Before the Zohar
🧿 The Zohar emerged in Castile in the 1290s, but a somewhat-forgotten Kabbala blossomed in the decades prior, including ecstatic Kabbala, which sought experiential mystical connection.
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Last week, we followed Kabbala—the distinctly medieval form of Jewish mysticism—as it bubbled up in Provence (southern France), then crossed the Pyrenees into Girona in northeastern Spain, where it flourished. It finally arrived in Castile, the heartland of Spain, which was by the thirteenth century under Christian rule. Under the two brothers R. Yaakov and R. Yitzchak bnei Yaakov ha-Kohen from the town of Soria, who were also related to the Ibn Gaon family, which would boast many mystics, Kabbala became a full-bodied spiritual practice. This is were we pick up today, in Castile, were the Kabbalistically curious began to form groups who sought mystical practices and esoteric knowledge of the Divine.
The Circle of R. Moshe of Burgos
R. Moshe ben Shlomo ben Shimon (c. 1230-c. 1300) was active as a rabbinical figure in Burgos, Castile beginning around the year 1260. In this capacity, he began teaching Kabbala, carefully passing on the traditions he had received. Many of them, it seems, were from the brothers R. Yitzchak and R. Yaakov bnei Yaakov ha-Kohen, forming a link in the transmission chain from Provence into Catalunya (northeastern Spain) and then into Castile (central Spain). He also possessed the works of the Iyun Circle. Two of his notable contemporaries (and his students) dedicated works to him: R. Yitzchak Abi (or Ibn) Sahula—the earliest source to mention the Zohar—who dedicated a number of works, and R. Todros ben Yosef ha-Levi Abulafia (not to be confused with his relative, the statesman-poet R. Todros ben Yehuda Abulafia), who specifically dedicated to him his Sha’ar ha-Razim (The Gate of Secrets), a mystical work about nineteen of the Tehillim (Psalms). The philosopher R. Yitzchak Albalag, though an avid Averroist Aristotelian—a follower of Aristotle’s philosophy as mediated by the towering medieval Muslim philosopher and commentator Ibn Rushd (Latinized Averroes)—identifies his contemporary R. Moshe of Burgos as a foremost Kabbalist.
Yet another contemporary attributes to R. Moshe a particularly spicy saying about the value of Kabbalistic knowledge in relationship to philosophy:
וכאשר היה שומע המקובל ירא השם מנועריו, הר’ משה ב”ר שלמה ב”ר שמעון מעיר בורגוש ז”ל, זכרון שבח על חכמי הפולספיאה, היה אומר הפוליסופי’ שאתם משבחי’ חכמתם, דעו באמת כי במקום מעמד ראשם מעמד רגלינו, ודבר זה מושכל ראשון הוא למשכילים.
When the Kabbalist, who was G-d-fearing from his youth, the rabbi Moshe son of the rabbi Shlomo son of the rabbi Shimon of blessed memory, would hear people praising those wise in philosophy, he would say: ‘The philosophers whose wisdom you are praising, you should know that, in truth, in the place of their heads we [the Kabbalists] stand with our feet, and this is the foremost wisdom for the wise.’
R. Yitzchak de-min Akko in Meirat Einayim, Vayishlach (pp. 76-77 in this edition)—more on R. Yitzchak next time
That is, according to R. Moshe, the height of philosophers’ intellectual achievement, their “heads,” reach only the position of the Kabbalists’ “feet”: Kabbala is a much deeper, higher wisdom.
A core concept of R. Moshe of Burgos’ traditions was the idea of a Left Pillar (amud ha-smali - עמוד השמאלי) of emanations mirroring the pure emanations described by the Sefirotic system. This impure set of emanating forces were a degraded or even evil mechanism acting on the world. This was in stark juxtaposition to Rambam’s theory of evil, which posited that evil was the absence of good rather than having substance in itself—at a time when Maimonideanism, or the philosophical-jurisprudential program of the Rambam was becoming entrenched in Spain and Provence. R. Moshe wrote a work dedicated to the concept, called Eser ha-Sefirot ha-Smaliyot (The Ten Left Sefirot) or Amud ha-Smali (The Left Pillar), which was not published until the twentieth century by Gershom Scholem.
