CHAPTER 12
The Mystic Fellowship of Safed: Moses Cordovero and Isaac Luria
KABBALAH CONTINUED TO DEVELOP and grow despite, or perhaps because of, the adversities experienced by the Jewish communities of the Mediterranean in the late fifteenth century. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain and the Inquisition forced Jews to convert to Christianity or flee into exile. Many went to Greece, Turkey, even to Mexico. Others went to the Holy Land, then under Muslim domination. In Safed, a small city in northern Israel, the Kabbalah flourished, as numerous fellowships of mystics gathered together to nurture and support one another in the mystic quest. The renewal of Kabbalah came through a community of mystic brothers who shared in a union based on love of God, the Shekhinah, and one another.
Moses Cordovero
The sixteenth-century rabbi Moses ben Jacob Cordovero was one of the
most important scholars and kabbalists of Safed. Cordovero was born
around 1522 and died in 1570. While his birthplace is unknown, the name
Cordovero strongly indicates that his family came from Cordoba, Spain,
and most likely fled from there during the Inquisition due to the
expulsion of Jews beginning in 1492.
Little is known of Cordovero’s origin and early life. It is possible that he was born in Safed; it is certain that he spent most of his life there. Cordovero was a major influence in the transformation of Safed into one of the most important centers of kabbalistic teachings in the sixteenth century. Moses Cordovero, Isaac Luria, and Joseph Karo are among three of the most renowned figures in the history of Kabbalah and they all lived in Safed at the same time. All of them had distinctive talents and special views on aspects of kabbalistic theology. And while there are differences between Luria and Cordovero on specific aspects of the sefirot, these are minor compared to their common spiritual and messianic view that their mission was to restore the well-being of the divine realm of God through collective action. All three were practicing mystics who shared a revolutionary outlook that man’s individual and collective actions could reestablish order in the cosmos. They were leaders of a mystical fellowship that, as one renowned Safed kabbalist, Hayim Vital, described it, were like brothers, each of whom bound himself “to the others as if he were one limb within the body of the fellowship.… And should there be one among them in distress, all must take it upon themselves to share his troubles, whether it has to do with some illness or with his children, God forbid.”333
Cordovero was the first and foremost leader of that fellowship and, while known for his prolific writing (approximately thirty books and manuscripts), he is most important historically for his ability to demonstrate the underlying unity of the kabbalistic tradition by organizing the various, often seemingly contradictory, viewpoints and writings, especially the Zohar, into a methodical system. However, our focus is more specifically on Cordovero as the practicing mystic and teacher, which unfortunately, is not well documented. His interest in the writings of Abraham Abulafia reveals that he was not only preoccupied by an academic interest in the symbolism of the sefirot, he was actively involved in exploring techniques of mystic practice.334 While Cordovero began his study of rabbinic law with the eminent scholar and mystic Rabbi Joseph Karo,335 he then went on to become a disciple of Solomon Alkabets,* his brother-in-law and founder of the circle of kabbalists at Safed.
Alkabets and Joseph Karo were acquaintances, and Alkabets not only had a significant influence on Cordovero in his mystical pursuits but also on Karo. Karo and Alkabets created the ritual of tikun leil shavuot, the tradition of staying up all night on the evening of the holiday of Shavuot. It was during one of these all-night rituals that Karo was visited for the first time by his maggid, whom he describes as an “angel who perched on his shoulder and kissed Jewish law into his mouth.”336 Cordovero was in search of a deeper understanding of Kabbalah, and Alkabets, a charismatic person who inspired his audiences with his knowledge of Kabbalah, was an obvious resource.
The two of them, along with other Safed mystics, took the kabbalistic mystic concepts and practices of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and pushed them to a level unimagined – or at least undocumented by – the earlier mystics. A central theme of these teachings is the cosmic repercussion of Adam’s sin. Early kabbalists taught that prior to his sin there was no material world. All human souls were part of the original soul of Adam; they were now the fallen sparks of the soul of Adam which not only partook of the sin, but then, because of the sin, were forced into exile from the spiritual realms to the physical world. Up to this point there is no major difference between earlier kabbalist teachings and interpretations of the Torah or Zohar.
The divergence from early Kabbalah begins with Cordovero, who soon became Alkabets’s master and a guide to other prominent kabbalists of Safed. The Safed mystics believed that it was their duty to help redeem the Jewish people and restore the original divine cosmic order through prayer, meditation, and other spiritual practices. The concept of individual responsibility for restoring the universe reverses the traditional notion of God’s autonomy and control so central to Jewish teachings. It is a revolutionary concept, for it implies that God looks to the individual human being to perform an act of his own will to bring himself and the world out of exile. Human beings take control of God’s well-being with their every act of religious observance – every good deed or sin has its effect on the divine. As Lawrence Fine, an important scholar of sixteenth-century Kabbalah, writes:
God is no longer conceived to be in control of all history in the conventional theological sense. Rather God’s own well-being is determined by what human beings do or fail to do. The mystic’s religious observance takes on an altogether new meaning by investing his every deed with enormous significance.337
But not only was Adam’s sin the cause of man’s exile, it also caused the exile of the Shekhinah. From this perspective, the Shekhinah is in exile wandering alone on the earth, parted from her other half (God) due to Adam’s sin (the sin of all souls in this world). Many scholars such as Gershom Scholem and George Robinson have written that this revolutionary concept appeared in Jewish life following the historical crisis of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Cordovero, Alkabets, and most of their students, who were primarily from the Iberian Peninsula, were attracted to the idea that only a collective action had the power to achieve that which had never been achieved, restoring the cosmic order to what it was before Adam’s sin and bringing the Shekhinah out of her long exile. (Jews have been persecuted and expelled many times throughout history but no group prior to the Safed mystics had the audacity to take on a responsibility of this magnitude!)
