(Pinchas Giller) Shalom Shar'Abi and The Kabbalist

Shalom Shar’abi and the
Kabbalists of Beit El
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Shalom Shar’abi
and the Kabbalists
of Beit El
pinchas giller
1
2008
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Giller, Pinchas, 1953–
Shalom Shar’abi and the kabbalists of Beit El / Pinchas Giller.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-0-19-532880-6
1. Kabbalah—History. 2. Yeshivat Beit-El (Jerusalem) 3. Sharabi, Shalom, 1720–1777.
4. Rabbis—Jerusalem. 5. Jewish scholars—Jerusalem. 6. Jews, Yemeni—Jerusalem.
7. Kavvanot (Kabbalah) I. Title.
BM526.G48 2007
296.8'3309569442—dc22 2007017669
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper
For Elliot Wolfson
Preface
I would like to thank Paul Miller and Haim Gottchalk of the Uni-
versity of Judaism library for help with my research. Aryeh Cohen,
Shaul Magid, and Rabbi Bob Judd read early drafts of this work and
made valuable suggestions. Rachel Bat Or, Jennifer Bellas, Alexander
Braham, Allison Cottrell, David Fasman, Moonlight Go, Zevi Hear-
shen, Malka Hefetz, Jordana Heyman, Valerie Joseph, Shalom Kan-
tor, Cindy Kapp, Rachel Kobrin, Scott Kramer, Marissa Lembeck,
Michael Paletz, Scott Perlo, Danya Ruttenberg, Jason Shakib, Robin
Simonian, Sam Sternberg, Risa Weinstein, and Ariel Wosk also read
and commented on the later drafts, and their work is most appreci-
ated. Jody Myers was particularly helpful, particularly when I was
incapacitated in a bicycle accident. I remain forever grateful for the
advice and support of Elliot Wolfson, Shaul Magid, and Boaz Huss.
Some research in Jerusalem was made possible by the Roland
Fund for Faculty Research of the American Jewish University, which
was expedited by the faculty secretary, Judy Dragutsky. Aspects of this
study were published earlier in ‘‘Between Poland and Jerusalem:
Kabbalistic Prayer in Early Modernity’’ (Modern Judaism 24, no. 3
[October 2004]: 226–250), with the gracious help of Professor Steven
Katz, and in ‘‘Nesirah: Myth and Androgyny in Late Kabbalistic
Practice’’ (The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 12, no. 3 [2003]:
63–86).
The Beit El mystics are underrepresented in contemporary
scholarship, even as they are the most influential living school of
viii preface
Kabbalah in the world. Living schools have generally been problematic for
scholars of Kabbalah. With some exceptions, the scholarly community has
neglected the contemporary kabbalists of the Middle East, particularly in
comparison to such movements as Hasidism or the Jewish enlightenment.
_
This study will, I hope, mark a small beginning in correcting this inequity in
the contemporary academy. Nevertheless, it remains a beginning, and I would
not be surprised if, in the future, many of its conclusions are successfully
queried. I expect that this book should raise more questions than it resolves.
Nonetheless, I hope that this little book is useful for limning the contours of
rich possibilities for further study.
Contents
Transliterations, xi
Introduction: Kabbalistic Metaphysics, 3
1. Shar’abi and Beit El, 5
2. Kavvanah and Kavvanot, 19
3. The Names of God in the Beit El Kavvanot, 39
4. Kabbalists in the Community, 55
5. Beit El Practice, 65
6. Shar’abi’s School, 85
7. The Literary Tradition of Beit El, 95
8. The Kavvanot in Hasidism, 107

_
9. Conclusions: Mysticism, Metaphysics, and the Limitations
of Beit EL Kabbalah, 117
Appendix: Nesirah—The Development of a Kavvanah, 131
Notes, 147
Works Cited, 179
Index, 193
Transliterations
a, e alef l lamed
b bet m mem
v vet n nun
g gimmel s samekh
h he ‘ ayin
v vav p pe
z zayin f fe
h het z zadi
_
t tet q, k qof
y, i yod r resh
k kaf sh shin
kh khaf s sin
t tav
Quotations from Hayyim Vital’s rendition of the Lurianic canon,

_
the Shemoneh Sha’arim (Eight Gates), and the Ez Hayyim (Tree of
_ _
Life), are from the comprehensive edition by Yehudah Ashlag
(Tel Aviv 1962), with the exception of various individual texts not
included therein, which will be identified by separate bibliographi-
cal data.
Shalom Shar’abi and the
Kabbalists of Beit El
Introduction: Kabbalistic
Metaphysics
The sefirot are the building blocks of classical Jewish mysticism.

The term is first evident in the Sefer Yezirah, or Book of Formation, a
_
brief text written in the Mishnaic style and steeped in Pythagorean
mysticism. The idea resurfaced among the mystics of Provence and
Gerona in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They, as well as the
mysterious composition Sefer ha-Bahir, contributed the idea of refer-
ence to the sefirot in terms of their kinnuyim, or symbolic euphe-
misms. Eventually, the sefirot were portrayed in anthropomorphic
form and were utilized in kabbalistic meditation much as the chakras
were employed in Tantrism.
The sefirot may be described as aspects, or stages, in the descent
of the Divine into present reality. In the classical works of theosoph-
ical Kabbalah, such as the Zohar and the works of Joseph Gikatilla,
Joseph of Hamadan, and Todros Abulafia, the sefirot are clearly hy-
postases of the Divine, emanations from the apex of the Godhead.
They were portrayed in many ways, and the various attempts to or-
ganize and structure them were collected in systematic works such
as Moshe Cordovero’s Sefer Pardes Rimmonim. They are most com-
monly organized in the form of a hierarchy of emanation, beginning
with Keter or Da’at, the highest aspect, which is the abstracted in-
ner nature of God. Keter is followed by the sefirot Hokhmah and Binah,
_
which represent the attributes of Divine wisdom and understanding,
respectively. The emotive features of the Divine are summed up in
the sefirah Hesed, the quality of loving kindness, and its apposite,
_
4 shalom shar’abi and the kabbalists of beit el
Din or Gevurah, the faculty of Divine Judgment. These are combined in the
central sefirah, Rahamim or Tiferet, which also interconnects with all of the
seven lower sefirot. The lowest four sefirot represent the four aspects of sentient
existence. Nezah is the aspect of linear time, while Hod is the aspect of scope or
_
grandeur. The sefirah Yesod governs sexuality, and the final sefirah, Malkhut or
Shekhinah, govern the simple fact of existence in the physical world.
Lurianic Kabbalah differed from the interpretations that preceded it in that
it emphasized a different structure of the Divine. Instead of the sefirot that
formed the basis for the Kabbalah of the Zohar and the mainstream Safed
Kabbalah, Isaac Luria emphasized a different system, which was first pre-
sented in the last sections of the main part of the Zohar. This universe is
visualized in anthropomorphic terms and structured according to a hierar-
chical family, including a patriarch (Attika Kadisha), a set of parents (Abba and
Imma), a son (Zeir), and his consort (Nukvah). The family, moreover, has been
traumatized by its history, following the well-known mythos of the ‘‘breaking
of the vessels’’ of Divinity and the need to restore the world through the act of
Divine repair. In the midst of this general catastrophe, Abba and Imma must
conceive and nurture their offspring, Zeir, and betroth him to Nukvah. The
various members of the cosmic Divine family, the parents (Abba and Imma),
the youth (Zeir Anpin), and his consort (Nukvah), have turned away from one
another to confront the chaos in the world following the breaking of the ves-
sels. With their backs turned toward one another, they face outward to confront
the chaos of the world outside. This turning out is called the back-to-back
embrace.
The goal of the adept, in the Lurianic rite, was to bring about the har-
monious and untroubled union of the various countenances, thereby causing
the conception and nurturing of Zeir Anpin, the central countenance. This
union is described as the goal of the kabbalistic practice in the later strata of the
Zohar, where unification with the Divine is a positive act that takes place
through the contemplative practice of certain commandments. The central act
of all Lurianic theurgy is to turn these dysfunctional figures toward each other,
thus effecting ‘‘face-to-face’’ union and thereby fixing the broken and sundered
universe.
1
Shar’abi and Beit El
A living form of Kabbalah is enjoying a renaissance, in spite of its

exotic and obscure nature. In Jerusalem, Safed, New York, and Los
Angeles, kabbalists regularly pray in elevated states of high concen-
tration and silence. As they complete the Jewish prayer rite, these
adepts contemplate complex and abstruse linguistic formulae. These
formulae, known as the kavvanot, or ‘‘intentions,’’ are based on a
complex set of associations, employing Divine Names, esoteric sym-
bols, and complex vocalized mantras. Across the development of
the tradition, it has been defined in various ways. It is a rite, performed
by the adepts with the power of their minds. The adepts may also
experience an ascent of the soul and even, according to some sys-
tems, an experience of union with God. The most widespread un-
derstanding is that, in the practice of the kavvanot, the contemplative
mind is sacrificed to the cathartic processes of the Divine in order
to expedite the uniting of Divine and earthly forces according to the
teachings of mainstream Kabbalah.
There has been a renewed enthusiasm for this form of contem-
plative prayer, and it is being propagated with a new urgency.
Prayer with kavvanot has been the provenance of the wonder-working
rabbis who have come to social prominence in the past three de-
cades, a line of recently departed sages that includes R. Mordechai
Shar’abi, R. Yisrael Abuhazeira, the ‘‘Baba Sali,’’ the Hakham (Sage)
_ _
Yizhak Kaduri of the Bukharian community, and his student
_
R. Shmuel Darsi. Posthumous sainthood has been conferred upon such

mendicant figures as Yosef Dayyan, an impoverished Jerusalem pietist who
made gravesite pilgrimage his special area of concern and who was a natural
subject of hagiography. With the passing of this immigrant generation of re-
ligious saints, there are new figures waiting in the wings to assume leadership
at the nexus of religious and political power.
There are a number of institutions devoted to the practice of kavvanot, and
they host a shifting number of practitioners. In Jerusalem, prayer with kav-
vanot takes place formally in the institutions Nahar Shalom, Beit El, Ahavat
Shalom, Ha-Hayyim ve-ha-Shalom, and Nayot be-Ramah, as well as in a circle
_
that meets every morning at the Western Wall. Among Jews of Middle
Eastern extraction, congregations that meet before dawn are likely to include
practitioners of the kavvanot. I have observed individuals practicing the kav-
vanot among the pious worshippers at the Aboab synagogue in Safed and at
the Natan Eli congregation in Los Angeles. Manuscripts of influential prayer
books with kavvanot are being published in photo offset. At the same time,
new editions of kavvanot are being prepared in conjunction with the recent
political and economic empowerment of the Jews from Middle Eastern com-
munities in locales ranging from Jerusalem to Los Angeles. As the practice of
kavvanot grows, it is clear that the wider public has accepted the primacy of the
most esoteric of practices and ceded the practice to a small elite of venerated
adepts.1
This tradition is grounded in the lineage and eros of classical Kabbalah.
The kabbalistic tradition sees its origins in the disciples of Rabbi Shimon Bar
Yohai in second-century Galilee. The exploits of this circle were documented
in the vast classic of Kabbalah, the Zohar. The Zohar began to circulate in
the thirteenth century. Following the Spanish expulsion, the Galilee hill town
of Safed saw a renaissance of kabbalistic activity, in which various refugee
scholars attempted to recover and reinstitute the practices laid out in the Zohar,
as well as the eros of a circle of adepts and the charisma of ecstatic rabbinic
leadership. The foremost kabbalist of Safed was Isaac Luria, whose teachings
were purveyed mostly by his foremost student, Hayyim Vital. Acolytes of the
_
Beit El tradition, like their European contemporaries in Polish Hasidism, see
_
themselves as the lineal descendants of the main systems of Kabbalah. From
Shimon Bar Yohai the tradition passed to Isaac Luria, known as the AR’’I (an
acronym for ‘‘our master R. Isaac’’). Luria’s revelations, according to the aco-
lytes, then passed to the founder of Hasidism, the Ba’al Shem Tov and Shalom
_
Shar’abi of Jerusalem.
shar’abi and beit el 7
Shar’abi
Shalom Shar’abi (1720–1780; also known as RaSHaSH) developed the most

popular and normative system of kavvanot. Shar’abi was a Yemenite kabbalist
who arrived in Jerusalem via Syria in the mid-eighteenth century. His personal
history is obscured by the sort of hagiographies that attend the biographies of
holy men in other traditions: picaresque escapes, the temptations of the flesh,
and the protagonist’s obscuring his spiritual identity as an act of piety. The
circumstances of Shar’abi’s journey to the land of Israel, his progression from
obscurity to the head of the Beit El yeshivah, and his acts of saintliness and
intercession are legendary.
Shar’abi was raised in Sana, Yemen, although his family originated in
Shar’ab, whence his name. He came to the land of Israel from Yemen by way of
Aden, Baqra, Baghdad, and Damascus. In Baghdad, he studied the Zohar with
a circle of mystics under the leadership of Sheikh Yizhak Gaon, and his ecstatic
_
manner earned him his first recognition. Controversy seemed to follow him:
his flight from Yemen was attended by an incident ‘‘like that of the wife of
Potiphar.’’2 The account bears repeating:
In the holy city of Sana I knew the family of the Rav RaSha’’Sh, wise
and steadfast people, and they told me of the circumstances of his
coming to [Jerusalem]. He was a comely and God fearing youth
and his livelihood was to peddle spices and small notions in the city
and the villages, as did all the Jewish youths in that district. Once he
passed though the gentile city Sana with his peddler’s sack on his
shoulder and a wealthy Ishmaelite noble woman saw him through
the lattice. She called him up to make a purchase. She let him in to
her chambers and locked the door behind him and attempted to
induce him to sin with her, threatening otherwise to kill him. When
he saw that there was no escape he asked to relieve himself. She
showed him to the privy and waited outside. He forced himself
through a small window in the privy; fell unharmed three stories to
the ground and fled. She waited for him in vain, and when she
saw that he had fled she flung his pack outside. He fled, and wan-
dered from city to city until he came to Aden, thence to Basra,
Babylonia and from there to Jerusalem.
It is not unusual for revered religious innovators to have a somewhat

checkered early history, and, for such a unifying figure, Shar’abi had a career
that, as he moved through the great Jewish centers of the Middle East, was
littered with misunderstandings and controversies; trouble seemed to follow

him. In Damascus, he was employed as the servant of Samuel Parhi, the
economic adviser of the Pasha of Damascus. R Parhi did not recognize the
young man’s real nature and was unkind to him. This led to an emotional
denouement some years later in Jerusalem. Parhi was himself an avid sup-
porter of the Beit El yeshivah and found his former servant sitting at the head
of the academy, leading the Damascus householder to beg forgiveness for his
mistreatment of Shar’abi.3 It was also in Damascus that Shar’abi became
embroiled in a halakhic controversy over the minimum acceptable weight of
the Passover mazah, which hastened his departure for Jerusalem.4
_
Upon his arrival in Jerusalem, Shar’abi behaved in a self-effacing manner.
He was assigned to be the sexton (mesharet) at the Beit El yeshivah and kept to
himself, although he visited the sacred graves on the Mount of Olives and
listened to lessons in Lurianic Kabbalah from a corner in an adjoining room in
the academy. Only after the clandestine circulation of some of his writings did
his star begin to rise among the scholars of Beit El. In accordance with the
romantic tone of his biography, it was the daughter of Gedaliah Hayyun, the
_
academy’s founder, who determined that Shar’abi was circulating the re-
sponsa, recognizing the true nature of the quiet, handsome, self-effacing
young sexton. Hayyun elevated Shar’abi’s status and gave him his daughter’s
_
hand in marriage, at which point Shar’abi entered into the historical record.5
Beit El
At the time of Shar’abi’s arrival, the Beit El yeshivah was still a young insti-
tution, part of the general flowering of Kabbalah in eighteenth century Jer-
usalem.6 The kabbalists of Beit El initially organized to study and follow the
kabbalistic system of Isaac Luria, which had been developed nearly two cen-
turies before in the Galilee hill town of Safed. The kabbalists were already
renowned among the population for their intercessions in times of drought.
Shar’abi’s leadership galvanized the Beit El community, in part because he
organized and chartered the majority of the Jerusalem kabbalists. The group at
Beit El left a number of documents, particularly four charters. The charters are
significant because they were based on the type that had been instituted by the
Safed kabbalist Hayyim Vital with the object of uniting the circles around Luria
_
under his (Vital’s) leadership.7 Hence, the instituting of the charters is evi-
dence that the Beit El kabbalists self-consciously patterned themselves after the
circles that attended Isaac Luria, which in turn were patterned on the kabba-
listic fellowships described in the Zohar. The first charter reflects concerns
about the continuation of the fellowship and the preservation of its social
structure and spiritual intensity. As in the case of the charter signed by Vital’s
companions, the signers committed themselves to attitudes of love and hu-
mility toward their fellows in the circle.8 The second charter deals with re-
sponses to catastrophes that occur to members of their community. The signers
committed themselves to take responsibility for the education of the comrades’
children and to take special measures in the event of a comrade’s illness or
death. The comrades also committed themselves to reciting all of the books of
the Psalms, which is also a common response to catastrophe. In the fourth
charter, the comrades designated themselves as the Ahavat Shalom group, an
appellation that survives to this day.9
The pietistic life of the Beit El kabbalists was distinguished by the structure
of the comradeship. In Beit El, there were three main areas of study: exoteric,
philosophical (mahshevet Yisrael), and Kabbalah. The group divided into three
‘‘watches’’ (mishmarot) that effectively kept the study room populated twenty-
four hours a day. The first watch began at the midnight vigil (tiqqun hazot) and
_
concentrated on the study of Lurianic Kabbalah, particularly Vital’s Ez Hayyim.
_ _
The second group commenced after the morning prayers and continued until
the afternoon. The third watch ran from the afternoon to the evening services
and concentrated on the study of Mishnah.10 After the evening prayers, this
group committed itself to the study of the Talmud. Hence, the social structure
of the mishmarot was such that merchants and people who worked for a living
could be preoccupied with exoteric studies during the day while the full-time
practitioners of Kabbalah were busy during the night and morning hours.
Owing, in part, to tensions in the Beit El community, a group broke away
and formed another institution, the Rehovot ha-Nahar yeshivah, in 1896.11
Rehovot ha-Nahar was founded in the Yissacharoff synagogue of the Bu-
kharian quarter of Jerusalem’s ‘‘New City.’’ The founder was Nissim Nahum,
of Tripoli, with the assistance of Hayyim Shaul Dweck, of Aleppo. Dweck had
_
left Beit El in the midst of a controversy over the proper kavvanot to be recited
for the Sabbatical year.12 Rehovot ha-Nahar was devoted to kavvanot practice, to
the apparent exclusion of Talmud study. Like Beit El, the new institution
operated around the clock. The daily schedule began with nightly immersion
in the ritual bath (mikvah), the performance of the midnight vigil (Tiqqun
Hazot), and the full recitation of prayers with Shar’abi’s version of the kavva-
_ _
not.13 Rehovot ha-Nahar served as a center for the Aleppo scholars and came to
include other newcomers to Jerusalem from Yemen and the west, as well as a
significant contingent of Ashkenazim. The leaders of the early Ashkenazic
pietistic circles of Jerusalem, Moshe Nahum Wallenstein, Aryeh Leib Beharad,
and Zevi Pesah Frank, as well as the Hasidic rabbinical court, gave their
_
approbation to Hayyim Shaul Dweck and Eliahu Ya’akov Legimi’s book of

_
popular penitential rites, Benayahu ben Yehoyada. By the beginning of the
twentieth century, then, the practice of prayer kavvanot was constantly taking
place in Beit El, within the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City and in the Bukharian
quarter of the New City. Like the revolving ‘‘watches’’ of the Temple priesthood,
the kabbalists of Beit El and Rehovot ha-Nahar saw themselves, through their
constant prayer vigil, as sustaining the peace of Jerusalem.
Shar’abi’s Hegemony
Shar’abi had the happy experience of having his greatness recognized while he
was still active. He raised many influential students, and even those who
disagreed with his theoretical positions on Lurianic Kabbalah, such as Shlomo
Molkho, praised him personally.14 For Beit El kabbalists and other serious
acolytes of Lurianic practice, Shar’abi came to complete a triumvirate of re-
vealers of the Kabbalah, along with Shimon Bar Yohai, the hero of the Zohar,
and Isaac Luria, who had come to preeminence, albeit posthumously, among
the sages of the Safed Kabbalah.15 Shar’abi’s portrayal of the Lurianic system is
seen as the fulfillment of that system, for he is regarded as the reincarnation of
Luria. The Aleppo kabbalist Hayyim Shaul Dweck, citing Hayyim Palag’, ex-
_ _
pressed this belief accordingly:
It was said of [Shar’abi], that he was the assurance that our teacher
Luria gave to his students: ‘‘if you are worthy, I will come to you
another time,’’ [indicating that] Luria came to them in the incarnation
of Shar’abi. From this we learn that Shar’abi was the reincarnation
of Luria, and his students were the reincarnation of Luria’s students.16
Since Shar’abi bore the spark of Luria’s soul, the acolytes reasoned that he
descended to the innermost workings of Luria’s mind in order to seek the
resolution of his teachings. Shar’abi revealed nothing new, only the source of
revelations with regard to Luria’s teaching. Hence, the Beit El kabbalists see no
spirit of auteurism in Shar’abi’s teachings. They are not original but simply a
realization of what Luria would have taught, for Shar’abi was gleaning from the
same sources as Vital and the original redactors.17 As expressed by Yosef
Hayyim, the influential Baghdad rabbi known as the Ben Ish Hai:
_ _
[There is a] question of how we should regard the new presenta-
tions in the words of our teacher RaSha’’Sh, which are not to be
found in the works of Luria upon which RaSha’’Sh was dependent,
such as Ez Hayyim and Mavo She’arim. Know that our teacher the
_ _
RaSha’’Sh is totally credible, for he made no innovations from his
own consciousness or from other works of kabbalah, adding nothing
to the words of our teacher the AR’’I. Indeed, he plumbed the depths
of the works of our teacher the AR’’I and developed principles which
are specifically explained in the writings of the AR’’I.18
Shar’abi’s relationship to the Lurianic canon is parallel to that of the

canon’s compiler, Hayyim Vital. Just as Vital was Luria’s authoritative redactor,
_
so Shar’abi is considered the central interpreter of Vital. However, the Beit El
kabbalists believed that if Shar’abi’s understanding were to contradict that of
Vital, then Shar’abi’s opinion was to be accepted, for he was the spark of Luria,
Vital’s teacher.19 Shar’abi’s opinion held sway; for it was commonly believed
that Shar’abi clarified and resolved issues that had remained hidden from
Vital.20
Shar’abi’s teachings were accepted as persuasive on purely scholastic
terms. Yet, it was also a matter of record in Beit El that Shar’abi had received a
revelation of the prophet Elijah, through ‘‘apperception in consciousness [b’ein
ha-sekhel].’’21 A tale circulated among the Beit El kabbalists of a maidservant
who saw Elijah communing with Shar’abi, who swore her to secrecy on the
matter.22 The Beit El kabbalist Masoud ha-Cohen Alhadad believed that
Shar’abi possessed ruah ha-kodesh, ‘‘holy spirit,’’ declaring that ‘‘we have re-
solved this according to the Holy Spirit of RaSha‘‘Sh.’’23 A contemporary
kabbalist, Ya’akov Moshe Hillel, has even defended the fact that Shar’abi de-
veloped religious practice on the basis of his revelatory experience on the
grounds that it occurred ‘‘face-to-face’’ with the prophet Elijah.24
It is theologically brazen, at this late date, to ascribe Divine inspiration to
any rabbi in modernity, and some kabbalists are reluctant to address the tra-
dition of Shar’abi’s visitation from the prophet Elijah. Yosef Hayyim, the Ben
_
Ish Hai, provides a more measured explanation of Shar’abi’s revelation:
_
With regards to the issue of Shar’abi’s having received a revelation
from the prophet Elijah . . . know that there is an injunction from the
words of Kabbalah; do not tamper with my anointed one and my
prophets do not oppress (1 Chron. 16:22). Meaning that it is not for us to
speak of such great and vast men according to the measure of our
mentality. So I may only tell you one thing of the revelation of Elijah,
of blessed memory. Truly, when one merits to speak to him face-
to-face as was the case with out teacher the AR’’I, such a thing was
difficult to imagine even for those of the early generations and all
the more so for the later generations. Indeed, it is plausible that a
revelation from Elijah may take place in the consciousness of the

zaddik. The spark of Elijah is clothed in the perception of the zaddik,
_ _
guiding him in truth. The zaddik doesn’t feel the revelation of Elijah
_
in his mind. He is merely conscious that he perceives the truth. But
it is really not so; he is receiving something from the garmented
spark of Elijah that is in his consciousness . . . and I believe that it was
so with our teacher RaSha’’Sh.25
Yosef Hayyim defined Shar’abi’s revelation as preconscious, an underly-

_
ing Divine spark that guided all of his actions and decisions. However, the
contemporary kabbalist Ya’akov Moshe Hillel has implied that Shar’abi’s ex-
perience with Elijah was articulate and conscious, a ‘‘face-to-face’’ experience.
Seemingly, time and distance have done nothing to diminish the mythos of
Shar’abi’s revelation but have served only to magnify the tradition.
Shar’abi was widely endorsed as a central kabbalistic authority, adjudi-
cating matters of doctrine according to his decisions.26 His system of prayer
kavvanot was considered the authoritative one, and the Beit El kabbalists have
formally declared that his interpretation of Kabbalah takes precedence over all
others. His student Sasson Bakher Moshe27 declared, ‘‘One must never depart
from the path of Shar’abi.’’ Today, Ya’akov Moshe Hillel has declared that ‘‘we
only rely on Shar’abi’s understanding of the AR’’I’’28 and ‘‘we on the margins
[azuvei ha-kir] can only align our thinking with Shar’abi’s transcendent wis-
dom.’’29 One Jerusalem Kabbalist, Sariah Deblitsky, in his Mahshevet Bezalel,
_
described the following situation, in an apparent reference to the disagree-
ments of Shar’abi and Shlomo Molkho:
In the book Tiqqun Hazot from the saintly genius Zevi Melekh
_ _
Shapiro (2:263b), it is written: one must never move at all, God
forbid, from the words of Shar’abi. Once there was a scholar who
wrote otherwise, and he even had a revelation that upheld him, yet
nonetheless, we pay it no mind, as is known to a number of scholars
here in the holy city. Shar’abi’s words are like a strong pillar to light
the path for the great sages of Israel and the masters of the Holy
Spirit.30
Despite these examples of Shar’abi’s authority, certain prominent Lur-

ianists have qualified their support of Shar’abi’s teachings. The Lithuanian
kabbalist Shlomo Bar Heikel Eliashiv (acronym Rav ShB’’H; 1841–1926) stated
_
in his work Leshem Shevo ve-Ohalama that, while Shar’abi’s interpretation is
necessary for understanding Isaac Luria’s writings, it is still merely ‘‘one aspect
of Lurianic teaching and it is possible to understand him also in other as-
pects.’’31 In the same vein, the influential Baghdadi/Yerushalmi kabbalist

