) is the Shekhinah represented by lunar symbolism; in the present passage this situation is illustrated by other images, as in the first parable above, in which she is manifest as a queen, matronitha, who is hidden in her apartments and whom everyone nevertheless seeks. Yet she is also the daughter of the king, come to our world as a strange guest from a faraway place. She comes from the place of light or even, as the strange variant puts it, from the “form of light she was taken.” She shines her light into the lower world and even dwells within it. Sefer ha- Bahir does not call this an exile of the Shekhinah—such a notion is not really developed in this book—but rather seems to imply that it is her destiny to dwell in the lower realms. Another passage (S §§97—98; M §147) states that the Shekhingh is the principle or essence of this world, and that it is “the brilliance taken from the primal light,” which is “the good light stored away for the righteous.” God has taken this brilliance and “incorporated within it the thirty-two paths of wisdom, and given them to this world.” Thus, the secret law of the Shekhinah, which is equated with the Oral Law—that is, the mystical substance of tradition—rules in this world. The third parable defines the Shekhinah’s status through the paradox 168 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD of the piece of field that is not contingent to the garden—i.e., the other Sefiroth or plantings of God—“even though everything is one.” The last Sefirah performs a different function from all the other Sefiroth: it is one with all the others and yet separate, because it performs a mission on their behalf to the world, like a princess coming from afar. One cannot help but recall the Gnostic hymns about the bride who is “the daughter of light, upon whom rises the radiance of kings, whose appearance is sublime and filled with charm and grace, and who is adorned with the beauty of purity,’*° or of the other hymn that became famous as the “Song of the Soul.” Is it not astonishing that the “daughter of light,” in the Gnostic bridal hymn about Wisdom, is likewise praised with thirty- two potencies*’—even if she did not originally contain the thirty-two within herself? And does it not give us food for thought to find that in Syrian Gnosticism the “daughter of light” is the second, lower wisdom, at the edge of the pleroma (the realm of “fullness” of the aeons), just as in Sefer ha-Bahir the daughter is the lower wisdom, the “wisdom of Solo- mon,” which has emanated from the supernal Sophia, the “Wisdom of God”?* Moreover, just as in Syrian and Armenian reworkings of these Gnostic hymns this Wisdom is associated with the Church, in early Kab- balah we find a similar process, whereby the “wisdom of Solomon” or lower wisdom is identified with Kenesseth Yisra’el and the Shekhinah. The “daughter” is likewise the blessing that God has sent into the world. Particularly interesting is the passage in which this idea is pro- posed, through means of the conscious and deliberate transfer into the symbolic realm of an aggadah that is in no way Gnostic. In a rather bizarre talmudic passage it states that “Abraham had a daughter, whose name was Ba-kol (literally, “in everything” or “with everything”).”’ In the wake of this dictum the Bahir states: [God] said: What shall I give him [Abraham] or what shall I do for him? I have made a lovely vessel, which contains precious jewels that are unparalleled, and are the gem of Kings.” I will give it to him, so that he may own it rather than I. Of this it is written, “And God blessed Abraham with everything” [Gen. 24:1]. [Bahir, S §52; M §78, with corrections based upon MS. Miinchen] SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY * 169 The Bahir has no doubts as to the essentially female nature of the Shekhinah; only rarely does it use neuter symbols for the Shekhinah. Its femininity is emphatically illustrated in a parable contrasting it with the masculine character of the other Sefiroth: This is compared to a king who wished to plant nine male trees in his garden, all of which were palm trees. He said: “If they are all of the same gender, they cannot survive.” What did he do? He planted an ethrog among them, among the nine that he had planned to be male. And what is an ethrog? An ethrog is female. (S §117; M §172) We must emphasize one other element, which goes beyond what we have thus far seen concerning the symbolism of the tenth Sefirah: namely, the inner dynamics of the Sefiroth within themselves. The Bahir speaks, not only of the downward movement of the Shekhinah in its mission to earthly beings as Wisdom and daughter, but also of its upward move- ment. In an extremely bizarre parable in S §101 (M §152), we read: This is compared to a king, who had a beautiful and fragrant vessel, which he loved very much. Sometimes he placed it on his head, that is, as the tefillin of one’s head; sometimes he placed it on his arm, as the knot of the tefillin of one’s arm, sometimes he loaned it to his son, that he might sit with it, and sometimes it was called his throne. Even stranger—albeit instructive for the Gnostic character of these frag- ments— is the interpretation of one of the signs used for scriptural can- tillation, the zarka, as a symbol for the Shekhinah: What is the meaning of the zarka? It is like [the literal meaning] of its name, that it is “thrown” or “hurled” (nizrak). Like a thing that is hurled, and thereafter there comes the wealth of the kings and nations. [Bahir, S §61; M §89] 170 + ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD But this precious stone is not only thrown to the earth among the people*! who have cast it aside and rejected it (in the sense of “the stone which the builders rejected” [Ps. 118:22]),” it also