To what extent the expulsion from Iberia consciously or unconsciously influenced Cordovero or any other of the Safed mystics or their students, is impossible to determine. But it is possible that the expulsion, for the wider Jewish community of Safed, was a major contributor to their increased interest in the Zohar and a mystic perspective on life, in which this physical world becomes unreal and the inner life becomes real. Life in this world is seen from a spiritual, eternal perspective rather than the (painful) here and now. The teachings of the mystics of Safed fit the Jewish community’s conceptual mindset of that time, which created a receptive environment for accepting radical changes in Jewish thought.
For whatever reason or reasons, Cordovero and his master, Alkabets, did have an emotional intensity, a sense of guilt and shame, which motivated them to engage in unique spiritual practices they believed would restore cosmic order. Together they performed gerushin (banishments), a practice of wandering into the countryside to imitate the exiled Shekhinah and thus transform themselves into a receptive vessel for her. In The Palm Tree of Deborah, Cordovero describes the experience:
One should wander, as if exiled, from place to place, purely for the sake of Heaven, and thereby make oneself a vessel for the Shekhinah in exile.338
During these gerushin, Cordovero experienced interpretations of biblical texts that would pour from his mouth. Cordovero said, “New ideas would come to us in a manner that cannot be believed unless one has seen or experienced it many times.”339 Gerushin was only one of the many means at hand that would allow for communion with the Shekhinah. Alkabets also taught Cordovero how to meditate on the graves of great spiritual leaders of former times in the area of Safed.
Cordovero and his brotherhood were men of ascetic piousness. One had to be pure in thought and action in order to make one’s heart the abode of the Shekhinah and to engage in mystic practice. This theme was developed into a system of hanhagot (rules of mystical piety), which became a genre of literature produced by many of the Safed mystics as a daily guide for their brotherhood. They were an intricate part of the teachings of the sages of Safed and laid the foundation for their mystic teachings. They can also be seen as representing a counterpart to mysticism, a theme inherent to so much of Jewish thinking, of Talmud and the Zohar, of law and love.
Cordovero included forty-one rules in his hanhagot. The following is a selection:
A person should never lie and ought to keep away from lies; he must not utter a false word in any manner whatsoever.
Let a person commune with one of the associates [companions] every day for the purpose of conversing about devotional concerns.
A person should not turn his heart away from meditating upon words of Torah and holiness, so that his heart will not be empty and void of reflection upon the commandments, and in order that his heart may become a dwelling place for the Shekhinah.340
In The Palm Tree of Deborah Cordovero had already put forward the concept that every action and thought of man affected the upper worlds, the divine realm. The individual therefore must imitate God in each aspect of mundane life. Cordovero explains how to do so. By the time Luria arrived in Safed, the groundwork had been prepared. After a very close relationship between Cordovero and Luria lasting six months, Cordovero died at age forty-eight. Luria became the leader of the fellowship. By all historical accounts, Cordovero, while a dynamic thinker, did not have the influence or charisma of Luria, who went far deeper, affecting the course of Jewish mysticism and religious practice even to this day.
Isaac Luria
Isaac ben Solomon Luria, generally known by an acronym of his name,
ha-Ari (the divine Rabbi Isaac),* lived from 1534 to 1572. He
was born in Jerusalem, but when his father died his mother moved to
Egypt, where he was brought up by a wealthy uncle. Luria studied under
one of the most renowned rabbinic scholars in Egypt, who was also a
kabbalist. Luria may have been initiated into the life of a mystic
through his influence. At the age of fifteen Luria married his cousin
and was able to continue his studies as he was well provided for. At
about the age of twenty-two, he became absorbed in the study of the
Zohar, which had recently been printed for the first time.
The Zohar had a profound effect on Luria and most likely inspired him to adopt the life of a recluse. He withdrew to an island off the banks of the Nile, and for seven years secluded himself in an isolated cottage, where he spent his time reading and meditating. While on the Nile he visited his family only on the Sabbath, speaking very seldom, and always in Hebrew. At this stage of his life Luria was having frequent internal visions and interviews with the prophet Elijah,* by whom he was initiated into the divine path. He also recounted that while he was asleep his soul ascended to heaven and conversed with many great teachers of the past. It was during these seven years of seclusion that Luria began developing his kabbalist system.