Yehudah Petayah was somewhat defensive regarding his methodology of
presenting a simple interpretation of Ez Hayyim in light of the hegemony of
_ _
Shar’abi’s approach:
In a given passage, I will not digress to another matter but will

explain that passage simply, as if there was nothing in the Ez Hayyim
_ _
but that passage, that the reader not be confused and [Luria’s]
words be made difficult for him, for undoubtedly even Shar’abi, at the
beginning of his study of the Ez Hayyim, studied it in its simple
_ _
form, until God graced him with an understanding of the deeper
matters . . . so I will explain the matters simply and leave Shar’abi in
his place.32
Notwithstanding these respectful detractors, it is clear that the majority of

the Beit El scholars saw Shar’abi’s opinion as definitive. The Beit El commu-
nity is united by the idea that Shar’abi’s theoretical works and prayer kavvanot
are their sacred doctrine.
Kabbalah in the Present Tense
In 1947, Gershom Scholem presented a lachrymose view of the prospects of

the Beit El community:
Rabbi Shalom Shar’abi . . . founded a center for Kabbalists which ex-

ists to this day. This is Beth-El, now a forlorn spot in the Old City
of Jerusalem, where even today as I write these lines, men who
are thoroughly ‘‘modern’’ in their thought may draw inspiration
from contemplating what Jewish prayer can be in its sublimest form.
For here the emphasis was again, and more than ever, laid on
the practice of mystical prayer, the mystical contemplation of the
elect. . . . Kabbalism becomes at the end of its way what it was at the
beginning; a genuine esotericism, a kind of mystery religion which
tries to keep the profanum vulgus at arm’s length. Among the writings
of the Sephardic Kabbalists of this school, which has exercised a
considerable influence on Oriental Jewry, it would be difficult to find
a single one capable of being understood by the laity.33
Scholem’s elegiac appraisal was premature in many ways. A number of his

points remain valid, but the reader will see that Beit El continues to thrive in
spite of, and even because of, the obscure and unworldly aspects of its esoteric
teaching. Now the Beit El building in the Old City is packed and bustling, and
the kavvanot are being attempted by dozens of young acolytes. Somehow, the
most willfully esoteric of kabbalistic schools is central to the workings of the
life of the Old City.
When I began to visit the various circles of kavvanot practitioners, in the
early 1980s, I imagined a different course for the movement. I believed that
they were likely to form the ideological core of the fledging Shas political party,
which represented the interests of the religious and poor Israelis of Sephardic
background. I thought that the leaders of the circle would become media
figures and political players. The common people revered the last wonder-
working rabbis of the prior generation, and their blessings were being bundled
together with a vote for the Shas party. The activity of rabbis such as Isaac
Kaduri and others in the 1992 elections reinforced that suspicion on my part,
although it has not come to pass. The Shas party was ascendant in the 2006
elections, and it remains to be seen to what extent it will continue to employ
Beit El kabbalists as soteric guarantors in the election process, particularly as
the old generation of charismatic saints has passed and a new generation is
quietly maneuvering for ascendancy.34 Still, the growth and spread of kavvanot
as an intellectual and spiritual phenomenon, if not a political one, has con-
tinued unabated.
The practice of kavvanot has spread out to newer religious circles outside
the purview of the Middle Eastern community. The Jewish renewal movement
of the late twentieth century, which brought religiously synchretistic and coun-
tercultural influences into liberal Judaism, has retained the most protean of
the kavvanot, the ascent through the four worlds that forms the basis of the
morning service. Chava Weissler has recently begun to document the devel-
opment of the rite in the Eilat Chayyim community, which is a central location
for the Renewal movement. The popular and controversial Kabbalah Centres,
currently led by Rabbi Yehudah Berg, have prepared an erudite prayer book
and have devised a novel implementation of the kavvanot. The prayer kavvanot
that have been evolving in the Kabbalah Centres differ from those in the Beit El
rite, although both traditions draw upon the Lurianic principles regarding the
application of sacred names to the liturgy. The Kabbalah Centre rite has, so far,
added new emphases and reinstituted certain texts that the Beit El kabbalists
had neglected. At the same time, dropouts from the Kabbalah Centres have
moved toward more traditional practice of the kavvanot and have attached
themselves to pietistic elements of Middle Eastern congregations in various
locales where both such communities are present.
The implication of all of this activity is that the practice of kavvanot is a
living tradition, unfolding in the present tense, and so one may speak of Beit El
kabbalists, what they believe and what they practice, with some confidence that
there is a community in the field, however reclusive and mysterious it may be.
The ‘‘Beit El kabbalists’’ comprise a specific historical series of kabbalistic
circles and their enthusiasts and supporters from outside the community.
For the purposes of this study, I will refer to Beit El kabbalists in speaking
of both the founding members of the circle and the school as it evolved in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I also refer to contemporary kabbalists
operating in the discipline, who speak with relative unanimity of purpose. Rav
Benayahu Shmueli, of the populist Nahar Shalom community, has embraced
the writings and publishing activities of Ya’akov Moshe Hillel, so there is
unanimity of opinion between the leading theorist of Beit El Kabbalah and the
most active group of acolytes. I have seen nothing to contradict their various
conclusions in the activities of the Beit El kabbalists who haunt the Western
Wall or in the fiery homilies of the late Rav Shmuel Darsi, of the Nayot be-
Ramah circle in the Geulah quarter of Jerusalem. Their influence extends, as
well, to institutions that reach out to the newly affiliated, such as the Yeshivat
Ha-Hayyim ve-ha-Shalom, led by Rav Mordecai Attia, and to the activities of
_
other groups of religious penitents in Jerusalem. There is, from the evidence of
the publishing record, a sizable audience for various new manuals on the
speculative and practical aspects of Beit El Kabbalah. There is apparently a
sufficient market for such studies to justify the expense and effort of publi-
cation. Hence, when this study refers to ‘‘the Beit El kabbalists,’’ it means both
the sages who flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and
practitioners functioning today who subscribe to the same trove of sacred writ-
ings and apply themselves to the same challenge—maintaining a prayerful
vigil over Jerusalem and the world, their words intoning the common liturgy
and their minds filled with the sublime speculations of the kavvanot.
Study and Observation
My observations of the Beit El kabbalists were informal and went on for many
years. I began to write this book as an expression of ga’agu’im, my yearning for
the Jerusalem that I first experienced as a young rabbi, fresh from an orthodox
seminary, ensconced in the old Bukharian quarter of Jerusalem, whose pop-
ulation was at the time still largely of central Asian origin. There the locals
would point out to me the attic of the Shoshanim le-David synagogue, where
Ya’akov Hayyim Sofer had sat and composed the voluminous kabbalistic law
_
code Kaf ha-Hayyim. In the large multiplex synagogue founded by the family
_
Moussaieff, I would hear of the nearby Yissacharoff synagogue and the circle
of kabbalists who had moved there, Hayyim Shaul Dweck and the Rehovot ha-
_
Nahar community. Throughout the neighboring communities, stretching in
an ‘‘L’’ shape from the Bukharian quarter into the Hasidic suburb of Geulah
_
and thence to the area around Jerusalem’s large open-air market, Mahaneh
Yehudah, there were kabbalistic synagogues. The Beit El synagogue, vacated
during the fall of the Old City of Jerusalem, had moved to the border of these
two neighborhoods and still attracted a circle of initiates, led by members of the
Hadaya family.
In those days, when I was a younger man, I had gone for a blessing to the
saint R. Mordechai Shar’abi, who was not, despite his name, a lineal descen-
dant of Shalom Shar’abi. He lived in a large facility off the main promenade of
the open-air market. It was a crisp morning, and I sat in the courtyard and
watched as his young wife fed the cats. After a while, I was shown into a
darkened room. Shar’abi sat in robes, cross-legged on a divan, swaying from
side to side like a blind man. And, indeed, he seemed not to see me. ‘‘Who is
it?’’ he cried. Next to him sat a burly young man, in the garb of any run-of-the-
mill yeshivah student. Perhaps it was a young Benyahu Shmueli; I can’t re-
member now. ‘‘He is coming with a question!’’ called out the burly young man,
though Shar’abi was sitting not three feet away from him. ‘‘Let him ask,’’ called
Shar’abi in an equally loud voice. He swayed from side to side in a trance,
smiling and staring blindly out into the room. I asked my question, and he
answered with a certain brusque optimism. And I walked out into the morning
light with a good feeling, as if I had encountered somebody who existed be-
tween two worlds, this one and the next, and he had leaned down from his
other world and brought my needs into it. Now Shar’abi has passed, with his
generation of holy men, and the house that I visited is now the Nahar Shalom
yeshivah, where a new generation pursues the Beit El practice.
I have prayed with the Beit El kabbalists for more than two decades, in
Jerusalem, Safed, and Los Angeles, observed their special rituals, joined their
prayer circles long before dawn, and recited the midnight vigil with them and
other denizens of the religious world of Jerusalem. I wish that all of my
questions about their circles could have been resolved through interviews and
observations, anthropologically, seeing, in the words of Robert Orsi, ‘‘to bring
the other into fuller focus within the circumstances of his or her history,
relationships and experiences . . . to stand in an attitude of disciplined open-
ness and attentiveness before a religious practice or idea of another era or
culture on which we do not impose out wishes, dreams or anxieties.’’35 Yet,
when it came time to ask hard questions about the nature of their practice,
I found that discussions and interviews were producing only anecdotal infor-
mation and preventing a clear understanding of their theological issues and
practical concerns. I found that the works of Ya’akov Moshe Hillel, the leader
of the present-day Ahavat Shalom community, in the Meah Shearim district of
Jerusalem, were more to the point as a response to my concerns. The questions
that I asked were the ones that he, in his contemporary portrayals of the
theological and practical issues related to fitting the Beit El practice into the
preexisting life of a kabbalist, were the questions that I would ask on the rare
occasion where I did gain access to R. Benyahu Shmueli or R. Shmuel Darsi.
Nothing that they told me contradicted what Hillel had to say, and sometimes,
when I spoke to them, it seemed as if they were hearing such questions for the
first time. So it was that, while I was observing, intermittently, the functioning
of a community ensconced in a large community, the answers that I sought
were to be found in books, not in the practitioners themselves. At the end of the
day, my interests were doctrinal and not experiential. I could not gauge the
latter dimension, and, for the practitioners, it was too intimate an experience to
be discussed with an outsider.
It is no small thing that, in that social milieu, the term ‘‘professor’’ is an
epithet and ‘‘universita’’ a curse. At the turn of the last century, the Jerusalem
pietist Asher Zelig Margoliot averred that he was uneasy about publishing
Shar’abi’s prayer book, ‘‘for the holy book will be found in the Universities, and
the houses of ‘doctors and professors.’ ’’36 I was now a professor myself, in a
liberal seminary, no less, and I had to behave modestly and not create ripples.
Although untrained, I was still enough of an anthropologist to know that it
would be best that my presence not be the center of attention. So I behaved as a
Jew who had come to pray and study and otherwise attach myself to the
community.37
It is hard to speak definitively about the role of Beit El Kabbalah in con-
temporary Israeli society, because the attitude of Israeli society toward religion
is changing before our eyes. The sharp lines between religious and secular are
seemingly being breached, so that there is a new middle ground. New groups
like the somewhat degenerate strain in the Breslav Hasidism, the Kabbalah
_
Centres, and other elements are conspiring to blur the lines between the
religious and the secular elements of Israel. The by now de rigueur pilgrimage
to India undertaken after army service is opening a bridge between East and
Far East, and returning young people are bringing back inchoate expressions
of spirituality that are being encouraged by a new openness. A new generation
of religious evangelists such as Rav Amnon Yizhak is espousing penitential
_
anxieties among secular Israelis. Institutions as Beit El are poised to take
advantage of any changes in the Israeli sociopolitical landscape. Populist
members of the community are fanning out and gaining new adherents. The
circles of mekavvenim and the morning lessons are fleshed out with various
dropouts from Israeli society: intellectual bureaucrats who took an early pen-
sion; people living on disability, often for military wounds; new penitents; the
divorced; people who have hit the invisible walls and glass ceilings that exist,
undocumented, in Israeli society.
Jewish Mysticism
Kabbalah studies have thus far equated Kabbalah, which is a system of

metaphysics, with ‘‘Jewish mysticism.’’ Scholars of Kabbalah have fought for
its place among the mystical teachings of world religions. It is unusual to
uncover a living kabbalistic tradition in Judaism, and unnerving for a Kabbalah
scholar. The sources of most of our studies have already folded themselves into
the creases of Jewish history or invested effort in covering their tracks, which
demand to be uncovered. In this case, Shar’abi and his heirs have been hiding
in plain sight. Shar’abi’s followers have remained active and, in recent years,
have grown as a group, yet they have not been given scholarly attention. There
are many reasons for this. For one thing, Kabbalah scholars have come from a
different stratum of Israeli society, separated from the practitioners in the field
by social, ethnic, and religious barriers.
In order to examine Beit El in the context of the study of Kabbalah, an
initial question is, What is the nature of the mystical experience in the Beit El
tradition? How do the activities of the school reflect the substance of Shar’abi’s
teachings? The answer reveals a problematic truth in the study of Kabbalah,
namely that, in fact, there is little of the mystical experience in Beit El Kabbalah.
The metaphysical object of the practice is clear, however, and nobody in the
Jewish or kabbalistic communities disputes the authenticity of Beit El in the
kabbalistic lineage and pantheon. In examining Beit El, a distinction must be
made between Kabbalah as a form of mysticism, to be equated with the other
mystical traditions of civilization, and Kabbalah as the inner metaphysic of
much of traditional Judaism. Beit El is the acme of the kabbalistic doctrine in
early modernity, yet it has little about it that would conform to many Western
typologies of the mystical experience. Is the academy to exclude Beit El from
the realm of Kabbalah because it doesn’t conform to Western notions of
‘‘mysticism’’? Is Kabbalah really to be considered a form of mysticism, or is it
best defined as Judaism’s salient esoteric, metaphysical tradition?
2
Kavvanah and Kavvanot
An astonishing admission, by Shar’abi’s son Hizkiahu Yizhak

_ _
Mizrahi Shar’abi, emerges from the very heart of the Beit El school.
As cited in the enormous review of the Beit El rite Divrei Shalom,
Avner Efg’in quotes the younger Shar’abi:
Even if we intend [mekavven] according to our intellects, each

one according to his capacity we do not know the explana-
tion of ‘‘kavvanah,’’ how it is and what the explanation of
what the Rav wrote . . . when he said ‘‘intend thus’’ and so
forth, what does ‘‘intend’’ [tekavven] mean? What is kavva-
nah? I have not achieved any spiritual level, [yet] because
of our many sins, it has transpired that people think of me
that I have the proper intention, and that I am expert in
the words of the Rav, and this causes me all of the evils of the
world, body and soul.1
This revelatory remark suggests that for all of the complexity

of Shar’abi’s system of kavvanot, the writings of the Beit El kabbalists
provide little description of the experience of the practice. This truth
also emerges after an exhaustive review of the Beit El literature.
The cultivation of a personal feeling and the achieving of a mystical
state were not goals of the practice, and directives about achieving
ecstasy or cleaving are largely absent from the literature. Rather,
prayer with kavvanot was a transitive experience, directed at the
object(s) of prayer.
This does not mean that the members of the Beit El school were oblivious
to the pietistic and experiential aspects of their practice. In fact, in matters
overtly spiritual, they were simply dependent on the rich ethical literature
coming out of the Safed tradition, exemplified by the writings of Hayyim Vital,
_
Eliahu de-Vidas, Elazar Azikri, and others. The widely circulated works of the
ethical (mussar) tradition were also universally acceptable to them. The Beit El
kabbalists were also empathetic with the Hasidic masters. Like their North
_
African counterparts,2 they felt that some Hasidic thought was talking to them,
as well. Otherwise, the spiritual dimension of their practice was derivative and
unoriginal, based on earlier kabbalistic traditions. The only exception to this
rule is the works of Yosef Hayyim, the ‘‘Ben Ish Hai,’’ who was an exceptional
_ _
theologian, operating in every homiletical field of Jewish literary expression.
Conventional notions of emotional intensity are not absent from the
kavvanot tradition. The nineteenth-century Beit El kabbalist Hayyim Shaul
_
Dweck, for instance, was renowned for his emotional intensity at the time of
prayer and for the beauty of his melodies.3 Otherwise, with regard to the nature
of kavvanah, the Beit El kabbalists relied on the precedents of early writings. If
even Hizkyahu Yizhak Mizrahi Shar’abi was uncertain regarding the au-
_ _
thenticity of his practice, what can a mere scholar accomplish in determining
the inner spirituality of Beit El Kabbalah? Yet, the Beit El kabbalists had an idea
of what they were trying to do, and their assumptions were based on traditional
Jewish notions of concentration in prayer, or kavvanah, and from these notions
came the religious practice that defined the Beit El school.
Kavvanah in Prayer
The term kavvanah emerges out of Jewish law. In the rabbinic tradition, there
is concern as to whether ritual and other acts are performed with the proper
intention. This preoccupation is particularly sharp with regard to the act of
prayer, in which the rote act may be manifestly insufficient. The concept of
kavvanah, meaning ‘‘intention’’ or ‘‘sincere feeling,’’ is the product of a certain
religious tension in early Judaism. The rote performance of a commandment
was often contrasted with the spiritual dimension of the act, which was termed
its ‘‘intention,’’ or kavvanah. In the case of fulfilling commandments through
actions, the intention implies will or volition. Certain commandments could
not be fulfilled by the act alone; the act had to be accompanied by the ‘‘intention
of the heart,’’ or kavvanah. In the case of prayer, the rabbis were highly con-
scious that the rote recitation of the words of prayer had to be accompanied by
an emotional commitment to the words being uttered. As the idea of kavvanah
kavvanah and kavvanot 21
evolved, the sages of the Talmud self-consciously acknowledged that they were
legislating the spiritual component of Judaism.
Although there are exceptions to the rule, it is a standard theme of the
prophetic tradition that prayer and repentance are the equal of sacrifice in their
positive effect on the Divine will. In later antiquity, when most Jews were
isolated from the Jerusalem Temple, they formally turned to prayer as the
replacement for the soteric agency of the sacrificial rite.4 The impetus for
Jewish prayer remains anxiety over the need for atonement. As the sacrificial
altar removed the effects of sin, so the act of prayer allayed punishment and
misfortune. Quietistic or meditative understandings of prayer must grapple
with the fact that the core of the exoteric prayer derived from the sacrificial rite
is petitional, tefilat bakashah, a laundry list of needs, couched in communal
terms. The primary goal of prayer was to achieve the supplicants’ physical
needs. Whether or not prayer may have brought the adherent to an elevated
state was beside the point. With prayer so heavily freighted with tension and
need, it became evident that there had to be an extra dimension to individual
prayer beyond the rote recitation of the words. Tannaitic discussions already
posit the need for an extra dimension of attention or sincerity in one’s prayer,
termed ‘‘intention,’’ or kavvanah.5
Inherent in the practice of kavvanot is a tension between the mental object
of concentration and the words coming out of one’s mouth. In the most pro-
tean Jewish prayer, the person praying vocalizes the name of God with the
word Adonay even as he or she reads the name YHVH. Hence, in all formal
Jewish prayer, there may be a disparity between the aural expression of the
word and the intention expressed.6 Even in common Jewish prayer, it is pos-
sible to ask the question that Joseph Weiss posed about the kavvanot: ‘‘Was the
mind completely separated from lips except insofar as the spoken word of
prayer acted as a springboard for the contemplative journey to the corre-
sponding sefirotic realities?’’7 The answer to his question must be in the af-
firmative; the purified mind was the main instrument of the theurgy of prayer.
Kavvanah in Kabbalah
As earlier stated, in medieval Kabbalah, kavvanot are ideas, texts, or formulae to

be contemplated while reciting the liturgy. In the annals of Kabbalah, there
was a transition from the idea of kavvanah, which means, simply, ‘‘intention’’
or ‘‘concentration’’ in prayer, to the kavvanot, which, in the parlance of medi-
eval Kabbalah, were ideas, texts, or formulae to be contemplated while reciting
the liturgy. Scholarly research has traced a single thread of the notion of
kavvanah leading from early Kabbalah to the classical forms of the eighteenth
century. The development of kavvanot accompanied the emergence of Kab-
balah in Gerona, Provence, and the Rhineland. In each case, the preexistent
format of the prayers was the instrument of the kabbalistic practice. In Azriel
of Gerona’s ‘‘Gate of Kavvanah of the First Hasidim,’’ kavvanah is a ‘‘systematic
_
absorption in the Divine Will and the desire to be united with it.’’8 The German
Pietists who flourished in the Rhineland roughly concurrently with Azriel’s
activity in Spain are described as ‘‘interpreters of the listed [dorshei reshumot],
weighing and counting the sum and number of the letters of prayer and
blessings [Tur Orah Hayim 113],’’ namely that they interpreted the words of the
prayer service according to its linear unfolding. Hence, the practice of kavvanot
was defined, at its outset, as the imposition of independent meaning onto a
preexistent ‘‘list,’’ namely the traditional prayer service. With the advent of this
practice among the Ashkenazi Hasidim, two ancillary values were developed,
_
as well, as has been noted by Joseph Dan. The first was the understanding that
the prayer book, as sacred canon, may not be altered in any way. The second
value was that prayer is not merely the fulfillment of a legal demand but is ‘‘a
vehicle for becoming a participant in a mystical, Divine harmony.’’9
The kabbalists were cognizant of their antecedents. Hence, elements of
the earliest statements about kavvanah remain relevant in classical and later
Kabbalah. The main anthology of lore for subsequent kabbalists was the Zohar,
and its ideas regarding the mythology of prayer were authoritative for most
subsequent kabbalists. The Zohar served as a warehouse for many ideas from
the early Kabbalah, the Safed kabbalist Moshe Cordovero derived his ideas
from the Zohar, and his student Isaac Luria operated in the same tradition,
so that ideas regarding such a central idea as kavvanah remained consis-
tent throughout the development of Kabbalah up to the emergence of Polish
Hasidism.
_
The Zohar locates the effects of prayer in the overlapping swirl of Divine
emanations. These various emanations include a number of contradictory
systems anthologized in the Zohar: the sefirot, or hypostases of the Divine, the
successive worlds of existence, and the celestial palaces filled with denizens of
the celestial and rabbinic hierarchies. The proper recitation of the set prayer
service is the way into these theosophical hierarchies. Hence, kabbalists saw
the structure of the liturgy as a code for the interaction of the sefirot and the
prayer book as a tool for influencing this interaction.10
The structure of the prayer service, as rabbinically established, is time
based. Moreover, in the worldview of the Zohar, the liturgical time represented
in the Jewish day, week, month, and year and marked by the prayer rite is, in
effect, the basis of secular time. Hence, the performance of liturgical prayer is a
portal into the realm of the true time, God’s time. Prayers, like the sacrificial
cult, have the effect of setting the world in its proper order, as instruments of
renewal.
Symbols and Kavvanah
The study of Kabbalah has widely emphasized the role of the symbol as the
main agent of esoteric meaning.11 The contemplation of symbols through the
reading of sacred texts with this charged hermeneutic is widely understood as
the central religious act of Kabbalah. Nonetheless, kavvanah emerged as a
second venue of kabbalistic contemplation. In allowing the adept another way
to access the transcendent, Gershom Scholem explained that:
Kavvanah . . . bridged the gap between the ancient forms of Jewish

prayer and its new forms. In this way, kavvanah did for a changed
understanding of the religious act in prayer . . . what on a differ-
ent plane and with different means, the symbol and symbolic exe-
gesis did for a changed understanding of the Torah. 12
In the history of kabbalistic practice, Scholem considered the practice of

mystical intentions to be as important as the widely discussed hermeneutic
tradition. In this vein, the practice of kavvanot also provided a bridge between
two understandings of kabbalistic theosophy. The practice advocated by the
Zohar is largely one of contemplative hermeneutics. As Elliot Wolfson has
pointed out, the central noetic of Kabbalah is the apperception of meaning
through the constant unfolding of the ever-hidden symbol.13 Other scholars,
particularly Yehudah Liebes, have stressed the role of participation in a given
mythos as an essential aspect of the kabbalistic experience.14 That is, the es-
sential act of the theosophical kabbalist in the tradition of the thirteenth-cen-
tury Spanish Kabbalah, as exemplified by the Zohar and the works of Joseph
Gikatilla and others, was to read sacred texts, interpret the symbolic meanings
that lie within them, and then look out at the world through the lens of that
symbolic tradition. The imagery of the phenomenal world also expanded to
become a symbolic universe, and the mystic ‘‘read’’ the nature of reality
through the archetypal symbols that had been honed in his reading of the
Bible.
In larger terms, the symbolic universe posited by the Zohar could be
strung together into a larger mythos. The surface nature of reality was not
its real nature but only an external sheath, hiding the true reality, which could
be perceived through the symbols and clues that it proffered. The kabbalist
lived with engagement in the mythos of larger forces at work beneath the
surface of phenomenal reality. One widely known example of this is the myth
of the Shekhinah, her estrangement from her consort, the cosmic God in
heaven, and her reconciliation with her consort on the Sabbath eve, when she
is escorted to the nuptial bower by her knightly escort, the kabbalists. This
mythos is presented many times in the Zohar and reflected in the structure of
the Friday-night service.
The employment of prayer kavvanot served as a device that took the
kabbalist beyond the realms of both myth and symbol in Kabbalah. By en-
gaging themselves in the prayer rite in this proactive way, theosophical
kabbalists left the passive role of theosophical apperceivers and became in-
tercessors in the processes of the Divine. The adept who practiced the kavvanot
contributed to the workings of the Divine mythos, which he had understood
only passively through his study.
The content of a given set of kavvanot derives from the system of meta-
physics, or the given mythos through which the prayers are being interpreted.
For example, the Safed kabbalists identified many prayers as occasions for the
unification of the sefirot. To that end, it was widely accepted in the common
religion of Safed that the prayers and meals attending the Sabbath eve were rites
for the unification of the God and the Shekhinah. Another product of this un-
derlying rationale for the performance of commandments and the recitation of
prayers was the le-shem yihud prologue, in which a given rite was preceded by the
admission that it was being performed in order to expedite ‘‘the union of the
Holy Blessed One and his Shekhinah.’’15 Contemporary editions of the prayer
book are still apt to contain the Le-Shem Yihud ascription, namely ‘‘for the sake of
the union of the Holy Blessed One and his Shekhinah, behold I am ready and
about to perform the mitzvah of __________ as it is written.’’16 The sacred
wedding on the Sabbath eve and the Le-Shem Yihud prologue are examples of
kavvanot that became part of common folk religion. Knowledge of these rites was
an acceptable Jewish metaphysic in most religious communities.
It was a given of Beit El practice that ‘‘before every mizvah or prayer one
_
says Le-Shem Yihud. Even on the days when one does not practice the kavvanot,
such as the counting of the Omer, and the days between Rosh ha-Shanah and
Yom Kippur, one says Le-Shem Yihud.’’17 The Beit El rite emphasized the
recitation of special versions of this prayer. The usual prologues to the Sabbath
service were excised from the Beit El rite in favor of the recitation of a special
version of the Le-Shem Yihud, and another version was instituted before the
additional (musaf ) service of the Sabbath and festivals.18 On the eve of the Day
of Atonement, the congregation similarly recited a particular version of the Le-
Shem Yihud for each of the five forms of self-affliction prescribed on that day.19
In their wide inclusion of the Le-Shem Yihud formula, the Beit El kabbalists, it
is clear, intended to draw down and enmesh the transcendent Divine in the
mundane and corporeal world.
The practice of such rituals with their accompanying intentions was
based on certain theoretical premises. These themes have been addressed by
the contemporary kabbalist Ya’akov Moshe Hillel. For contemporary Beit El
kabbalists, the goal of worship is to effect the union of God and the world
through the drawing of the light of the infinite through the five levels of the
soul. Kavvanot practice brings about a sublime repair (tiqqun), drawing down
the light of the infinite (Ein Sof ) into union with the world.20 Kabbalistic prayer
unifies and links all the worlds in the highest levels of the cosmos, to make the
Divine flow, or shefa’, descend into the corporeal world.21
Prayer as Union
Maimonides identified the consciousness of God’s unity, mizvat ha-yihud, as a

_
specific commandment of the Torah, namely to always know that there is one
God.22 In Kabbalah, this understanding of yihud, or unity, evolved from the
idea of consciousness of the oneness of God into a specific act. Rather than
passively knowing that God is one and unique, the individual, through the act
of yihud, performs an act of unification: of the individual with God, of God with
the world, and of the sundered world itself. In the late zoharic work Tiqqunei
ha-Zohar, unification with the Divine is a positive act that takes place through
the contemplative practice of certain mizvot.23 A similar point is made in the
_
prayer book commentary of Isaiah ha-Levi Horowitz, the author of the mon-
umental work Two Tablets of the Covenant. In one instance, Horowitz quotes
the sixteenth-century kabbalist Meir Ibn Gabbai’s Avodat ha-Kodesh:
The true unification is the root of the religion and faith, of which the
Torah commands us in the verse Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God
the Lord is One. The inner truth of this tradition is to link and unify
the emanation, which is the Divine. These are the powers that are
gathered in the special Name, in One. The term Shema’ implies
gathering and assembly. . . . The essence is that one must link and
unify the branches to the root. Hence one must unify with intention
and with thought purified from any other impulse, so as not to make
any rupture or separation.24
Similarly, according to the Zohar, kavvanah is necessary for the successful

act of union with the Divine: ‘‘If one comes to unify the holy name and did not
intend [hitkavven] it in his heart, the desires and fears that within him are
blessed, the lower and the higher. Then his prayer is cast out and evil is decreed
on it.’’25 In both of these expositions of the relationship between the two terms,
unification is the end for which kavvanah is the means.
The image of erotic union is common through classical Kabbalah and no
less so in the literature of the kavvanot. The erotic component of the prayer
experience emerges from the fact that in Lurianic Kabbalah, no less than in
that of the Zohar, the Universe is gendered. The theme of prayer as sexual
union is already present in the earliest Lurianic writings, as it is already a
theme in the Zohar, expressing the intention that the male and the female be
united ‘‘as they were at the creation of the world!’’26 In the later strata of the
Zohar, unification with the Divine is a positive act that takes place through the
contemplative practice of certain mizvot.27 The prayers are a form of seduction,
_
geared toward raising the ‘‘feminine waters’’ of the Divine superstructure.28
One of the earliest, most central, and most widely circulated kavvanot is
the premise that a given mizvah facilitates the union of the masculine and the
_
feminine elements of the emanated Divine, the Holy Blessed One, and the
Shekhinah. This view is central in the early Kabbalah and is evident in many
documents from the Safed renaissance and later that view themselves as ful-
filling the mission of the Zohar.29
In the Zohar literature and prior to it, the fitting object of union was the
Shekhinah. One of the broadest and most popularly circulated kabbalistic ideas
was that prayer consists of the unification of the Shekhinah with her consort in
the upper realms.30 Any Jew who prays is standing in the phenomenal world
and gazing upward. Hence, the first entity that he or she will encounter is the
indwelling of God in the World, namely the Shekhinah.31 In the time of the
Jerusalem Temples, the Shekhinah literally ‘‘dwelled’’ in the Holy of Holies and
was the object of the earliest synagogue prayer. Shar’abi acknowledged the
centrality of the original Temple to Beit El practice:
The goal of our turning in prayer is to pray and to pour out our souls to
the Blessed God, to redeem the Shekhinah from the exile and to break
down her prison and to free the prisoners. . . . If there is one who is
aroused in repentance to break down her prison, the Holy Blessed One
will answer and return the Shekhinah to him, for this is many days
and years that the Shekhinah remains in the exile. Since the de-
struction of our holy and glorious Temple and the blocking of all
prophetic vision, the Holy Spirit has ceased, and many of the mizvot of
_
the Torah are hidden in the corner, the harvest has passed and the
summer is ended and everything is contingent on repentance.32
This idea has many antecedents, and many commandments, according to

classical Kabbalah, have the sole purpose of bringing about the union of the
Shekhinah and her celestial consort.33 In the Zohar literature, particularly,
prayer is a way of invoking the presence of the Shekhinah in the world.34
Certain prayers also bring about the eroticized union of the male and female
aspects of the Universe.35 The idea of prayer being a form of communion with
the Shekhinah was retained by the Beit El kabbalists, as is evident from this
admonition by Hayyim Shaul Dweck:
Things that help attainment: It is a great mizvah to teach oneself