Some of R. Moshe of Burgos’ other, numerous mystical works have been lost, and some remain in manuscript, while several were published in modernity; these include, among others, a treatise on the forty-two-lettered Divine Name; commentaries on three segments of Neviim (Prophets), known as Merkevet Yeshayahu (a vision of the Divine chariot), Merkevet Yechezkel (another vision of the Divine chariot), and Mareh ha-Menorah shel Zekhariah (a vision of the Temple Menorah); and a commentary on Shiur Komah, an ancient mystical exposition of the enormous proportions of the Divine “body,” so to speak, that formed the most secretive part of Maaseh Merkava (the visioning of the Divine chariot). Despite his care in disseminating the traditions he received, much of R. Moshe’s Kabbala was eclipsed by Zoharic Kabbala in the centuries after his passing and it remains a trove of pre-Zoharic Kabbalistic insights.
The Ecstatic Kabbala of R. Avraham Abulafia
Another tradition which fell out of the line of transmission after the emergence of the Zohar in the 1290s was the ecstatic Kabbala of R. Avraham Abulafia (1240-after 1291). It is termed “ecstatic” because Avraham Abulafia sought, and claimed to have experienced, mystical union and even prophetic visions, alongside a more studied, intellectual knowledge of Kabbala. Avraham was a member of the distinguished Sefardi Abulafia family which included both Todros ben Yosef and Todros ben Yehuda, mentioned above, as well as Ramah (רמ”ה), R. Meir ha-Levi Abulafia, a fiery anti-Maimonidean during the lifetime of Rambam, and after. R. Avraham began his advanced learning with a study of Moreh ha-Nevuchim (The Guide of the Perplexed), Rambam’s late-breaking philosophical magnum opus, which purported to be a commentary on the difficult words of Neviim but also to present the “chapter headings” of the major subjects of a Jewish philosophy. This quickly led R. Avraham to a place of esoteric seeking.
Though he grew up and was educated in Spain, Avraham Abulafia left for Eretz Yisrael around the age of twenty, apparently in an attempt to find the legendary Sambatyon River, which was said to behave differently on Shabbatot (for more on the Sambatyon, see the Premodern Aliyah Series, here and here). In 1260, however, a conflict broke out in Eretz Yisrael between the Mamluks (a class of non-Arab, mostly Turkic slave soldiers that gained political power, especially in medieval Egypt but also parts of the Levant and Hijaz from the mid-1200s to the 1500s) and the Mongols, tribes of whom invaded the Middle East beginning in the thirteenth century. This prompted Avraham to return to Europe, via Greece and Italy. In Capua, a city in southern Italy, he studied the Moreh with the halachist and philosopher R. Hillel of Verona (c. 1220–c. 1295, who likely himself never lived in Verona).
Sometime after that, R. Avraham returned to Spain. Around 1270 he began studying the secrets of the Kabbala in Catalunya with one R. Baruch ha-Togarmi (“the Turkish”), whose traditions seem to have concentrated on the Divine Names and letter mysticism, as well as ecstatic experiences. (One work of R. Baruch’s, an exposition on Kabbala styled as a commentary on Sefer Yetzira, survives.) Around the time of these studies, R. Avraham received a revelation with messianic overtones, which he promptly began disseminating in Castile. Soon thereafter, he resumed his travels, reaching Italy and Greece again, where he acquired students and continued to share his Kabbalistic experiences.