In 1570 Luria settled in Safed. Safed welcomed him as it was a cultural haven of scholars, poets, and writers, and there were many kabbalists open to new ideas. They were sincere seekers intent on creating the right conditions for the messiah to appear. When Luria arrived, Moses Cordovero had been the central figure in the kabbalist community for some time. There is some evidence that Luria regarded Cordovero as his spiritual master. The temperament and values of the community and Luria meshed. Cordovero died on June 17, 1570, the same year that Luria had arrived. Luria filled the vacuum of leadership created by Cordovero’s death.341
Luria lived in Safed for only about two years, and during this time he dominated the kabbalistic community. However, it should be stressed that by the time of Luria’s arrival, the community included other illustrious kabbalists in addition to Moses Cordovero, Joseph Karo, and Solomon Alkabets:
Jacob Berab, who had set out to reinitiate rabbinic ordination by reestablishing an unbroken line back to Moses;
Elijah de Vidas, the author of Reshit hokhmah (The Beginning of Wisdom), one of the most influential ethical works in Judaism;
Eleazar Azikri, author of Sefer haredim (The Book of the Pious); and
Hayim Vital, author of the Ets hayim (The Tree of Life).
Luria the charismatic mystic was not only in harmony with the mystical atmosphere and culture of Safed, but before his arrival the town had already become one of the major centers in the world influencing Jewish religious thought. Kabbalistic thinking was becoming part of the mainstream, and was being spread to other parts of the world by followers of Cordovero and other teachers living in Safed.
Luria had four groups of disciples, as well as some disciples who were outside the structure of a group. The first two groups became the vessels for his secret teachings and rituals and his formulae of invocation. To his first and most notable group belonged Hayim Vital, Jonathan Sagis, Joseph Arzin, Isaac Kohen, Gedaliah ha-Levi, Samuel Uceda, Judah Mishan, Abraham Gavriel, Shabatai Menashe, Joseph ibn Tabul, and Elijah Falko. The third and fourth groups consisted of novices, to whom he taught elementary Kabbalah.
Since Luria wrote very little, we are completely dependent on Hayim Vital (1543–1620), Joseph ibn Tabul, and a few other disciples to tell us what he was like as a man and what he taught. But everything they wrote was subject to their interpretation, and none of them were able to convey Luria’s unique combination of personal charisma and spiritual insight. Since the writings of these disciples, especially of Vital, are all that remain of him, they have become synonymous with the teachings of Luria.
The irony is that according to Vital, Luria did not want his teachings to be known beyond the circle of his students (possibly only to Vital himself) nor did he desire to speak in public. However, his disciples continued to gather around him, and Vital tried to convince Luria to continue as their teacher. Luria also refused to commit anything of his mystical thinking to writing aside from a short commentary on a section of the Zohar and some religious poetry. He explained why:
It is impossible, because all things are connected with one another. I can hardly open up my mouth to speak without feeling as though the sea burst its dams and overflowed. How then shall I express what my soul has received, and how can I put it down in a book?342
If he could hardly express his wonderment at his experience of the divine unity, how could he write it or tell it? Yet he did divulge something, as the story of his death reveals. Luria died at the age of thirty-eight from the plague. He predicted his early death and attributed it to the fact that he had divulged too much of his mystical knowledge to his disciples. What he divulged isn’t really known, but from reading between the lines of Vital’s writings, it seems that Vital pressed him to give the esoteric meaning of a passage in the Zohar. Luria said he didn’t have permission from “on high” to do so, that it was a great mystery. But finally Vital wore him down and he revealed it; the esoteric secret had to do with the level of Luria’s own soul and his spiritual attainments. He also told Vital that as a result he would have to die within the year.
Luria’s sin was in teaching the mystery to people who were not deserving. There are many hints in Luria’s writings that he felt his disciples didn’t love one another enough, and this is what made them undeserving. That is why he didn’t have divine permission to teach them the inner secrets. Yet he revealed too much and, like Moses the prophet of the Bible who couldn’t enter the promised land with his people, Luria ultimately felt he had failed in his mission.
LURIA'S COSMOLOGY
Based on the teachings of the Zohar and early Kabbalah, Luria
developed his own symbolic explanation concerning the process of
creation, which resonated with the Jewish psyche of his time, both on a
national and a psychological level. At the heart of Luria’s teachings
are the concepts of tsimtsum (contraction) and shevirat
ha-kelim (shattering of the vessels). Luria believed that at the
time of the initial creation, God contracted or withdrew into Himself,
thus creating a vacuum or empty space (tehiru) in which the
creation could take place. According to Luria, prior to
tsimtsum, the spiritual aspects or qualities of God – which the
kabbalists called the sefirot – existed undifferentiated, beyond
duality, within the Ayn-Sof (the infinite primal light).
Know that before the emanations were emanated and the creatures created, the simple supernal light filled all there was and there was no empty area whatever, that is, an empty atmosphere and a vacuum. All was filled with that simple infinite light. It had no beginning and no end. All was simple light in total sameness. This is called the endless light.
When in His simple will it was resolved to create worlds and emanate the emanations, to bring to objective existence the perfection of His deeds, and His names and His appellations, which was the reason for the creation of the worlds, then He contracted Himself within the middle point in Himself, in the very center. And He contracted that light, and it was withdrawn to the sides around the middle point. Then there was left an empty space, an atmosphere, and a vacuum extending from the precise point of the center.343
Luria makes it clear that this is all metaphorical and not meant physically: “Know that for the sake of comprehension we have been permitted to draw on analogies from the physical organisms , … but you, enlightened one, cleanse your thinking to realize that in the supernal realm there is nothing physical.”344
With tsimtsum, God expelled from himself even the potential for negativity, thus creating the “seed” or potential for the duality of positive and negative, good and evil. At the highest level, all is oneness. Only when the creation process begins does the undifferentiated primal light divide into the duality of positive-negative, masculine-feminine forces.