_
to always do the acts of unification that relate to the Shekhinah. There
is nothing to control the sins and support her but the one who knows
how to perform these acts of unification.36
Dweck’s admonition appears in one of the popular devotional works that

he helped to publish. Hence, it is clear that in Beit El, during the period of its
first great flourishing, union with the Shekhinah was the goal of the practice.
Therefore, it may be assumed that the Beit El kabbalists of today, as at the turn
of the twentieth century, see themselves as part of the union of the Shekhinah
with the upper realms of Divinity during their times of prayer.
Union in the Lurianic Rite
The theme of prayer as sexual union is present in the earliest Lurianic writings,
just as it is in the Zohar. Lurianic Kabbalah differed from the interpretations
that preceded it in that it emphasized a different structure of the Divine.
Instead of the sefirot that formed the basis for the Kabbalah of the Zohar and
the mainstream Safed Kabbalah, Isaac Luria emphasized a different system
that was first presented in the last sections of the main part of the Zohar. This
universe is visualized in anthropomorphic terms and structured according to a
hierarchical family, including a patriarch (Attika Kadisha), a set of parents
(Abba and Imma), a son (Zeir), and his consort (Nukvah). The family, moreover,
has been traumatized by its history, following the well-known mythos of the
‘‘breaking of the vessels’’ of Divinity and the need to restore the world through
the act of Divine repair. In the midst of this general catastrophe, Abba and
Imma must conceive and nurture their offspring, Zeir, and betroth him to
Nukvah. The various members of the cosmic Divine family, the parents (Abba
and Imma), the youth (Zeir Anpin), and his consort (Nukvah), have turned away
from one another to confront the chaos in the world following the breaking of
the vessels. With their backs turned toward one another, they face outward to
confront the chaos of the world outside. This turning out is called the back-to-
back embrace.
The goal of the adept in the Lurianic rite was to bring about the harmo-
nious and untroubled union of the various countenances, thereby causing the
conception and nurturing of Zeir Anpin, the central countenance. This union is
described as the goal of the kabbalistic practice in the later strata of the Zohar,
where unification with the Divine is a positive act that takes place through the
contemplative practice of certain mizvot.37 The goal of Lurianic practice is to
_
turn these dysfunctional figures toward each other, thus effecting ‘‘face-to-
face’’ union and repairing the broken cosmos. Similarly, the aim of prayer with
kavvanot is to effect unions among these familial elements of the cosmic
structure. The role of the kavvanah is to draw the Divine effluence from above
to below.38 The initial move of the kavvanot is to arouse the ascent of the
mayyin nukvin, the ‘‘feminine waters,’’ which provoke the excitement of the
male countenances. The various prayer intentions and rituals mandated by
the culture of Lurianic Kabbalah were exercises in the adept’s self-immolation
at the orgasmic center of these unions.
Early Lurianic teachings indicated the prayers that facilitated specific un-
ions and embraces. There are embraces to be repaired at every passage of the
day, and these are associated with specific prayers.39 The recitation of central
prayers, such as the Shema’ prayer and the reader’s repetition of the silent de-
votion, serves to turn Zeir and Nukvah toward each other and bring about their
union.40 The recitation of the Shema’ also effects the Divine union, turning the
consort, Nukvah, from the back-to-back union to the face-to-face through the
ascent of the ‘‘feminine waters.’’ The prostrations during the silent prayer are
considered particularly efficacious in bringing about the unions of the coun-
tenances.41 Hence, the real function and meaning of the Jewish liturgy are not
to simply profess faith in God and then ask for things, as it would seem from
the manifest structure of the Shema’ and the silent devotion. These prayers are
really devices to bring about processes that have nothing to do with the plain
meaning of the words but rather evoke supernal mysteries available only to
those who are adept in Kabbalah.
Devekut and Thought
One constant in the contemplative aspect of kavvanot practice is the prin-

ciple of devekut, or ‘‘cleaving’’ to God. Devekut has its origins in the bibli-
cal adjuration to ‘‘cleave to Him’’ (Deuteronomy 11:22). This ‘‘cleaving’’
has been described as the central goal and preoccupation of kabbalistic prayer
from the early kabbalists to the Lurianic practitioners, and, of course, it is

also ubiquitous in Hasidism.42 The achievement of devekut is intimately
attached to the presence and application of kavvanah, as Moshe Halamish has
_
defined it:
Kavvanah is the path to the actualization of this cleaving through

the stripping of the religious act (in this case, prayer) of its concrete,
external nature, through ongoing contemplation of its inner na-
ture. In this way the human thought (or will) combines into this
Divinity, and the gap between the two shrinks.43
Ephraim Gottlieb portrayed the relationship of devekut and kavvanah in the

medieval period by describing two forms of kavvanah. The first kind was a
nontransitive form, directed inward, that endeavored to bring the individual to
devekut. The second form of kavvanah was transitive in nature in that it en-
deavored to repair the Divine world. Gottlieb understood devekut as a kind of
meditation in that it was the nontransitive aspect of kavvanah. The act of
devekut placed the individual at the center of prayer, rather than the commu-
nity.44 Prayer is largely defined by the first kind of kavvanah, according to
Gottlieb, in which the core of the practice of prayer with kavvanot is a quest
toward contemplation, or hitbonnut.
The tool, or vessel, for the process of kavvanah is the kabbalist’s thought.
The kabbalist uses the prayer form to cleave his thought and soul to the Divine
world, shedding the outside world and locating himself in the path of the
Divine flow. Thought is the materiel that fuels the union of the individual and
the Divine. According to Isaac the Blind, ‘‘the way to prayer is through the
finite things that a person receives and raises in thought to the infinite.’’45 The
early kabbalists spoke of the ‘‘cleaving of thought’’ (devekut ha-mahshavah), as
opposed to the absorption of the self into God, the unio mystica that serves as
one of the markers by which scholars recognize ‘‘mysticism.’’
The idea that thought could ascend linked the experience of kabbalistic
prayer to classical prophecy. This association with prophecy, in which the
prophetic mind is the vessel of the experience, is pronounced in such works as
Hayyim Vital’s Sha’arei Kedushah. Such ‘‘raising of thought’’ is also ascribed to
_
the ancient pietists of Talmudic legend, the Hasidim Rishonim, who ‘‘elevated
_
their thought to the source and emptied themselves of their thought.’’46
The authors of the Zohar repeatedly concretized thought into a dynamic
instrument of theurgy.47 Similarly, Ezra and Azriel of Gerona convey the
power of thought as ‘‘a spring of water which flows from its source,’’ as dem-
onstrated in this well-known passage from Ezra’s commentary on the leg-
endary material in the Talmud:
Thought expands and rises to its place of origin. The simile is:
A spring of water flows from its source. If you dig a dam to prevent
the water from dissipating then it will go to the source and no fur-
ther. The early pious ones would raise their thought to the place of
its origin and through the adhering thought the [sefirot] would be
blessed and enhanced and receive from the emptiness of thought. It
is like a person who opens a pool of water so that it flows all over.
For the adhering thought is the source and blessing and endless flow
and from this emanation and adhering of thought, the things
would be increased and multiply, and from the joy they would be
revealed to him, and thus was the extension of prophecy, when
the prophet would concentrate and direct his heart and adhere his
thought above. According to his adherence the prophet would see
and know what is going to happen.48
For Azriel, thought is literally the instrument for ‘‘channeling’’ the Divine
flow and its positive effects. Like prophets, who have a tension between their
public function and their individual experience, the practitioner separates his
activist/theurgic role from his contemplative practice.49
In this vein, Elliot Wolfson has identified the constant factor in the de-
velopment of the kavvanot as the formation of sacred space in the mental
realm. From the rabbinic period through the thirteenth-century pietists of the
Rhineland, visualization of the Shekhinah, from its original locus in the
Temple to the inner emptiness of the mind, is the object of kavvanah.50
Through the time-based rhythms of the liturgy, prayer with the appropriate
kavvanah represents a union of this sacred space with sacred time. In the case
of the Rhineland pietists, the image of the Temple and the Shekhinah were
interchangeable. Wolfson further defines the constant and unchanging es-
sence of the role of kavvanah as a ‘‘phenomenology of affinity’’51 that links the
Rhineland pietists, theosophical kabbalists, and prophetic kabbalists in the
Abulafian mold:52 ‘‘Kavvanah is . . . the internal state of consciousness by means
of which the worshipper creates a mental icon of God.’’53 Visualizing the image
of the Temple resolved the tension of how to imagine an imageless God who
could not be visualized, for ‘‘utterance of the Divine names results in the visual
manifestation of the Divine glory.’’54
Eventually, the object of prayer became linked to specific sefirot. A man-
uscript of Jacob the Nazir, a Provencal kabbalist who preceded the emergence
of the Zohar, cites a tradition of Avraham ben David of Posquieres (RaBa’’D).
The latter stated that the prayers of thanksgiving that begin and close the silent
devotion were directed to the Ilat ha-Ilaot, the highest level of the Divine.
According to his point of view, the middle, petitional prayers were to be di-
rected toward Binah, the highest levels of the Divine.55 In the proof texts of the
Lurianic Kabbalah, the Idra literature of the Zohar, prayer reaches the ears of
the secondary anthropos, Zeir Anpin, and thence enters the Divine mind.56
Following this reasoning, in the later Lurianic model, thought may indeed
cleave to God, but prayer could rise only to a given point within the Divine
anthropos. Accordingly, Gershom Scholem defined the role of Lurianic prayer
as an aspect of the world’s need for repair (tiqqun):
In fact, the Lurianic system appears as a highly developed technique

for speeding up the otherwise slow and long process of tiqqun. By
correlating the words of the daily liturgy with the dynamic move-
ments and the corresponding rising toward God and falling earth-
ward of the mystical worlds, Lurianism taught its adepts to inject new
strength into them and to lift them out of the depths into which
they had fallen at the ‘‘breaking of the vessels.’’ The proper kavvanah
establishes a hidden harmony between the meditating kabbalist
and the cosmos.57
This unification is expressed, from the Zohar’s Idra literature through the
Lurianic Kabbalah, as a kind of immolating self-abnegation. Luria stressed that
a person, during prayer, should have intention and prepare himself as if he
were a dwelling and a throne for the emanation.58 It is a preparation for
martyrdom. In the Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot, he declaims:
We have to give over our souls for the sanctification of the Name . . .
and one must have the intention of receiving the four death penal-
ties of the court. . . . [This] must be through our merits and good
actions. Through our sins we bring it down and from our sins we
raise it. So now it is impossible to rise but for the saints among us
who rise to the level of Imma. . . . However, in the present, when
we have nobody to rise to this level . . . we have a partial tiqqun, that we
commit our souls totally to death for the sanctification of the name
with all of our heart, for if so, even if we have no good deeds and
we are wondrously evil, through giving ourselves over to martyrdom,
our sins are forgiven . . . as it says, great is repentance from it brings
one to the throne of Glory.59
For the contemporary kabbalist Ya’akov Moshe Hillel, Luria’s goal of mar-
tyrdom is transformed into a general stance of self-abnegation. This value, which
is manifested in Hasidism as the notion of bittul, is a personal and social for-
saking of this world, though not an invitation to literal martyrdom. Hillel states:
The one practicing the intentions of Luria, as set forth by Rav Shalom
Shar’abi in his holy prayer books, show that he totally deprecates
himself and his lowly existence in this limited world, in favor of the
grand terrible goal of repairing the upper worlds, to remove and
raise everything to the transcendent without any personal or earthly
accounting of this world . . . to fix the worlds, for one services the
needs of a higher power.60
The second-generation Lurianic kabbalist Natan Neta’ Shapira portrayed

this self-abnegation as necessary to channel Divine energy into the world and
bring about the process of the repair of the world:61
This is the reason for kavvanah in our prayers and precepts, for
through this the sefirot will be unified. For through the service of
the heart, which is prayer, this is the secret of the drawing forth of
Divine effluence to the sefirot above, that the individual might be a
part of God from above, linked in the chain of holiness through the
chain of the outpouring of his soul from level to level. Behold, let
this aforementioned out flowing be a ladder on which the arousal of
his actions should rise until they unify all of the sefirot, drawing
down the flow of blessing from the first sefirah to the last, until in all
comes to dwell on him through that ladder.
For these three traditional kabbalists, the cessation of personal needs

was the empirical goal of the practice. Only by negating their personal needs
could the kabbalists accomplish the soteric ends to which prayer was devoted.
Hence, the condition of prayer, that of self-abnegation, was the method for
achieving the goal of prayer, which was to immolate oneself and have one’s
consciousness become, literally, a brick in the wall of the Divine superstruc-
ture. Put simplistically, it might be said that in Hasidism, the experience of
_
devekut was the object of the practice, whereas, for Lurianic practitioners, it was
merely one of the tools of the rite.
Silence
Since its initial development and among contemporary practitioners, the

practice of kavvanot has been a mind-only ritual. It was not meditation for its
own sake, because it was subsumed into the mechanics of Jewish prayer rit-
uals. One zoharic value that would survive into later kabbalistic practice is a
stress on the virtue of silence. Hence, the Zohar provides various rationales for
why prayer is best recited in a whisper, a ‘‘still small voice.’’62 In contrast, then,
to the virtue of boisterousness that characterizes some schools of Hasidic
_
spirituality, the Zohar stresses the importance of silence in the process.63 This
sensibility comes to the fore in the teachings of Shar’abi and in the practices of
the Beit El community. The rules of prayer included a legal stipulation that the
lips should move and that the recitation should be audible. The accompanying
kavvanah, or intention, was never uttered; it remains in the mind and is never
sounded out.
While the kavvanot are daunting in their complexity, the complexity of the
system is brought into sharp relief according to this account of the early-
twentieth-century Beit El kabbalist Hayyim Shaul Dweck. Dweck was afflicted
_
by blindness late in his life, yet he continued the full practice of the kavvanot.
This perplexed and impressed his students, as is clear in the following vignette:
Once [R. Suleiman Mozfi] asked Rav Shaul Dweck . . . how was he
_
able to practice so many details of the kavvanot laid out in Shar’abi’s
prayer book, and so quickly, without the help of the prayer book to
guide his eyes. Dweck compared the question by gesturing towards
the window of the room, ‘‘What is this?’’ Rav Suleiman answered, ‘‘a
window.’’ The master answered, ‘‘Yet how many details are com-
bined in it, and yet you say, ‘it is a window.’ So it is with everything
that a man is expert in and knows well, with all of its many com-
ponent elements from which it is grafted and created, and they are
all apprehended by thought in one apprehension. So it is with the
kavvanot of Shar’abi, the one who is expert in the paths of the ef-
fluence and the stages of the details of the worlds, the order of their
ascent and descent, in an instant they are all apprehended and re-
membered mentally, etched in his imagination as the rabbis said ‘the
paths of the firmaments are as clear as the paths of Neharda’ah.’ ’’64
Clearly, Dweck was also able to practice the kavvanot through the intuitive
application of their theoretical principles. Memory and the application of the
basic rules of the kavvanot as a ‘‘mind-only’’ aspect of the practice were the tools
of its execution.
Garb: Kavvanot and Power
The Jerusalem scholar Yonatan Garb has discussed kavvanah, from late an-
tiquity to the civil religion of Safed, in ways that might be useful in under-
standing the Beit El practice of kavvanot. Garb understands the primary nature
of kavvanah, from practically the inception of the term in antiquity, as referring

to the channeling and harnessing of Divine power.65 In harnessing kavvanah,
the adept may draw down the power from the cosmic realm (hydraulic), or he
may provoke Divine expression through the relationship between the cosmic
form and the human (isomorphism), The premise of the spatial, isomorphic,
and hydraulic understandings of prayer is that, through the empowered con-
sciousness, human and Divine thought connect and intersect. Power is ‘‘called
forth’’ by the actions of the adherent, which may be linguistic, auditory, or
visual, although there are distinctions among these different forms of power.66
In these cases, the radical isomorphism is that the human chassis is a mi-
crocosm of the Divine.
The hydraulic and spatial models posited by Garb are present in the
teachings of the Zohar. In Garb’s terms, the Zohar presents ideas that are both
hydraulic and isomorphic. The hydraulic drawing down of Divine energy into
the world is described as inherent in the term brakhah, or blessing. Brakhah is
derived not from the Hebrew BRKH of the bended knee but from the breikhah,
the collecting pool of Divine flow. The prayers of the righteous draw down
Divine effluence.67 Prayers are also independent entities that may be dis-
patched, particularly with the metaphor of the sling so common in the Zohar.68
To illustrate his point, Garb has constructed several models in which
power is manipulated through kavvanah.69 Each path to the infinite is unique.
In spatial models of kavvanah, power is transmitted over a lineal distance that
is transcended by kabbalistic practice.70 This theurgy is based on a basic
premise of theosophical Kabbalah, namely that human actions influence the
Divine. Human and Divine states resemble each other and converge isomor-
phically, through a relationship between humanity and the cosmic super-
structure.71 For example, one presentation of the Shema’72 prayer portrays the
act in terms of aligning the embraces and the proper intonations of the letters
with the physical layout of the adherent’s own body. Another spatial model
posits a drawing down of energy from higher to lower realms, energy that can
be mobilized by the gifted adherent. Garb calls this model ‘‘hydraulic,’’ because
the material being brought down is the stuff of Divinity, flowing from an
endless source. Many popular sources attest to this view: the Bahir, for in-
stance, describes power as a flowing stream, directed by reservoirs and pipes, a
portrayal echoed in a well-circulated section of the Zohar (Ra’aya Meheimna
42a).73
Garb rejects models of kavvanah that are insular in that they view the
individual as remaining in constant contact with the Divine. Kavvanah is not a
meditative experience, because the experience itself is not noetic. Finally, the
experience is not quietistic, and the adepts who are using kavvanah want to
manipulate the processes of the Divine to their own ends in human history.
For Garb, the core of the kavvanot lies in the performance and action of the
adherent, rather than in the nature of the Divine object being contemplated.74
Garb sees the model of kavvanah as nascent in rabbinic Judaism from its
inception in antiquity.75 From the studies of Rebeccah Lesses,76 Garb adopts
the term ‘‘ritual power’’ after the Merkavah tradition’s use of the term ‘‘power,’’
or Gevurah. Rabbinic texts characterized Gevurah as being strengthened or
weakened by human activity. Garb argues that, rather than apposing ‘‘magical’’
and ‘‘theurgical’’ elements in the rabbinic tradition, that there is a ‘‘cycle of
empowerment’’ in rabbinical notions of kavvanah in which God is supported
by the righteous and then imparts thaumaturgic power to them. Hence, the
rabbinic dictum ‘‘Make God’s will your will, so that he will make your will his
will. Negate your will before his will, so that he may negate the will of others
before yours’’77 is an empirical, as opposed to a figurative, remark, as is
the related statement ‘‘a mizvah follows a mizvah, a transgression follows a
_ _
transgression.’’78
The Zohar’s model of prayer is based on isomorphism between the human
and the Divine. The human form is the ultimate model for both the existential
and the Divine realms, based on an anthropomorphic theology and anthro-
pology.79 This tradition is reflected poignantly in the image of the God who
observes the commandments, on whose phylacteries the name ‘‘Israel’’ is in-
scribed.80 In the same way, the Lurianic rite of intentions directs the adherent
to think of the word ‘‘throat’’ (garon) at the point in the service at which the
energies spread to God’s throat.81 In the words of Elliot Wolfson, ‘‘the ultimate
goal of contemplation may be the separation of the intellect from the body, but
the consciousness fostered by intention in prayer is predicated on the iconic
visualization of the Divine Presence in bodily terms.’’82 Hence, most human
actions, if they fall within the realm of halakhah, affect the Divine realm.
Garb’s models of power are further combined and come to the fore in the
Kabbalah of the sixteenth century, including the civil religion of Safed. The
sixteenth century was a time of efflorescence of theories of power in many
world religions.83 A monolithic figure in the Safed renaissance, Moshe Cor-
dovero, synthesized hydraulic, astral, personal, and linguistic models of power,
in Garb’s parlance.84 Cordovero’s ‘‘Gate of Kavvanah’’85 portrays the mode in
which the zaddik is able to draw down the power of the Shekhinah. Similarly, in
_
the mainly non-Lurianic kavvanot of the Rashkover prayer book, there are
many instances of the community coalescing at moments of particular Divine
effulgence. The early and late Lurianic literature repeats that the goal of prayer
with kavvanot is that the light of the infinite (Ein Sof ) be drawn down below, as
‘‘the whole world is filled with his glory’’ and his unification.86
Whatever the final conclusion, the models employed by the practitioners

of kavvanot in the eighteenth century had long been established by earlier
generations, and they were walking along trails that had been blazed by others.
Menachem Kallus has pointed out that ‘‘by the sixteenth century virtually all of
[Garb’s] models were employed by the major kabbalists of that age, [so that]
such a message ceases to be a useful tool for distinguishing the unique features
of Lurianic theurgy from that of . . . Cordovero or . . . Ibn Araby, as all the
models adduced by Garb are locatable in them all.’’87
In all analyses of kavvanah, the reality is that there is no monolithic
statement that can be made, because there are so many different types of
Kabbalah and so many different understandings of the role of kavvanah in
them. Ephraim Gottlieb’s portrayals of kavvanah, the inward-looking, non-
transitive form of devekut and the transitive, tiqqun-oriented form, were rooted
in the early Kabbalah of Provence and Gerona.88 Garb has based his sup-
positions on the middle period, from the Zohar up to Kabbalah’s spread
throughout the world, with particular attention to the saints of Morocco. Jo-
seph Weiss seems to have assumed that the practices posited by Gottlieb were
normative for the practice of kavvanot that was rejected by Hasidism, when, in
_
fact, as Kallus has observed, the Lurianic practice of kavvanot was already too
complex to categorize according to one model or another. Although Garb’s
models are of great value, it can be assumed that the Beit El practice incor-
porated all of them.
In Judaism, the prayer experience fulfils the same role as the noetic, medita-
tive, or revelatory one in other disciplines; it is the practice that defines the
essence of the religion’s given theology. The quintessential Jewish moment is
the turning of the individual, whether Abraham, Moses, or Hannah, to God in
prayer. In all of Judaism, prayer, liturgical or extraliturgical, is the instrument
of breakthrough to God. Whether kabbalistic or not, the goal of Jewish prayer is
to access the highest levels of the Divine, for purposes of theurgy, and thence to
affect Divine providence. It must follow that the experience of prayer must be
‘‘felt’’ and sincere. But besides that quality of existential sincerity, what should
the experience be?
The paradoxes of kavvanah as intention are an enormous topic in rabbinic
theology. The broadly defined ‘‘kavvanah’’ of rabbinic theology evolved into the
more narrowly defined ‘‘kavvanot’’ of Kabbalah. In each case, the intentions
that might accompany the performance of a mizvah became far more specific
_
when applied to the act of prayer. Evaluating the effects of kavvanah in the
context of prayer, with its concomitant values of devekut and technical acuity, is
challenging because all that is available for this evaluation is the textual record.
The scholar of mysticism Steven Katz has argued that, with regard to the
study of mysticism, there are no unmediated religious experiences and that, in
interpreting the mystical record, scholars have only the texts before them as
witness.89 In the case of the practice of kavvanot, we also have the communi-
ties, which are party to the resurgence of these practices. The analysis of lost
traditions, such as the works of Abraham Abulafia and the circle of the Zohar,
differs from the study of the practice of kavvanot because the latter are being
practiced by living communities. The first question that must be asked of these
circles is whether the practice of these communities is authentic to the spirit of
the theoretical writings that they are implementing. A second question is
whether there is an unbroken chain of this tradition, extending from Shalom
Shar’abi to the present acolytes of the tradition.
The person standing next to the scholar in a synagogue may be in a state of
mystical ecstasy, but the scholar cannot enter his mind to see, and modern
practitioners may and in fact probably will be hostile to questions from the
academic sector. This raises another question of authenticity, namely the effect
of scholarly writing on Kabbalah and its tacit dissemination to the traditional
communities.
For example, in one prayer circle in Jerusalem, I noticed a man standing
outside the main synagogue on the balcony. During his prayer, he would sob
despondently during the silent devotion. The researches of Moshe Idel and
Eitan Fishbane have addressed the role of weeping in classical kabbalistic
practice, so I was intrigued to encounter this experience in the field.90 Upon
investigation, I determined that the young man in question was felt by all to be
mentally unbalanced, that he was a social pariah, and that he was verbally
abused by the other kabbalists. He certainly came from outside the community
and may, in fact, have been influenced by Idel’s articles. If such a ‘‘freak’’ enters
the community and recovers practices described in academic writings and then
practices them in the community, is this practice ‘‘authentic’’?
The vast literature of the kavvanot does not emphasize the nature of the
experience. There are, in general, few accounts of the experience of mysti-
cal ecstasy in comparison to the myriad accounts left in other traditions, and
some of the accounts that we do have remain unexamined. Shalom Shar’abi’s
contemporaries in Poland, including but not limited to the saints of early
Hasidism, made great strides toward an emotional and theologically rich tra-
_
dition of kabbalistic prayer, which is addressed in a further chapter. Yet this
was not the understanding of Isaac Luria’s teachings that pervaded Beit El. The
Lurianic prayer system, as conceived by the Beit El adepts, is a rite, not a
meditative process. Therefore, personal sensation is beside the point, because
the object of the rite is not the receiving of a noetic experience but simply the
completion of the rite. Hence, the experience of the contemplative is one in

which the practitioner enters a realm in which he is no longer motivated by the
liturgy’s overt concern with human needs.91 Hence, the search for the inner
experience of the Beit El practice of kavvanot can proceed only in the knowledge
that the answers will be hard to define, if not unknowable.
3
The Names of God
in the Beit El Kavvanot
The actual texts of the kavvanot usually consist of arrangements of

the various names of God. The idea that God has different names is,
of course, biblical in origin, and traditions of various Divine names
may be found at every stage of Jewish intellectual history. Throughout
the history of Kabbalah, the premise of the tradition remained con-
stant, namely that sacred names accompanied the emanation of the
Divine into present reality and served as instruments for channel-
ing that emanation. As Gershom Scholem expressed it:
The Divine Names . . . are aroused through meditative activ-

ity directed toward them. The individual in prayer pauses
over each word and fully gauges the kavvanah that belongs to
it. The actual text of the prayer, therefore, serves as a kind
of banister onto which the kabbalist holds as he makes his
not unhazardous ascent, groping his way by the words. The
kavvanot, in other words, transform the words of the prayer
into holy names that serve as landmarks on the upward
climb.1
In the kabbalistic tradition there are innumerable names of

God, for, as the thirteenth-century sage Nachmanides observed, ulti-
mately the whole Torah was nothing but a random collection of
names of God.2 These names are taken apart, vocalized in new forms,
repeated, and recombined. In their rearranged form, they make up
the actual content of the kavvanah that accompanies the intoning of
the prayer. This statement from Joseph Dan regarding the thirteenth-century
pietists of the Rhineland is equally true of the Beit El kabbalists, namely that
‘‘it sometimes seems that where other readers would see letters and meanings
in the Bible. [They] would see only rows of figures and numbers, mystically
connected.’’3 Shar’abi’s system of names is by far the most abstract and com-
plex of all of the kavvanot systems.
The practice of Lurianic kavvanot had a period of efflorescence in Poland
from the seventeenth century until the early generations of the Hasidic
_
movement and for a while, operated concurrently with the Beit El school. This
Polish rite, which is discussed later in this study, was constructed around the
same name traditions, although it is less developed and complex. When viewed
from without, the manipulation of sacred names in Shar’abi’s system seems
completely impenetrable, yet the component aspects of the system are clear
enough.
The four-letter name of God, YHVH, is the foremost object of contem-
plation, while its biblical compatriots AHYH, Elohim, El Shaddai, and ADNY
make up a second tier in terms of their importance. Other names grow out of
ancient Jewish myths and were incorporated into the Lurianic mythos. Yet
more names are developed artificially through the permutation of letters and
other methods. Names were plucked from acronyms of biblical verses and
recovered through the numerical coefficients (gematriot) of different vocaliza-
tions of the name YHVH. Names are also generated by acrostics of sacred
verses and by replacing one letter of a given name with another.4
Name traditions developed throughout the course of kabbalistic history. As
mentioned earlier, most essential names were the various names of God em-
ployed in the Bible itself. Other sacred names are referenced in rabbinic writings
and explained in Gaonic materials.5 In the Heikhalot literature of late antiquity,
sacred names accompany and underlie the workings of the Divine.6 These tra-
ditions then spontaneously ‘‘recrudesced’’ in Provence, Gerona, and the Rhi-
neland in the great resurgence of Kabbalah in the twelfth century. Joseph Dan
has pointed out that the name HVYH, used ‘‘to express Divine Presence and
Divine will,’’ emerged as an important terminological innovation in the thir-
teenth century. This term emerged simultaneously in the thought of two early
kabbalists who seem otherwise to have been unaware of each other: Rabbi
Eliezer of Worms and Isaac the Blind of Provence.7 This and other sacred-names
traditions developed and percolated beneath the surface of kabbalistic history.
It is well known that the renowned kabbalist Abraham Abulafia’s kabba-
listic system was based in sacred names, and it is tempting to try to find
parallels with and precursors to Lurianic practice in Abulafia’s system. How-
ever, Abulafian practice emphasized posture, breathing, and bodily movement,
the names of god in the beit el kavvanot 41
along with the contemplation of sacred names in their permutations.8 Accord-

ing to Idel:
Abulafia’s method is based upon the contemplation of a constantly

changing object: one must combine the letters and their vowel signs,
‘‘sing’’ and move the head in accordance with the vocalization, and
even lift ones hands in the gesture of Priestly Blessing9 . . . the letters
of the Divine Name are not only a method of cleaving to God; the
process of imagining the letters in the first stage precedes the vision
of the letters in the final stage of the ecstatic process.10
This physical dimension and, moreover, any prescriptive understanding of

what the experience entails is absent from the Lurianic literature. The Lurianic
practice of kavvanot is silent (‘‘mind only’’) and draws on the halakhic pre-
scriptions for prayer as its mode of implementation. The names are never
enunciated but only kept in the mind as silent objects of contemplation. The
substance of the name traditions, that is to say certain patterns of vocalization,
survived from one tradition to another, while the implementation did not.
Sefirotic Coefficients
The practitioners of the Lurianic kavvanot, including Shar’abi and his students
and their contemporaries in Eastern Europe, incorporated a number of con-
tributing elements from earlier traditions. These include the linking of Divine
names to elements of the sefirot, the vocalization of the name YHVH in ways
that have different numerical coefficients, and, finally, the recovery of tradi-
tions of sacred names whose origins are in antiquity.
The essential associations of the names with sefirot date at least to the early
Spanish Kabbalah. The Zohar, as well, specified sefirotic coefficients for vari-
ous Divine names, whether biblical or postbiblical. The name ADNY, which is
the name that is uttered in the practical liturgy, is linked to the sefirah Malkhut,
the realm of present reality. AHYH is the name associated with Keter, the
highest of the sefirot.11 The name Elohim can represent the sefirot Binah, Din,
or Malkhut.12 Zoharic traditions also link names to archetypal aspects of the
sefirot. The name YHVH represents the central trunk of the sefirotic tree, the
sefirah Tiferet. As Moshe Cordovero put it, ‘‘All names come from YHVH. In
the Tiqqunim, the name HVYH is called ‘the sap of the tree.’ ’’13 Hence, the
mythic ‘‘Tree of Life,’’ which is the way of expressing the flow of Divine reality
into the present world, is also reducible to the function of Divine names, a
principle that would become important to Shar’abi.
In the sefirotic system favored by the Zohar and Moshe Cordovero, the
sefirot were the most important element of the system. In the Zohar’s latter
strata and the Lurianic canon, the countenances, which sit over the sefirot,
come to the fore.14 Luria was haunted by the imagery of the countenances and
recast the Zohar’s Kabbalah on the basis of this system. The sefirah Tiferet, for
instance, is replaced, in the Lurianic system, by the countenance Zeir Anpin.
Luria embellished the status of Zeir Anpin further. He maintained that there
were three levels of Zeir Anpin, which are indicated by three construct forms of
the name YHVH. The first is YHVH AHYH; the second level is YHVH Elo-
him; and the third level is YHVH ADNY. These permutations of these basic
biblical names form the basis of many subsequent kavvanot. In Luria’s full
system, sacred names were interpreted as standing for the various counte-
nances of the cosmic anthropos (parzufim),15 and they also were the energy
_
behind the circulation of the mohin, channels of consciousness through the
16
same anthropomorphic structure.
A master list of the combinations of AHYH, HVYH, ADNY, and ELOH
and ELOHIM was compiled by the nineteenth-century Lithuanian kabbalist
Shlomo Eliashiv, himself the author of the magisterial work Leshem Shevo ve-
Ohalamah (acronym Rav ShB’’H, for Shlomo Bar Heikel). Eliashiv’s chart is
_
based on Cordovero and the Vilna Gaon and was reproduced in the printed
editions of Ez Hayyim.17 Eliashiv developed 120 combinations in all.18 Ac-
_ _
cording to Menachem Kallus, the source for these vocalizations is in Luria’s
commentary to the zoharic composition Idra Zuta. That particular text served
as the ur-text for the kavvanot of the daily priestly blessing, as well as for the
Shabbat service.19
Miluyyim: The Vocalizations of the Name YHVH
Luria’s system is also reliant on the secret of miluyyim, or, as Kallus called
them, the ‘‘fillings of the Tetragrammaton.’’ This tradition consists of the name
YHVH, transliterated, with the vocalization being implemented with different
block letters as vowels, rather like the vocalization of Yiddish or Ladino.20 The
numerical sum of these names is then added up, and the names are signified
by the gematria, or numerical coefficient, of that name,21 as well as the number
of letters or words in a given text.22 The four miluyyim are as follows.23 The
name ‘‘seventy-two’’ is based on the transliteration using the letter yu’’d, as
follows: YVD HY VYV HY.24 The name ‘‘sixty-three’’ makes use of the aleph in
the letter vav, producing the formulation YVD HY VAV HY, forming the
gematria ‘‘sixty-three.’’ The name ‘‘forty-five’’ vocalizes the HV’’H with the letter
aleph so as to produce YVD HA VAV HA.25 The name ‘‘fifty-two’’ makes more
extensive use of the letter hey: YVD HH VV HH.26 Hence, the miluyyim are
identified by the gematriot that they produce, rather than by the random con-
sonant that vocalizes them.
These names are implemented in various ways during the Lurianic prayer
rite. Different blessings call for different various vocalizations or miluyyim of
the name YHVH.27 The miluyyim, being four in number, are naturally linked
to four countenances of the Lurianic system, Abba, Imma, Zeir, and Nukvah.28
They are also employed as instruments and signposts in one of the central
practices of Lurianic prayer, the ascent through the four worlds.29
The miluyyim are ubiquitous in the kavvanot literature. In his recent
sweeping study of Lurianic prayer,30 Menachem Kallus has emphasized one
text that, in his opinion, clarifies and exemplifies the use of names in the
Lurianic prayer system. Significantly, it identifies the name ‘‘sixty-three’’ as the
most intrinsic of the miluyyim for the meditative aspect of the kavvanot. Kallus
has prepared a composite version of this text culled from the various versions.
It is daunting in its complexity but still provides the best window into the
origins of the kavvanot tradition:
It is appropriate for a person to have intention always, particu-

larly before study and before prayer, to set himself as a dwelling
and throne for the holy emanation. For is man not created in the
image of God (Gen. 9:6)? In this will his prayer and Torah be an-
swered and accepted! For through this one may link all of the worlds,
thereby letting the higher holiness come to rest on it. How [to do
this]? He should have intention to prepare his head to be a throne
for the name HVYH with the vocalization kamaz and its two mohin,
_
Hokhmah and Binah, and well as the HVYH(s) of patah and zeirei.
_
And his two arms are segol and sheva’, and his body is holem. And
his two palms31 kubuz and hirik and the yesod vocalized with shuruk
_
and the diadem is HVYH without vocalization.
The first section of this charge links the various vowels of the Hebrew
language to the limbs of the body. The adept is charged to see himself as a
vehicle for the energies of the Divine name. This name is infused with the
energies of the Hebrew vowels, which are manifested with all of the vocali-
zations possible in the system of the Hebrew language. The patah and zeirei,
_
which make an ‘‘ah’’ and an ‘‘ay’’ sound, respectively, are vocalized by the adept
in his mind in order to prepare his consciousness to be filled by the presence
of the name HVYH. It seems that by visualizing the most auditory aspect of
kavvanot practice, the mind psychically resonates with the audible aspect of
that vowel. Each one of the vowels of classical Hebrew has a certain role in the
act of meditative prayer as linked to the physical body of the adept and, one
would assume, isomorphically to the Divine body, as well. This is the closest
that the Lurianic kavvanot tradition comes to anything resembling the mantra
practice of Eastern meditation traditions, insofar as each vowel resonates with
the limb to which it is assigned.
The text continues:
As it says in the Tiqqunim (129a), he should intend that the ‘‘man’’

is the name of sixty-three. . . . He should have the intention that his
ear is the name sixty-three, excepting the last he’’h, and perhaps with
this he will apperceive hearing some higher holiness in prayer and
at the time of his study. Also his nose is the name of sixty-three, for
this is its gematria, and perhaps he will smell some holy scent.
Also his mouth is the name of sixty-three, and the twenty-two letters
from the five linguistic families, perhaps [thus] he will apperceive
that the spirit of God will speak to him and the word of his tongue
will be at the time of his study and prayer.
Even the orifices are thought of as receptacles for the powers of the sacred
names. The name ‘‘sixty-three’’ (YVD HY VAV HY) is particularly efficacious
in the basic preparation for prayer. This name is linked here to the linguistic
theories first propagated in the ancient text Sefer Yezirah, in which the five
_
consonantal families are linked to five essential energies in the creation the
Universe. The text continues with a preparation for the ascent through the four
Worlds of Creation, an idea that is addressed elsewhere in this study:32
Everything is contingent on the depth of his intention and cleaving

