CHAPTER 1
In the Beginning...
SPIRITUAL MASTERSHIP IN JUDAISM can be traced to the beginning of time – with the stories of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and other legendary figures whose lives are captured in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. In subsequent books of the Bible, in the collections called the Prophets and Writings, the narrative continues with the teachings of prophets like Elijah, Samuel, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. The hereditary priests also played a role in providing spiritual guidance through the Temple ritual in which the Israelites attempted to commune with the divine.*
Of the earliest biblical figures – probably up until the time of Moses – we have to rely on the stories and legends collected in the midrashim (rabbinic commentaries on the Bible), the narrative texts of the Talmud, the mystical interpretations of the Zohar (the primary work of the medieval Kabbalah), and other material. We don’t have straightforward narratives in the Bible itself describing the mystic experiences of these patriarchs – just hints here and there, which were expanded upon by the later literature. What is significant, however, is what this later literature focused on – the possibility of personal contact with the divine – the first-hand experience of the divine power, the ascent to higher spiritual realms. This demonstrates that there was always a subtext of personal spiritual experience and transmission embedded alongside the literal history that the Bible presented. The later mystics were able to extract these spiritual themes from the Bible’s narrative of the events of the men and women of an earlier time.
ADAM, THE FIRST MAN, the first human being: To Jewish mystics he became the archetype of humanity, whom they called Adam Kadmon (the primal Adam). They understood him symbolically as the macrocosm within whom all life was generated, like the Primordial Man of the Upanishads10 and the P’an ku (primal man) of China.11
The legends surrounding Adam are compelling. In addition to the well-known stories of Adam and Eve in Genesis, many legends were passed down from generation to generation in sources outside the Bible; some were written down as midrashim, or preserved in the Zohar and other collections. Some not included in the Jewish sources appear in the Muslim hadith (narrations originating from the words and deeds of Muhammad). Indeed, the very foundation of the Jewish religion is based on a literature conveying the experiences of evolved souls who had direct revelation from God, and the transmission of that spiritual knowledge, often secretly, from one generation to the other through a line of masters, beginning with Adam himself, the first man. This is not the Adam of original sin whom we know from the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, but the Adam of light – the one chosen by God to receive His light and transmit it to succeeding generations. These legends assume that Adam was given a divine mission to convey God’s spiritual light and wisdom to the world.
A fifth-century legend recounts that when Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden, they lost the primordial celestial light – the light that was God’s first creation. Later an angel returned a small fragment to them in the form of a gemstone, a tsohar.
Without this light, the world seemed dark to them, for the sun shone like a candle in comparison. But God preserved one small part of that precious light inside a glowing stone, and the angel Raziel delivered this stone to Adam after they had been expelled from the Garden of Eden as a token of the world they had left behind. This jewel, known as the tsohar, sometimes glowed and sometimes hid its light.12
At his death, the legend recounts, Adam entrusted the stone to his son Seth who used it to gain spiritual insight. Seth peered into it and became a great prophet. It was then passed down to Enoch, in the seventh generation after Adam, who also became spiritually awakened by virtue of it and eventually ascended to the heavens where he was transformed into an angel. About Enoch there are only a few lines in the Bible (Genesis 5:18–24) and yet a whole esoteric tradition grew around him; he is portrayed as a spiritual master who ascended to the heavens in mystic transport while still physically alive and saw God enthroned in all his glory, and then shared the divine teachings with his earthly descendants.
The story of the tsohar continues through the first generations of man and reveals how each person – Methusalah (Enoch’s son), Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses – used the stone to come closer to God and gain spiritual insight.
The jewel symbolizes the primal divine wisdom, the spiritual knowledge, the inner light, that is the heritage of humanity. It is the link between man and God. The legend says that God had originally bestowed this divine light upon Adam. Adam lost touch with it when he was disobedient to God and listened to the voice of his ego which told him to eat the forbidden fruit. Even though Adam was banished from the Garden of Eden, God preserved this light for Adam and his successors, in the form of a gemstone that an angel later returned to Adam. This is a poetic way of saying that this wisdom still remains within the realm of human realization because God has kept it for us. That it is passed down through the generations, through a lineage of prophets and patriarchs, tells us that it is there for everyone at all times.