The concept of shevirat ha-kelim explains the next step in the creation process in a manner similar to the Big Bang theory: At the moment of creation, the primary emanation of light from the Ayn-Sof was too intense to flow into the creation in an orderly way, so it shattered the vessels (of light) that were meant to contain and channel it.* From this cataclysm, sparks of the divine light flew off helter-skelter in a chaotic profusion. Some of the sparks returned to their source, while others fell into the material planes and were imprisoned in the kelipot, shells or shards of coarse matter. Thus there are sparks of the divine imprisoned everywhere in the creation.
On a narrative level, Adam’s sin of disobedience to God, for which he and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden, is a metaphor for the shattering of the vessels and the scattering of the light. Adam’s sin resulted in disharmony in the divine realms, according to Luria, as the divine light, the primal energy, no longer flowed through the sefirot into the created world in an orderly way.
The concept of the sefirot is the imposition of order on the flow of light into the creation in successive stages, according to Luria. He used the metaphor of partsufim (faces, configurations, arrangements) to explain it further. The partsufim are groupings of the ten sefirot into five configurations or pairs. When the partsufim are in balance, they interrelate and energize each other so that the divine force flows between them harmoniously. At the time the primal light became dispersed into the creation, the harmonious flow of energy among the partsufim was interrupted, and thus the divine realms went into a state of imbalance. The flow of the creative energy that had formerly circulated between them continuously had stopped. The restoration of their harmonious energy flow is the goal of tikun olam, “repair of the cosmos,” which was Luria’s concept of creating harmony in the spiritual realm.
The Lurianic notion of tikun olam is also based on the principle that all things and actions in the world, no matter how seemingly trivial, are saturated with holy sparks, which are yearning to return to the state of unity from which they fell at the time of creation. Thus it is obligatory for the pious to recite specific prayers and perform rituals and meditation exercises that would not only absolve them of their own sins, but which would free the sparks from the kelipot, the shells or layers of materiality, and help them return to their source in the divine.
Luria’s concept of tikun was a very powerful notion that caught hold of the imagination of the Jews of his time. Luria and his followers had developed an ideology that was a direct response to the afflictions of the Jewish people. The exile of the Jews from Spain in the fifteenth century was no less a tragedy than the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. The contemporary historian of religion George Robinson elaborates on this theme. He says that particularly at that time in history, an answer was needed to the question of the existence of evil in the world – “the sort of evil that had forced thousands of Jews to convert to Christianity at sword point, killed countless thousands of other Jews, and finally driven the Iberian Jews into exile.”345 Lurianic Kabbalah gave Jews of this period the responsibility to respond positively to the evil. Rather than lose themselves in bitterness and rage, they were to “repair the cosmos” by engaging themselves in tikun olam.
On another level, the efforts to repair or mend the disharmony and polarization in the upper realms can be understood as an externalization of the need for the individual soul to rise above the state of spiritual disharmony and alienation in which human beings all live, to union with the divine being, which is above duality and exists in pure self-contained oneness. This is exemplified in the myth of Adam and Eve, who were commanded not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (which represents duality) and taste only of the tree of life (divine unity). However, they succumbed to the temptation of ego and became trapped in the realm of duality – of suffering and contentment, pain and pleasure, good and evil.
Luria’s teachings embodied the basic vision, corroborated by contemporary science, that “the cosmos consists of a great chain of being, in which one can discern the whole structure of reality in any particular part of it.”346 The universal mystic principle is that the part contains the whole. Like other kabbalists, Luria also divided the creation into four realms of decreasing degrees of spiritual purity: atsilut (emanation), briah (creation), yetsirah (formation), and assiyah (making or actualization), in which every lower level mirrors the one above. It is easy to see, therefore, why Luria envisioned that each of the five partsufim contained all ten sefirot, that each of the four realms of creation contained an entire set of partsufim, that each of the ten sefirot contained elements of all ten sefirot, and so forth.
Luria’s teachings spread quickly and influenced many European Jewish scholars and mystics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His concepts of tikun olam and liberation of the sparks from gross matter penetrated deeply into the thinking of kabbalists and messianic figures, including Shabatai Tsevi of the seventeenth century. Such concepts as tsimtsum (contraction), shevirah (shattering), and tikun (mending), which underlie the teachings of modern Hasidism, while originating in the Zohar, were greatly illuminated by Luria. From the time of the canonization of the Hebrew Bible in the fifth or fourth century bce until Luria, there had not been a charismatic mystical authority to equal him in spiritual impact. The thinking of twentieth-century psychologists and writers like Carl Jung and James Joyce was also dramatically influenced by Luria. The synagogue liturgy and many present-day Jewish customs are based upon Lurianic devotional practices.