[hitdavkuto]. And the secret of the eyes: if he is the realm of the world
of ‘Assiyah, let him intend the five HVYH(s) whose sum is ‘ayi’’n,
five times twenty-six, let him intend the name with the milui of he’’y.
And in Yezirah, which is from the prayer ‘‘Blessed is He who Spoke’’
_
up to ‘‘Let Your Name be Praised Forever Our King,’’ let him intend
the HVYHot of aleph. And in prayer ‘‘Creator of Light,’’ which is
the world of Briah, let him intend the five HVYH(s) of sixty-three.
And in the silent devotion, which is ‘Azilut, he should intend the five
_
HVYH(s) of seventy-two. And if he is walking in the market he
should intend that his two feet are Nezah and Hod. And when he
_
looks, he should intend that his two eyes are Hokhmah and Binah.
_
And so on with all individual things. He should intend that he is
a throne for the highest holiness. Doubtless, if he practices this for
some time, he will be able to apperceive anything that he wants to

and he will be as one of the angels who serves in the firmament.
This text presents a basic charge for the adherent and combines a number
of central aspects of the theories that underlie the use of sacred names. These
include the Divine names, their vocalizations and numerical coefficients (mi-
luyyim), and the Divine countenances. It is striking that the text is as dense as it
is, yet does not even bring in the theory of the countenances that so charac-
terized Lurianic Kabbalah into its thick forest of associations. It goes without
saying that the creation tradition of the Divine withdrawal (zimzum), the
_ _
breaking of the vessels (shevirah), and repair (tiqqun) so beloved of those who
read Scholem is nowhere to be found here.
Kallus provides a concise analysis of the text:
We find here that the practitioner is transforming himself into a

‘‘dwelling place’’ for the emanation of the Divine manifestation, in
order to pray effectively with the kavvanot. Also it counsels that
one integrate the ordinary uses of the senses into the service of the
Divine presence. The contemplator rises to different levels of spiri-
tual existence and activates the qualities of Divine manifestation,
corresponding to the different configurations of the Name contem-
plated. It is as if the Name empowers the person to see one’s own
qualities as Divine manifestation. This practice uses the different
fillings of the Tetragrammaton to invoke the levels of shared human-
Divine ontological realms i.e. realms of Being, and transforms
the human faculties by invoking the Sefirot in connection to the
inner-vocalizations of that Name. Its success depends on ‘‘the
power of one’s kavvanah and devekut, one’s intention and mystical
union.’’33
In his presentation of this seminal text, Kallus notes the conflation of the
major spiritual traditions of later Kabbalah (devekut, kavvanah, and union) into
the charge for kavvanot practice. Clearly, the practitioners of old viewed the text
as important; otherwise, it would not have been so widely reproduced. Kallus is
correct in emphasizing the centrality of this work, and it remains one of the
best indications of the outcome for which the contemplation of the names is
intended. It also documents, for the late sixteenth century, the extent to which
the contemplation of the sacred names was linked to a spiritual and contem-
plative state. The attainment of the state would not be so emphasized in the
later writings coming out of the Beit El school.
The Name of Forty-Two Letters and the Seventy-Two Names
The compilers of the kavvanot appropriated two ancient sacred name traditions
with origins in antiquity. Such names derive from whole sections of scriptural
text, reduced to acronyms and recombined. Perhaps the most widely re-
produced of these is the forty-two-letter name, which was retained in the
Hasidic rite. The forty-two-letter name of God is literally ABGaYTaZ KR’A
_
S’TaN NGaD YaKhaS B’TaR Z’TaG HaKBaTN’A Y’GaL PZaK SaKVaZYT. The
name is created by the rearrangement of the first words of the first chapter of
Genesis.34 The forty-two-letter name is a popular object of contemplation; it
appears in the Friday-evening service as the ‘‘prayer of R. Nechuniah ben ha-
Kanah’’ and is widely circulated among the popular practices of the contem-
porary Kabbalah Centers.
The forty-two-letter name is invoked in the Talmud, one citation stating
that it is not to be transmitted except to one who is modest, humble, mature,
never angry, never intoxicated, and not arrogant.35 The forty-two-letter name
crossed from tradition to tradition, albeit with different rationales and expla-
nations. According to Hai Gaon, in the eighth century, the forty-two-letter
name originated in the Merkavah tradition.36 The name was also seen as
emanating from the world of the angels and as being an instrument for influ-
encing their activities.37 In discussion of its structure, many ancillary expla-
nations according to gematria were also associated with the Name.38 The
kabbalistic tradition produced a plethora of associations and commentaries for
the forty-two-letter name, as well as a number of etiological formulae for its
derivation from scripture. In the later edition of Luria’s teaching, Meir Pop-
pers’s Ez Hayyim, the forty-two-letter name is explained as a quadrupling of
_ _
the name AHYH.39
Kabbalists eventually began to define the function of the forty-two-letter
name. The twelfth-century Ashkenazic pietist Eliezer of Worms wrote an en-
tire work, Sefer ha-Hokhmah, as a commentary on the name. He saw it as an
instrument for influencing the activities of the Shekhinah.40 Tiqqunei ha-Zohar
described the name as emanating from the realm of the sefirah Gevurah.41 The
nineteenth-century Vilna kabbalist Pinchas Eliahu Hurvitz echoed the opinion
that the name was the original instrument that God used to create the World.42
The Zohar alludes to the use of different parts of the forty-two-letter name
for magic, or ‘‘practical Kabbalah.’’43 The segment KR’’A ST’’N is applied as the
kavvanah for the blowing of the shofar, particularly in rites attending exorcism,
a meaning inherent in the overt translation of the words (‘‘tear Satan’’).44 The
name was also applied in toto as the kavvanah for specific prayers, such as the
recitation of the biblical chapters associated with specific sacrifices45 and the
mourner’s Kaddish.46 Finally, the forty-two-letter name is the acronym for the
widely circulated ‘‘prayer of R. Nehuniah ha-Kanah,’’ also known as Ana be-
Koah, which is a widely circulated kabbalistic meditation. These uses of the
forty-two-letter name imply that it has a protective function and is employed in
petitional prayer in times of crisis.
A second tradition, that of the seventy-two names of God, occupies a role in
the kavvanot traditions similar to that of the forty-two-letter name. The seventy-
two names are constructed as an acronym that originates in the three verses of
Exodus 14:19–21.47 The first letter from the first verse is combined with the last
letter from the second verse and the first letter of the third verse. Hence, the
first aspect of the name is w’’hw, after which one begins with the second letter
of the first word, the second letter from the end of the second verse and the
second letter of the third verse, making y’’ly. Hence the name is artificially
synthesized from a concrete reduction of biblical text into acrostic signifiers.
The seventy-two names have a long history in classical Judaism. The
earliest reference to the seventy-two names is in Genesis Rabbah (44), al-
though the actual names are not cited.48 The formula for deriving the seventy-
two names is first cited by Hai Gaon. Rashi alludes to the seventy-two names
during a Talmudic discussion of the Exodus.49 The seventy-two names appear
in the first kabbalistic text, the Bahir,50 while a passage in Abraham Abulafia’s
work Sefer ha-Heshek is devoted to instructions for properly reciting the name.51
For the Beit El kabbalists, the recitation of the seventy-two names became
associated with the processes of repentance52 and routinely served as the
kavvanah for the second and third paragraphs of the Shema’ prayer.
The seventy-two names have been revived in the activities of the Kabbalah
Centers, under the direction of the Berg family.53 It has been acknowledged by
Yehudah Berg that his affective psychological interpretation of the seventy-two
names was influenced by the work Herev Pifiyyot.54 This work was composed
_
by Yeshayahu Ya’akov of Alesk, a member of the kloiz of kabbalists in Brody
that operated at roughly the same time as the Ba’al Shem Tov. This work
presents a method in which the forty-two-letter name and the seventy-two
names serve as the inner kavvanah of the recitation of the Shema’ prayer. Herev
_
Pifiyyot presents a psychologized version of the names, much as contemporary
Hasidic works render a psychological interpretation of kabbalistic ideas. This
_
psychological interpretation has been adapted by the Kabbalah Centres as one
of the institution’s most compelling doctrines. Hence, the forty-two-letter
name of God and the seventy two names have their origins in the dawn of
Jewish esotericism but remain very much in play among present-day acolytes
and enthusiasts.
The Sha’ar ha-Shemot
These basic name traditions—the biblical names, the miluyyim, the forty-two-
letter name, and the seventy two names—dominate the early version of Luria’s
teaching, particularly in the work known as the early work Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot.
It is a matter of record that the kabbalists of the Beit El yeshivah of Jerusalem
much preferred to use the later redaction of the Lurianic teaching exemplified
in Meir Poppers’s widely circulated work Ez Hayyim.55 The compositions
_ _
Sha’ar ha-Shemot in Poppers’s Ez Hayyim and the chapter of the same title
_ _
in Ya’akov Zemakh’s Ozrot Hayyim present a more involved doctrine of the
_ _
names, in which the systems of miluyyim, gematriot, and letter combinations
are taken far beyond their original provenance. The Sha’ar ha-Shemot serves as
the basis of the kavvanot used in Beit El and, moreover, is the key to the circle’s
ontology and, perhaps, to its renewed popularity today.
Poppers’s Sha’ar ha-Shemot is a restatement of the entire Lurianic system
from the beginning. Since it came late in the development of the Lurianic
canon, the Sha’ar ha-Shemot incorporated all of the ideas that had been brought
into the Lurianic writings in their later version. The work begins with a de-
scription of the entire kabbalistic cosmology to date: the ten sefirot, the four
worlds, the sefirot within the worlds, the lights that shine through them to the
Divine countenances, the celestial palaces, and the world of the soul. The sys-
tem is presented in its full baroque complexity; the Divine countenances,
besides having internal sefirot, contain aspects of inner and surrounding light,
essence and vessels, five levels of the soul, and four worlds of creation, as well
as shadow aspects of each countenance.
Having presented the most baroque and abstruse portrayal of the kabba-
listic universe, the Sha’ar ha-Shemot then links each tier of the system to an
extant sacred name. Each letter of YHVH is linked to a sefirah, and each name
has an individual soul at its core.56 The various permutations of the Divine
name enliven various levels of the Universe, for the soul of the Universe dwells
in the consonants, while the vowels are enlivening soul of the letters. Further
complicating the system, the Sha’ar ha-Shemot adapts an earlier scholastic
discussion between those who believed that the sefirot were the essence of God
and those who believed that the sefirot were merely the vessels (kelim) for
Divinity.57 According to the formulation of the Sha’ar ha-Shemot, each of the
Divine countenances has an essence but also has a secondary system of vessels.
When the ideas of the Sha’ar ha-Shemot are implemented, the kabbalistic
universe is portrayed as nothing more or less than a series of cascading names.
As a consequence of this aggregate representation of the kabbalistic universe,
many new names are required in order to have a specific name for every
countenance, with its component sefirot, worlds, palaces, essence, vessels, and
soul levels.58 In response to the need to project names on all of these aspects of
the system, the names and their permutations began to multiply exponentially.
Each of these new names was subjected to new miluyyim, leading to more and
more gematriot, which themselves required analysis.59
It was Shar’abi’s innovation to recast the system of kavvanot, which was
more or less universal in its manifestations from Poland to Jerusalem, in terms
of the Sha’ar ha-Shemot. He incorporated the linguistic theory of the Sha’ar ha-
Shemot, which is not specifically directed to prayer, into the prayer kavvanot.
Every prayer, then, had to be recast in the new system of names presented in
the Sha’ar ha-Shemot. Shar’abi acknowledged his reliance in this exhortation
from Nahar Shalom:
I am not warning, but merely reminding to strive to have intention in

all the details of the kavvanot of the Names, the sefirot and their
surrounding energies, as is explained in the Sha’ar ha-Shemot, and
the names of [the five aspects of the soul] which are the forms of
HVYH as vocalized, and their surrounding energies, to draw them
down clothed in the names of the mohin which are the un-vocalized
names. They are clothed in the form, to draw down the form into
these names of the ten sefirot of that countenance that relates to
those mohin, and [the five aspects of their soul]. This is whole kav-
vanah. Without the kavvanah of the vocalized names, that are the [five
aspects of the soul], all of these kavvanot are like a body without a
soul!60
Shar’abi took what was ultimately a theoretical construction at the far end
of the development of the Lurianic system and wrote it back into the prayer
service. The great labor of perfecting Shar’abi’s kavvanot, which was under-
taken by his students in the generations after his death, consisted of taking the
linguistic theory of the latest version of the Lurianic system, namely the Sha’ar
ha-Shemot, and incorporating it into the prayer service, for which it had not
originally been conceived.
A Retreat into Pure Theory
Members of Shar’abi’s school differed as to whether one should contemplate

the Lurianic myth in its figurative mythic essence, as initially presented in the
Zohar and in the Safed Kabbalah, or whether the system should be reduced to
the disembodied system of names. The abandonment of kabbalistic mythos

was presaged centuries before the Beit El community in the remarks of the
Spanish philosopher-kabbalist Isaac Ibn Latif, who advocated contemplation of
the Divine name and declared:
The desired end is to strip the Name of all matter and to imagine it
in your mind, although it is impossible for the imagination to de-
pict it without some physical image, because the imagination is not
separate from the senses, and most of what is attained by the activity
of the imagination is performed through the contemplation of the
shape of the letters and their forms and number.61
There was a strong tendency, spearheaded by European kabbalists, to

accept the anthropomorphic metaphors of the Lurianic myth in order to un-
derstand the relationship of the various elements of the system. This view is
exemplified by Moshe Zakhut (acronym RM’’Z). Zakhut was a venerable au-
thority in the early circulation of Lurianic Kabbalah. Zakhut advised that the
adept should concentrate not on the vocalized names of YHVH but only on the
names of the sefirot that are germane to a given prayer. His reasoning is
somewhat different from the prevailing opinion and bears citation:
It is inappropriate to write the HVVH names with the letters, such

as, for instance, inflecting the name of God with a segol, or Eloheinu
with a sheva, because the HVVH names with vocalization imply
the inner nature of the soul.62
Zakhut’s objection was a lonely voice against the emerging consensus

among later Lurianic authorities that, at the moment of prayer, in order to not
imagine God physically, it is necessary to use the metaphor of the Divine
names. Such was the position of Shlomo Eliashiv, for whom the letters of the
names were a more appropriate object of prayer than the images of the myth.
Eliashiv warned that the only appropriate version of the kavvanot was Shar’abi’s
version, because of its erudition in the use of the letters.63 For study, one may
use the anthropomorphic images.64 This was also the opinion of the influential
Hasidic scholastic Zevi Hirsch of Zidhitchov, who admitted that ‘‘everything
_ _
that a man imagines is corporeal.’’65 Hence, one could not avoid imagining the
Lurianic system in mythic terms, as that was the imagery of the Zohar and the
Lurianic canon.
Shlomo Eliashiv and Zevi Hirsch of Zidhitchov may have been influenced
_
by a similar discussion regarding the nature of kabbalistic symbolism that had
occurred among the generations that preceded them. This discussion took
place between two groups, literal and figurative theorists, a distinction that has
been explored by, among others, Elliot Wolfson and Nissim Yosha.66 Accord-
ing to this division, one group of kabbalists tended to view the processes
described in the Lurianic system as metaphors for processes too ineffable to
explain. Such figurative theorists include Avraham Herrera (author of El Puerto
del Cielo), Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, and the Gaon of Vilna. On the other side
were the literalists, who believed in the empirical existence of forces such as the
parzufim, or Divine Countenances. Among such thinkers were Immanuel Hai
_ _
Ricci and Schneur Zalman of Liadi. The theological problem of the discussion,
of course, is the temptation to idolatry inherent in the bold anthropomorphic
nature of the myth of the countenances. The tension is evident in Hayyim
_
Vital’s exclamation:
Indeed it is clear that there is neither a body or the force of a body

above, Heaven forbid . . . hence permission is given to speak in terms of
forms . . . above there are only ephemeral lights, essentially spiritual.67
Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto also allegorized the Lurianic myth and was per-
_
haps the most influential of the allegorical kabbalists.68 A statement of Luz-
zatto’s position with regard to symbolization is included on the first page of
many of his books, in an ‘‘announcement and warning on distancing oneself
from physical imagery [gashmiyyut] in the kabbalistic allegories, particularly
those of Luria.’’69 These concern knowledge of the Tree of Life as explained in
Luria’s writings and its relationship to the existential state of human beings.70
R. Yosef Hayyim, the ‘‘Ben Ish Hai,’’ as well, interpreted a remark of Vital’s
_ _
as a defense of the allegorical reading. He insisted that the realities are above
contemplation, even though one might find physical forms attached to them.
Every letter, on the other hand, points to a separate Divine light.71 The letters
and the linguistic system were therefore a more direct and undeniable vehicle
and conduit to the Divine because they were unclouded by the myth.
Accordingly, Shar’abi himself was a figurativist, advocating a metaphorical
view of the Lurianic system. He made extensive use of parable, concluding that
both the names and the mythos were substitutions for processes too ineffable
to recount. This became the opinion of a plurality of Beit El kabbalists. In-
evitably, symbols are necessary to explain the spiritual in this base physical
world. The objects of the metaphors are but devices to condition the student to
the interplay of transcendent forces. So it was that Shar’abi defended the
mashal, for without it humans would grasp nothing of the spiritual secrets. As
one grasped the external metaphor, the sparks of the inner light would clarify
the inner nature of the parables. Hence, the Beit El kabbalists are drawn to
systems, such as the use of names, which elide the mythic content found in the
Lurianic canon. In setting the priorities of contemporary Beit El kabbalists,
Ya’akov Moshe Hillel insists that, while there may be gradations in the nature
of study and understanding, they serve the same soteric purpose. Those who
study the parable in its mythic form will attain full understanding in the world
to come. In fact, it is improper to attempt to understand the essential reality of
the processes of emanation.72
Ultimately, Shar’abi had no choice but to be a figurativist, for it is the effect
of late Lurianic doctrine to reduce the study of Kabbalah from its original myth
to a mere linguistic theory. In late Lurianic practice, the mythos of the Divine
family was expressed through various names. As a result of this reduction to
linguistic-theory names, the system began to be distanced from its original
mythic content. The kabbalists no longer visualized the system in terms of the
myth of the countenances, the interaction of the sage Arikh Anpin, the parents
Abba and Imma, the son Zeir Anpin, and his consort, Nukvah. The implication
is that these names depict the essence of the reality, rather than the mythos of
the countenances or parzufim. In offering the possibility of a world shorn of
_
myth, the Lurianic system finally cut its moorings from the world of mythos,
just as the world of mythos had shut the door on the symbolic systems offered
by the Zohar literature.73
The impulse to move from mythos to sacred names as the focus of kab-
balistic practice seems rooted tacitly in kabbalists’ discomfort with the bold
anthropomorphisms of the Lurianic system. Anthropomorphic images, such
as the unification of the Divine parents, Abba and Imma, and the conception
and nurturing of the wonder child Zeir, must always exist in tension with nor-
mative, exoteric Judaism. This view porztrayed the entire process as a passage
through the names, with Divine effluence flowing through the permutations of
the names. Immanuel Hai Ricci’s Mishnat Hasidim portrays the emanation of
_ _
the names and the drama of the countenances as unfolding simultaneously,
two sides of the same coin. For many kabbalists to this day, however, the
question has been more a case of either/or.74
Shar’abi’s insistence on the primacy of names over mythos led the Beit El
kabbalists away from the images of the Lurianic myth and toward pure theory,
devoid of symbolism, imagery, or poetics.75 It is as if computer users were to
put away their easier operating systems and run their computers only with MS-
DOS. Prayers no longer have any of their exoteric meaning but are now com-
pletely given over to esoteric formulae. The overt subject matter of the liturgy,
the national and creaturely concerns that it expresses, is missing. The very idea
of petitional prayer, emotional investment, and the essential sense of prayer
as communion and dialogue have been discarded in favor of a faith in the
most abstruse reaches of the Lurianic method, its numerology and linguistic
method.
In the absence of another rationale, perhaps this insistence on the farthest

reaches of esotericism was another response to modernity. The Middle Eastern
kabbalists of the nineteenth century turned inward, away from Kabbalah’s
earlier mythos, as a response to the implicit criticism by the rationalism of
Enlightenment thought, with its concomitant criticism of myth and supersti-
tion. The emphasis on sacred names and their theoretical construct erected a
blank wall of metaphysics in the face of rational analysis, defending the circle
against the societal changes and existential challenges to which no religiously
community was altogether inured. Did the kabbalists of Beit El respond to the
emergence of a culture of science and technology with an alternative, meta-
physical theory of Divine energy? Or does the turn to a pure name theory
reflect a discomfort with the rationalist critique of the mythic element in
Kabbalah? Whatever the impetus, this branch of late Kabbalah turned inward,
toward an insular theory, rooted in traditions that were primordially old and
mysterious, beyond the realm of myth, symbol, or the physical image.
4
Kabbalists in the Community
The Beit El circles, from their inception to the present, have seen
themselves as practicing the most essential and avant-garde form of
Judaism. Essential, in that the mystics believe that their practice of
kavvanot sustains and protects the Jerusalem community and the
Jewish people as a whole. Avant-garde, in that its ontology lies in a
realm of pure linguistic abstraction, as has been addressed in the
previous chapter.1 The twin poles of the social responsibilities and
the esoteric concerns of the Beit El kabbalists led to the develop-
ment of their lifestyle and values, and this, in turn, led to novel defi-
nitions of the kabbalistic lifestyle, as the Beit El kabbalists sought
to position themselves in the context of the religious community of
Jerusalem and the Diaspora.
To this end, the Beit El tradition developed specific models of
behavior for its adepts. Most spiritual fellowships set strong condi-
tions for acceptance, and the Beit El kabbalists are no exception. In
the early generations, it was acknowledged that only the saints of Beit
El were viewed as qualified to perform the kavvanot.2 Today, if they
aspire to practice the kavvanot, adepts have to break new ground in
holiness and purity, to attain their inner holiness.3 Yosef Hayyim,
_
the Ben Ish Hai, further restricted the practice of kavvanot to those ‘‘for
_
whom the secret wisdom was their craft’’ and who had internalized
that wisdom beyond merely understanding it intellectually.4 These
instructions laid the foundation for the arrangements made in Beit El
that endure to the present, in which there is a cadre of full-time
mendicant pietists, living on the largesse of the community. Surrounding

them are acolytes of various social stations who have achieved different degrees
of acceptance into the upper echelons of the circle.
The contemporary Jerusalem kabbalist Ya’akov Moshe Hillel has recently
presented a revamped set of rules for the aspiring acolyte. Hillel presents a two-
tiered view of the scholarly/spiritual community; he sees it as consisting of
those who operate on the level of the Lurianic system and everybody else, the
conventional pious Jewish laity.5 Acceptance into mystical circles had tradi-
tionally been left up to the acolytes themselves. Hillel’s criteria for the prac-
titioner are based on the values transmitted by Luria to his own students. By
delineating the entrance requirements, Hillel implicitly liberalizes them, so
that free-lance acolytes can adopt Shar’abi’s practices far from the Jerusalem
centers.
The circulation of Hillel’s manuals has facilitated the spread of Beit El
practice, with actual acolytes present to spread the doctrines. I have observed,
in the Natan Eli synagogue in Los Angeles, former members of Rabbi Philip
Berg’s Kabbalah Center using the Rehovot ha-Nahar prayer book in the ac-
cepted Beit El style. These dropouts from the Kabbalah Centre are able to
recover the Beit El practice through the circulation of the writings of Hillel and
others and are able therefore to attempt to reconstitute the practice of the
Jerusalem circles in any Diaspora community. The new popular literature
provides a way for them to move from the vocal kavvanot developed by the
Kabbalah Centres into a Shar’abi’s tradition, which is socially acceptable in
certain segments of the Orthodox community.
For individual Beit El mystics, the practice of the kavvanot requires a
particular extra degree of religious intensity and a large time commitment.
Hence, in order to populate an academy, one must assemble an elite class of
practitioners. The practice of the acolytes is strenuous, including at least six
hours of prayer daily, with frequent extended periods of daily fasting. There
are, as well, the demanding study schedules of the academy, in which the
highest acolytes must be present through the night. Certain groups meet in the
damp, chilly chambers of the Western Wall complex or in locales otherwise
distant from the modest neighborhoods where the pietists may have found a
place to live.
The acolytes of such populist institutions as Nahar Shalom or Nayot be-
Ramah are drawn from an economic and social cross-section of the Israeli
religious community and from the Talmudic academies and also include both
random intellectuals and doctrinaire settlers from the West Bank. A number of
simple workingmen who anyway keep early hours make a practice of com-
pleting the prayer quorum for the mekavvenim. There are also, as there are in all
kabbalists in the community 57
of the outreach groups, such as the newer configurations of Breslav Hasidism,

_
the flotsam and jetsam of the Jerusalem streets, namely the left-behinds of
contemporary Israeli society: the unemployed, the militarily disabled, divorced
men struggling to find a new sustaining meaning in their lives. At the entry
level of the community, pensioners and veterans subsisting on disability
payments fill the study rooms in downtown Jerusalem and may flesh out the
congregations of the core mystical circles. As with the resurgence of Breslav
Hasidism, which similarly deserves the attention of scholars, the Beit El
_
communities draw on marginalized populations within Israeli society, as well
as a number of young rabbinical scholars, members of the kollel elite, whose
interests have turned to rabbinical study.
Beit El kabbalists have also redefined the role of the mystic vis-à-vis his
community. Because of the demands of the practice, the mystics are often
reduced to a mendicant lifestyle. To that end, the pietists maintain strong,
symbiotic ties to their communities. At intervals during the day, the doors of
the yeshivah fly open and pallets of biscuits and rolls arrive from the first batch
of the local bakery, while coffee and soft drinks come from the neighboring
grocery stores. It is clear that the surrounding working-class communities of
Mahaneh Yehudah, Geulah, and the Old City consider their livelihoods and
wellbeing to be sustained by the activities of the mystics in their midst.
Beit El Discourse and Intellectual Life
The common ground among all Orthodox Jews is the institution of Talmud
study. Formal study of the Talmud remains integral to the Beit El community.
Control of Talmud study is an article of power in the world of Orthodox
Judaism, and anxiety regarding that power extends to the education of women
and the disbursement of funds to support its study.6 Practically, as well, Tal-
mudic acuity is a ‘‘use it or lose it’’ proposition. In order to remain a sharp
Talmudist, one must constantly repeat the texts and make a substantial time
commitment. To this day, Benayahu Shmueli, the head of the Nahar Shalom
community, studies according to the daily daf yomi system with his followers,
following the program of study of the entire Orthodox world.7
As the head of an institution that is a sociopolitical player in the con-
temporary Israeli theocracy, Hillel has to locate the role of Talmud study in the
context of the mystical lifestyle. Hillel adapts Vital’s well-known assertion that
Talmudic study has an exoteric goal, namely to break the kelipot, or obstruc-
tions to divinity. The kelipot, which are ubiquitous in the Lurianic system, are
here defined as the questions (kushiyyot) that impede understanding in exoteric
study. Hillel seems to echo the impulse, best exemplified by the author of
Tiqqunei ha-Zohar and Ra’aya Meheimna, that the discursive, abstruse dialec-
tics of Talmud study are a sign of its degenerate nature.8 Nonetheless, who-
ever has a facility with the complexities of Talmudic study (iyyun) will break
through the obstructions most easily. However, earlier sources indicate some
tension between the two forms of practice, particularly with regard to the
question of investing one’s available time in order to practice ‘‘Torah,’’ namely
Talmud study, or yihudim, the Lurianic spiritual exercises. The Aleppo kabb-
alist Hayyim Shaul Dweck’s early collection of penitential kavvanot, Benayahu
_
ben Yehoyada’, contains the following adjuration:
If one has begun to practice the known yihudim, and yet desists from
performing the unification, this causes great damage. If he leaves
them for a day, then in two days they will leave him. He causes it to
be that those souls that want to cleave to a man will be separated
and [those souls] distance themselves from him. One should not say
that preoccupation with the Torah is great and should not be ne-
glected, for the matter of the yihudim is greater than the practice of
the Torah, for it unifies the upper worlds, including the practice of the
Torah and unifies them, all together. Even though the souls do not
appear completely, one should not worry and neglect the yihud. It
must be that one’s intent is not only to draw down the souls, but
also to fix the upper worlds.9
Textual sensitivity is necessary because contemporary acolytes of the Beit

El tradition believe that the Lurianic canon is written as esoterically as the Bible
or the Zohar, in that Vital hid the true meaning, hiding allusions in his writing.
The Beit El kabbalists allow that the confusion of the texts in the Lurianic
canon may have been willful, and that they may have been intentionally written
in an obscure manner. Hayyim Shaul Dweck devised a novel taxonomy in
order to resolve internal contradictions in Luria’s teaching.10 Dweck declared
that all of the writings of Vital that apparently contradict one another were
deliberately presented in an opaque style in order to conceal the entrance from
the unworthy. Dweck saw is the Drush ha-Da’at, from the early recension
Sha’ar ha-Hakdamot, as the key to all the difficult passages in the canon. This
methodology was first implemented by the Tunisian kabbalist Yosef ha-Cohen
Sadavon.11 Similarly, texts that could be thought of as merely poorly written or
poorly assembled, such as Hayyim de la Rosa’s Torat Hakham, are considered
_ _
by the Beit El kabbalists to be esoteric, written so allusively that one can even
assume the opposite of what the author seems to mean.12
Prerequisite to practice, of course, is learning the system.13 Menachem