The Bible begins its account of the creation of man with the statement, “This is the book of the generations of Adam” (Genesis 5:1). The Zohar interpreted this passage symbolically to mean that this book is actually the spiritual wisdom that is passed down from Adam through the generations. This means that the human lineage beginning with Adam is a spiritual lineage. Enoch inherited the same “book of the generations of Adam” and it gave him the key to the mystery of the holy wisdom.
Rabbi Abba said, “An actual book was brought down to Adam, from which he discovered supernal wisdom. This book reached the sons of Elohim [God], who contemplate and know it.13 This book was brought down by the master of mysteries [the angel Raziel], preceded by three envoys.
When Adam departed the Garden of Eden he grasped that book, but as he was leaving it flew away from him to the gate. He prayed and cried before his Lord, and it was restored to him as before, so wisdom would not be forgotten by humanity and they would strive to know their Lord. Similarly we have learned: Enoch had a book – a book from the site of the book of the generations of Adam, mystery of wisdom – for he was taken from the Earth, as is written: He was no more, for God took him (Genesis 5:24). He is the Lad [the heavenly servant].…* All hidden treasures above were entrusted to him, and he transmits, carrying out the mission. A thousand keys were handed to him; he conveys one hundred blessings every day, wreathing wreaths for his Lord. The blessed Holy One took him from the world to serve Him, as is written: for God took him.14
Following Adam, the Bible tells the story of Noah and the great flood, in which God commanded Noah to build an ark in order to save one male and one female of each species. According to some students of ancient myth, the ark symbolizes the continuity of life, and thus the core of the spiritual teachings, through the cosmic cycles of creation, destruction, and re-creation.15 Noah functions as a mythical spiritual master, the archetypal savior of mankind, who carries the mystical teaching (symbolized as the potential for the continuity of life) from one age to another. In the Bible, Noah is called ish-tamim, a perfect or innocent man, tam meaning simple, whole, or perfect.
Noah is also called a tsadik, a term derived from tsedek (virtue, righteousness), a quality of God that human beings can emulate. Tsedek can also mean salvation, deliverance, or victory. Over the centuries, the tsadik was to become one of the most important terms for the spiritual master in Judaism.
Although the recorded legends about Adam, Noah, Enoch, and other personalities date from a much later period, they attest to the persistence of a genre of literature parallel to the Bible that presented these towering figures as spiritual adepts who had powerful mystical experiences through meditation and prayer – experiences so profound that they created a model for later Jewish mystics to emulate. They provided narratives through which the later mystics imparted their teachings.
Abraham
Abraham is regarded as the first spiritual father of the Jews,
because according to the story, he rejected idol worship and chose to
worship YHWH, the one God. The Bible gives an account of Abraham’s early
life and his journeys, at God’s command, from Ur in Mesopotamia, the
“land of his fathers,” to the land of Canaan. It tells of his devotion
to YHWH and of YHWH’s covenant with him. The covenant is a promise of
mutual faithfulness. It is a pledge between lovers, one divine and one
human. Abraham agrees that he will worship and devote himself to the one
Lord. In exchange, God promises his unceasing love and care for Abraham
and his descendants: that a great and mighty people would issue from
him, to whom He would bequeath a land “flowing with milk and honey,”
provided that they continued to be faithful to Him. The covenant was to
be sealed with the circumcision of male children issuing from Abraham
and his lineage. This is the story on a literal level.
But what does it mean to say that Abraham began to worship one God? From a mystical perspective, this worship of the one God, or monotheism as it is commonly called, is the worship of the unity that is God, the divine creative power or life force that permeates the entire creation; it is often referred to in the Bible as the essential, ineffable name or word of God, the holy spirit. Many of the ancient legends about Abraham reflect the esoteric tradition that he experienced God directly as the holy spirit (ruah ha-kodesh) and was given a divine mission to convey that knowledge to others.