LURIA'S INFLUENCE AND CHARISMA
Luria’s charisma was embodied in his spiritual and psychic
sensitivity. His divinatory experiences – ability to read minds, see
past lives of disciples, and the like – elevated his authority in the
minds of his disciples. His access to the divine realms, where he
conversed with Elijah and brought his disciples into contact with him
and other great souls, also enhanced Luria’s disciples’ concept of him
as someone of spiritual mastery, who could change their lives and heal
them so that they could in turn heal others in their mission to mend the
cosmos. In that sense they believed he was their redeemer. Hayim Vital
imparts in Sha’ar ha-hakdamot (Gate of the Introductions) a
first-hand description of his master that represents the experience of
all of Luria’s disciples:
The Ari [Luria] overflowed with Torah. He was thoroughly expert in Scripture, Mishnah, Talmud, Pilpul, Midrash, Aggadah, Ma‘aseh Bereshit, and Ma‘aseh Merkavah [various texts, methods of interpretation, and mystical teachings]. He was expert in the language of trees, the language of birds, and the speech of angels. He could read faces in the manner outlined in the Zohar.… He could discern all that any individual had done, and could see what they would do in the future. He could read people’s thoughts, often before the thought even entered their mind. He knew future events, was aware of everything happening here on earth, and what was decreed in heaven.
He knew the mysteries of gilgul [reincarnation], who had been born previously, and who was here for the first time. He could look at a person and tell him how he was connected to higher spiritual levels, and his original root in Adam. He could read wondrous things [about people] in the light of a candle or in the flame of a fire. With his eyes he gazed and was able to see the souls of the righteous, both those who had died recently and those who had lived in ancient times. Together with these departed souls, he studied the true mysteries.
From a person’s scent, he was able to know all that he had done.… It was as if the answers to all these mysteries were lying dormant within him, waiting to be activated whenever he desired. He did not have to seclude himself to seek them out.
All this we saw with our own eyes. These are not things that we heard from others. They were wondrous things that had not been seen on earth since the time of Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai. None of this was attained through magic, heaven forbid. There is a strong prohibition against these arts. Instead, it came automatically, as a result of his saintliness and asceticism, after many years of study in both the ancient and the newer kabbalistic texts. He then increased his piety, asceticism, purity, and holiness until he reached a level where Elijah would constantly reveal himself to him, speaking to him “mouth to mouth,” teaching him these mysteries and secrets.347
VALUES
Luria’s sensitivity extended to the moral and ethical aspects of
people’s lives. He expected his disciples to live according to his high
standard. Vital summarizes his teachings:
The most important of all worthy traits consists in an individual’s behaving with humility, modesty, and with the fear of sin to the greatest possible degree. He should also, to the utmost degree, keep his distance from pride, anger, fussiness, foolishness, and evil gossip; and even should he have a significant reason for behaving harshly, he ought to refrain from acting in this way.… He should also abstain from idle conversation … and not to lose his temper, even with the members of his own household.348
Luria’s sensitivity included even the humblest of animals, as Vital writes:
My master, of blessed memory, used to be careful never to destroy any insect, even the smallest and least significant among them, such as fleas and gnats, bees and the like, even if they were annoying him.349
Luria was especially concerned about displays of anger among his disciples. He believed that it was “an obstacle to mystical inspiration altogether” as it injures a person to the depth of his soul.
In devotion, Luria emphasized the importance of a happy disposition. Sadness runs counter to the attainment of mystical inspiration.
Melancholia is, by itself, an exceedingly unpleasant quality of personality, particularly in the case of an individual whose intention is to acquire esoteric knowledge and experience the Holy Spirit. There is nothing which impedes mystical inspiration – even for someone who is otherwise worthy of it – as much as the quality of sadness.350
Luria also maintained that performance of the commandments (the mitsvot) must be done with joyfulness. The amount of “supernal light (aur elyon) and the inspiration of the holy spirit (ruah ha-kodesh)” that the performance of the mitsvot evoked were “in direct proportion to one’s degree of joyfulness.”351
Luria was also passionate about the importance of his disciples loving one another:
And especially when it comes to the love for one’s associates who study Torah with one another, each and every person must bind himself to the others as if he were one limb within the body of this fellowship. This is particularly important when an individual possesses the knowledge and the mystical insight with which to understand and apprehend his friend’s soul. And should there be one among them in distress, all must take it upon themselves to share his trouble, whether it has to do with some illness, or with his children, God forbid. And they must all pray on his behalf. Likewise, in all one’s prayers and petitions one should be mindful of his fellows. My teacher, of blessed memory, took great care to caution me about the love which we ought to bear toward our associates, the members of our brotherhood.352
The Safed kabbalists who preceded Luria, while at the center of kabbalistic thought, were also known for being consumed by melancholy, guilt, and vanity. Luria, like many other masters throughout history, emphasized in his daily interactions with his students the importance of controlling emotional states that impeded spiritual development, and he was an example in his behavior in that he did not demonstrate those negative states.
In spiritual practice, discipline and passion are required. One cannot help but admire the sincerity and intense dedication to the spiritual life that Luria and his disciples embodied.
In addition, Rabbi Abraham ha-Levi, may God protect and preserve him, related to me that my master, of blessed memory, gave him the following advice concerning the attainment of mystical inspiration: a person must not indulge in idle conversation; he must rise in the middle of the night and weep on account of our poverty of knowledge. He ought to study forty or fifty pages of Zohar each day with the exclusive goal of textual familiarity, without engaging in intensive investigation. He should read the Zohar frequently.