Kallus has presented the difficulties with this aspect of the practice very suc-
cinctly:
The challenge of training a would-be practitioner of Lurianic kavvanot

is heightened by the fact that there are no primary introductory
texts for this purpose, and there seem to be no extended explanations
in the literature . . . of the practical experiential meaning of what
Kavvanah in the Lurianic context entails.14
Besides the question of how to begin, the erstwhile practitioner faces

another problem: how to structure the program of his study. Is it better to
study the distant forces of the cosmos or their manifestation in present reality,
in the commandments and the phenomena of the manifest world? In answer
to these questions, Hillel counsels the adherent to concentrate of the theoret-
ical speculations of Lurianic Kabbalah.15 In my recent experience, the mystics
of the Nahar Shalom community in Mahaneh Yehudah advocate the study of
Ozrot Hayyim, a recension influenced by Ya’akov Zemakh, as the ideal intro-
_ _
duction to the system. In this way, they avoid Shar’abi’s bias in favor of the late
recension Ez Hayyim, while eliding the fact that the ideas that were central to
_ _
Beit El Kabbalah were not present in the first edition of Luria’s teachings,
Shmuel Vital’s Eight Gates.16
This is not to say that the Beit El kabbalists are oblivious to the idea of
personal ethics or to the concern with morality that is commonly called mussar.
The Beit El mystics have access to the most cosmopolitan library of homiletical
and ethical literature. Among the instructions of the Beit El kabbalists was that
every day, following the morning service, an ethical work was to be read aloud.
The favorite selections for this moment were Bahyah Ibn Pakudah’s Sufi-
influenced Hovot ha-Levavot (Duties of the Heart), the Safed kabbalist Eliahu
_
de Vidas’s Reshit Hokhmah (The Beginning of Wisdom), or Hayyim Vital’s
_ _
Sha’arei Kedushah (Gates of Holiness).17 On the New Year, before the blowing
of the shofar, it was also customary to recite a set text from the ethical tradition.
On the first day, Shar’abi selected a section of Hayyim Yosef David Azulai’s
_
work Avodat ha-Kodesh. On the second day, a special oration was composed by
R. Avraham Gagin (Aga’’N) and inserted into the liturgy.18
The very nature of the discourse between the mystics, particularly in their
oral study, remains a mystery to me. In a legal or exegetical discussion, the
ground of discourse is fairly clear, drawing upon legal principles or exegetical
insights. What is the ground of reality in the discussions that take place among
Jewish mystics? On what intellectual basis do they recast their theosophy,
particularly at the outer reaches of Lurianism, which is not grounded by exe-

gesis or the technical realities of a situation (meziut)? There is a mid-morning
_
class at the Nahar Shalom yeshivah that reviews, along with the rest of the
Orthodox community, the daf yomi, or Talmud portion of the day. In addition
to this text, the kabbalists study the Pentateuch, Prophets, and Writings of the
Hebrew Bible, along with Mishnah, the Zohar, and ethical and legal writings.
Their curriculum resembles but does not directly follow the methodology set
forth in the devotional anthology Hok le-Yisrael; a work hat has its origins in
_
Luria’s practice. Yet, for one who comes from the eastern European model of
Talmud study, the intellectual climate of the present acolytes is characterized
by a startling incuriosity. The study of kabbalistic texts is rote and lacks the
Socratic give and take of the rabbinic study hall. The acolytes and their teachers
simply sit and review the conceptual works of Kabbalah, from primary works
such as Vital’s Ez Hayyim to the introductory works such as Suleiman Eliahu’s
_ _
Kerem Shlomo. The larger question of the role of didactic study in a purely
kabbalistic context remains unanswered; hopefully scholars will invest suffi-
cient time among the Beit El kabbalists to resolve it.
Prayer without Kavvanot
In medieval Kabbalah, before Kabbalah moved to a position of social promi-

nence, the practitioners of kavvanot were solitary figures operating within their
various Jewish communities.19 The kabbalist needed the community, because
he needed a minyan, or prayer quorum, in order to achieve the most efficacious
prayer. Yet contemporary scholars have agreed that these early kabbalists
seemingly displayed few signs of their practice. Inevitably, there were tensions
between the practitioners of kavvanot and the exoteric congregations that
hosted them. Joseph Dan has written of the prayer of the German Hasidim:
_
‘‘Ashkenazi Hasidic literature does not reveal to us whether [its] novel concept
of the liturgy had any practical significance that influenced the behavior of a
Jew when actually praying in the synagogue.’’20 The social role of the practi-
tioner in the exoteric polis was, as Joseph Weiss characterized it, ‘‘paradox of
solitude and community.’’21 The individual kabbalist pursued the complex
meditative understanding of the prayers among a quorum of the common folk,
praying in the conventional fashion. In the early stage of the practice, there was
no outward manifestation or any need for a community of initiates, as there
was no specified liturgy for them. In fact, Ephraim Gottlieb disparaged the
prayer communities and fraternities that characterized Kabbalah in its classical
and late periods as a debasement of the kabbalists’ proper role among the polis,
which was to be a lonely sentinel of the true reality.22 It was inevitable that,
with the social rise of Kabbalah and the romanticism associated with the Zohar
and the Safed Kabbalah, such isolated practice would be overwhelmed by the
eros of the new movements.
The Beit El kabbalists, on the other hand, see themselves as a spiritual
elite. If the abstruse Beit El practice is the apex of the form, what is the purpose
of the exoteric prayer of the Jewish masses? What is the role of the common
folk who are inadequate to understand or practice the kavvanot? The herme-
neutic principle of Jewish prayer is that reciting the words of the prayer
properly, in the original Hebrew, constitutes fulfillment of the commandment
to pray. All Jews, Israelis not withstanding, have difficulties with some of the
more abstruse language of the liturgy, particularly for the festivals, and need
some help parsing its tropes. Yet, if they mouth the syllables of a sacred text
without fully understanding it, they are still considered to have ‘‘prayed.’’
The distinction between simple practice and the Beit El system is partic-
ularly sharp because there is no middle ground between conventional Jewish
prayer and the mysteries of the Beit El system. Such was not the case in other
systems and social milieus. The Polish system that was in existence at the time
of Shar’abi’s arrival at Beit El in the eighteenth century was eclectic and in-
cluded kavvanot based on the earlier, sefirotic tradition of the Zohar and the
mainstream teachings of Safed. This is particularly true of peak moments of
the daily liturgy as performed in the synagogue, such as the Kaddish prayer,
the recitation of the Shema’, and the sanctification prayer of the silent devotion.
Presumably, there were aspiring acolytes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century Poland who attached a kavvanah only to these ‘‘high points’’ in the
synagogue service. The kavvanot that were attached to these prayers drew on
much more elemental forms of Kabbalah than the abstruse formulations of
Shar’abi and his students. In all of these cases, the most influential compila-
tion of Polish kavvanot, the Rashkover prayer book, presented materials that
are avowedly Lurianic alongside materials that are broader and more general
than even the zoharic Kabbalah of Safed.23 The Polish rite was based on the
premise that there were gradations of possible kavvanah. Aspiring acolytes
could enter the world of concurrent meanings at a level at which they were
comfortable.
Such auteurism is not acceptable in Beit El circles. The Beit El kabbalists
repeatedly declare that only Shar’abi’s version of the kavvanot is usable.
A mystic, who is necessarily a scholar, might think that he could synthesize
a kavvanah to practice through his own scholarly enquiry. This is deemed
inappropriate by the Beit El kabbalists; in their view, it is wrong to utilize the

raw material of the Zohar as a source for proper intention. Even the simple
meaning of the prayers must be mediated by Luria’s understanding.24 Hence,
acolytes of the Shar’abi program may not ‘‘develop’’ their kavvanot as other
liturgy develops, from the simplest sacred texts to the most abstruse. The
Polish view, according to which non-Lurianists were enabled to practice kav-
vanot according to the broader, zoharic mythos, is absent here.
There are, however, some exceptions to this rule among the Beit El mys-
tics. Rahamim Sarim, author of Sha’arei Rahamim, himself a figure of avowed
humility,25 agreed with Hayyim de la Rosa that it is permitted to practice
_
kavvanah in a limited way without knowing the most intimate details of the
linguistic theory.26 According to Sarim and de la Rosa, simple practice still
affects the repair of the worlds of existence. The common folk might recite the
penitential prayers circulated by Hayyim Shaul Dweck and the Rehovot ha-
_
Nahar yeshivah. They could practice the penitential rites (tiqqunei ‘avvonot) that
are found in the writings of Luria. In each case, the absence of the practice of
kavvanot does not hold back the act of Divine repair, or tiqqun, although kav-
vanot would surely optimize it.27
The sum of these views is that there is ambivalence regarding the role of
an adept in the midst of a humble lay group. If a practitioner of kavvanot is
alone in his pursuit, he still must be a member of a prayer quorum (minyan) to
accomplish his ends. I once was told that the kavvanot were being recited in the
Geulah quarter of Jerusalem, at the synagogue of a certain well-known kabb-
alist. I went to the synagogue before dawn, only to find that the kabbalist in
question was reciting the kavvanot while the young men of his kollel, or on-
going rabbinical program, were dutifully waiting for him to complete his ex-
tended prayers. At one point during the repetition of the silent devotion, the
members of the kollel left the room, leaving the rabbi alone. They motioned for
me to come out and offered me a cup of boz, black Turkish coffee, which they
_
enjoyed every morning while the rabbi finished his extended prayer with
kavvanot. The simple prayers of the laypeople support the more advanced
practitioner’s completion of the kavvanot.
Might a mystic, because of his unassuming nature, desist from practicing
the kavvanot altogether? According to Ya’akov Moshe Hillel, a person who is
spiritually worthy of practicing the kavvanot should not absent himself from it,
even when there are aspects that he has not yet resolved. Therefore, according
to Hillel, sages and adepts who have mastered the Lurianic system may not
exempt themselves from the practice of kavvanot, for the penalty for so with-
holding oneself from the cosmic struggle is very great.28
Kabbalah at Street Level
As has been noted by Moshe Halamish, the phenomenon of the Lurianic

_
system of kavvanot has been that the public has adopted the most esoteric of
practices.29 This is the paradox of the present period, in which the most widely
accepted and revered system among accredited mystical circles is that of
Shar’abi, which is itself extraordinarily esoteric, dry, and technical. The Lur-
ianic canon, and the Beit El Kabbalah that is based on it, is distinguished by
being relentlessly impersonal and psychologically nondirective.
And yet, today, the habitués of the Beit El communities include working
people, full-time Talmudists from the world of the kollels, or ongoing rabbinical
programs, a few tweedy intellectuals beset by midlife ennui, and an otherwise
random assortment of the religious Jews of Jerusalem. In every circle, there is
something of the eros of the close-knit community, and the leaders, in dif-
ferent ways, display affection for their charges and yet continue to exhort them.
In one instance, the leader of kavvanot practice at the Western Wall surveyed
his class on rainy winter evening and said, ‘‘If you weren’t at the Western Wall
this morning, let me tell you, you lost out [hifsadeta].’’ The Beit El circles are
growing, because of a basic idealism about the validity of the most abstruse
forms of Kabbalah, passionately implemented to the point of exhaustion.
The development of a pietistic elite is a common phenomenon in many
religious cultures. The religious community of Jerusalem that supports the
Beit El kabbalists already possesses a large scholarly class, a number of whose
members are in straitened economic circumstances. The Beit El kabbalists
draw from the population of metropolitan Jerusalem and meet in the most
central locations, the shrines of the Old City and the public market. Within the
group, leaders come to the fore through force of personality and intellectual
acuity, in the way that leaders are customarily chosen in traditional religious
contexts. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there was some self-
consciousness about the Middle Eastern character of Beit El and how open it
was to Ashkenazic acolytes.30 Today, such concerns are subsumed in the com-
mon concerns and culture of Israeli orthodoxy.
Beit El occupies a niche in the Jerusalem religious community that comes
from the separation of Kabbalah into an enterprise different from the rest of
rabbinic Judaism. This is not to say that Beit El kabbalists have been indifferent
to the rabbinic tradition; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they were
dominant Talmudists and social leaders. At this point, however, the energies of
the community are wholly given over to a lifestyle based on the kabbalistic rite,
which has expanded to become the all-encompassing focus of their religious

practice. This quality is fueled the acquisition of new disciples who are not
learned in the Talmud or who have walked away from a preoccupation with
rabbinic study. The kabbalists now occupy a separate track in the Jewish
community and fulfill a different social role, one that is saturated with the
world of prayer and the mystical names that underlie it.
5
Beit El Practice
If one could pinpoint a single trend in Beit El thought and practice,

it would be the eschewing of much of ‘‘classical’’ Jewish mysticism
in favor of a worldview entirely based on Lurianic Kabbalah. In
practice, this move to pure Lurianism is evident in a number of ways.
In the development of their literary oeuvre, Beit El kabbalists did
not interpret the Zohar or compose homilies based in the sefirotic
system. Their speculations largely centered on the interaction of the
countenances, which was Shar’abi’s preoccupation in most of his
writings. Besides limiting themselves to speculative literature, the Beit
El circles continued the patterns of canon limitation prevalent in
earlier forms of Kabbalah, namely the schools of the Zohar and Isaac
Luria, in which a limited set of materials becomes the core doctrine of
a movement.1 In the theoretical works of the Beit El kabbalists, the
preponderance of references and citations are to the works of other
Beit El kabbalists!
In some cases, Beit El kabbalists are at a loss when non-Lurianic
practices do enter their culture. For example, Isaac Luria taught
that when the prayer Barukh She-Amar is recited, the adept should
contemplate one of the ten sefirot during each of the prayer’s ten
stanzas.2 Other traditions link the recitation of the Shema’ prayer to
the forty-two-letter name of God. The forty-two-letter name is printed
beneath certain paragraphs of the Shema’, on the premise that it
represents the underlying intention of the prayer.3 These kavvanot
are based on kabbalistic teachings that predate even the Safed
Kabbalah and thus do not appear in Shar’abi’s prayer book, because, according
to Hillel, they do not originate with Luria. In fact, they are cited in the protean
Lurianic text Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot, and they appear in the influential Polish
Rashkover prayer book, but they are not specifically Lurianic in nature, and that
is the reason for Shar’abi’s neglecting them.4 In other cases, earlier practices
moved into the vacuum left by Luria and Shar’abi. For example, the completion
of the whole Jewish literary oeuvre on the Shavuot holiday, as compiled in the
work Shnei Luhot ha-Brit, was part of Beit El practice, although its origins were
manifestly zoharic and Cordoverean.5 In this case, the earlier ritual was in-
serted because Shar’abi left no specific tradition with regard to these practices.6
There is, however, one exception to the rule of theoretical basis in late
Lurianic ideas. That is the ongoing reference to the vicissitudes of the She-
khinah in the popular writings of the Beit El kabbalists. Such references are
understandable for kabbalists in Jerusalem in the early modern period, who
must have felt that they were at ground zero for the activities of the Shekhinah.
Nonetheless, their commitment to a purely Lurianic view was such that, like
Luria himself, the Beit El kabbalists did not sing the Cordoverean hymn Lekhah
Dodi on the Sabbath Eve.7
In other instances, Shar’abi was able to develop and institute new kavvanot
based on practices with which he was familiar in the abstract. If he had the
theoretical principle in his Lurianic sources, he could develop new practices.
For instance, the nature of the form of the Hebrew letter shin made by the
straps of the prayer phylacteries, or tefillin, is not indicated by the AR’’I, but
there is a version in Ya’akov Zemakh’s Olat Tamid, which Shar’abi adopted.8
There was no set of kavvanot for the Sabbath service in the basic Lurianic
canon; they were also developed and instituted by Shar’abi.9 In the same way,
the Beit El version of the Passover meal was certainly developed not by Shar’abi
but by his student David Majar. Majar and the circle at Beit El withheld the
esoteric meaning of the Passover Seder from the Aleppo kabbalists, which was
doubtless the cause of friction between the two groups.10 Hence, the devel-
opment and emergence of new kavvanot and other formulae was a gradual
process and often beset by the internecine politics of the various schools.
The kavvanot traditions accumulated over time. They were communicated
orally, collected by members of the circle, and eventually published in what
have become, of late, veritable codes of kabbalistic practice. An early collection
of the Beit El practices appears in Rafael Avraham Shalom Shar’abi’s Divrei
Shalom. Ya’akov Hayyim Sofer, a Baghdad kabbalist who affiliated with the
_
Rehovot ha-Nahar community in the Bukharian quarter, collected many Beit El
practices in his voluminous practical code, Kaf ha-Hayyim. Later collections of
_
Beit El practices culled materials from random mentions in various theoretical
beit el practice 67
works. Nahman ha-Cohen’s recent Minhagei Beit El was a short précis of these
issues, while Avner Efg’in’s Divrei Shalom is a longer treatment, presenting an
exhaustive interpretation of the kabbalistic underpinnings of these liturgical
refinements. The earliest collections were quite concise and arguably pre-
sented the ideas in their essence, while Efg’in’s recent work has, after the
fashion of many contemporary treatments of Jewish law, expanded the tradi-
tion considerably.11
It is arbitrary to present only a few areas of Beit El practice, because the
scope of the Beit el rite is enormous and is increasing all the time. Nonetheless,
in perusing the theoretical literature, one sees certain recurring themes and
emphases that characterize the daily and seasonal practice of the Beit El
mystics and serve as good examples of their spiritual preoccupations. The ag-
gregate practice of the Beit El kabbalists was based on Shar’abi’s reading of
Luria. Luria’s tradition, in turn, was a selective adaptation of the ideas current
in Safed in the sixteenth century, most of which were derived from the Zohar,
which in turn had adapted them from the rabbinic mythologies of late antiq-
uity. Thus, the mythos of the Beit El was refined through many processes but
nonetheless originated in the most ancient myths that Kabbalah recovered
from ancient Judaism.
The Atonement Cycle
The kabbalists of Beit El lived out a basic premise of classical Kabbalah, namely
that cosmic processes are unfolding over Jewish liturgical time. Among the
most important of these cosmic dramas is the kabbalistic mythos of the sea-
sons. In Kabbalah, the Jewish holidays are merely the surface events of great
cosmic struggles and dramas. These mythic themes are the underlying prem-
ise and rationale for the exoteric practices of the holidays. For example, as is
explored elsewhere,12 the blowing of the ram’s horn (shofar) on the New Year
literally ‘‘awakens’’ a sleeping aspect of divinity from its slumber in order to
advocate for the Jewish people. The Passover holiday, as well, represents a
‘‘flight’’ from the forces of impurity, which is then followed by a seven-week
process of purification, ending with the holiday of Shavuot, or Pentecost. By
following these cosmic processes and responding to them liturgically, the Beit
El kabbalists ‘‘lived the myth’’ in its most developed form.
The cycle of atonement is a period of heightened anxiety in exoteric Ju-
daism. It is a universal belief that the season of atonement, from the beginning
of the month of Ellul, continuing through the New Year, and culminating on
the Day of Atonement, is a period of Divine judgment. The Jewish nation
assembles; its conduct is reviewed in the Divine court, at which point a ten-day
period of ‘‘sentencing,’’ the ten days of repentance, ensues. Finally, on the Day
of Atonement, the great gates of heaven close as the Jewish nation assembles
outside, wildly singing the praises of the creator. Throughout the ten-day pe-
riod, the nation avows its faith that God will grant its members agricultural
prosperity and freedom from pestilence, sickness, and the oppression of the
gentiles. This mythos, together with the imagery of the Divine court, the Book
of Life, and the decrees for the year, remains in all Jewish liturgy, in even the
most liberal and reductionist movements.
Besides the cosmic dramas of the season of repentance and the Days of
Awe, the act of repentance and the expunging of sin were expressed with a
muscular spirituality, fueled by a wailing sense of penitential remorse. The
Beit El kabbalists saw themselves as the leaders of the public repentance, the
advance force of the effort to obtain a good decree for the coming year. Their
pietistic behavior in Jerusalem, the locus of the atonement drama, made their
activities of paramount importance. Shar’abi also considered his community to
be the Jews’ legal consul, managing their appeals and limiting their liability.
Shar’abi was, therefore, specifically concerned with the legalistic aspects of the
period, the release of curses,13 the release of vows (Kol Nidrei), and other
aspects of the holiday that lent themselves to the interpretations of halakhic
civil law.
In the service of the Beit El kabbalists’ special role, many accessory rituals
were added in the atonement cycle. In the opening prayer of the day of
atonement, Kol Nidrei, the Beit El kabbalists include a special supplementary
prayer written by Shar’abi and institute a special reading from Tiqqunei ha-
Zohar (143a).14 From their preoccupation with the actual mechanics of the
disposal of the powers of judgment to the esoteric meaning of the blowing of
the shofar, to the popular drama of the judgment of Israel by the heavenly
court, the Beit El kabbalists lived the myth.15
The Beit El kabbalists did not hesitate to alter some of the most revered
prayers in the liturgy. In Beit El, the famous Kol Nidrei prayer is couched in
both the past tense, as in most congregations, and in the future tense, in an
attempt to prevent any indemnity in the future.16 There was widespread var-
iation in the confession of sins prayer (vidui). In most Beit El versions of the
litany of sins, the usual acrostic version recited in most congregations was
doubled. For example, instead of merely saying cazavnu (‘‘we lied’’), adepts
substituted the homonym cazavnu-ca’asnu (‘‘we lied, we were angry’’). Another
version altered the recitation of the sins in order to correspond more closely to
a certain sacred name.17 Hence, even the most central aspects of the canon
were altered to conform to Luria and Shar’abi’s kabbalistic grammar.
beit el practice 69
Well before the Days of Awe, the Beit El kabbalists were anxious regarding
their own records in the celestial court. Before every new month as well as at
the New Year, they performed a formal ‘‘release of oaths.’’ The first of these that
was directly related to the New Year occurred on the twentieth day of Av, forty
days before Rosh ha-Shanah. The kabbalists also practiced a formal rite of
humiliation, the acceptance of a formal rebuke by a rabbinical court.18 Other
penitential seasons figured heavily in the Beit El catalog, such as the midwinter
period known by the acronym Shovev’’im, which took the form of two forty-day
fasts, and the thirty-seven-hour fast that took place before the rise of the new
moon in a leap year.19
The rectification of sexual sins was an important part of the atonement
process for the Beit El kabbalists. There has, recently, been a resurgence in
public rituals for atoning for such sexual offenses as masturbation, adultery,
homosexual relations, and intercourse during menstruation. These rituals
were apparently performed in the period of the Safed renaissance and were, at
some indeterminate time in the recent past, reinstituted. Manuals aimed at
promoting these various forms of sexual continence have been recently com-
piled and circulated. These penitential rituals essentially originate with Lur-
ianic Kabbalah and are scattered throughout the Lurianic canon. The Beit El
kabbalists continue to publicly perform these rites, as evidenced by the public
atonement for homosexual relations recorded in the film ‘‘Trembling Before
God.’’ A regular tiqqun ha-yesod (prayer for the rectification of sexual sins) is
held by the Nahar Shalom community and is usually portrayed as a response to
the general debasement of modern Israeli society.20 The Beit El kabbalists also
practiced symbolic, penitential flagellation.22 This practice was never com-
pletely eliminated from the kabbalistic practice, although it is criticized in the
Talmud.23
The Beit El kabbalists have kept alive a practice that was rife among
kabbalists of the classical period but that had fallen out of favor, probably under
the influence of positivistic movements such as Hasidism. This practice is the
_
symbolic taking on of the four capital punishments of the rabbinic court. By
accepting these punishments, as executed by a court of one’s peers, the Beit El
kabbalists clearly hoped to prophylactically remove the possibility of having
their lives foreshortened by transgression. A number of contemporary spiritual
manuals describe these symbolic punishments vividly:
After the morning prayers of the eve of the Day of Atonement, a

rabbinical court of three scholars is appointed. One scholar beats each
one with forty strips, forty times, corresponding to the four letters
of HVYH. Afterwards each one receives the four death penalties of
the rabbinical court, as a remembrance of the matter in order to

humble the hearts. This is the order of receiving them: First one
brings a beam and sets it up at a slight angle in the floor of the
synagogue. The one who is being beaten removes his clothing except
for the trousers, and they place the flagellant at the beam. He places
his right hand on the left and they are bound to the beam. Afterwards
they bring the Rav of the congregation, and he demands that the
flagellant repent of his sins. As he is repenting, the Rav beats him
with the strap in his hand, once on the right and once on the left,
and with every beating he said one word of the verse ‘‘And He is
merciful, forgiving all sin. . . . ’’ Afterwards he receives the four death
sentences of the rabbinical court. This is their order: First they clothe
the man in sackcloth from the soles of his feet to his forehead.
Afterwards, he receives the punishment of stoning, as they stone him
with three or four small stones. The afflicted then takes a large stone
and beats himself over his heart. And the sage calls out: ‘‘Thus it
would be done to a man who angers and vexes his creator, Woe to us
from the day of judgment. . . . .’’ And the order of burning: They light
a wax candle and drip three or four drops onto his flesh under the
sackcloth until they see that he is suffering, and the sage repeats the
lament. For the order of death [by sword]: While he is dressed in
sackcloth, they lay him on the floor and three or four youths drag him
back and forth, as the sage repeats his lament. The order of stran-
gling: Two people strangle him with a single belt, or he does so with
his two hands, and he sits on his knees and the sage repeats his
lament. Before the stoning the afflicted says, ‘‘Master of the Universe,
if I have sinned before you and flawed the letter Yu’’d of HVY’’H and
the letter A or ADNY and I have become liable for stoning in you
righteous court, behold I receive stoning on myself.’’ Before the
burning he says, ‘‘ . . . that I flawed with the letter H of HVYH and
the letter D of ADNY, and thus before the execution he says ‘‘ . . . the
letter V and the letter N,’’ and before the strangling he says, ‘‘ . . . by
the last letter H of HVYH and the letter Y of ADNY.’’ Afterwards
he goes to immerse himself.21
These rites of self-mortification reflect an ancient pietistic suspicion of the

efficacy of Halakhah in really bringing about the cleansing of one’s spiritual
record. From the early pietists (hasidim rishonim) of the Talmud to the grad-
uated repentance of the German pietists, there has been a tendency to add
additional afflictions to the process of repentance, and the Beit El kabbalists
beit el practice 71
remain firmly in that tradition. Moreover, in the context of the Beit El kabb-
alists’ self-image, they make perfect sense. The kabbalists have committed to
giving over their minds to the processes of the Divine, to the cathartic union of
the higher and lower worlds. It follows that their bodies, as the chassis for their
mind, have to be a pure as possible. Therefore, the purification of their bodies
takes on paramount importance in the practice of the rite, and there is no more
cleansing purgative activity for the body than the mortifications prescribed, at
least theoretically, by Jewish law.
The Sabbatical Year
Since the revival of the Jerusalem community in the sixteenth century, the
proper observance of the Sabbatical year (shemittah), in which the land lies
fallow for a year, has been a source of economic anxiety and social tension. At
the end of the nineteenth century, a conflict arose in the Beit El community
with regard to the practice of the Sabbatical year, because Shar’abi left two
conflicting teachings on the subject. Different wings of the community
adopted the opposing interpretations, leading to a schism. According to Yom
Tov Algazi,24 initially, Shar’abi had treated the Sabbatical year like any other
year with regard to the kavvanot to be performed. In every other year, the prac-
tice of kavvanot was necessary ‘‘labor’’ that had to be performed, in the Sab-
batical year as in any other. As the Sabbatical year was little more than the
Sabbath writ large, the Beit El kabbalists continued to maintain the schedule of
kavvanot for those days.25 In purely kabbalistic terms, Shar’abi averred that,
although certain aspects of the Divine infrastructure had been ‘‘fixed,’’ yet
others remained unrectified, so one was still required to practice the daily
kavvanot during the Sabbatical year.
Nonetheless, Algazi recalls that Shar’abi was troubled (libo nokfo) at per-
forming the kavvanot during the Sabbatical year. Shar’abi’s basic inclination
was to suspend the kavvanot during the Sabbatical year, with the possible
exception of certain rites. His reasoning, in the most simplistic terms, was that
the Sabbatical year is a time when ‘‘work’’ should be put aside. In this regard,
there was no more demanding ‘‘work’’ than maintaining the schedule of the
kavvanot. The Sabbatical year represents the ‘‘labor’’ of the six years that pre-
cedes it, just as the Sabbath is the culmination of the six days that lead up to it.
Yet, Shar’abi remained troubled by the idea that he ought to desist from kav-
vanot on the Sabbatical year.26 Toward the end of his life, he acted on this
impulse and refrained from practicing kavvanot during the Sabbatical year.
The kabbalists saw his death as coming about as a consequence of that
mistake.27 As a result of this perceived catastrophe, with the onset of the

coming Sabbatical year, in Algazi’s words, ‘‘we, orphans of orphans, are afraid
that the neglect of the kavvanot caused the great light to be extinguished.’’ So
the mystics of Beit El, led by Hayyim de la Rosa, decided to go back to the
_
original practice of performing all of the kavvanot for the year.
Algazi’s rationale for the return to the practice of the kavvanot during the
Sabbatical year was that the observance of the Sabbatical year in the present
era, with the Jerusalem Temple not functional, was merely a rabbinic in-
junction. If the Sabbatical year was merely being observed with a rabbinic level
of stringency, then the requirement of prayer, including the requirement of
performing the kavvanot of prayer in the approved way, must supercede the
lenient elements of the Sabbatical year observance. For this reason, one ought
not to neglect the appropriate kavvanot for a given day.
This remained the practice of the Beit El kabbalists until the beginning of
the twentieth century. At that time, a controversy arose regarding the obser-
vance of the Sabbatical year and the performance of its kavvanot. As a result of
this controversy, the Aleppo scholar Hayyim Shaul Dweck left the Beit El
_
academy in the Old City of Jerusalem for the Rehovot ha-Nahar community in
the New City.28 Ya’akov Moshe Hillel summarized that conflict thus:
[Dweck] followed the practice of Shar’abi in his last year, namely to