Rabbi Judah Leib Alter of Ger (1847–1904), one of the most inspired of the later rabbis of Hasidism, taught about the deepest level of meaning of the prayer, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One,” which is considered the embodiment of the monotheism taught by Abraham. He explains that the entire creation “is God himself.” God is the power immanent in the creation.
The proclamation of oneness that we declare each day in saying “Hear O Israel,” and so forth, needs to be understood as it truly is.… That which is entirely clear to me … based on the holy writings of great kabbalists, I am obligated to reveal to you … the meaning of “YHWH is One” is not that He is the only God, negating other gods (though this too is true!), but the meaning is deeper than that: there is no being other than Him. [This is true] even though it seems otherwise to most people … everything that exists in the world, spiritual and physical, is God himself.16
In a play on words, some of the rabbis of antiquity interpreted God’s command to Abraham to leave the home of his fathers and “go up” or “get thee forth” to the land that God would show him, as a command for Abraham to leave the lower level or state of consciousness that he normally inhabited and raise his consciousness to a spiritual level through meditation. The Hebrew says literally, “lekh lekha” – “go to yourself” (Genesis 12:1), which has been interpreted mystically as “go within yourself.”17 The rabbis believed that Abraham enjoyed communion with God through mystic experience.
Later Jewish mystics remarked that the covenant, which was marked by the rite of circumcision, was Abraham’s entry into a relationship with God’s “name.” The Zohar says that the covenant marks the time that Abraham became united with the higher wisdom, the “name” of God. The circumcision, which seals the covenant, symbolizes the cutting away of attachment to the lower levels, rungs, or grades of spirituality. In fact, the term brit milah, commonly translated as covenant of the circumcision, also means “covenant of the name.” The Zohar tells us that before entering into the covenant, Abraham had only seen God in a vision on particular occasions, but after that time he was always accompanied by God’s presence.
Previously God gave wisdom to Abraham to cleave to Him and to know the true meaning of faith, but only this lower grade actually spoke with him; but when he was circumcised, all the higher grades joined this lower grade to speak with him, and thus Abraham reached the summit of perfection. See now, before a man is circumcised he is not attached to the name of God, but when he is circumcised he enters into the name and is attached to it. Abram,* it is true, was attached to the name before he was circumcised, but not in the proper manner, but only through God’s extreme love for him; subsequently He commanded him to circumcise himself, and then he was vouchsafed the covenant which links all the supernal grades, a covenant of union which links the whole together so that every part is intertwined. Hence, till Abram was circumcised, God’s word with him was only in a vision, as has been said.18
The worship of the one God that Abraham taught to his descendants and disciples, therefore, was most probably an inner worship of the name of God, with which he had been united at the time of the covenant. This is the true monotheism – worship of the one divine principle that is everlasting and sustains all.
The contemporary scholar of Jewish mysticism, Arthur Green, explains the essence of monotheism in mystical terms: “In the beginning there was only One. There still is only One. That One has no name, no face, nothing at all by which it can be described. Without end or limit, containing all that will ever come to be in an absolute undifferentiated oneness.”19
There are many traditions concerning Abraham as a spiritual master, a teacher who brought the divine wisdom from the East – the place of his origin – to Canaan, where he shared it with whomever he would invite into his home. The Zohar presents one of the most interesting. It recounts that Abraham purified the inhabitants of the world with water – a symbolic reference to the inner water, the divine wisdom which flows from the spiritual realms to the human. He then planted a tree wherever he resided, and through this he gave shade to all who “embraced the blessed Holy One.” The tree is also a symbol for the spiritual teaching. God is explicitly likened to the life-giving tree.
Come and see: Wherever Abraham resided, he planted a tree; but nowhere did it sprout fittingly until he resided in the land of Canaan. Through that tree, he discovered who embraced the blessed Holy One and who embraced idolatry. Whoever embraced the blessed Holy One – the tree would spread its branches, covering his head, shading him nicely. Whoever embraced the aspect of idolatry – that tree would withdraw, its branches rising above. Then Abraham knew and warned him – not departing until he embraced faith. Whoever was pure the tree would welcome; whoever was impure it would not, so Abraham knew and purified them with water. Underneath that tree was a spring of water: if someone needed immediate immersion, water gushed toward him and the tree’s branches withdrew. Then Abraham knew he was impure, requiring immediate immersion.…
Come and see: When Adam sinned, he sinned with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, inflicting death upon all inhabitants of the world. When Abraham appeared, he mended the world with another tree, the Tree of Life, proclaiming faith to all inhabitants of the world.20
Adam’s sin by eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is symbolically a reference to Adam’s entering the world of duality, while the tree of life that Abraham planted symbolizes the divine unity, which is the ultimate source of all life.