When I asked my teacher how he had merited all the esoteric wisdom in his possession, however, he told me that he had invested a great amount of effort studying. But I responded that Rabbi Moses of Cordovero, of blessed memory, had also done the same. Even I, Hayim, devoted a tremendous amount of effort in acquiring this wisdom. He then told me that while it is true that we applied ourselves extremely diligently, to an extent greater than any of our contemporaries, we did not do as he had done. For how many nights had he remained awake, poring over a single passage of the Zohar? Sometimes he would seclude himself, sit and study only a single passage during the course of six weekday nights. And usually, he would avoid sleeping altogether during these nights.353
HIS TEACHINGS
As reflected in the stories of his personal life, Luria believed that
spiritual truths could not be conveyed through books, although he
greatly valued the Sefer yetsirah, Sefer ha-bahir, and the
Zohar, and he used their symbolism as the vocabulary for his own
teachings. To Luria the sublime secrets of the divine could only be
imparted from master to disciple. In fact, Luria defined Kabbalah as the
transmission of knowledge from one person to another.354 That is most
likely why he did not write, and he requested that his teachings not be
spread. He also believed in the power of divine inspiration and internal
contact with the prophets of old and with those in spiritual realms
beyond the earth. Luria himself was unable to transmit his deepest
understanding to others, as it was too sublime to be communicated in
earthly language, and his disciples weren’t ready to receive it. Yet the
personal contact between master and disciple was the core of the
relationships among the Safed kabbalists.
This is very different, for example, from Abulafia, who wrote extensively and gave out instructions for mystic union in his books. Abulafia did not deny the importance of a teacher but did not emphasize it either. He had many disciples, but that did not mean one could not learn his methods from books. For Abulafia the important thing was that the exact meditation practice he had prescribed be followed.
One did not become a disciple of Luria’s without a diagnosis by Luria. He could see into the heart, mind, and soul of an individual to determine if they were fit to be purified before entering upon discipleship. To diagnose individuals he used a method which allowed him to see with his inner eye several Hebrew letters visible upon an individual’s forehead to determine the state of his soul, mind, and body in the most-minute detail.
Luria could also tell much about a person’s emotional state by pulse reading, and if required, he “called forth the nefesh, ruah, or neshamah (three levels of the soul) of an individual to speak with it.” It was said that he could know everything about a person, from what they would do in the future to what they would say next, to what past lives they had gone through. However, he utilized these powers in a very affectionate manner. Lawrence Fine, in his ground-breaking work Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos, gives us one excellent example from Vital of Luria’s skills, how he used them, and a feeling of the warmth that came from him:
Vital wrote that every single evening his master would gaze upon the faces of his disciples. He would then see a scriptural verse shining upon the forehead. The visualized verse was one that pertained to that particular student’s soul, in accordance with the Lurianic notion that every soul possesses interpretations of Scripture that are unique to it. Luria would then partially explain the esoteric meaning of the verse in terms of the significance that it held for that individual’s spiritual condition. The disciple was then instructed to concentrate upon the explanation he had been given and to recite the verse before going to sleep. He did this so that when his soul ascended to the upper realm during sleep, he might gain full knowledge of the verse’s meaning. In this way, the individual’s soul would increase in purity and ascend to still higher levels in the divine realm, where it would enjoy the revelation of additional mysteries of the Torah.355
Before becoming full-fledged members of the fellowship, where much spiritual knowledge was to be obtained, the potential disciples had to go through intensive purification practices due to sins committed in their present life. For each sin committed by a student prior to acceptance or while a practicing disciple, there were specific prescribed acts of purification that had to be endured. These acts of purification are well documented by his disciples. For lesser sins the act of purification was difficult but tolerable and would require fasting for 87 days, but other acts of purification were even more dreadful. For example, according to Vital, Luria instructed three of his followers to undergo “specific spiritual correction” for having sinned by engaging in immoral behavior. This remedy required 233 days of fasting, 161 of which were accompanied by immersing oneself naked in the snow and rolling frontwards and backwards nine times.
Luria had no hesitation about demonstrating these practices of purification. One act of purification which he appeared to favor required being tied in a cloth sack and having his disciples throw one-pound stones at him. Then he would jump out of the sack into a bed covered with burning nettles and roll around until he was covered with blisters.
However gruesome these activities may appear to us, they need to be perceived through the lens of the sixteenth century, not the twenty-first century, with a special focus on the history of Judeo-Christian attitudes toward sin and Luria’s concept of shevirat-ha-kelim, breaking of the vessels.356 It is probable that Luria and the Safed mystics were inspired by the penances of the Hasidei Asheknaz, with which they were familiar through many texts that had been preserved. Also, some members of the fellowship had originally lived in Morocco and other areas of North Africa, where these types of ascetic practices were commonly practiced by the Muslim Sufis.
There appears to be no indication that any of the disciples who wrote about these acts of purification saw them as unusual or harsh. In their writings they emphasized the importance of the number of days a person was to fast or the number of times to be immersed in water. To calculate the number of days for a fast or number of immersions for the particular sin they had committed, they used the intricate kabbalistic application of letter and number combinations.