retain the kavvanah of the inner consciousness from the word ‘‘love’’
in the silent devotion and onward, unlike [Shar’abi’s] practice in
the earlier Sabbatical years, in which he made no distinction. . . .
Shar’abi’s students, after his death in the Sabbatical year 1777 . . .
adopted his earlier practice. . . . But the Rav SaDeH [Dweck] upheld
Shar’abi’s last understanding . . . thus he practiced and taught to
his students. This caused opposition, as he differed with the set
custom of Beit El, as practiced by hundreds of mekavvenim over the
course of two hundred years, and he was alone in this interpretation,
opposed to the elder kabbalists of the generation, and he did not
defer to any man, until for this reason he was compelled to leave Beit
El, to break away and to commit himself to the establishment of
the new Yeshiva Rehovot ha-Nahar, in the year 1896, a Sabbatical
year.29
Such anxieties over the Sabbatical year had accompanied Jewish life in
Israel since the land’s resettlement by Jews and were addressed in the sixteenth
century in the responsa of Jacob Berab and Levi Ibn Habib. They came to a
_
head some time later with Rav Avraham Yizhak Kook’s ‘‘release of sale’’ (heter
_
mekhirah) in 1910–1911. This well-known responsum released the produce of
beit el practice 73
the land of Israel for cultivation and consumption during the Sabbatical year,
provided that the land was in the titular possession of a non-Jew. The thrust of
the responsum essentially enabled the Jews to live on and acquire parcels of
land during the Sabbatical year and hence expedite religious Zionism. Hence,
the dispute over the proper practice of kavvanot in the Sabbatical year must be
understood in the larger context of the evolution of the Sabbatical year in
contemporary Israel. Dweck’s departure outside the Old City walls may well
have owed something to internal tensions in Beit El; certainly, the institution
he help found, Rehovot ha-Nahar, served a particular cross-section of scholars
in the Jerusalem community.30
Tefillin
The casual visitor to a group of Beit El kabbalists will be struck by the ubiq-
uitous wearing of the phylacteries, or tefillin. Rather than wearing one set, as do
most religious Jews, many Beit El kabbalists have the unique practice of
wearing two sets of tefillin. Shar’abi seems to have formalized the practice of
wearing two sets of phylacteries, a practice that had been advocated by Luria.31
The two sets of tefillin reflect two opinions held by the medieval sage Rashi and
his grandson, Rav Ya’akov (‘‘Rabbeinu’’) Tam, on the order of tefillin. The
disagreement centered on the order of the readings placed inside the leather
compartments of the phylacteries. Pious Jews have historically resolved the
problem by wearing one set and then donning another. As mentioned, the
kabbalists of Beit El often wear two small sets at the same time.32 It was noted
that some pietists frequented the Beit El community in order to practice the
stringencies regarding tefillin, such as wearing them for the afternoon prayers
or wearing the two sets simultaneously.33
Shar’abi himself held forth on the matter in an exchange with the sages of
Tunis. He felt that each permutation of the acceptable orders of the scrolls
reflected different aspects of the Divine physiognomy. Therefore, the order of
the texts nestled next to the adept’s cranium during the act of prayer with the
kavvanot had the power to affect those aspects by activating the consciousness,
or mohin, of the person wearing the tefillin. Tefillin constructed according to the
Rashi’s conclusions governed the mohin of the countenance Imma, which
those of Rabbeinu Tam governed the mohin of the countenance Abba. The
tefillin ordered according to the work Shimusha Rabbah governed the mohin of
the countenance Arikh Anpin.34
The Beit El kabbalists try to wear their tefillin as much as possible. It was
considered best to walk to the synagogue already wrapped in the prayer shawl
and phylacteries. If one didn’t want to walk the streets of Jerusalem so attired,
it was best to contrive to be at the synagogue before dawn, in order to put them
on at the first opportunity.35 Of course, it should be recalled that the original
context for such pious behavior was Jerusalem’s Old City, with its intimacy and
squalor. The adept, likely as not, rolled out of his tiny room directly into the
alleys and larger thoroughfares of the Old City to get to the Beit El synagogue.
Unlike members of the general population, the Beit El kabbalists are also
known for wearing their tefillin, particularly tefillin of Rabbeinu Tam, during
the afternoon service.36 The Beit El kabbalists retain their tefillin for the addi-
tional prayers of the New Month, even though it is a custom to ostentatiously
remove one’s tefillin for the earlier additional (musaf ) service of that day.37 The
Beit El kabbalists also continued to put on tefillin on the morning of the ninth
of Av, which is otherwise proscribed by Jewish custom.38 In situations that are
somewhat unclear regarding the requirement of tefillin, such as the ninth of Av
and the later service for the new month, the popular impulse is to put aside the
tefillin and let the special aspects of the day define the ritual.39 For the Beit El
kabbalists, however, the tefillin are not a mere sign or a flourish of glorification.
The tefillin are a prayer tool that augments the adept’s prayer and grants it
greater efficacy. Hence, the Beit El kabbalists seemed to promote the wearing
of tefillin as much as possible. The tefillin are not a mere ‘‘sign’’ of the Holy, as
they are commonly considered in Jewish tradition. They are considered a tool
or device to aid the soteric effects of kavvanot practice. The impulse of exoteric
Jewish law is to limit the use of tefillin, while Beit El interpretations of the law
want to enable their use in doubtful situations.
Counting the Omer
Just as the Jewish liturgy changes for the Sabbath and festivals, so seasonal
concerns often overwhelm the normal cycle of kavvanot practice. The regular
kavvanot are suspended, and all of the emphasis is put on the time-specific
ritual of the season. For example, during the holiday of Sukkot, the waving of
the four species of plants is the most important synagogue ritual. The medi-
tations attending the waving of the palm, myrtle, willow, and citron therefore
supplant all of the other kavvanot. Another situation in which the Beit El
kabbalists discarded the regular order of kavvanot was during the counting of
the Omer, the fulfillment of the biblical precept to count the days between the
Passover and Shavuot holidays, which were the days of the gathering of the
first wheat in the time of the Jerusalem Temple. 40 The counting of the Omer is
one of the most widespread kavvanot, a popular ritual that has persisted among
beit el practice 75
Jews who pray according to the popular Orthodox and Hasidic rites.41 Most
_
Jews simply count off the days every evening, but the kabbalistic under-
standing was always to link the act of counting to an underling theurgic goal.
The Zohar taught that the first days of Passover constitute a spiritual re-
demption that liberates God’s earthly presence, the Shekhinah, from the cos-
mic ‘‘Egypt.’’ Similarly, Hayyim Vital described the biblical Exodus as an
_
irruption of loving kindness on the first night of Passover, in which the Divine
form expanded and then withdrew into itself. 42 There are a number of symbols
of this withdrawal, one of which is the performance of a diminished order of
celebratory Psalms (Hallel) on the days late in the holiday week.43 However, as
this liberating impulse subsides, the redeemed Shekhinah is thought of as
flawed and menstruous. As a menstruous woman requires seven days of pu-
rification after menstruating, so the Shekhinah requires seven weeks in order to
be presented to her bridegroom for marriage. These are the forty-nine days of
the Omer, which purify the Shekhinah from what amounts to her menstrual
impurity following the sojourn in Egypt. The Divine marriage itself takes place
on the holiday of Shavuot, at the end off the counting of the Omer.
The most basic kavvanah for the counting of the Omer links each day of
the Omer to a particular confluence of sefirot. The seven days of purification
transform into the forty-nine days of the Omer through a basic premise of
Kabbalah, namely that every one of the sefirot has a full complement of sefirot
within it. Therefore, the forty-nine days of the Omer are devoted to the repair of
any flaws committed in the bottom seven sefirot of each of the lower seven
sefirot. The most common expression of the sefirotic associations of the day was
the prayer that was inserted into many later editions of the prayer book:
Master of the Universe, you commanded us through your servant

Moses to count the Omer in order to purify ourselves from our ke-
lipot and our impurities, as you have written in our Torah . . . in order
to purify the souls of Your people Israel from their impurity, Thus
may it be thy will, our God and god of our fathers, that in the merit
of the counting of the Omer that I counted today, that it fixed
whatever I have blemished in the sefirah _______ in _________ and
I will purify and I will be sanctified in the Holiness of Above, and
through this will flow a Divine effluence through all the worlds to
repair our physical souls [nafshoteinu] and spirits [ruhoteinu] and
highest souls [nishmoteinu] from every blemish and to purify us and
sanctify us with you highest holiness, Amen Sela.
The result of this teaching is the ‘‘semipopular’’ view of counting the

Omer, the popular kavvanah that is widely reproduced in most Hasidic prayer
_
books and has recently been incorporated into the Ashkenazic rite in the
Anglo-Saxon Artscroll editions. This system is found in the early codifications
of Lurianic practice, Ya’akov Zemakh’s Shulkhan Arukh ha-AR’’I and Nagid
_
U-Mizaveh.44 According to this system, each day of the Omer is aligned with a
_
certain combination of sefirot, seven within seven inner sefirot of the bottom
seven sefirot in the macro system. It seems that this sefirotic counting of the
Omer is the kavvanah that Luria himself practiced, according to the new,
reconstructed version of this rite and the writings of Ya’akov Zemakh.45
The Lurianic systems of counting the Omer differ from this model in
that they concern themselves not with the system of the sefirot but rather with
the interplay of the countenances. The process of the Omer, like so many
Lurianic metaphysics, is devoted to the conception, nurturing, and maturing
of the countenance Zeir Anpin. All Lurianic understandings concur that the
Omer involved the loading of the synapses of consciousness, mohin, into
the embryo of Zeir Anpin. The basic difference in the Lurianic system, across
the board, is that, rather than tracing the act of repair through the seven
lower sefirot, the entire sefirotic system is reviewed during the process, from
Da’at to Malkhut, with the intermediate seven sefirot being collapsed into the
amalgam Tiferet, which is synonymous with Zeir Anpin. Beit El kabbalists saw
it as the aim of the counting of the Omer, as with so many other activities,
to expedite the circulation of the mohin, lines of consciousness through the
countenances, from the highest countenance (Attika Kaddisha) to the coun-
tenance Zeir. In this way, the moah of each sefirotic entity undergoes tiqqun
every week.46
In Hemdat Yisrael, a commentary on the prayer service by Hayyim Vital’s
_ _
son, Shmuel Vital, the order of the Omer is as follows: the first week restores
the sefirot of the realm of divine wisdom, or Hokhmah; the second week restores
_
the sefirot of the realm of understanding, or Binah; the third week restores the
sefirot of the diffuse lovingkindness (hasadim) in the highest level of the in-
tellect, Da’at. The following weeks depart from a purely sefirotic model, ad-
dressing the diffuse forces of judgment (gevurot) in the highest sefirah Da’at;
the fifth week does the same for Hesed, the sixth week for the inner judgments
_
of the sefirah of judgment itself, Gevurah, and the seventh week for the lower
sefirot Tiferet and Malkhut.47 Hence the kavvanah follows a different path
through the cosmic anthropos and is particularly concerned to expunge the
harsh elements from the lower sefirot.
Two differences of opinion beclouded the codification of the Lurianic
kavvanot of the Omer, as interpreted according to the sefirotic ‘‘popular’’
practice just described. The first questioned which of the elements of a given
confluence of sefirot was primary and which was secondary, the first or the
beit el practice 77
second. All of the kabbalists concur that the first night is Hokhmah of
_
Hokhmah, but is the second night Binah of Hokhmah or Hokhmah of Binah?
_ _ _
Shar’abi48 was inclined to agree with the second view, while Shmuel Vital’s
commentary favors the first interpretation.49 Finally, there was an additional
discrepancy, in this case between the Beit El kabbalist Hayyim Shaul Dweck
_
and the other Aleppo sages,50 regarding the flow of the lines of consciousness.
These wend, according to the two versions, through various gradations of the
shadow aspects of the countenances (Yisrael Sabba and tevunah) and other
gradations of the baroque system. They address the nuances of the greater and
lesser aspects (gadlut ve-katnut) and the essence and the vessels (azmut ve-
kelim) of each countenance. These differences in interpretation are evident in
the two most widely circulated versions of the prayer book, the version pub-
lished by Dweck and David Majar and the version of Yedidiah Raphael Hai
_
Abulafia, which bore the imprimatur of the Aleppo sages.
Hence, there are, in the mainstream kabbalistic tradition, at least five un-
derstandings of the metaphysics of counting the Omer in the weeks between
Passover and Shavuot. Four of these traditions are Lurianic, and all five largely
contradict one another. These discrepancies in the counting of the Omer, ac-
cording to Shar’abi, originate in the vagaries of the Lurianic canon. In fact, there
are two versions of the counting of the Omer presented in the original canon, in
Vital’s Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot itself. At the same time, Shar’abi and the later student
Hayyim Shaul Dweck interpreted these two versions differently.
The great discrepancies in the practice of the Omer point to broad dis-
agreements regarding the interpretation of the Lurianic system during the
period that it was taken most seriously by the kabbalists. The emphasis on the
counting of the Omer also points to a residual concern with the nature of time,
particularly cyclical time, in Jewish practice.51 The counting of the Omer is a
way of fixing reality across time, and concerns with time, in Judaism, lead to
concerns with the end of time. The classical Jewish response to time is mes-
sianism, and it wouldn’t be surprising if at the bottom of the concerns about
the counting of the Omer are concerns about rectifying the Divine structure for
the final judgment.
The Ascent through the Worlds
The Beit El rite also included an aspect that is widely distributed in kabbalistic
prayer, the rite of ‘‘four-worlds prayer.’’ In this rite, the individual’s prayer and/
or soul ascends through four ‘‘worlds’’ of existence, each of which represents
an aspect of the creation of the universe. This rite has an illustrious history and
persists in many quarters to this day; therefore, it bears a broader introduction,

beyond the scope of just Beit El Kabbalah.
The names of the worlds are taken from the principle verbs used in the
creation accounts of Genesis. The lowest level, consonant with the most prosaic
reality, is the world of action, ‘Assiyah. Above the world of action is the phe-
nomenal world, the world of formation, Yezirah. Above the world of formation is
_
the world of pure creation, Briah. The highest is the world of abstracted and
inaccessible divinity, the world of ‘Azilut, as posited by Maimonides.
_
The doctrine of the four worlds is hinted at in early Kabbalah, and the term
‘‘worlds’’ was used as a euphemism for the sefirot in a number of early sources,
as well as in the main sections of the Zohar. The normative conception of the
four worlds emerged in a number of sources that began to circulate in the
fourteenth century, such as the later strata of the Zohar, the sections called
Tiqqunim and Ra’aya Meheimna, as well as in a short contemporary work
known as the Masekhet Azilut.52
_
The essential act of four-worlds prayer is an ascent through the worlds.
The adept’s soul rises, propelled upward by the prayer but also following its
own track by linking to the collective souls of all the sentient beings that dwell
in the various worlds. Otherwise, the ascent is ambiguous, in that it is some-
times portrayed as the individual’s prayer, loosed liked a slingshot into the
upper worlds. In other accounts, it is the adherents’ very soul, rising in a
visionary experience. Various accounts of the four-worlds rite vacillate between
these two understandings.
In order to understand the relationship between prayer and the worlds, it
should be understood that there are five major sections of the morning prayer
service, which are demarcated from one another by the recitation of the Kad-
dish prayer. The service begins with the morning blessings, which accompany
the morning routines of waking, washing, and preparing for the day. The
following section consists of the recitation of psalms, bracketed by a blessing
before and after the recitation. The third section is the recitation of the Shema’
prayer, the essential credo of Judaism, which is also introduced and followed by
extended blessings. The eighteen blessings of the silent prayer, or Amidah,
follow, accompanied on most weekday mornings by a confession of sins. The
service closes with a number of additional psalms and hymns.
Luria’s Four-Worlds Rite
In Luria’s understanding of the four-worlds rite, the sections of the morning

service are stages in an ascent through the mystical infrastructure. The various
beit el practice 79
sections of the morning service parallel the various worlds of emanation. In

Luria’s initial teaching, during the morning prayer service, prayer ascends
through the successive worlds of creation, peaking at the Amidah and then
descending.53 The morning blessings on the first actions of the day, as well as
the commemorative recitation of biblical and rabbinic verses regarding sacri-
fices, represent a traversing of the world of ‘Assiyah. The morning psalms,
similarly, are parallel to and contiguous with the world of Yezirah.54 The world
_
of Yezirah ends with the Song at the Sea.55 The recitation of the Shema’ credo,
_
along with the blessings that precede and follow it, signals the world of crea-
tion, or Briah. Finally, the silent devotion is a sojourn in the abstracted world
of Azilut. At that point, the Divine shefa’, or effluence, begins to descend in a
_
series of unions.56 In the midst of this outflowing, the adherent risks anni-
hilation; hence, the confessional prayer is recited as one prepares oneself for
martyrdom.57
As mentioned earlier,58 the ascent through the four worlds is accompanied
by the contemplation of special names of God, the name YHVH vocalized
with various consonantal inflections (miluyyim) and numerical coefficients
(gematriot).59 For example, from the first morning blessings until the blessing
‘‘Blessed is he who spoke’’ (Barukh She-Amar), which begins the morning
service, the practitioner is instructed to visualize the name YHVH filled out
with the letter he’’h for the vowels. This vocalization, which comes to the
gematria of fifty-two, is specifically associated with ‘Assiyah, the lowest world.60
The morning psalms represent a traversing of the world of Yezirah, evoked by
_
the name of forty-five (M’’H). The recitation of the Shema’ prayer and its
blessings are signified by name of sixty-three, which is linked to the world of
Briah (creation). The fourth recitation of the Kaddish prayer includes the
Yezirah with Briah through the milui of sixty-three.61 The highest world, Azilut,
_ _
which is indicated by the silent devotion, is indicated by the HVYH of seventy-
two. In each of these cases, every mental intonation of the name YHVH must
be vocalized silently, with the appropriate consonantal vocalization.
The doctrine of the four worlds was not initially linked to prayer. The
association of prayer with the four worlds and the location of the four worlds in
line with specific sections of the prayer service seems to have originated with
Isaac Luria’s circle.62 It was Luria who ‘‘made the connection’’ between the
sections of the prayer service and the four worlds. He averred that the role of the
adherent is to ‘‘fix’’ [metakken] the four worlds of Azilut, Briah, Yezirah, and
_ _
‘Assiyah by stripping them of their extraneous aspects [hizonim]. The ascent
_
‘‘fixes’’ the worlds in their places, raising, cleansing, and integrating each world.
A later teaching, found in the collection Pri Ez Hayyim, avers that the worlds
_ _
must be unified with one another; they have become contaminated by the hard
kelipot, the ‘‘husks’’ or detritus left over from the well-known tradition of the
breaking of the vessels.63 At every stage of the ascent, the kelipot must be avoided
and cleared from the Divine structure.64 At the point of the silent devotion, one
has to elevate all four worlds so that they are all included, this one in that.65
The work of the ascent through the worlds is to banish the power of evil
(sitra ahra) from each of those worlds. This cleansing takes place in the worlds
of Briah, Yezirah, and ‘Assiyah, for the world of Azilut is above the struggle.66
_
Certain actions, such as hand washing, evacuation, and so forth, sanctified as
part of the individual’s morning practice, also reflect the purification of the
Divine body. In fact, the main difference between the order of prayers on the
Sabbath and that for the weekday is that the former lacks an aspect of cosmic
repair through the positive commandments.67
Changes in Liturgy
The doctrine of four-worlds prayer came into play in the construction of the
Lurianic order of prayers and in the nusakh AR’’I, popularized by the Hasidic
movement.68 One problematic move in the combination of Ashkenazic and
Sephardic rites that characterized nusakh AR’’I was the placement of the Hodu
prayer, the recitation of Chronicles I:15, in the preliminary blessings. Kabbal-
ists to the nineteenth century debated the placement of this prayer. In the
Ashkenazic rite, it follows the opening blessing of the morning psalms (the
blessing ‘‘Blessed is he who spoke,’’ or Barukh She-Amar), whereas in the Se-
phardic rite, Hodu precedes Barukh She-Amar:69 The transition from the world
of ‘Assiyah to the world of Yezirah occurs at the beginning of the morning
_
psalms, at Barukh She-Amar.70 Barukh She-Amar is the apex of the world of
‘Assiyah and is simultaneously the end of the world of ‘Assiyah and the com-
mencement of the world of Yezirah. As Hayyim Vital put it:
_ _
The custom of the Ashkenazim is to say it after Barukh She-Amar.
The reason for their opinion is that now it is already called the world
of Yezirah, which is from Barukh She-Amar to [the blessing that
_
commences the Shema’ sequence] Yozer. . . . But the Sephardim say
_
it before Barukh She-Amar before all of this is in the realm of the
tiqqun of the World of Assiyah. For Yezirah itself is not really repaired,
_
and does not receive light for itself. . . . Therefore one should not
say it except from the ‘Assiyah to the Yezirah, which is after the
_
Kaddish of the ‘Assiyah. And before Barukh She-Amar which is the
beit el practice 81
tiqqun of the Yezirah. So our teacher practiced the Sephardic cus-

_
tom.71
The difference between the two rites lies in the ascent of prayer through
the successive worlds of creation. The Ashkenazic rite retained the location of
Barukh She’Amar before Hodu, while the Sephardic custom began the pre-
liminary prayers with Hodu. According to Vital, the original authors of the rite
must have had kabbalistic principles in mind when constructing their re-
spective versions.
The Ascent through the Palaces
One part of the four-worlds rite derives directly from zoharic and Cordoverean
ideas. This is the passage through the Divine palaces, which are described in a
number of Zoharic compositions.72 The Zohar explicitly sees prayer as a journey
through the celestial palaces, as they are portrayed in the sections of the Zohar
devoted to them.73 The Palaces are located at the level of the sefirah Malkhut in
the world of Briah.74 The lowest palace is called the Livnat ha-Sapir (the star
sapphire) and is associated with the sefirah Yesod. In the liturgy, it is located in
the acrostic ‘‘Blessed God, great in Mind’’ (El Barukh Gadol Deah) and in the
blessing Yozer Or (creator of light). The second palace is called the Ezem Sha-
_ _
mayim (the center of Heaven) and corresponds to the inner sefirah Hod in the
larger sefirah of Malkhut. The third palace is called Nogah (glow, Venus) and
corresponds to the sefirah of Nezah; the fourth palace is Zekhut (merit), corre-
sponding to the sefirah Gevurah. The Palace of Love (ahavah) is for the sefirah
Hesed and is invoked at the blessing ‘‘With great and everlasting love’’ (Ahavah
Rabbah). The sixth palace is the palace of will (Razon), which corresponds to the
_
sefirah Tiferet. The seventh palace is called Kodesh ha-Kedoshim (Holy of Holies)
and corresponds to the sefirah Binah.75 The palaces are located by Moshe Cor-
dovero and Isaac Luria in the in the world of Briah and are paralleled by the
seven medurim (dwellings) in the world of Yezirah. Liturgically, then, they are
_
approached during the blessings before and after the Shema’ credo. They are
then worked into the structure of the ascent through the four worlds.76
In Lurianic Kabbalah, the passage through the palaces has the effect of
unifying the countenances Abba and Imma.77 Even the later drushim on the
subject continue to mix Cordovero’s and Luria’s ideas,78 blending the images
of the Palace with the countenances and the building of the mohin, through the
birth and suckling of the central parzuf Zeir Anpin.79
_
The association of the Palaces with the third section of the morning service
provided the template for Luria’s eventual four-worlds rite. However, at that
time the palaces had to be placed in relation to the worlds. This process did not
end with Luria. The Beit El rite includes an ascent through the Palaces during
the recitation of the passages that deal with the various sacrifices. Shar’abi had
a striking, almost monophysite view of the worlds. The lower three worlds were
not, in fact, full-fledged worlds but rather emanations of the feminine aspect of
Azilut. These lower aspects originated during the breaking of the vessels,
_
through the vessels of Azilut, in the incident that the Zohar famously calls ‘‘the
_
death of the kings.’’80 According to Shar’abi’s dense metaphysical portrayal,
the inner vessels of the kings fell into Briah, the middle into Yezirah, and
_
the externals (hizoniyyim) into ‘Assiyah. In this way, the Malkhut of Azilut
_ _
overlaps and ‘‘nests’’ the three sefirot of Briah, the location of the Heikhalot,
or Palaces.81 The preexistence of the ascent through the palaces remained
a source of anxiety for Lurianists and was viewed, as late as Shar’abi, as a
problem to be resolved in theosophical context.
The Redemption of Souls
The Beit El kabbalists saw the four-worlds rite as linked to the redemption of
the souls of humankind, which isomorphically relate to the cosmic soul of God
and the attendant apparatus of the Divine. In the course of the ascent through
the worlds, the adherent’s prayer rises and unifies the souls of the righteous
that are built into the cosmic structure,82 according to the zoharic doctrine
of the three levels of the soul.83 The first stage of the service, in the world of
‘Assiyah, has the effect of raising the earthly souls, the nefashot, to the world of
Yezirah. At the stage of Yezirah, the ruah or emotive souls should rise to the
_ _
world of Briah. At the stage of Briah, one should intend to raise all the ne-
shamot, the Divine souls to the world of Azilut. Moreover, there are kabbalistic
_
practices and interpretations that relate to one’s individual soul.84 Kallus cites
Shar’abi’s assertion that certain prayers, such as ‘‘Light is sown for the righ-
teous’’ (Psalms 97:11), are created in order to enable the creation of new
souls.85 The extent to which this understanding was popularly embraced and
linked to the pathos of exoteric Judaism is evident from this statement by
Hayyim Shaul Dweck:
_
RaSha’’Sh said . . . the order of the blessings from the morning
blessings until ‘‘I will bless them’’, are because the mohin have al-
ready entered Leah and she has ceased to spread through the whole
beit el practice 83
length of Zeir Anpin. The inner point of Rachel is completely des-

cending to Briah, entering between the kelipot, to gather and bring
out those souls and sparks that have fallen because of our sins through the
kelipot [italics mine]. So she [Rachel] wails and cries out in a bitter
voice about her divorce and exile and on the destruction of her
temple and on their falling and separation from her beloved Zeir
Anpin from the world of Azilut . . .86
_
The link between the four worlds and the morning prayer service was
central to the basic Lurianic rite in both the Polish and the Beit El schools. The
visualization of ascent through the worlds was retained in Hasidic practice.
_
The four worlds are still indicated in Hasidic prayer books, in the face of the
_
fact that Hasidism had otherwise dispensed with the practice of kavvanot.
A ritual ‘‘Four-Worlds Prayer’’ is presently being developed in the contempo-
rary Jewish renewal movement, in venues such as the Eilat Chayyim Center, in
Vermont.87
The tenacity of the four-worlds rite and its persistent presence in the
forefront of contemporary mystical practice result from its authenticity to the
Jewish sensibility. When the pious Jew perceives his or her prayer as ascend-
ing, this act invokes the most ancient notions of celestial hierarchy and dis-
course. The four-worlds prayer harks back directly to the experience of the
prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel and the ascents of the Merkavah mystics of late
antiquity. The four-worlds rite provides a mechanism and a mythos of ascent
that is linked to the familiar morning prayer service, ‘‘spiritualizing’’ the pro-
cess that, because of its length and technical nature, is at the greatest risk of
being rendered ‘‘set’’ and mundane.
Further Study
The Beit El kabbalists clung to certain totems of piety, such as tefillin, peni-
tential fasting, and the practice of the kavvanot themselves, over and above the
demands dictated by conventional religious practice. Since the movement’s
original coalescing under Shalom Shar’abi, the impulses of the Beit El mystics
have remained consistent. The school is committed to a mystical practice
founded wholly on Lurianic Kabbalah, reducing that system to the theories of
sacred names that crystallized in the later stages of that literature.
This commitment to pure Lurianism is startling because it is actually very
rare in the phenomenology of later Kabbalah. Most kabbalistic schools operate
at a variety of levels. Other groups of kabbalists may dabble in the associative,
symbolic Kabbalah of the Zohar and Moshe Cordovero or may even produce
biblical exegeses in the mode of Moshe Alsheikh and the other preachers of
Safed and Morocco. They may produce works of ethics (mussar) or otherwise
vary their literary output and preoccupations. This is not the case in Beit El;
they ‘‘do’’ Lurianic Kabbalah, at its most abstracted level, nearly exclusively.
The only exceptions to this rule are outlying figures, such as Yosef Hayyim, the
_
Ben Ish Hai, whose social obligations may have caused them to lift their heads
_
from the main work of the kavvanot and attend to the needs of the masses. The
customs and practices that have received cursory attention in this chapter are
only the outward manifestations of the Beit El kabbalists’ monistic view of a
universe governed by forces that are ultimately reducible to the impersonal
physics of the sacred names.
Many of the directives for specific ‘‘Beit El practices’’ are really side products
of debates over the development of a pan-Sephardic Jerusalem liturgy, parsing
the nuances of Sephardic practice as the various communities came to Jer-
usalem, developed their congregations, and, in a place such as Beit El, which
encompassed scholars from multiple districts, developed their combined ritual.
The assertion of Beit El practices is also part of a larger phenomenon in which
the ascendant non-Ashkenazic communities have moved to separate their
practices from those of the formerly dominant European culture and have
sought to reassert their religious custom as equally normative.
Ultimately, there are as many possibilities in the investigation of Beit El
practice as there are nuances of Jewish law and practice; that is to say, the
possibilities are endless. At the same time, as I have pointed out many times,
this is a living tradition, whose practitioners are ‘‘players’’ in the internecine
religious politics of Jerusalem, itself a community of great religious intrigue
and pretension. Moreover, as noted earlier, the religious practices of Beit El are
influenced by general trends in the Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities.
The phenomenon of publishing and the ever-wider circulation of materials, as
well as the recombination of new pietistic practices from many sources, will
lead to a more eclectic Beit El rite. The literature of the circle is expanding and,
increasingly, popularizing. And, yet, it is also a closed circle, dictated by the
internal history of the school and the development of its literature, as is de-
tailed in further chapters of this volume.
6
Shar’abi’s School
The personalities who have composed the Beit El school over the
last two centuries might need some introduction to the Western
reader, although they draw from the aristocracy of the Middle Eastern
rabbinate. The Beit El ‘‘school’’ consists of a particular lineage of
sages, drawn from a limited set of communities. Shar’abi’s teachings
circulated among the Jews of the Orient and the Levant, from
Jerusalem to Aleppo (Halab) and thence to Baghdad, with contribu-
_
tions from the ‘‘sages of Tunis.’’ Acolytes of Shar’abi’s teachings
also dominated the Sephardic chief rabbinate of Jerusalem for much
of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A number of those
designated Rishon le-Ziyyon (chief rabbi of the Sephardic commu-
_
nity) and Hakham Bashi (official religious liaison to the Ottoman
_
Empire) were theorists of Shar’abi’s method, were active in the Beit
El circles, and were even Shar’abi’s lineal heirs.
The heads of Beit El, to the present, are as follows:
Gedaliah Hayyun 1737–1745

_
Shalom Shar’abi 1745–1780
Yom Tov Algazi 1780–1802
Hezkiahu Yizhak Shar’abi 1802–1808
_ _
Avraham Shalom Shar’abi 1808–1827
Hayyim Avraham Gagin 1827–1850
_
Yedidia Raphael Abulafia 1850–1871
Aaron ‘Azriel 1871–1881
Shalom Moshe Hai Gagin 1881–1883

_
Sasson Bakher Moshe 1883–1903
Masoud ha-Cohen Alhadad 1903–1927
Shalom Hadaya 1927–1945
Ovadiah Hadaya 1945–1948
Yehudah Meyer Getz 1975–1995
Moshe Halamish has noted that practitioners of Shar’abi’s kavvanot were

rare among the sages of North Africa, who have an emotional tie to the Zohar,
the Safed common religion, and the Lurianic system as it evolved out of those
sources.1 The exception to this is Shar’abi’s influence on the mystics of Tunis,
particularly Yosef Sadavon, who were active in the dissemination of the prayer
book.2 Otherwise, Shar’abi’s teachings and kavvanot did not dominate the
activity of Moroccan sages until the twentieth century, nor were most North
African sages involved in the development of the prayer book kavvanot.
Shar’abi’s immediate heirs assumed the initial leadership of the circle and
also produced a substantial number of books. Shar’abi’s son, Hizkiahu Yizhak
_
Shar’abi (d. 1808, referred to as the Ha’’i be-SheMe’’Sh) was the fourth head of
_
Beit El, as well as an important rabbinical judge.3
Rafael Avraham Mizrahi Diyedi’a Shar’abi, Shalom Shar’abi’s grandson,
was among the first major redactors of the teaching. He was known as Rav
Avraham Shalom Hasid (‘‘the saint’’; acronym RA’’Sh), for his piety. Rav Av-
_
raham Shalom Hasid was the author of Divrei Shalom, a theoretical work that
_
also details the practices of the Beit El community. He was also involved in
developing the eventual version of Shar’abi’s prayer book.4 He was reputed, as
well, to have used practical Kabbalah when Jerusalem was under siege in order
to limit the carnage.5 We have the following account of a shelling in 1835
during a revolt against the Turkish sultan:
During one shelling, Rav Avraham Mizrahi Shar’abi, the famous

kabbalist of Beit El Yeshivah, sat down with his scribe, Rav Yedidiah
Abulafia, and wrote various holy names and permutations on a
parchment. He ordered his disciple not to move from his place while
he concentrated on the holy names. It seemed that Rav Shar’abi’s
prayers and meditations were effective. The damage from the shel-
ling was extensive, but not a single human being was killed. At
the end of the day, Rav Abulafia went outside to see what had hap-
pened. As soon as he started down one of the corridors, a piece
of shrapnel struck him and left him limping for the rest of his
life.6
shar’abi’s school 87
Another of Shar’abi’s grandsons, Hayyim Avraham Gagin (acronym Rav