Moses: The archetypal prophet
Moses is thought to have lived in the thirteenth century BCE, with
the Exodus having taken place around 1230. The personality of Moses
dominates all discussion of spirituality from his time onward. He is
considered the quintessential Israelite prophet. Yet he was not a grand
personality nor was he even called a prophet in the Bible – simply a man
of God. The biblical portrayal is of a humble man who struggled to
fulfill his divine calling and minister to a rebellious people. It is
his example that became the standard according to which all the mystics
of later generations were viewed, and they often referred to Moses as
their spiritual ancestor. The eighteenth-century hasidic master, the
Ba’al Shem Tov, taught:
Just as Moses was the head of all of his generation … so it is with every generation. The leaders have sparks [within the flame of their souls] from our teacher Moses.21
The medieval Jewish Sufi, Obadyah Maimonides, grandson of the twelfth-century philosopher Moses Maimonides, in his book The Treatise of the Pool, considered Noah, Enoch, Abraham, and other early patriarchs as practicing mystics, recipients and transmitters of the spiritual wisdom. He describes them as “intercessors” on behalf of the people, through whom the divine Will reached humanity. But, he says, by the time of Moses this lineage of prophecy had ceased to be active. It was only Moses who revived it.
The individuals who attained this state were very scarce, as it is said, “I have seen the sons of Heaven, but they are few,”22 like a drop in the sea.… For thou wilt find in each era but a single individual, such as Noah in the generation of the Flood, his predecessor Methuselah, Enoch, Lemekh, Shem, Eber, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. After the patriarchs the bond [wusla] was severed and there was no intercessor [safi] until the birth of the most glorious of beings and the noblest of creatures, our master Moses, peace be upon him, who restored it, through the Divine Will.23
This spiritual inheritance that Moses received from the earliest patriarchs and used on behalf of the Israelites is explained symbolically in another legend recounted in a medieval prayer book. The spiritual knowledge was symbolically “engraved” on a rod or staff that came from Adam, who handed it down to his son Seth; and it was passed along through the generations till Moses received it. As a rod or branch cut from the “tree of life,” it symbolizes the spiritual power, the divine “name” of God that Moses invoked as prophet and spiritual master of the Israelites. It is the rod with which he split the Red Sea, in the story of the Israelites fleeing slavery in Egypt.
There was nothing like it [the rod] in the world, for on it was engraved the ineffable name of God. This rod Adam handed on to Seth, and it was handed on from one generation to the next until Jacob, our father, went down to Egypt and handed it on to Joseph. Now, when Joseph died Pharaoh’s servants searched through everything in his house, and they deposited the rod in Pharaoh’s treasury.
In Pharaoh’s household was Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses; Jethro was one of Pharaoh’s astrologers and he learned of the importance of this rod by means of astrology. He took it and planted it in his garden, and it took root in the earth. By means of astrology Jethro discovered that whoever would be able to uproot this rod would be the savior of Israel. He therefore used to put people to the test, and when Moses came to his household and then rose and uprooted it, Jethro threw him into the dungeon he had in his courtyard. Zippora fell in love with Moses and demanded from her father that he be given her as husband. Thereupon Jethro married her off to Moses.24
This legend points to Moses as a true spiritual adept, inheritor of the divine wisdom passed down from the beginning.
But outside of tradition, what do we actually know about Moses? What was the nature of his spiritual revelation, and what was his relationship with his disciples, the Israelites? In other words, what were the characteristics that defined Moses as a prophet, a man sent by God to liberate the people? One important factor was the nature of his selection through a revelation of God in a “burning bush.” Second, is the extraordinary divine encounter he had on Mount Sinai and his continuing intimate communion and conversation with God throughout his entire prophetic career. Also of great importance was his humility, embodied in his reluctant acceptance of his mission.