keeps “rising up to the very heights” (presumably during Israel’s prayer, although this is not stated clearly). Indeed, “it rises to that place from whence it was hewn”—that is, to the primal light of the supernal wisdom, from whence the Shekhinah emanated, if not to the place of the first Sefirah itself. Thus, we already find here the theme of the internal dynamics within the world of the Sefiroth, where the lowest Sefirah can rise up to the highest. Within the Godhead, there takes place a secret movement upward no less than downward, and it is the Shekhinah in particular that is the instrument of that motion. But this ascent—in which that entity that exists on the border of the Godhead, on the verge of being hurled or rejected, is accepted and ab- sorbed into the upmost reaches—is never viewed in Sefer ha-Bahir as a sacred marriage. At this stage Kabbalistic symbolism had not yet ad- vanced that far—or should I say: returned full circle! To be sure, male and female are united in both the earthly and the celestial form of the human being (S §116; M §172), but no conclusions are drawn here from this. The interdependence of male and female is alluded to in at most indirect hints (as in S §§57—-58; M §84-85). However, the Bahir’s re- straint regarding this subject contrasts sharply with the extravagant sex- ual symbolism of the Zohar, to which we shall address ourselves below. I have attempted to summarize and analyze here in some detail the premise notions about the tenth Sefirah found in Sefer ha-Bahir, due to the fundamental importance of this text as the earliest presentation of the ideas of this new school. Its true innovation lies in the fact that the Shekhinah no longer appears only in relation to the world and to the Jewish people—i.e., to created things—which was the only way in which it could be discussed in the earlier stages of development of this concept. In the Bahir, on the other hand, we find the first statements that portray the Shekhinah in the opposite direction—i.e., in the relation to God. The images used for this relationship in the Bahir appear in all their original freshness, whether they were taken from the legacy of Gnostic SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY + 171 speculation in late antiquity or whether they took shape in the course of the creative reflection of anonymous Jewish God-seekers of the twelfth century upon the meaning of the images of their own tradition. But whatever its historical origins, the breakthrough of a new attitude in terms of contents is heralded here and virtually takes place before our very eyes. What is most astounding about this attitude is the unabashed self-assurance with which this symbolism appears in the spiritual milieu of the twelfth century, within which this text must have been redacted in its extant form. V But we have thus far not yet discussed a subject that is essential for our understanding of the Kabbalistic notion of the Shekhinah from the early thirteenth century onward, one that, regarding a crucial point, goes be- yond what has already been said—namely, the role of the Shekhinah as a mythical hypostasis of the divine immanence in the world. It was not for naught that the Kabbalists termed this phenomenon ba-kol (“in every- thing”). Its feminine character is marked from the outset by strongly passive and receptive traits, and it was not difficult to make the step from the intellectual world of the Bahir to a much more decisive theoretical formulation of this concept. Indeed, Spanish Kabbalah took such a step from an early date, certainly no later than 1200. Nowhere in the Bahir itself is it stated explicitly that the nine upper Sefiroth only operate in Creation through the intermediacy of the last Sefirah, that these potencies manifest themselves exclusively in this medium, and that they thereby permeate the purely receptive nature of the Shekhinah with their active drives. While these ideas are implied in some of the Bahir fragments discussed here, they were not clearly formulated. By contrast, they were clearly and explicitly stated in the subsequent literature, even prior to the Zohar, which received these views from that tradition. This is illustrated, for example, in a very widely known text on the ten Sefiroth from the school of R. Moses Nahmanides of Gerona (1194- 172 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD 1270)—one which indicates to what extent the colorful tone introduced by the Zohar into the image of the Shekhinah is still lacking here. For instance, the last Sefirah is described as follows:*? The tenth Sefirah, called Shekhinah, is the crown. It receives from Yesod [the ninth Sefirah], and is alluded to in the language of nun [ie., the feminine]. And it is [i-e., symbolized by] this world, for the guidance of this world is affected by [the pleroma] that comes to it from the zayin [i.e., the seven upper Sefiroth].... And it is called “angel” and “the angel of God”** ... for kingship [should read “angelic being”] flows from it. And it is called Beth-El [House of God], because it is the house of prayer; and it is the bride of the Song of Songs, who is called “daughter” and “sister”; and it is Ke- nesseth Yisrael (literally, “Gathering of Israel”], in which everything is ingathered.** It is the supernal Jerusalem, and in prayers it is known as Zion [i.e., depiction, representation, emergence], for it is that in which all potencies are represented.