As mentioned earlier, Luria had four groups of disciples. But his first group mattered the most to him. It was his elite community, which would help with the mending of the cosmos. This is not to say that the other groups were not important or that Jews who were not initiated did not matter. It is just that he believed that only a small, dedicated, and evolved group was necessary to facilitate the mending of the cosmos.
It is important to understand that each figure of the above-mentioned group knew his soul ancestry through Luria or by his own divination. Luria believed himself to be the reincarnation of the biblical Moses, as well as of Simeon bar Yohai, legendary mystic of the Zohar.357 His followers believed they were incarnations of eminent righteous souls as well. Luria maintained that their actions, no matter how small, had a correspondence with, and influence on, the workings of the macrocosm. Their goal clearly stated was that through their actions and daily contemplative ritualistic devotion they would mend the cosmos.
YIHUDIM
One of Luria’s contemplative ritualistic acts of devotion intended to
mend the cosmos was yihudim (unifications). The common
understanding of the yihudim taught by Luria is that they were
silent meditative exercises based on repetition and contemplation of
combinations of sacred words or names. They involved “unifying the name
of God” and “binding” the individual soul to the upper spheres. The
practices were meant to restore the divine harmony in the upper spheres
by reconnecting the aspects of God that had become estranged, allowing
the sparks to return to the primal light. Thus the purpose of
yihudim was to bring about the tikun olam.
Lawrence Fine comments on the type of meditation on the names that Luria and his disciples practiced. It should be emphasized that the performance of these yihudim could take even more than twenty-four hours. Needless to say, the practitioner had to bring total concentration (kavanah) to his practice.
Many of the names used in the performance of the yihudim correspond to the partsufim and their multiple sub-configurations, the unification of which is effected through formalized and sustained contemplation.… Some of these names constitute different spellings of the Tetragrammaton [the 4-letter name of God YHWH] and are known by their gematria [numerical values]. Thus, they are called by the names 72, 63, 45, and 52, and correspond to the partsufim.… As with the partsufim, the names of God to which they correspond constitute a vast and complex map of the divine structure. That is, the names are linguistic symbols, denoting various discrete concentrations of divine power. As such, they are not really names in the conventional sense. In a way highly reminiscent of the seemingly arbitrary deconstruction and reconstruction of Hebrew words so strikingly characteristic of Abulafian mysticism, Luria’s use of divine names is, to a significant extent, beyond rational understanding altogether.… Many of the yihudim consist of long sequences of names in deconstructed and reconstructed forms that do not bear any clear meaning. These are typically vocalized in ways that only add to the difficulty of making sense of them.358
We only have one document written by Luria himself, in which he gives instructions on performing a yihud to unify the sefirot of hokhmah (wisdom) and binah (understanding) as well as tiferet (beauty) and malkut (kingship). The result of the yihud would be the unification of the name of God YHWH, which would now become whole and perfect, with the qualities of those sefirot unified within it.359
But there was another very important aspect to Luria’s yihu- dim, which Lawrence Fine explores – and that was communicating with the souls of deceased saints, what is sometimes called “communicating with the very special dead.”360 This was a distinctive practice that was outside the daily communal prayers and individual meditations that disciples of the fellowship performed. It involved lying down on the graves of deceased saints and holy men and trying to unite with their souls in order to communicate with them and raise one’s own spiritual level (and theirs). Apparently, a very similar form of yihudim was being practiced by Muslim Sufis in Safed before Luria arrived.361
What Luria was teaching went against the Torah and all talmudic injunctions. There appears to be no evidence that yihudim as practiced by Luria has any connection to accepted Jewish rites. Although visits to gravesites of saints had become part of Jewish custom since the thirteenth century, under the influence of Sufi practice, stretching out on graves and trying to unite with the souls of the dead was a new Jewish ritual taught by Luria. This gives us insight into Luria’s creative ability as well as the power of what he created, as it carried on for centuries into the future.
The underlying basis for these yihudim was that Luria and his fellowship believed, as did most kabbalists, in the transmigration of the soul. Descriptions of reincarnation in Kabbalah are fairly complicated, and there is no definitive or comprehensive understanding of what was taught. However, what we know about transmigration as taught by Luria (through the writings of Vital and others) is quite unique and is based on a concept of “soul groups.” Luria taught that all souls belong to a particular soul group and that these groups reach back to the beginning of humanity. All souls were at one time part of Adam – the primal Adam of myth – Adam Kadmon. According to Luria, Adam’s sin and banishment from Eden symbolizes the scattering of the primal light into the creation. Thus the souls that were originally part of Adam scattered in many different directions. Those who came to the earth belonged to various classifications of soul groups. The members of these groups share a deeper relatedness than a blood-family ancestry, due to the fact that they share a long-term metaphysical ancestry going back to the beginning of humanity. Owing to this ancestry and depending upon their group’s classification, some members of certain groups would be qualified to help other members in the great task of uplifting souls from the material world. Fine informs us:
The knowledge of one’s soul-ancestry – knowledge that Isaac Luria was able to give to his disciples – was thus of absolutely crucial importance to them. It is precisely this affinity of souls that constitutes the basis for the communion of souls at the grave. Because of their natural kinship, through intense concentration, the soul of the adept can arouse the corresponding aspect of soul of the tsadik [the master].362
It cannot be overemphasized that the Luria fellowship was very special to the disciples because of their perceived kinship to their dead metaphysical ancestors and to each other. They took seriously and literally the Zohar’s statement that the righteous never depart from this world because they continue to live in all the worlds at the same time, even to a greater extent than during their lifetime.363 Luria was their earthly guide in terms of teaching the yihudim and instructing them on their mistakes. It was very important to him that they succeeded, not only for their sake but for the health of the cosmos.