_
Aga’’n, 1787–1848), was the sixth head of Beit El, served as Rishon le-Zion from
_
1842 to 1848, and was the first to be designated Hakham Bashi, or the recog-
nized chief rabbi of the Ottomans.7 Gagin married the daughter of Avraham
Shalom Hasid; the bride was known as ‘‘Doda’’ (Aunt) Rivka.
Next to Shar’abi himself, Hayyim Yosef David Azulai (acronym HYD’’A,
_ _
1724–1826) was perhaps the most famous of the Beit El students. He produced
an entire library of legal, homiletical, and theoretical works and traveled far and
wide as an emissary of the Jerusalem community.8 The original charters of the
Beit El kabbalists are written in his hand, implying that he was their author. He
organized the circle known as Ahavat Shalom, which did not seem to continue
after his move to Hebron in 1769. His homiletical and theoretical writings do
not reflect Shar’abi’s teaching, and he may have pulled back from deep activity
in the world of kavvanot.
Among Shar’abi’s other prominent students were Yisrael Ya’akov Algazi
(1680–1756) and his son, Yom Tov Algazi (1727–1802), who would become a
Rishon le-Ziyyon.9 Yom Tov acted as an emissary for the Jerusalem community
_
and made a favorable impression on such monolithic figures of the Hungarian
rabbinate as Moshe Sofer, the Hatam Sofer, and his father-in-law, Akiva Eiger.
_
Besides his rabbinical duties, Yom Tov Algazi was the head of Beit El for the
last twenty-five years of his life, to 1802.
Another second-generation kabbalist, Ya’akov Shealtiel Nino, was raised
from his youth in Beit El. He authored the work Emet Le-Ya’akov, which is
widely referenced by other theoretical works, as well as a number of penitential
rites (tiqqunim). Nino also acted as an emissary for the community.10
A humble and unassuming member of the Beit El community, Rahamim
Sarim, produced the work Sha’arei Rahamim, which is a series of responsa
elicited from such figures as Hayyim Shaul Dweck. The questions themselves
are often simplistic and the various sages often do not respond to the questions
asked, but the work is suffused with a charming humility and piety, qualities
often in short supply in the Beit El tradition.11
R. Yedidiah Raphael Hai Abulafia (acronym the Rav YiR’’A) was the sev-
enth head of the Beit El yeshivah. Abulafia was the primary editor of Shar’abi’s
writings and produced the most widely accepted version of Shar’abi’s prayer
kavvanot. Like Ya’akov Shealtiel Nino, he was affiliated with the Beit El com-
munity from childhood. His prayer book was acclaimed in Beit El as the
authoritative version.12 Through his efforts, the prayer book expanded to in-
clude devotions for the entire year. He also edited the introductions at the
beginning of the prayer book, which are commonly called Rehovot ha-Nahar.
He revised his own teachings a number of times, on the basis of his acquisition
of Shar’abi’s autograph manuscripts that were in his possession.13 He also
based his own writings on the conclusions of earlier figures such as Gagin14
and Hayyim de la Rosa.15 Because of the encompassing sweep of his activities,
_
Abulafia is widely considered the final arbiter of the Shar’abi’s practices and
kavvanot.16
Aleppo
Among the Beit El kabbalists, the sages of Aleppo (Aram Zovah or Halab)17
_ _
have great authority and credibility and are considered to have preserved the
most authentic version of Shar’abi’s kavvanot. Mordechai Abadi brought the
Beit El practices to Aleppo.18 His colleague Eliahu Mishan, one of the major
Aleppo sages, referred to Shar’abi in a number of his responsa in his work
Zedek ve-Shalom.19 Mishan was also the author of the commentary Sefat Emet
on Vital’s Ez Hayyim.
_ _
Mishan and Abadi’s principle student was Hayyim Shaul Dweck, the ‘‘Rav
_
SaDeH.’’ Dweck was the most influential sage of the Aleppo school. In his
youth, he was also influenced by Nissim Harari Raful, author of ‘Alei Nahar, an
early explication of Shar’abi’s prayer kavvanot. Early in his career, Dweck
contacted Sasson Bakher Moshe, the sitting head of Beit El, to discuss scholarly
concerns in the study of Shar’abi’s practice.20 At the age of thirty-two, he
moved to Jerusalem, cementing relations between the two communities. He
left Syria, supposedly over the problem of immodest behavior of the Aleppo
women.21
There are many traditions that relate to Dweck’s bravery in the face of the
blindness that afflicted him in his later years. Two main students of the next
generation, Yehudah Petayah and Suleiman Mozfi, cared for Dweck in his
_
infirmity. His later works, such as his well-known commentary on Vital’s Ozrot
_
Hayyim, Eifah Sheleimah, were dictated orally to Yehudah Petayah and Ya’akov
_
Hayyim Sofer.22 Sofer was the author of Kaf ha-Hayyim, which he wrote in the
_ _
loft of the present-day yeshivah Shoshanim le-David, in Jerusalem’s Bukharian
quarter. Rahamim Sarim’s Sha’arei Rahamim was composed in a similar oral
format and contained many contributions from Dweck.23
Dweck’s Efah Shleimah, a commentary on the Lurianic work Ozrot
_
Hayyim, presents many of Shar’abi’s teachings with great clarity.24 Dweck was
_
committed to expanding the popular base of Beit El practice by publishing the
penitential kavvanot in a chapbook format. These include Benayahu ben Ye-
hoyada, Kavvanot Pratiyot, (Hayyim Shaul Dweck and Eliahu Ya’akov Legimi,
eds.); Kavvanot ha-Sefirah, Kriat Shema’ ‘Al ha-Mitah (all Jerusalem, 1911); Or
ha-Levanah (Ya’akov Kezin, ed., Jerusalem, 1915); Ez ha-Gan (Jerusalem, 1931);
_ _
and Sar Shalom (Jerusalem 1912). These publications represented the first time
that Shar’abi’s penitential prayers were widely circulated. Dweck also assisted
in the publication of such works as Nissim Harrari Raful’s ‘Alei Nahar, Eliahu
Mishan’s Sefat Emet, and Avigdor Azriel’s Zimrat ha-Arez.
_
The publication of these works, as well as the early edition of Shar’abi’s
prayer book, reflected a messianic tinge to Dweck’s activities that bears further
attention. In his fateful decision to popularize the kavvanot, his decision to
reinstitute Shar’abi’s radical kavvanot for the Sabbatical year, and his move
from the Old City to the Bukharian quarter, Dweck showed impatience with
tradition that seems motivated by the sense that new paradigms of behavior
were at hand.
Dweck esteemed the works of the Hasidic court of Komarno, particularly
_
Yizhak Eizik of Komarno’s Torah commentary Heikhal ha-Brakhah, and the
feeling between the two communities was mutual.25 Dweck was also close to
other Ashkenazi giants, such as the Muncaczer Rav, Hayyim Eliezer Shapiro,
and the rabbis of the Karliner dynasty.26 In this, Dweck represents a link to the
scholastic kabbalists of late Hasidism and the coalescing of various social
_
currents in the Jerusalem into one ultra-Orthodox community with shared
social and spiritual concerns.
Baghdad
The influence of the Jewish community of Baghdad extended among the ex-
patriate Baghdadi Jews from Southeast Asia to South America.27 The leader of
the nineteenth-century Baghdadi community at the height of its influence was
Yosef Hayyim (1835–1909), known as ‘‘the Ben Ish Hai,’’ after the title of his
_ _
most popular work. He was an extraordinary communal leader, scholar, and
theologian. Zvi Zohar has best described the scope of his activity:28
[He] was an exceptional and unusual spiritual figure. He possessed

rare intellectual talents, a phenomenal memory, a fluent and ex-
pressive literary and rhetorical style, and an interest in all branches
of the Torah creative process. One could describe him as combin-
ing the prominent aspects of the Vilna Gaon and the Maggid of
Dubno: unusual diligence in study and command of every aspect of
the creative Torah literature on one and, and unobstructed involve-
ment in bringing the Torah to the general public through popular
sermons and through the composition of special compositions for the

general public, on the other hand.
Yosef Hayyim considered Shar’abi’s approach to the Lurianic system as

_
prerequisite for the teaching of ‘‘true wisdom.’’29 His didactic work Da’at
U’Tevunah invokes Shar’abi extensively, usually as the capstone to the pre-
sentation of a given topic. He viewed Shar’abi’s understanding as prerequisite
and declared that a beginner in Kabbalah should study only works that were in
agreement with the introductions of Shar’abi. Yosef Hayyim included kabba-
_
listic material in his responsa, Rav Pe’alim, as well as in his commentary on the
Talmud, Sefer Benayahu, and in his popular work, Ben Ish Hai. He devised his
_
own versions of Luria’s penitential rites in his Lashon Hakhamim.30
_
Besides Yosef Hayyim, Shar’abi’s influence was evident in the writings
and movements of other Iraqi kabbalists. Another didactic work by a Baghdadi
kabbalist, Suleiman Eliahu’s Kerem Shelomo is also based on Shar’abi’s sys-
tem.31 Eliahu underwent a crisis of faith much on the order of an intellectual of
the Eastern haskalah, and the Ben Ish Hai intervened to redirect him toward
_
Kabbalah. Kerem Shelomo remains a popular work among Beit El kabbalists
today. Another important Baghdadi mystic, Yehezkel Ezra Rahamim, immi-
grated to Jerusalem in order to study Kabbalah.32 Eliahu Mani33 (1818–1899)
similarly moved from Baghdad to the land of Israel in 1856, settling first in
Jerusalem but two years later establishing himself in Hebron. He established
the Beit Ya’akov synagogue in that city, which also hosted a circle of kavvanot
practitioners (mekavvenim). Mani frequently cites Yedidiah Raphael Hai Abu-
_
lafia and, in turn, influenced Avraham Gagin and Avraham Bakher David
Majar (the latter is helpfully referred to as RaBaD in the scholarly writings).34
Yehudah Petayah, already mentioned, left quite a mark on the social fabric
of Jerusalem, through his writings, activities, and the illustrious family that he
founded. Petayah is reputed to have exorcized Shabbatai Zevi’s dybbuk in
Baghdad in 1903. He eventually took up residence in Jerusalem, where he
composed a number of works still popular among both Beit El adepts and the
general populace. Petayah was also a visionary who left a record of his com-
muning with the spirit world.35
Others
Besides the question of how rank beginners in the field should approach
Lurianic Kabbalah and Shar’abi’s gloss on it, another question presents itself.
For the generations of cosmopolitan, seasoned nineteenth-century kabbalists,
what brought about the ‘‘conversion experience’’ that brought them into the
Beit El camp? What was the quality that Shar’abi brought to his interpretations
that resolved so many textual problems for so many acolytes? Was it simply
exposure to the eros of the Beit El community?
The persuasiveness of Shar’abi’s teachings was particularly strong for
kabbalists outside the Jerusalem-Aleppo-Baghdad corridor. In fact, Shar’abi
had disciples elsewhere in the Jewish world.36 One Ashkenazic acolyte, Ya’akov
Meir Shpilman, describes an intellectual and spiritual awakening through
exposure to Shar’abi’s teaching in his didactic work Tal Orot:
I did not come but to the edge [of the Divine wisdom] until I jour-
neyed to the countries of the west and there I found the works of
Rav Shmuel Vital, the son of the holy Rav Hayyim Vital, and the
_
works of the holy Rav Shalom Shar’abi. And I found favor by a
student of one of his students, who did not withhold from me the
early introductions, and I added his words to the earlier and later
authors, and thereby came to understand like a drop in the ocean this
sweet delightful beloved holy wisdom.37
Menachem Menkhin Heilperin, in his editor’s introduction to the enor-

mous Jerusalem edition of Ez Hayyim,38 portrays Shar’abi’s teaching as having
_ _
resolved the problematic elements of the Lurianic canon and its presentation:
With regards to Luria’s writings the drushim multiply to infinity,

yet every drush has a connection to some other drush. But we could
not connect them and make them into one doctrine until our holy
Rabbi, the wondrous light, the pure lamp Rav Shalom Shar’abi cru-
shed them and ground there and kneaded them with pure olive
oil, which was the Divine wisdom that was within him, and revealed
to us the path of the order of the process in all its details, grafted
them and combined them together and made them into own won-
drously deep teaching, Blessed is the sage of secrets!
Many of these panegyrics came about in response to perceived attacks on

Shar’abi in Shlomo Molkho’s Shemen Zayit Zakh, which is a commentary on
Nahar Shalom. The debate between Molkho and Shar’abi requires further
analysis, although its complexities are certainly reflected in the following vi-
gnette. The Jerusalem kabbalist Sariah Deblitzky, in his Mahshevet Bezalel,
_
describes the situation as follows:
It is known that the saintly genius Rav Shlomo Molkho, who lived
at the same time as Shar’abi, wrote a book known as Shemen Zayit
Zakh the essence of which was to question Shar’abi’s teachings with

regards to a number of issues that were written in the introduction
to Rehovot ha-Nahar. One hundred years ago in Jerusalem there was
a righteous sage, Rav Eliezer ben Tuvo, author of Pekudat Eliezer
on the code of Jewish law, and he practiced the secret wisdom. Once
he was investigating a great question in Shar’abi’s language, and he
could not resolve it. He dozed, and slept, and in his dream a voice
said ‘‘is this question not resolved in the work Shemen Zayit Zakh, in
form and image?’’ He did not own Shemen Zayit Zakh, so one was
brought to him and he saw the question written!39
Initially, Shar’abi’s school comprised a largely Middle Eastern circle, giv-

ing new resonance to the trope Sephardim ve-Edot ha-Mizrah, Sephardim, the
latter being the lineal heirs of the Spanish community, concentrated, in this
instance, in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, as opposed to Edot ha-Mizrah, the
community of sages that resided along the strip extending from Jerusalem to
Aleppo and thence to Baghdad. The initial leadership of the group was drawn
from the latter group, with the Persian community acting as spectators in the
process. The spiritual climate of Jerusalem grew increasingly cosmopolitan in
the nineteenth century, and many Ashkenazic sages came under the influence
of Beit El. Sar Shalom Rokeah of Belz and others in the court of the Belzer
Hasidim requested manuscripts of Shar’abi’s prayer book and Nahar Shalom
and were, to all reports, enthralled by Shar’abi’s insights.40 Avraham Yeshaye
Kareliz, the influential halakhist known as the Hazon Ish, meditated in
_
Shar’abi’s private quarters and exclaimed, ‘‘How awesome is this place.’’41
Hayyim Shaul Dweck earned an enthusiastic approbation for his commentary
to Ya’akov Zemakh’s Ozrot Hayyim, Eifah Shleimah, from Zevi Hirsch Shapira,
_ _
the estimable Munkazcer Rav.42 The latter was a member of the late Beit El
circle, as was Ben Zion Shapira, from the circle of Mahari’’l Diskin. The Jer-
usalem pietist and zealot Yeshayahu Asher Zeir Margoliot served as an in-
tercessor between the Beit El community and the principle sages of Eastern
Europe.43
In this way, Shar’abi’s influence ‘‘crossed over’’ into the Ashkenazic com-
munity of his period and after. Alliances between the Beit El kabbalists and
their Ashkenazi counterparts began over a shared interest in Lurianic practice.
Within the European rabbinic world, the Beit El kabbalists were understood to
be the central receptors of the tradition. One does not see the Hazon Ish or
_
Rabbi Akiva Eiger as avid kabbalists. Yet, they represented the apex of rabbinic
achievement into the next generations and, possibly in a classically rabbinic
refusal to engage with Kabbalah, ceded the ultimate authority to the East. As is
demonstrated in a later chapter, the Hassidic movement engaged Beit El and

_
yet came to reject its direction. It might be argued, after Garb, that kabbalistic
authority was itself a form of power, or at least a currency, when an institu-
tion came to promote itself in the economy of Jewish Jerusalem, which was
maintained, as today, by donations from supporters in the Diaspora.
Eventually these alliances spread into the realm of social concerns, and the
relationships between the European and the Eastern schools coalesced into the
shared concerns of what would now be called the haredi, or ultra-Orthodox
world. The Ashkenazic and Middle Eastern rabbinates found a common
ground in the veneration of the Beit El school. Contacts between kabbalists in
the East and enthusiasts of Kabbalah in the rabbinic establishments created
one line of communication within the religious world that would survive into
the British Mandate.
7
The Literary Tradition
of Beit El
The Beit El kabbalists root their practice in Shar’abi’s theoretical

writings, which are mainly glosses and commentaries on the Lurianic
canon. These writings are uneven in structure and scope and call
for much interpretation. A number of them are extant only in man-
uscript,1 while others were not published until the early twentieth
century. Shar’abi’s central work, Nahar Shalom, while widely circu-
lated, is a random jumble of writings without an inner order. There
are many lost fragments in the various editions of Shar’abi’s prayer
book, with no final edition that resolves the differences. Accordingly,
contemporary Beit El kabbalists have applied themselves to compil-
ing his writings in ever more exact and perfected editions. This is
particularly the case with Shar’abi’s prayer book, which is, after all,
more a tool than a mere book.
Shar’abi’s essential writings include Emet ve-Shalom, his emen-
dations on Vital’s Ez Hayyim; Rehovot ha-Nahar, a clarification of
_ _
the Lurianic system;2 and Nahar Shalom, a commentary on the prayer
kavvanot in Vital’s Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot. Nahar Shalom is also the for-
mal name of Shar’abi’s prayer book, incorporating his introductions,
which are called Rehovot ha-Nahar,3 and the kavvanot themselves.
Shar’abi also composed responsa, many of which are lost.4
Shar’abi also produced a number of tiqqunim, that is, mystical
prayers and incantations to rectify the situation of widows and the sick
and to prevent and rectify nocturnal emissions. Many of these prac-
tices were culled from Vital’s Sha’ar Ruah ha-Kodesh and adapted by
Shar’abi.5 Shar’abi also formalized penitential rituals for the donning of

sackcloth, ritual immersion, charity, self-flagellation, acceptance of punish-
ments of the rabbinical court (particularly for sexual offenses),6 and petitions
for the ending of plagues. The earliest kavvanot to be set in type were rites for
the atonement for various sins. Some of these penitential prayers were col-
lected by Hayyim Shaul Dweck in the works Benayahu Ben Yehoyada, Kavvanot
Pratiyot (literally ‘‘Private Kavvanot’’) and Sar Shalom.7 Because of Dweck’s
stormy relations with the sages of Beit El, Nissim Nahum sent the manuscript
for review to Shlomo Eliashiv, the author of Leshem Sh’va Ve-Ohalamah.8 In his
approbation to Dweck and Legimi’s Benayahu Ben Yehoyada, Eliashiv admitted
that Dweck and Legimi augmented and consolidated the kavvanot in Vital’s
Sha’ar Ruah ha-Kodesh. Since this work was intended for penitential purposes,
it was certainly acceptable because of the volume of successful repentance that
it would expedite.9 Hence, acts of public penitence have prompted the circu-
lation of kavvanot.10 In response to the upheavals of the approaching twentieth
century, Dweck and the Rehovot ha-Nahar community relaxed their strictures
and enlisted the common folk in the cosmic struggle.
Shar’abi’s emendations to Vital’s Ez Hayyim are called the Hagahot ha-
_ _
Shemesh.11 The original copy, which seems to be still extant, was kept under the
ark of the synagogue at Beit El.12 Many of these emendations were put into
the Ez Hayyim unparenthesized, while others are parenthesized and yet not
_ _
credited to Shar’abi.13 This led, at times, to the alteration of texts in order to
bring them into line with Shar’abi’s emendations.
Perhaps because of the complexities attending the compilation of Shar’-
abi’s oeuvre, the mystics of the Beit El School have taken a view of it that
parallels understandings of Luria and Vital’s elastic canon. Shar’abi’s surviving
writings are considered only a fragment of his production,14 a tradition also
associated with the Zohar itself. Shar’abi’s acolytes have developed theories of
the development of Shar’abi’s ideas, the archaeology of his writings, and their
gradual assembly.15 The desiderata and discrepancies that remain in Shar’abi’s
Nahar Shalom are sometimes resolved in Rehovot ha-Nahar.16 Eliahu Mishan
was the first to advance a documentary view, maintaining that Shar’abi initially
left matters unresolved until his later writings.17 An important later inter-
preter, Sasson Bakher Moshe, denied that there were stages in Shar’abi’s
teaching, claiming, rather, that ‘‘it is all true.’’ However, creditable figures such
as Ya’akov Moshe Hillel and Yedidiah Raphael Hai Abulafia identified ar-
_
chaeology and development in Shar’abi’s teaching.18 In fact, the contemporary
kabbalist Ya’akov Moshe Hillel posits the existence of earlier and later editions
in Shar’abi’s oeuvre, much like the archaeology of Vital’s writings. In any case,
Hillel concurs with Abulafia’s insistence that only the later edition be seen as
the literary tradition of beit el 97
authoritative.19 Hillel opines that if Shar’abi had edited his own works, they
would have been well edited and publishable as is.
Shar’abi’s Prayer book
The most widely known evidence of Shar’abi’s activity is ‘‘his’’ prayer book, the
Siddur ha-RaShaSh. Shar’abi did not reveal his kavvanot during his lifetime; his
students and descendants circulated them. A complex taxonomy attaches to the
various versions of Shar’abi’s prayer book. Shar’abi amended and correct his
prayer book throughout his life, adding and erasing, until he came to the con-
clusions of the final edition.20 As he wrote,21 ‘‘for many years I have performed
the intention with which God has graced me by heart, until I wrote out the
intentions of the silent devotion.’’ This is the reason, according to the faithful,
that so many versions of the kavvanot were found in Shar’abi’s notebooks.22
The prayer book that has come to be called Siddur ha-RaShaSh, or
‘‘Shar’abi’s,’’ was developed over successive generations following Shar’abi’s
death. Since the early twentieth century, it has been published a number of
times and in a few editions, and the format and presentation of the kavvanot are
still evolving. There are a number of traditions attending the prayer book’s
original redaction and its circulation.
It is popularly believed that Shar’abi’s original version of the prayer book
was transmitted to the kabbalists of Aleppo and was hidden for some time.
After Shar’abi’s death, his son Hizkiahu took the manuscripts to Tunis, and
there the writings became disordered. To further contribute to this confusion,
the scribes who copied the various prayer books did not fully understand the
material and made a number of mistakes. An important source for the re-
dactors was a copy of Vital’s Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot that included Shar’abi’s
emendations and that belonged to David di Silo. Finally, the last edition of the
prayer book was lost. In any case, it was widely acknowledged that the material
published in Jerusalem in 1916, nearly a century and a half after Shar’abi’s
death, was nothing but a portion of the original.23
As a result of these factors, there are many versions and editions of the
prayer book. There are ‘‘long’’ and ‘‘short’’ versions, as well as the editions
preferred by the Beit El and Aleppo communities.24 The prayer book used in
Beit El was the ‘‘long’’ edition, while the printed edition was the short Aleppo or
Aram Zovah edition. There is some confusion as to whether the Aram Zovah
_ _
edition was ever extant in the longer version. Most of the prayer books in
circulation were based on the ‘‘short’’ Aram Zovah edition, while the Beit El
_
‘‘long’’ edition was, until the present era, circulated mainly among the inner
circle of adepts. The Beit El edition was not published in its full form, as the
Beit El kabbalists had an antipathy to publishing the prayer book.25
The decision to begin the publication of the kavvanot was obviously a fateful
one. Hayyim Shaul Dweck was involved in the early publication of the prayer
book. He based his version on a number of manuscripts from Eliahu Mishan
and Nissim Harari Raful, as well as on texts from Shar’abi’s scribe, Yosef Der’i.26
He also drew on the later versions of the prayer book from Yedidiah Rafael Hai
_
Abulafia that were based on the work Divrei Shalom. The first editions were
published with the help of Reuven Haaz of the Sha’ar ha-Shamayim yeshivah.
The later versions came out under the aegis of Yom Tov Yedid Levi. This led to
the edition of the prayer book published by David Majar, which was based mainly
on Shar’abi’s ‘‘first edition.’’ This version of the prayer book is in the public
domain and has been widely circulated.27 However, Dweck was involved only in
the publication of the kavvanot of the first section of the prayer book (1911). After
the publication of the first sections, Dweck withdrew from the enterprise, having
had second thoughts about the probity of circulating the kavvanot.28
The prayer book editions prepared by Yedidiah Raphael Hai Abulafia have
_
the greatest credibility among the canonizors.29 His theoretical introductions
were published as Shar’abi’s Rehovot ha-Nahar. Contemporary mystics believe
that the introductions are best rendered in Yedidiah Raphael Hai Abulafia’s
_
Kinyan Perot.30
In recent years, new editions of Shar’abi’s kavvanot have been published
and earlier editions republished. These include new editions of the prayer
book, kavvanot for special occasions and practices, such as the counting of the
over or the bedside Shema’, and specifically penitential prayers. A version of the
prayer book was developed by and for the use of the Hasidim of Arele Roth,
_
the Shomrei Emunim community.31 Another edition was developed that uses
an obscure form of color coding as part of the practice.32 The Nahar Shalom
community, in collaboration with Ya’akov Moshe Hillel, has developed the
extensive version Rehovot ha-Nahar that is based on the long Aram Zovah
_
editions and the version by Yedidiah Raphael Hai Abulafia. Thus, the early
prayer books circulated by members of the Rehovot ha-Nahar circle, such as
Dweck and David Majar, have been usurped by the Aram Zovah school among
_
the contemporary kabbalists of Beit El.
Canon Limitation
Religious movements, as they gain social momentum, often move to limit

their accredited body of sacred writings.33 The canonization or sacralization of
the Zohar led to further limitations on the kabbalistic canon. The Zohar itself
limited the sources that it was willing to cite as authoritative. References to
Sefer Yezirah, for instance, are almost wholly absent from its main sections.
_
The very size and scope of the Zohar tended to run less presumptuous spec-
ulative works to ground. This tendency to limit creditable sources is also
present in the teachings of the central figure of post-Zohar Kabbalah, Isaac
Luria. Luria was openly critical of prior kabbalists in a well-known passage
referred to as ‘‘Nachmanides and his Comrades,’’ in which he says that up to
_
the time of the Zohar, kabbalistic teachings had been imperfect.34
In order to reinforce Shar’abi’s authority and spiritual hegemony, the
Beit El kabbalists employ forms of canon limitation that are characteristic of
both the Zohar literature and the Lurianic literature that is based upon it. The
Beit El kabbalists have taken pains to valorize the authority of Shar’abi’s
reading of Luria among practicing kabbalists. Shar’abi willfully limited his
sources, further maligning the early Kabbalah in these passages from his
Nahar Shalom:
My word is already before the witness of heaven that all of my pre-

occupation and study is only with the words of the AR’’I and his
student Hayyim Vital alone. Besides them I have no business with
_
any work of the kabbalists, early or latter. I didn’t even study the
writings of the AR’’I’s other students. When I come across their
words, I skip them. So I am not warning, but reminding, for God’s
sake, do not touch their words . . . only the Work Ez Hayyim and
_ _
Mavo She’arim and the Eight Gates, which are well known as all words
of the Living God. I have been as concise as I can on this matter,
for I feared that these pages might fall into the hands of one who has
not yet studied the words of the AR’’I appropriately, and they might
suspect that I had studied other books. And it is not so, as I have
stated.35 . . . Let the Heavens and all on high bear witness that that is
written [in the work Rehovot ha-Nahar] are all the words of the liv-
ing God spoken through Luria and Vital, and nothing besides. And
even the words of the other students of the AR’’I I did not study, nor
did I touch the books of the kabbalists, not the earlier nor the latter.
I did not study them nor do I have any knowledge of them, and it
is revealed and known before the One who spoke and the World came
into being that this is true.36
Yedidiah Raphael Hai Abulafia further echoed Shar’abi’s impulse to limit

_
the acceptable sources for the Beit El kabbalists in his approbation to Vital’s
Sha’ar he-Pesukkim and Sefer Likkutim:
Whoever is expert in his words and orders will see with his eyes that
he did not depart from the works of the Rav’s students, only from the
Eight Gates, Ez Hayyim and Mevo She’arim and Sefer Likkutim and
_ _
Olat Tamid, and from them he brought to light the pearls of his
introductions.37
Shar’abi proposed a very limited group of acceptable sources for the de-
velopment of his teachings, avowing that he drew all of his ideas from the
simple interpretation of Vital’s Eight Gates and Poppers’s Ez Hayyim. Materials
_ _
from the later Lurianic corpus then augmented these basic kavvanot. Hence,
Shar’abi’s kavvanot represent doctrinal conclusions about the development of
ideas in the Lurianic canon.38 Shar’abi seems not to have made use of Pri Ez
_
Hayyim, or of Zemakh’s Olat Tamid, preferring to use Hayyim Vital’s Derekh
_ _
Ez Hayyim and Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot.39 Among contemporary Beit El kabbalists,
_ _
the text of choice seems to be Ozrot Hayyim, the version compiled by Ya’akov
_ _
Zemakh in the second wave of editorial work on the canon.
_
Mishnat Hasidim
_
Among analysts of Shar’abi’s oeuvre, there is speculation about the influence
of Emanuel Hai Ricci’s Mishnat Hasidim on Shar’abi’s teachings.40 This in-
_ _
fluential work limned the entire Lurianic system and presented in it a flat,
declarative, yet wholly mythologized style. Mishnat Hasidim circulated the
_
kavvanot in the form finalized in Poppers’s Pri Ez Hayyim. Ricci’s work became
_ _
the most widely circulated primer on the Lurianic method, and it had wide
influence in the absence of any of the genuine Lurianic writings. In the ab-
sence of a full-scale study of this important kabbalist, a few words must suffice
to detail the problematic aspects of this teaching.
In the absence of much scholarly assessment, Ricci’s biography is contained
the introduction to his commentary on the psalms, Hozeh Ziyyon. He was born
_ _
in Ferrara, Italy, but spent his early adulthood as an itinerant teacher. Shortly
after being appointed rabbi of Trieste, in 1717, he emigrated to Safed, where he
sojourned for two years. After his daughter’s death from the plague, he spent his
remaining years in a number of Mediterranean locales, as well as in London. At
the age of fifty-five, on the first day of Adar, 1743, Ricci was murdered by bandits,
throttled with his own tefillin, and was buried in Gennetto.
A whiff of scandal, namely a rumored association with the Shabbatean
apostasy, attached to the reputation of Mishnat Hasidim, and it affected the
_
reception of the work in subsequent history.41 Ricci was ordained by a Shab-
batean, Hillel Ashkenazi of Hania, Crete, in Trieste, on the ninth of Av, 1717. In
_
fact, Ricci’s work Hoshev Mahshavot posits the occultation of the Messiah, a
_
manifestly Shabbatean idea.42 Other Shabbatean elements in Ricci’s teaching
include his advocacy of the wearing of phylacteries at the afternoon service on
the Sabbath eve, with regard to which he ruled leniently. In connection with
this, he quoted Ya’akov of Vilna, a known Shabbatean in the eyes of modern
scholarship.43 In this matter, he shared the opinion of the notorious Shabba-
tean work Hemdat ha-Yamim, as well as the practice of Ephraim of Ostrow.44
_
As a result of these concerns, Joel Teitelbaum, the renowned Satmar Rav,
in his letters, is said to have intimated darkly that the ‘‘mixed multitude’’ came
with Ricci’s writings.45 The eighteenth-century kabbalist Aryeh Leib Epstein
also indicated that ‘‘it would be better to desist from writing such texts, unless
the Holy Spirit rested upon one.’’46 This question of Ricci’s ties to Shabba-
teanism also preoccupied Yeshayahu Asher Zelig Margoliot, as evinced in a
communication to Zevi Moskowitz in the latter’s Hayyei ha-RaSHaSH.47
_ _
Notwithstanding the intimations of Shabbateanism, many prominent
sages attested to the importance of Mishnat Hasidim. In the words of the Hasidic
_ _
scholastic Zevi Elimelekh of Zidatchov: ‘‘I have warned people to believe only
the words of Hayyim Vital, and the words of Mishnat Hasidim, that I have
_ _
found to be fine flour, worthy to believe in, for he was a faithful copyist.’’48 A
later Hasidic figure, Zadok ha-Cohen of Lublin, seems to have thought that
_
Ricci was acceptable, referring to him as a ‘‘great and holy man . . . (who) erred
only in his belief.’’49
Questions about the reliability of Mishnat Hasidim as a source recur
_
among Beit El kabbalists. For one thing, the kavvanot of flagellation published
at the end of the work Emet le-Ya’akov50 are not found in Luria’s writings on
flagellation. The author of Emet le-Ya’akov, Jacob Shealtiel Nino, noted that:
I went to find the source of these things, whence they are found. I
found its source opened in the Sha’ar ha-Mizvot . . . and I further
_
found the matter further explicated in Mishnat Hasidim [Masekhet
_
Teshuvah 7] and in the work Sha’arei Zion. And nearly all of these
_
kavvanot are brought in Mishnat Hasidim with specification, for this
_
is [Shar’abi’s] holy method. . . . Apparently he recanted, at the end
of his life, [his admonition not to use any works other than Luria’s]
or it seems that [the admonition] was only in cases where there was
a contradiction to Lurianic teaching. And I have already committed
to memory more than ten teachings in his order of kavvanot that are
written in the Mishnat Hasidim, yet not mentioned in any gate of
_
[Vital’s] Eight Gates.51
Clearly, even to an authoritative figure such as Nino, Shar’abi had ab-

sorbed the influence of Mishnat Hasidim.52 Hillel quotes Yedidiah Raphael Hai
_ _
Abulafia, who was the author of the definitive version of the prayer service:
Specifically our teacher Rav Sar Shalom Shar’abi did not leave any
corner or niche in his ordering, for he did them all with the Divine
spirit which shone upon him from the study house of Shem, and
he specifically wrote that one was to pay no mind to the works
Mishnat Hasidim and Hemdat Yamim.53
_ _
In spite of the avowed concerns of so many kabbalists, Mishnat Hasidim
_
gained its greatest influence during a period when very few Lurianic works
were readily available. In the absence of Vital’s writings, Mishnat Hasidim
_
was widely circulated as an authoritative work, notwithstanding the aforemen-
tioned concerns. As a concise and systematic presentation of the Lurianic
system, it was embraced by the masses in the face of increasingly faint rabbinic
objections. A similar phenomenon has occurred in the rehabilitation of the
work Hemdat ha-Yamim, which has been reintroduced into the market and has
_
worn down its opposition. As indicated elsewhere,54 the Beit El kabbalists were
decidedly blasé when they encountered Shabbatean materials. Nonetheless,
they did not hide their reserve about other aspects of the Lurianic canon.
Vital’s Hegemony and the Italian School
As mentioned earlier, Shar’abi accredited only a limited number of Lurianic

sources, on the basis of the fact that he saw Hayyim Vital as Luria’s central
_
redactor. The years following Luria’s death saw a campaign by Vital to establish
his hegemony over the other students. Vital’s students declared that his ap-
pointment as Luria’s redactor was divinely inspired. According to the past life
regressions commonly practiced by the members of Luria’s school, Vital was
considered to bear the spark of Rav Abba, who was the redactor of the Zohar
from Shimon Bar Yohai.55 In stressing the centrality of Vital’s edition, Shar’abi
effectively continued Vital’s efforts to have himself considered the official
source of the Lurianic teaching.
In order to establish Vital as the sole redactor of the Lurianic teaching, all
opposing schools had to be discredited. The most threatening one was the
nascent Italian school, founded by Yisrael Sarug. Sarug was a young scholar
who sailed to Italy in the sixteenth century and began to purvey Lurianic
teachings to important figures of the Renaissance. Over time, his terminology
altered and assumed a tone more consonant with Italian Neo-Platonism. Even
contemporary scholars have differed over Sarug’s authenticity as a purveyor of
Luria’s teachings. Gershom Scholem argued that Sarug was not an authentic
purveyor of Lurianic teachings, a view that was challenged by Yosef Avivi and
Ronit Meroz.56 Any mention of Sarugian teachings is apt to be accompanied by
a disclaimer. Consider, for instance, the remarks of Vital’s final redactor, Meir
Poppers, upon invoking Sarug:
For Rav Hayyim Vital commanded, in the introduction to Ez Hayyim,