SELECTION
The book of Exodus of the Bible recounts that Moses was tending the
sheep of Jethro, the Midianite priest and astrologer, when he had his
first prophetic experience – a direct encounter with the divine reality,
the “angel of the Lord,” manifested in a burning bush whose fire was
never consumed.
And the angel of the Lord appeared to him
in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush;
And he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire,
and the bush was not consumed.And Moses said, I will now turn aside,
and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.
And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see,
God called to him out of the midst of the bush,
and said, Moses, Moses.
And he said, Here am I.
Exodus 3:2–5
The passage suggests that suddenly, spontaneously, without warning, Moses was chosen by God to be the savior of the Israelites, freeing them from enslavement in Egypt. The idea of God making himself known to the prophet through a burning bush has galvanized the imaginations of generations of Bible readers, who have understood it literally. But it also seems to suggest a symbolic interpretation, as an ascent to a higher plane of consciousness in which Moses had a strong experience of the divine presence, manifested as the ineffable spiritual light and sound.
Moses’ response to this calling was indicative of his great humility. He said:
O my Lord, I am not eloquent,
neither yesterday nor the day before,
nor since you have spoken to your servant;
But I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.
And the Lord said to him,
Who has made man’s mouth?
Who makes the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind?
Is it not I the Lord?
Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth,
and teach you what you shall say.
Exodus 4:10–12
Moses did not seek out this role for himself – quite the opposite, he saw himself as unworthy, unable to speak. When he begged God to relieve him of this awesome responsibility, God reprimanded him for his lack of faith, saying that the One who has created the mouth, and the words it utters, would teach him what to say. What greater reassurance could he have needed? And yet he continued protesting, five times in all, until finally God allowed him to bring along his brother, Aaron, as a spokesman. The humility that marks this incident became identified with the character of Moses.
REVELATION
The Hebrew name for Egypt, Mitsrayim, literally means
constricted, and the sages interpreted the Israelites’ enslavement in
Egypt symbolically as signifying a state of spiritual constriction, a
lower spiritual state.25 Eventually, under the guidance of Moses, the
souls of the Israelites came in touch with true divinity, God’s word or
speech, through the revelation at Sinai.
The Israelites waited at the foot of the mountain while Moses communed with God at the mountaintop. There God revealed the Ten Commandments and, according to tradition, the entire Torah. The bestowal of the Ten Commandments symbolizes a renewal of God’s covenant with Abraham six hundred years before the revelation to Moses.
While Moses was intimately communing with the divine reality on their behalf, the Bible recounts that the Israelites were indulging in immoral behavior at the foot of the mountain, where they created and worshipped a golden calf. Although they were undeserving, the revelation was still bestowed on them. It was their spiritual heritage despite their ingratitude. This would be the model of their relationship with God during their forty years of wandering through the desert before reaching the “promised land.” The journey through the desert was to give them the opportunity to leave the constricted spiritual state they had come from and provide a transition to their growing spiritual awareness. But they consistently lost faith and acted rebellious, wanting to turn back to Egypt, and again and again God, through Moses, proved his love for them. This story is also a metaphor for the Israelites’ relationship with God and his prophets throughout their history – and for the soul’s infidelity and ingratitude to its spiritual heritage.
Moses’ experience of the awesome divine presence on the mountaintop is described dramatically in Exodus:
And Moses went up into the mount, and the cloud covered the mount. And the glory [kavod]* of the Lord abode upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days; and the seventh day he called unto Moses from the midst of the cloud. And the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel. And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and went up into the mount; and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.
EXODUS 24:15–18
How did the people perceive Moses after his experience?
And it came to pass, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of Testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses knew not that the skin of his face shone while He [God] talked with him. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come closer to him. And Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned to him; and Moses talked to them. And afterward all the children of Israel came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai. And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face. But when Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he took the veil off, until he came out. And he came out, and spoke to the people of Israel that which he was commanded. And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone; and Moses put the veil upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him.