Yihudim do not necessarily have to be practiced at the grave but could be practiced at home. Better results were thought to occur at the grave, Vital says, and sometimes the whole group of disciples would perform rites at the grave together.
Be aware that in the case of all possible yihudim, if you perform the yihud by stretching yourself out on the tsadik’s actual grave, you should contemplatively intend that by virtue of your stretching out on top of him, you also cause the tsadik to stretch out his lower soul [nefesh], which will then spread out in his bones that are in the grave: whereupon he comes alive and his bones become like a body to the soul that is stretched and spread out within them.364
Vital goes on to explain that when the disciple lies on the tsadik’s grave, the two souls can concentrate on their “common root” (their deep connection to their soul group which is often called the “soul root”) and then they “cleave to one another.” They can talk to each other; the tsadik becomes an actor in this world, an advisor and counselor to the disciple. Also, by joining with each other, the mystic and the tsadik can travel together to celestial realms.
By stretching out on the graves of the dead, one symbolically enters the realm of the dead, by implication the divine realms. One enters the death state while still alive, crossing the line between living and dead. In an act that evokes magic and shamanism, one gains strength from the souls of the dead and overcomes the taboos of impurity of contact with the dead. It is thought that these practices may have originated with the Sufi practices of contemplation on the form of a living master, which thereafter had become transformed into contemplation and union with the forms of dead saints.
It is interesting that Vital at one point actually stopped practicing this ritual out of frustration because “those souls did not come to me as openly as they should have done.” Not enough concentration and love, Luria said to him! Luria stressed love and intense concentration in all prayer and ritual, especially in yihudim. Mystical transformation required that the ritual be accompanied by intense love and concentration if it was to work.
Fine’s explanation of yihudim allows us to understand Luria a bit more deeply as it represents his earnest attempt to help redeem the cosmos through interaction between this world (souls longing to return and reconnect) and the worlds above. According to Vital, the practice of yihudim held greater merit than Torah to Luria.365 It was a living practice; it was the connection between this troubled earth and the more ethereal realms of the vessels above. It was more than words; from the perspective of Luria and his followers, it was the joyful experience of their souls in the act of redemption.
LURIA AS REDEEMER AND MESSIAH
Luria was understood to be the incarnation of not only Moses and
Rabbi Simeon, but also Adam and Abel of the early stories of Genesis.
Moses and Simeon were viewed as the incarnations of the messiah son of
Joseph (precursor to the true and final messiah, from the lineage of
David). Vital and the other disciples felt that Luria was the first and
only authentic teacher of Kabbalah since the Kabbalah had first appeared
and was of the same stature as Simeon bar Yohai. Vital wrote that in
every generation God sends to Israel “extraordinary individuals
(yehidei segulah) ‘upon whom the Holy Spirit rested, and to
whom Elijah … revealed himself, instructing them in the secrets of
Kabbalah.’”366
When Luria sat with his disciples, he envisioned himself and his disciples as incarnations of Simeon with his disciples in the idra rabba (the Great Assembly), discussing matters of spirituality and spurring each other onwards in their spiritual quest. Simeon was also called the tsadik, pillar of the world, meaning that he sustained the world. He was the channel through which the divine blessing enters the world. Thus Luria was regarded by his disciples as the messiah, a redeemer and tsadik who would bring about the messianic age. Luria’s teaching of tikun olam has messianic implications, as its goal is to bring about perfection and salvation to the world. Once the divine realms are brought into a harmonious balance and the divine energy flows from one sefirah to the other in an orderly way, the messianic age would begin on all levels – spiritual and material, cosmic and individual.
Luria’s circle of disciples believed that God, in his compassion, sends a redeemer to every generation. In their generation, too, God had not withheld a redeemer but had sent “the great rabbi, our saintly teacher, our rabbi and master, Isaac Luria … filled like a pomegranate with [knowledge].” Moreover, the penitential remedies that Luria provided for his disciples to mend their souls had an unmistakable messianic motive: “He gave him [each of his disciples] the tikun he required for the corresponding transgression, in order to cleanse his soul, so that he could receive the divine light.367
Yet as we saw earlier, Luria felt he had failed in his mission as he had revealed too much to those who were not ready for the spiritual illumination. The failure and death of the messiah figure is also built into the concept of the messiah who continues to incarnate in every generation. He must fail so that the creation will continue and he can be reborn in a new form. As Gershom Scholem remarks, the disciples of Isaac Luria discovered hints in the Zohar to the effect that “the messiah of the House of Joseph is reborn in every generation. If there is a sufficient number of righteous men in his generation to save him from death [by their merits, then all is well], but if there is no one to save him, then he must die. However, by the repeated deaths he suffers in every generation, he atones for himself so that he need not die at the hands of the wicked Armilus*, but may die every time by a divine kiss.”368