soul but hurt everybody by delaying the redemption. They organized several “repentance groups,” in which the members would consult and assist each other in striving for religious and ethical achievements.
The very concept of repentance underwent a radical transformation: it no longer represented the return to observance after a transgression, but a way of life, one of complete dedication to extreme orthodoxy, repenting not only one’s own sins but the sins of all others, past and present. The conception seems to have been that God does not deal only with individuals, but with the people as a whole, and redemption is to be achieved by communal or even national perfection. Each individual is religiously responsible for the sins and transgressions of everyone else, living and dead, and therefore there cannot be any limit to the sacrifices and efforts of repentance. Several Safed scholars went as far as inflicting themselves with pain and wounds, including self-immolation, which is very rare in Jewish practice.
Isaac Luria, who revolutionized the kabbalah in this period, arrived in Safed in 1570 when these practices were at their peak.
He was born in Safed in 1534, but his family migrated to Egypt, where he grew up and acquired his traditional and kabbalistic 72
M O D E R N T I M E S I I : S A F E D A N D T H E L U R I A N I C K A B B A L A H
education. When he returned to Safed a group of disciples assembled around him. Rabbi Hayyim Vital Klippers, who was already a well-known Safed scholar, headed the disciples, who believed that Luria’s soul was often uplifted to the divine realms, where he studied great secrets in the celestial academy of Torah.
Although we have a few fragments of his writing discussing portions from the Zohar, he did not write much. He explained his reluctance to write by the enormity of the visions that were before his eyes. It was like a great river, he is reported as saying, which he could not control and let it flow from his tiny pen.
Luria died in a plague two years after his return to Safed, in 1572, at the age of thirty-eight. Some of his disciples explained his early death as punishment for revealing forbidden secrets, thus enhancing the prestige of his teachings. Others maintained that he was the Messiah Son of Joseph, the commander of God’s armies who was destined to die just before the Messiah Son of David redeems the world. (Rabbi Hayyim Vital believed this second role to be his, and he asserted that Luria had revealed to him his own messianic destiny.) Luria’s prestige grew in the next decades, a body of hagiographic tales relating his miraculous knowledge was told by those who knew him, and his disciples assembled his teachings in several versions.
The most important studies of Luria’s teachings were presented by Gershom Scholem and Isaiah Tishby in 1941, and since then, while we have many books and articles dealing with particular problems and aspects of Luria’s teachings, the main picture that they drew is still dominant. Further studies may cast some doubts, but as of now presenting their studies is the best that we can do. The reader should not accept the following description as a final word; it may be revised, but today we do not have any comprehensive alternative.
The Withdrawal: Zimzum and Shevirah Isaac Luria dared, unlike most theologians and philosophers, to put in the center of his worldview the most basic questions, 73
K A B B A L A H
which are so often avoided: Why everything? Why does God exist? Why did the creation occur? What is meaning of everything? He gave to these questions a most radical and revolutionary answer, expressed in daring mythological concepts and terms. The most innovative concept that lies at the heart of Luria’s teachings is the imperfection of beginning. Existence does not begin with a perfect Creator bringing into being an imperfect universe; rather, the existence of the universe is the result of an inherent flaw or crisis within
The very concept of repentance underwent a radical transformation: it no longer represented the return to observance after a transgression, but a way of life, one of complete dedication to extreme orthodoxy, repenting not only one’s own sins but the sins of all others, past and present. The conception seems to have been that God does not deal only with individuals, but with the people as a whole, and redemption is to be achieved by communal or even national perfection. Each individual is religiously responsible for the sins and transgressions of everyone else, living and dead, and therefore there cannot be any limit to the sacrifices and efforts of repentance. Several Safed scholars went as far as inflicting themselves with pain and wounds, including self-immolation, which is very rare in Jewish practice.
Isaac Luria, who revolutionized the kabbalah in this period, arrived in Safed in 1570 when these practices were at their peak.
He was born in Safed in 1534, but his family migrated to Egypt, where he grew up and acquired his traditional and kabbalistic 72
M O D E R N T I M E S I I : S A F E D A N D T H E L U R I A N I C K A B B A L A H
education. When he returned to Safed a group of disciples assembled around him. Rabbi Hayyim Vital Klippers, who was already a well-known Safed scholar, headed the disciples, who believed that Luria’s soul was often uplifted to the divine realms, where he studied great secrets in the celestial academy of Torah.
Although we have a few fragments of his writing discussing portions from the Zohar, he did not write much. He explained his reluctance to write by the enormity of the visions that were before his eyes. It was like a great river, he is reported as saying, which he could not control and let it flow from his tiny pen.
Luria died in a plague two years after his return to Safed, in 1572, at the age of thirty-eight. Some of his disciples explained his early death as punishment for revealing forbidden secrets, thus enhancing the prestige of his teachings. Others maintained that he was the Messiah Son of Joseph, the commander of God’s armies who was destined to die just before the Messiah Son of David redeems the world. (Rabbi Hayyim Vital believed this second role to be his, and he asserted that Luria had revealed to him his own messianic destiny.) Luria’s prestige grew in the next decades, a body of hagiographic tales relating his miraculous knowledge was told by those who knew him, and his disciples assembled his teachings in several versions.
The most important studies of Luria’s teachings were presented by Gershom Scholem and Isaiah Tishby in 1941, and since then, while we have many books and articles dealing with particular problems and aspects of Luria’s teachings, the main picture that they drew is still dominant. Further studies may cast some doubts, but as of now presenting their studies is the best that we can do. The reader should not accept the following description as a final word; it may be revised, but today we do not have any comprehensive alternative.
The Withdrawal: Zimzum and Shevirah Isaac Luria dared, unlike most theologians and philosophers, to put in the center of his worldview the most basic questions, 73
K A B B A L A H
which are so often avoided: Why everything? Why does God exist? Why did the creation occur? What is meaning of everything? He gave to these questions a most radical and revolutionary answer, expressed in daring mythological concepts and terms. The most innovative concept that lies at the heart of Luria’s teachings is the imperfection of beginning. Existence does not begin with a perfect Creator bringing into being an imperfect universe; rather, the existence of the universe is the result of an inherent flaw or crisis within
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