EXODUS 34:29–35
When Moses descended from the mountain with the Ten Commandments, his face shone with light – he had experienced within himself, in a state of higher consciousness, the spiritual light of God’s presence with which he glowed. The Israelites were frightened of the brilliance emanating from Moses – the immediate evidence of the power of the divine. He therefore put a veil over his face so that his light would not overwhelm them – this may be referring not so much to a physical veil but to his spiritually masking his spiritual brilliance so that he would not intimidate them. Moses sacrificed himself by standing between the Lord and the people as mediator, because the full presence of God’s self-revelation was too intense for them. The book of Deuteronomy recounts the people’s reaction to the divine revelation through fire and the awesome voice that projects from the fire. They were afraid they would die if they faced God directly, while Moses was able to speak with him and live.
The Lord talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire, I stood between the Lord and you at that time, to tell you the word of the Lord; for you were afraid because of the fire, and went not up into the mount.… [He then repeats the Ten Commandments which were engraved on the Tablets, and then Moses says to them:] These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice which was not heard again. And he wrote them in two tablets of stone, and delivered them to me. And it came to pass, when you heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, for the mountain burned with fire, that you came near me, all the heads of your tribes, and your elders; And you said, Behold, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire; we have seen this day that God talks with man, and he lives. Now therefore why should we die? for this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, then we shall die.
DEUTEROMY 5:4–6, 19–22
The Bible also points to the high degree of Moses’ spiritual attainment by calling it a relationship where God spoke to him “mouth to mouth” and allowed him to see His “form”:
My servant Moses … is the trusted one in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, manifestly, and not in dark speech; and he beholds the form of the Lord.
NUMBERS 12:7–8
Many Jewish mystics have taught that Moses’ prophetic experience of the revelation of the Torah on the mountaintop was a metaphor for his spiritual ascent, in which he experienced, first hand, the divine power – the essential or unwritten, ineffable Torah or divine word. According to Abraham Abulafia, a thirteenth-century kabbalist, “the ascent to the mountain is an allusion to spiritual ascent – that is, to prophecy.” He writes:
For Moses ascended to the mountain, and he also ascended to the divine level. That ascent is combined with a revealed matter, and with a matter which is hidden; the revealed [matter] is the ascent of the mountain, and the hidden [aspect] is the level of prophecy.26
Arthur Green asks us to think about the fundamental significance of revelation. He understands Moses’ encounter with the divine realm on a mystical level:
What then do we mean by revelation? Whether we understand the tale of Sinai as a historic event or as a metaphor for the collective religious experience of Israel, we have to ask this question. Here, too, the notion of primordial Torah is the key. Revelation does not necessarily refer to the giving of a truth that we did not possess previously. On the contrary, the primary meaning of revelation means that our eyes are now opened, we are able to see that which had been true all along but was hidden from us.… The truth that God underlies reality, and always has, now becomes completely apparent.…
What is it that is revealed at Sinai? Revelation is the self-disclosure of God. Hitgallut, the Hebrew term for “revelation,” is in the reflexive mode, meaning that the gift of Sinai is the gift of God’s own self. God has nothing but God to reveal to us.… The “good news” of Sinai is all there in God’s “I am.”27
Moses explicitly urged the Israelites to look within themselves to find God, “in your own mouth and own heart”:
For this commandment which I command you this day, is not hidden from you, nor is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it, and do it? Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it, and do it? But the word is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may do it.
DEUTERONOMY 30:11–14
Green points out that in Jewish spiritual history there is an underlying tension between the vertical conception of God – who lives in heaven, away and apart from us, who can be reached, metaphorically, by climbing a physical mountain – and the inner conception of God, who can be reached by climbing within ourselves to higher inner realms or stages of consciousness, through mystic practice. Green asks:
What does the Torah mean here? It does not sound as though Moses is saying: “God’s teaching indeed used to be in heaven, but I have already brought it down for you!” This seems to be a rather different Moses than the one who climbs the mountain. Here he seems to be telling us that the journey to Torah is, and always has been, an inward rather than a vertical journey. The only place you have to travel to find God’s word is to your own heart. The journey to the heart is the mystical quest.28
The prophetic experiences that Moses had on Sinai, and earlier at the burning bush, indicate that he had a mystic transformation, an experience of the one divine reality within. He got in touch with his “mystic heart.” At the most sublime level, the covenant between God and the Israelites was God’s pledge to endow them with a state of spiritual consciousness symbolized as a land of milk and honey – the true promised land – provided that the Israelites stayed true to their side of the bargain – to worship YHWH and be obedient to his will.