In the summer of 1280, in a quixotic attempt to convert the impactful, power-shifting Pope Nicholas III to Judaism, thus provoking the beginning of the messianic age, R. Avraham arrived in Rome. Unfortunately for him, the pope died unexpectedly in August of 1280, arousing suspicion of Avraham and leading to his imprisonment. After his release, Avraham continued teaching and writing in Italy, but by 1285 he had sufficiently aroused the ire of the great Rashba, who placed him under ban as a messianic pretender and effectively proscribed ecstatic Kabbala, resigning it to obscurity. In a responsum on messianic pretenders (including Nissim ben Avraham, the “Prophet of Ávila”), Rashba wrote of Avraham Abulafia:
מ[עין] אלה ראיתי ושמעתי [בעצמי]. ואחד מהם היה אותו הנבל, שם רשעים ירקב, אותו אברהם [אבולעפיה] ששָׂם שמו נביא ומשיח בשיסיליאה [=סיציליה], ופִתה בכזביו כמה מבני ישראל. ולולי שסגרתי הפתח בפניו, בחמלת השם - עם רב כתבי וכתבי קהלות הקודש - כמעט שהתחיל והיה מכלה ברב דבריו הדמיוניים והכוזבים, שהיו כחוכמות רמות לאויל, ושנתן דעתו עליהם כמה ימים ובהתמדת מה שהיה מרגיל עצמו בו, ולוקח הכתובים ודברי החכמים בגימטריאות, ומערב בהם מעט דברים אמיתיים לקוחים מספרי החכמה.
Some such cases I have seen and heard [myself]. One of them was that scoundrel, may the name of the wicked rot, that Abraham [Abulafia] who claimed to be a prophet and messiah in Sicily. With his lies he seduced some Jews; had I not shut the door against him—with God's mercy, through my letters and the letters of the holy communities—he would have quickly consummated what he had begun. [For he spoke] with an abundance of imagined and false words which to a fool seem lofty wisdom. He would think about them for a few days with the diligence that he generally employed. And he took scriptural verses and the words of the Sages concerning numerology, mixing them with a few true things taken from the books of wisdom.
Rashba, Responsa Volume 1, no. 548,1 edited and translated in Michael Walzer et al., The Jewish Political Tradition, Hebrew ed. p. 166, English ed., p. 236
R. Yosef Gikatilla
During his days in Castile, Avraham Abulafia had contact with, and disseminated teachings to, both R. Moshe of Burgos and R. Yosef Gikatilla (1248-c. 1325). The latter in particular became R. Avraham’s student, before becoming an influential Kabbalist in his own right. R. Yosef Gikatilla had a considerable output of written works; the earliest, Ginat Egoz (Garden of Nuts), concentrates on letter mysticism, as did Avraham Abulafia during that period, and evinces Maimonidean influence. Later, especially in his best-known work, Shaarei Orah (Gates of Light), R. Gikatilla developed a theory of the Sefirotic system. He also wrote ethical-Kabbalistic works and explanations of the reasons for the commandments (taamei ha-mitzvot), though one work in the latter genre has been shown to be misattributed to him. R. Gikatilla later met R. Moshe de León, in whose circle the Zohar would surface. The two would prove influential on one another, as we’ll soon see.
Reads and Resources
Dr. Moshe Idel, a prolific scholar, has written extensively about Avraham Abulafia, as has Dr. Elliot R. Wolfson (among others). You can hear Idel give a brief overview in this video. For the most accessible (though quite academic) introduction, I’d recommend Idel’s Messianic Mystics (Yale, 2000).
R. Avraham Abulafia’s are also available on HebrewBooks.org (put אברהם אבולעפיה in the author search field) and as seforim; here is a 13-volume set, but many individual volumes are also available. So too are R. Yosef Gikatilla’s (searchיוסף ג'יקטיליה on HebrewBooks or see seforim here.)
Rashba’s massive amount of responsa are textually complex; “Volume 1” is not the earliest responsa, but rather the first volume assembled by printers in the age of mechanical printing. In the linked PDF, it appears on internal page 208 (starts on p. 234 of the PDF). It also appears in H. Z. Dimitrovsky’s (partial) edition of Rashba’s teshuvot, vol. 1, pp. 100-107.