*’ ... All prohibitions of the Torah are rooted in it... therefore women are obligated to observe the negative commaridments, for they derive from the same source. The point of departure for the Zoharic images of the common origin of the “eternal feminine” is already formulated here. In a recurrent pun on the Hebrew root kalal, the Shekhinah is called kalah ha-kelulah min ha- kol, “the bride incorporated from everything,” who has no specific, posi- tive potency of her own, beyond that from which she is constituted and with which she is crowned. (Kalal is likewise related to “crown,” as well as to “nuptials/bride” and “all.”) She is herself a pure “receptacle” (keli, often linked to the root kala in a mystical etymology). But this is not all that the Kabbalists have to say about the Shekhinah within the world of the ten Sefiroth. In their consciousness the Shekhinah was split into two potencies; this division has a very precise meaning in the dynamic understanding of the structure of the Sefirotic world, as elaborated more and more clearly and fully in thirteenth-century Kab- balah. In the following discussion we will attempt to determine the meaning of this split. SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN DIVINITY ° 173 Although the Kabbalists claimed that this split is already clearly stated in the Bahir, this is by no means certain. The crucial sentence regarding this matter is subject to quite a different interpretation. The disciples asked him [their teacher]: “We know [the order of the Sefiroth] from above to below, but we do not know from below to above.” ... He sat and expounded to them: The Shekhinah is below as it is above.** And what is this Shekhinah? Let us say that it is the light that has emanated from the Primal Light, which is Hokh- mah. And this [i.e., the emanated light] likewise surrounds every- thing, as is written, “the whole earth is filled with His glory” [Isa. 6:3]. And what does it do here? It is comparable to a king who had seven sons, and assigned to each one of them his place. He said to them: “Dwell one above the other.” The lowest one said: “I do not wish to live below and do not wish to be remote from you.” He said to them: “Behold, I go about and see you every day.” This is, “The whole earth is filled with His glory.” And why does He dwell among them? To maintain them and to sustain them. [Bahir S §116; M §171] Scholars have always overlooked the fact that the first sentence in this fragment is none other than a quotation from an ancient cosmogonic midrash of the talmudic esoterics: “Just as His Shekhinah is above, so too is it below.” * That is, the same Shekhinah that appears in the transcendent world of the throne and the Merkavah is likewise that which fills the lower world. The sequel to the above-cited passage indicates that the Bahir also understood this sentence in that way, for only one Shekhinah is discussed. Unquestionably, however, the sentence could also be explained contrary to its original meaning: there is a Shekhinah above just as there is a She- khinah below—that is, there are two manifestations of the Shekhinah. Such a reading of course presupposes that the image of a double She- khinah, split into an upper and lower potency, was already present in the reader's mind. The assumption that this misunderstanding originally stemmed from an erroneous reading of the sentence strikes me as too simplistic and superficial, particularly in light of the parallel material in the history of religions on the doubling of female potencies. 174 * ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD When did this change of interpretation take place? It appears, at the very latest, in a different stratum of the Bahir itself. In a certain passage (S §74; M §§104-105), the third Sefirah, known among the Kabbalists as Binah—and not the tenth—is unmistakably construed as “Mother of the Universe” and “(the divine] glory.” The seven Sefiroth are her children; characteristically, the book does not state that she gave birth to them, but that they were “the sons which she raised.” The third Sefirah, like the 99 60 tenth, is known by the appellation of “glory,”® a title born by no other Sefirah in the Bahir. Compare with this the loose usage of many Spanish Kabbalists, who refer to all of the Sefiroth as God’s Kavod, His glory, and do not use it specifically of the Shekhinah.°! From the early thirteenth century, we find the two terms “upper She- khinah” and “lower Shekhinah” used in a fixed, regular way. This Kabbal- istic distinction is not to be identified with the twofold Sophia or Wisdom, supernal wisdom is the second Sefirah, Hokhmah, whose being in turn derives from the divine nothing or Ennoia, the uppermost Sefirah, whereas the upper Shekhinah is identified with Binah, in which the undif- ferentiated divine wisdom is made distinct and is separated out. In this respect, Gnostic and Kabbalistic symbolism widely diverge. What is the meaning of this double Shekhinah within the framework of the dynamic unity of divine manifestations and emanations? Two concep- tions of the principle of femininity are realized and expressed in these images. As the upper Shekhinah of the Sefirah of Binah, femininity is the full expression of ceaseless creative power—it is receptive, to be sure, but is spontaneously and incessantly transformed into an element that gives birth, as the stream of eternally flowing divine life enters into it. One might almost say, to use the terms of Indian religion, that the upper Shekhinah is the Shakti of the latent God; it is entirely active energy, in which what is concealed within God is externalized. In the division of the Sefirotic world into the three upper and seven lower Sefiroth—a division generally accepted since Sefer ha-Bahir—the upper Shekhinah stands at the edge of the seven Sefiroth or seven primal days, emitting them from herself and realizing her strength in them (this is the inner, theogonic side of Creation!). In the same way, the lower Shekhinah stands at the edge of the external Creation, formed during the SHEKHINAH: THE FEMININE ELEVENT IN DIVINITY * 175 temporal seven