MOSES THE SHEPHERD
But the Israelites did not stay true to the worship of the one God;
they always doubted him and reverted to idol worship and fertility
rituals. Yet Moses ministered to them faithfully and never gave up on
his attempts to bring them back to God. His experience as a shepherd
gave him an understanding of the challenge he faced in caring for his
followers. In the ancient Near East, the shepherd was often used as a
metaphor for a spiritual master or guide. If one of his sheep would
stray, the shepherd would go out of his way to find it and carry it in
his arms back to his flock, evading predators.
In fact, according to the Bible, many of the biblical prophets, such as Moses, David, Amos, and Ezekiel, were shepherds in their youth. Some of the later Jewish mystics conjectured that “tending the sheep” was a biblical metaphor for meditation.29 Whether these prophets were really shepherds or whether this was a metaphor for their pursuit of a spiritual life, their practice of meditation, one cannot know. The Italian kabbalist, Rabbi Simon ben Tsemakh Duran (1361–1444), suggests that Moses, prior to his being selected by YHWH for this mission, was already spiritually attuned, and that it was no accident that he became a shepherd.
With his keen mind, [Moses] was able to understand what was required to attain enlightenment, realizing that the path was through meditation [hitbodedut].
He therefore chose to separate himself from all who would disturb him and to reject all physical desires, choosing to be a shepherd in the desert, where no people are to be found. While he was there he unquestionably attained a great attachment to the conceptual, divesting himself of all bodily desires, until he was able to remain for forty days and nights without eating or drinking.30
Aryeh Kaplan, whose studies of Jewish meditation reveal a long tradition of inner spirituality, says that hitbodedut was the main term used by ancient Jewish mystics to describe meditation. Literally, hitbodedut means seclusion or self-isolation, and is generally understood as a “kind of internal isolation, where the individual mentally isolates his essence from his thoughts.”31
Joshua
When Moses was about to die, the Bible recounts that God named Joshua
as his successor, because the Israelite masses needed a living spiritual
guide. Again using the metaphor of the shepherd and his sheep, Moses
begged YHWH to appoint a successor to him, so they would not be “as sheep
which have no shepherd” (Numbers 27:17). The Lord agreed and told Moses
to appoint Joshua, “a man in whom is spirit” (Numbers 27:18), meaning
that he lives by the force of the holy spirit, just as Moses had. God
pledges to have the same relationship with Joshua that he has had with
Moses.
Perle Epstein, a contemporary scholar of Jewish mysticism, affirms that Moses’ real relationship with Joshua was that of master and disciple. This was an inner, spiritual relationship, which was translated into Joshua’s successorship outwardly, for the benefit of the Israelites.
Moses … had obtained the perfect devekut [cleaving to God].… All this, Moses accomplished in the high place called Sinai which, sages have said, meant a state of meditation figuratively referred to as “Sinai,” as well as an actual mountain. Even the prophet’s own sons could not assume the teaching; only Joshua, who “did not depart” from Moses’ side, remaining in perfect hitbodedut [meditative seclusion] with him from his boyhood, could absorb the “tradition,” and pass it on to the generations which followed.32
But Joshua and his successors had an equally impossible job. Despite Joshua’s leadership, the people continued worshiping idols and participating in fertility cults – to rebel, to doubt, and to forget the reality of the one God. This behavior would continue for the next fifteen hundred years. More than anything else, the story the Bible conveys may be a grand allegory of God’s love for a wayward people: no matter how badly they behaved, he continued to send his prophets to guide them. This is an important aspect of the prophet’s devotion to God and to his people, and it applies to all the prophets from this time onward.