_ _ _
that we not study the words of any man besides him. And it is a
mizvah to uphold his words, so in all of my compositions you will
_
not find that I mention any drush besides the holy words of Rav
Hayyim. But here I have come to show you that I said nothing from
_
my own theory, for this is true and correct.57
What did Shar’abi think about Sarug and the Italian school? He polemi-
cized against the use of the works of Luria’s other students,58 unless they were
cited by Vital.59 Shar’abi himself would cite other students besides Vital, but
the assumption is that he could determine the correctness of an ancillary
tradition. He was also known to have disagreed with traditions that Vital de-
rived from Luria’s other students.60 In the work Kinnus Hakhamim, there is an
indication that Shar’abi did not permit the study of Sarug’s Drush ha-Malbush.
However, his student David Majar, in his Hasdei David, did refer to it.61
_
In this light, the contemporary kabbalist Ya’akov Moshe Hillel proscribes
much of the Italian Kabbalah, including the works of Menachem Azariah de-
Fano and Naftali Zevi Bakharakh; Moshe Yonah’s Kanfei Yonah; and Mena-
hem Azariah de Fano’s revision of that work, Yonat Ilem, as well as the anon-
ymous works Hathalat ha-Hokhmah, Ma’ayan ha-Hokhmah, Shever Yosef,
_ _
Sha’ar ha-Shamayim, Va-Yakhel Shlomo, Adam de-Azilut, and Raza de-Atvan
_
Glifin.62 However, some works are acceptable, notwithstanding their citation of
Sarug. These include the Shabbatean work Sha’arei Gan Eden, by Jacob Koppel
Lifschuetz, and Shalom Buzaglo’s Mikdash Melekh.63
The Beit El School continues to limit acceptable sources. It has already
been noted that Shar’abi limited his sources to a few sections of the late
Lurianic canon; contemporary mystics limit their study to the acolytes of the
Beit El school itself. In this fold are the work Shalom Yerushalayim, by Shlomo
Adani of Beit El; Hasdei David, by David Majar; Da’at U-Tevunah, by Rav Yosef
_
Hayyim, the ‘‘Ben Ish Hai’’; and the works of Shlomo Eliashiv. Hillel endorses
_
much early Kabbalah, perhaps more than his heroes Luria and Shar’abi: Re-
canati, Meir Ibn Gabbai, Yosef Gikatilla, and Ma’arekhet ha-Elohut with the
commentary of Yehudah Hayyat. He does warn against Abraham Abulafia,

_
however, whose works were not in general circulation until recently and do
contain antinomian ideas.64 Moshe Cordovero’s Kabbalah remained acceptable
to Shar’abi as a foundational work, as Cordovero was Luria’s teacher.65
For Hillel, the odd intrusion of occasional Shabbatean materials into the
Shar’abi canon is less of a problem than the appearance of Sarugian materials.
Among another group of Beit El kabbalists, the compilers of the recent series
of devotional works Ez Tidhar, Shar’abi’s kavvanot are combined with the
_
earlier common religion and even with manifestly Shabbatean ideas, re-
producing the commemorative meal for Tu Be-Shevat that has its origins in the
Shabbatean work Hemdat ha-Yamim.66
_
There is an ideological dimension to this polemic. In the contemporary
milieu, Hillel’s polemic against the works of Luria’s others students reflects
anxieties regarding contemporary scholarship. Scholars such as Ronit Meroz
and Yosef Avivi have developed documentary theories of the development of
the Lurianic canon that give particular attention to the works of the ancillary
students as reflecting better the essential Lurianic teaching in its early stages.
Hillel’s continuation of the strident advocacy of Vital and his deprecation of the
‘‘other students’’ serves as an attack on the archaeological reading of the Lur-
ianic teaching as a response to scholarly analyses and a concomitant interest,
among adepts as well, in the alternative recensions of other members of Luria’s
circle. The contemporary mystics of the Beit El school have declared war on the
academic notion of the evolution of Kabbalah.
Nonetheless, Hillel is only echoing an old concern, voiced by no less a
figure than Isaiah Horowitz, the author of the authoritative kabbalistic work
the Shnei Luhot ha-Brit, (abbrev. SheLaH). Horowitz, in a letter to Shmuel b.
Meshullam Feibush in Jerusalem, warned against the profusion of ‘‘small
compositions’’ (kuntrusim) that profess to originate from the AR’’I.’’67 Polemics
against the use of extraneous interpretations appear in the earliest published
editions of Shar’abi’s writings, which appeared at the beginning of the twen-
tieth century.68
This notion of the appropriate redaction and taxonomy of the Lurianic
canon flies in the face of critical archaeology of the canon, which views Vital’s
redaction as embellished over time and valorizes Luria’s minor students as
purveyors of the core teachings. Hillel projects a rejection of this view onto
Shar’abi’s teaching, developing an inverse view of the development of the
Lurianic canon. According to his view, the more laconic presentations of the
‘‘other students’’ are suspect in comparison to the full, exhaustive redaction
presented by Hayyim Vital and his students.
_
The Unfolding of Revelation
It should be noted that, more than the historical acceptance of Shar’abi by

acolytes, adherence to Shar’abi’s spiritual authority has taken on some of the
muscle of contemporary postmodern messianism. Many Jewish works aver
that their very composition is a harbinger of the end-time. Such works that are
the most canonical and credible often emerge during periods of messianic
surge. For example, the Zohar avers that it is the central kabbalistic document,
with messianic roles for its central figures. Lurianism, in turn, sees itself as the
correct interpretation of the Zohar. Both the Zohar and Luria’s writings are
messianic works whose very revelation presages the beginning of an end-
time.69
Ya’akov Moshe Hillel declares that, since Luria’s teaching derives from a
reading of the Zohar, one should have no doubt as to the validity of his reading.
Hence, Luria’s understanding is preferable to the Zohar’s plain meaning. In-
deed, Luria’s emergence was the ‘‘appointed time’’ to reveal the doctrine of cos-
mic repair, or tiqqun. For various reasons, the secrets of the world of Divine
repair, or tiqqun, had been unrevealed until the time of Luria. The processes of
revelation are such that if the Zohar had not been revealed, the worlds would
have returned to their state before creation, of being ‘‘unformed and void [tohu
va-vohu].’’70 As clarified before, Shar’abi is the third stage in the unfolding of
revelation, after Luria and the Zohar.
For contemporary kabbalists, the existence of enlightened sages in a given
generation and the teachings and general enlightenment that they spread have
a direct effect on the forces in the cosmos. In the case of kabbalistic enlight-
enment, the Zohar disappeared from late antiquity to the Middle Ages; con-
sequently, the wisdom of the sages was reduced. According to the contempo-
rary view, the upsurge of Kabbalah in the Safed renaissance consisted of a new
revelation, an outpouring of celestial light to the benighted world below.71
According to Lurianic ideas, each revelation of the secrets of the Torah in
successive generations comes about in order to further cleanse the successive
worlds of existence. Along with contaminated secular knowledge, there is a
growth in esoteric knowledge. Hence, Shalom Shar’abi’s teachings represent
another stage in the redemption. If this is the end-time, his teachings are the
key to redemption, and if this is not the end-time, it is the best that the
kabbalists have.
8
The Kavvanot in Hasidism
_
At the same time that Shalom Shar’abi was making his way to
Jerusalem, Gershom of Kitov, brother-in-law of the mysterious and
charismatic founder of Hasidism, the Ba’al Shem Tov (acronym
Besh’’t), was also establishing himself among the kabbalists of the
holy city. By most accounts, Rav Gershom came to Jerusalem in
the mid-eighteenth century and, by some accounts, attached him-
self to the Beit El community, as well as at the yeshivah of Hayyim
_
Ibn Attar.1 The evidence is that he had established a relationship
with Beit El’s founder, Gedaliah Hayyun, as early as 1748.2 Accord-
_
ing to Shivhei ha-Besh’’t (‘‘In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov’’), the
central record of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s legend,3 Shar’abi called upon
Gershom Kitover to lead public prayers for the release from a
drought.4 Shivhei ha-Besh’’t records that Rav Gershom was an avid
practitioner of kavvanot and received a formula from the Ba’al
Shem Tov of the blessing ‘‘who quickenest the dead’’ that was too
overwhelming for Rav Gershom to execute.5
The shared language among such geographically disparate
figures as the Polish Kitover, the Moroccan Ibn Attar, and the Ye-
menite Shar’abi was their practice of the kavvanot. Kavvanot prac-
tice flourished briefly in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries, in such communities as Brody, Rashkov, Zolkva, and
Medzibez, as evidenced by the accumulation of manuscripts and
printed prayer books from the area, which we assume indicates con-
comitant activity.6 At the same time, Besh’’tian materials penetrated
the North African Kabbalah of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.7 The
Besh’’t moved among groups of pietists, already known as Hasidim, who were
_
functioning in the same area at the same time, including the mysterious Klaus
in Brody.8 These communities produced the earliest manuscript prayer books,
which in turn formed the basis of the ‘‘Nusakh AR’’I,’’ the order of prayers in
the Lurianic style. Yet the Polish tradition of kavvanot practice was fated to be
abolished in the next generation of Hasidic leaders. In the course of a study of
_
the Beit El school, which came to include so many Eastern European adher-
ents, the role of the kavvanot of early Hasidism must be addressed.
_
Lurianic Prayer Books
Hasidism was a dynamic movement that circulated along new paths of eco-
_
nomic and social access in Eastern Europe. One agent of the spread of kavvanot
was the preparation and circulation of special prayer books with the exoteric
kavvanot inserted into the margins of the prayers. Among mekavvenim in
Europe and the Middle East, the special prayer book with kavvanot was born of
necessity. Lurianic kavvanot had grown so complex that the average adept could
not remember all of them during the course of prayer. The prescribed kavvanot
for a given rite had come to include a daunting number of sacred names and
associations that had to be presented on the page, linked directly to the prayer
itself as it was being recited.9 The ‘‘prayer book with the kavvanot of the AR’’I’’
became the characteristic instrument for the practice of contemplative prayer.
Most prayer books with Lurianic kavvanot were adopted from a number of
sources, which are intermingled. A central text was Vital’s Sha’ar ha- Kavvanot,
from the first edition of Lurianic writings, the ‘‘Eight Gates’’ of Shmuel Vital.
A second source was Pri Ez Hayyim, edited by Meir Poppers, comprising the
_ _
very last stage of the compilation of Lurianic writings. The writings of Ya’akov
Zemakh were also critical, as Zemakh had mastered a very didactic form of
_ _
expression. A converso who first encountered Judaism at the age of thirty-five,
Zemakh came into the world of the Jerusalem kabbalists very much from the
_
outside. Hence, he was able, and was compelled, to organize the materials he
found in formats that were more coherent than those of the kabbalists who
were used to the study of the drushim.10 Zemakh wrote out prayer kavvanot, as
_
well as two handbooks of kabbalistic practice, Nagid u-Mizaveh11 and Shulkhan
_
‘Arukh ha-AR’’I z’’l. Zemakh’s version was the template for the various sub-
_
sequent editions of other kabbalists.12 Ricci’s Mishnat Hasidim, as well, was
_
incorporated in toto in a number of editions.13 The importance of these later
the kavvanot in h asidism 109
_
recensions is evident in the development of the Lurianic prayer books. These
works reflected no interest in the documentary archaeology of Luria’s teach-
ings. They were based largely on the last recensions of the Lurianic writings,
the Ez Hayyim and particularly the Pri Ez Hayyim of Meir Poppers.
_ _ _ _
The Rashkover Prayer Book
An influential source for the spread of kavvanot in Poland was Shabbatai of

Rashkov’s prayer book, which quotes the Besh’’t several times.14 This work
served as a template for subsequent Lurianic prayer books.15 The prayer book
was written in 1755 but was published only in 1797, with a more exact version
produced in 1864. Avraham Shimshon of Rashkov, the son of Ya’akov Yosef of
Polnoye, transcribed another copy, available in manuscript facsimile.16 Kallus
has demonstrated that this edition is substantially the same as Shabbatai’s
original.17 Another influential prayer book, compiled by Asher Margoliot (Lvov,
1788), acknowledges its debt to the earlier Rashkover prayer book.18
In the published version of the Rashkover prayer book, the quotations
from the Ba’al Shem Tov are presented in the present tense, which may rep-
resent a bit of artistic license on the part of the publishers.19 The Rashkover
prayer book, for instance, presents the kavvanot for ritual immersion as the
pivotal kavvanot from the Besh’’t. This may demonstrate that the Ba’al Shem
Tov’s kavvanot may have been of the ‘‘occasional’’ variety, as opposed to the
comprehensive kavvanot of the full system.20
Although it is generally considered the Lurianic prayer book par excel-
lence, the Rashkover prayer book reflects earlier kabbalistic teachings as much
as the specifically Lurianic tradition. In the great set pieces of the service, the
moments of greatest suffusing of Divine effluence, the Rashkover prayer book
also presents kavvanot based on the general sefirotic Kabbalah, as well as
kavvanot derived from the pure Lurianic method. Such moments include pray-
ers such as Barukh She-Amar, the introduction of the preliminary psalms, the
kedushah, the moment of entrances into the synagogue, and the hymn El Adon
and other central hymns. In all of these cases, the Rashkover prayer book
presents materials that are avowedly Lurianic alongside materials that are
broader and more general than even the zoharic Kabbalah of Safed. In many
instances, two levels of kavvanah are presented. Often, the more popular, se-
firotic aspect survives into the popular recensions of the Hasidic rite, such as,
_
for instance, portraying the counting of the Omer in terms of the interplay of
the sefirot.21
Did the Ba’al Shem Tov Practice Kavvanot?
When thinking of Hasidism as an independent movement, scholars have

_
emphasized the Ba’al Shem Tov’s development of an atomistic approach to
prayer. This form of Hasidic prayer demanded meditation on the constituent
_
letters of every word of the prayer.22 Descriptions of this type of prayer often
invoke notions like ‘‘simplicity,’’ ‘‘emotionalism,’’ and ‘‘ecstasy.’’ Teachings
attributed to the Besh’’t also counsel the importance of ecstatic prayer, evinced
in music, dance, drinking, and, particularly, emotive power. The movements
help to create an experience that is emotional in nature, a great welling up of
emotion in dance and song.23 In one instance, atomistic reading is portrayed as
a substitute practice for one whom, for whatever reason, is not on the spiritual
level to practice the kavvanot:
For the wise man, whose eyes are in his head and may understand
and intuit, if the time has come that he can intend (le-kavven) the
inner secret and thus rejoice . . . it is good. But if he still sees him-
self as diminished, and cannot concentrate, for the strange thoughts
are overcoming him, let him pray like a day-old infant, from out of
a book, as so happened to my teacher [the Besh’’t], when he was
in another land and lost [his wisdom] so he cleaved himself to the
letters, for when he prayed from a text and cleaved himself to the
letters, he attained the World of Assiyah.24
This remark is significant in that it describes the activity that would later
be associated with Hasidic prayer: an emotive and naı̈ve meditation on the
_
plain liturgical text. According to this account, this practice is recommended as
a substitute for prayer with Lurianic kavvanot. According to Ya’akov Yosef, all
prayer, not just the kabbalistic form, when executed properly, is considered to
have the appropriate soteric effect on the upper worlds,25 as well as provoking
what scholars have termed the ‘‘radical immanence’’ that so characterized early
Hasidism.26 Eventually, Shlomo Lutzker, a disciple of the Maggid of Mezer-
_
itch, developed the standard substitution for the formal system of the kavvanot,
namely that one becomes lost within the letters themselves, after the fashion of
the Besh’’t.27
The Besh’’t’s facility with the world of sacred names for magical use, which
is an integral aspect of his persona, could easily have extended to the manip-
ulation of those names for prayer kavvanot.28 Joseph Weiss noted that the Ba’al
Shem Tov neither advocated nor condemned the use of prayer kavvanot. It was
Weiss’s argument that the Besh’’t seems to have been indifferent to the kav-
_
vanot or to have gone beyond the need to use them.29 However, Weiss, fol-
lowing the lead of Scholem, characterized the Ba’al Shem Tov as a classical am
ha-arez (unlettered person) of the eighteenth century.
_
Menachem Kallus has argued for the Besh’’t’s being an adept at kavvanot.
Kallus contends that the Ba’al Shem Tov was a practitioner of kavvanot himself,
on the basis of readings of the Rashkover prayer book.30 Weiss’s view that the
Ba’al Shem Tov was ‘‘too much of a plebian to have practiced the Lurianic
kavvanot’’31 is also belied by recent researches by Moshe Rosman.32 Kallus and
Rosman have demonstrated the Ba’al Shem Tov’s literacy and social position.
Kallus points to three practitioners of kavvanot who were linked to the Ba’al
Shem Tov: Moshe ben Dan of Dolena,33 Yisrael of Satanov, and Shabbatai of
Rashkov.34
Shivhei ha-Besh’’t alludes to the Ba’al Shem Tov’s possessing certain kav-
vanot, as in the aforementioned account of Gershom Kitover. However, most of
the accounts in Shivhei ha-Besh’’t reflect the type of prayer that had developed
into the Hasidic style by one generation later.35 The Besh’’t is described as
_
strenuous, emotional, centering spiritual intensity, but there seems to be little
recourse to an esoteric formula in the text. If, as Kallus argues, the Besh’’t was
an avid practitioner of kavvanot, then the accounts in Shivhei ha-Besh’’t are
anachronistic.
One may assume that the Besh’’t’s use of kavvanot was auteuristic and ad
hoc; that is, he specified certain kavvanot linked to specific prayers that had
been composed by specific and closely related sages. It is reasonable to expect
that he made novel use of gematriot, or numerical coefficients, as is evident in
many early Hasidic writings. Positive attitudes toward the practice of the
_
kavvanot survived among a number of Hasidic formalists, such as Zevi Hirsch
_ _
of Zidhatchov.36
The Rejection of Kavvanot in Hasidism

_
In recent years, Moshe Idel, Menachem Kallus, Rivka Schatz, and Joseph
Weiss have differed over the process by which the Hasidic movement dis-
_
pensed with the practice of kavvanot. It is unclear whether the disapproval of
kavvanot began as early as the Ba’al Shem Tov or whether it originated with his
successor, the Maggid of Mezeritch. On the face of it, the Maggid abolished the
practice. He argued that kavvanot could not bring about the emotional di-
mension necessary for cleaving to the Divine.37 According to the Maggid, the
emotional cry of the enthusiastic and pneumatic prayer of conventional Ha-
_
sidism is the more effective practice. The practice of kavvanot is not sufficiently
brazen to awaken the flow of divinity from heaven.38 The result of this rejec-
tion, as Joseph Weiss put it, was that for Hasidism, ‘‘kavvanah has become a
_
vehicle of the central Hasidic virtue of devekut.’’39 That is to say, the value of a
devekut-driven lifestyle overwhelmed the interest in kavvanot. Kavvanah passed
from being the object of the practice to being an aspect of a larger idea, namely
devekut.
The Maggid of Mezeritch deintellectualized the idea of kavvanah. It lost its
old kabbalistic meaning of the contemplation of sacred names at the time of
prayer. Its intellectual character thus lost, kavvanah became one of the various
synonyms of devekut, that ubiquitous Hasidic concept.40 Schatz defined the
_
rejection in terms of the technical object of the kavvanah:
It follows . . . that there is indeed a substantial difference between

the goal of the kabbalist, which is ‘‘to unite the World of the sefirot’’
and that of the hasid, which is to nullify his individuality by means
of immediate devequt with the Infinite.41
Were kavvanot abolished in order to substitute a new form of prayer, or

were the founders of Hasidism simply pessimistic about the possibility of such
_
use of kavvanot in the degenerate contemporary age? According to the latter
way of thinking, the rejection of kavvanot was an act of piety, a recognition of
the adept’s spiritual inadequacy. Such was at least partly the argument of non-
Hasidic quietists with regard to this practice, as has been demonstrated by
_
Alan Nadler.42
R. Ze’ev Wolf of Zhitomir saw the creation of such kavvanot as an example
of human arrogance.43 The Maggid also criticized the Lurianic system for
being limited, as it specified a random selection of ideas from the Zohar and
the speculations of Cordovero and Luria.44 The randomness is an artificial
limitation of the expressive possibilities of Kabbalah. Even Nahman of Breslav,
one generation beyond the central debate, was still compelled to polemicize
against the practice of kavvanot:
One of the ‘‘people of the Name’’ told me that he spoke with our
Rebbe about the service of God as it should be. Our Teacher under-
stood that [the adept] was engaging a bit in the kabbalistic inten-
tions in his prayer. Our teacher was very stringent with him, saying
that he should longer engage in it, nor pray with the kavvanot.
Rather, he should only pray with simple intention (even though this
man had studied Luria’s works according to his instructions, none-
theless he did not want him to engage in the kavvanot at all). Our
teacher said to him when an unworthy person prays with the
_
kavvanot it is like witchcraft. For of witchcraft it is said that it is
studied for understanding but not for practice. The Rabbis of Blessed
memory45 explained that one does not learn them to do but to un-
derstand and to instruct. And the same is true with the issue of the
kavvanot. One only learns them to understand and to know, but not
to practice if one is not worthy of it. For the essence of prayer is
cleaving (devekut).46
R. Nahman was concerned that specifically unworthy people were risking

the practice of the kavvanot. Throughout early Hasidism, there was a sense that
_
the generation was no longer worthy to practice the more recondite kabbalistic
traditions. In practical terms, the kavvanot remained extent in Hasidism
_
among the leadership. Theoretically, the kavvanot were beyond the ken of the
simple folk, but a worthy caste of practitioners could continue to practice the
kavvanot, with the support of the community. Such designated practitioners
were the saintly rabbis or zaddikim themselves. A number of citations limit the
_
practice of kavvanot to adepts of a frankly unattainable level,47 as was the case
in Shabbateanism.48
Avraham Hayyim of Zlatchov indicated that the proper prayer intention
_
was to link oneself with the ecclesia of Israel, particularly with those who
practiced the kavvanot.49 In the absence of the ability to pray, people confess
their inadequacy, saying, ‘‘Let it be as if I upheld it with the appropriate kav-
vanot.’’50 Others, such as Benjamin of Salositz, opined that the generation as a
whole had lost its worthiness to practice the kavvanot.51
Nusakh AR’’I
Notwithstanding their rejection of the formal Lurianic kavvanot, the early

Hasidic movement constructed an order of prayers, which they called nusakh
_
AR’’I, or ‘‘the order of the AR’’I.’’ The nusakh AR’’I was an amalgam of the
Ashkenazic and Sephardic rites developed as a result of the influence of the
manuscript Lurianic prayer books. The structure of this rite is rooted in an
ethnic ambivalence in Luria’s own life. Despite his coming from an Ashke-
nazic family, Luria took for his own liturgical practice the Sephardic rite, which
differed, in its text and structure, from the Ashkenazic rite.52 In order for an
Ashkenazic Jew to implement the Lurianic system of kavvanot, one would have
to make changes in the order of prayers.53 Those who wanted to emulate Luria
would rearrange the structure of the prayers to mimic the Sephardic rite, even
when the texts themselves still followed the tropes of the Ashkenazic custom.
In developing the new order, the aforementioned manuscript prayer book of

Avraham Shimshon of Rashkov54 was most influential, as has been demon-
strated by Yizhak Alfasi. Alfasi compared the Rashkover prayer book to the
_
Zolkava and Rashkov editions, as well as to the nusakh developed by Schneur
Zalman of Liadi, asserting that the former was a model for the others.55 As the
‘‘Lurianic’’ nusakh developed, certain things were added that had nothing to do
with the Sephardic rite practiced by Luria. There has also been resistance to
changing the custom of certain communities, as in the recent efforts by
Ovadiah Yosef to defend the Eastern communities from the encroachments of
artificial influences.56 Hence, this altered amalgam of the two prayer forms,
nusakh ha-AR’’I or, contemporarily, nusakh Sepharad, became the normative
order for Hasidism and, later, the state of Israel.
_
Hasidism has won a place in the study of religion for its exemplary theology,
_
which was interpreted by some as applicable to monotheistic belief even be-
yond the scope of Judaism. Nobody can deny that the social values of Hasidism
_
or the historical patterns of its spread through Eastern Europe, and its popu-
lism influenced the formation of the Zionist movement and thus the very
course of Jewish history.
In rejecting the practice of kavvanot, the early masters of Hasidism spe-
_
cifically turned away from a central feature of the Kabbalah that otherwise
informed their thinking. In removing the practice of kavvanot, the implication
was that the general thrust of Hasidic thought was going to bypass the most
_
abstruse formulations of the Lurianic system, to back away from the cutting
edge of kabbalistic innovation, labeling it as obscurantist and an obstruction to
spiritual attainment. The position of Hasidism was a return to the more
_
symbolic and contemplative form of Kabbalah espoused in the works of Moshe
Cordovero and the common religion of Safed.57
There is a possibility that there is a relationship between the negation of
the self that was necessary in bringing about the reconciliation of the sundered
countenances (parzufim) in Lurianic practice and the ethic of self-abnegation,
_
hitbatlut, of subsequent Hasidism. Although there is no causal or semantic
relationship, there is an intellectual closeness that links these ideas. Through-
out the kavvanot traditions of the Safed renaissance, the systems propounded
by Moshe Cordovero and Isaac Luria, the theurgic aspect of the practice is
essential. The role of prayer is manifestly to bring about a tiqqun, a theurgic
‘‘fixing’’ in the structure of the worlds.58 The goal is a transitive act, bringing a
change in an ‘‘other,’’ namely God. In order to have the desired effect, the
individual is called upon to negate himself,59 to immolate himself in joining
the embraces of the parzufim. This aspect of self-negation may have trans-
_
_
formed itself during the development of the widely known concept of bittul,
self-abnegation, advocated in Hasidic teaching. The early Hasidic polemics
_ _
regarding prayer and the kavvanot reveal that the early masters were concerned
with jettisoning the apparatus of kavvanot, while retaining the spiritual expe-
rience. This experience, as implied in the writings of the Safed kabbalists, was
one of self-abnegation and immolation.60
By and large, the Hasidic masters rejected the practice of kavvanot, seeing
_
it as an impediment to a religious view that was emotional, self-conscious, and
deeply psychological. Rather than view the tradition of sacred names as a secret
code that underlay the function of the cosmic order, the Hasidic masters took
_
another tack that presaged the yearnings and impulses of modern society. It is
significant that, in terms of its kabbalistic influences, one of the first orders of
business for the nascent movement was to dispense with the obscure, esoteric,
and elitist practiced of kavvanot in order to forge a theology based on popular
sensibilities.
Hasidism drew on an aspect of the kabbalistic that the world of kavvanot
_
would neglect, namely the eros of the road and the romance of the wanderer.
The kabbalistic circles that are described as surrounding Shimon Bar Yohai in
late antiquity were picaresque and populist. The sages of the Zohar were de-
picted as wandering the paths of the Galilee, having encounters with marginal
members of Jewish society: wagon drivers, women, and children. The unen-
cumbered contemplative experience that one gains by being a wanderer on the
paths of life is central to the Safed tradition, as well, as is evident from the
accounts of Moshe Cordovero and Shlomo Alkabetz of their wanderings or
‘‘exiles’’ in the environs of Safed, a practice that was continued by Isaac Luria.61
The Hasidic movement in its first century was similarly dynamic; it spread
_
through Eastern Europe and was nourished by the peregrinations of a newly
mobile Jewish society.
The practice of kavvanot, as it evolved at Beit El, marked a return to the
study house. Rejecting the mobility that defined the other streams of Kabbalah,
the Beit El kabbalists clung to the oldest Jewish quarters of Jerusalem. It was
from the alleys of the Old City and the Bukharian quarter that their teachings
radiated to the Diaspora. The lack of the personal element in Beit El Kabbalah,
its roots in Jerusalem, its domination by the Middle Eastern rabbinate, and its
willful obscurity caused it to drop from the concerns of Hasidism, as that
_
movement moved to its present position of social and historical importance in
the Jewish world.
9
Conclusions: Mysticism,
Metaphysics, and the
Limitations of Beit El
Kabbalah
This book is a combination of a historical survey of a kabbalistic school

and a study of a ‘‘lived tradition,’’ that is, a living community of
kabbalists. The kabbalists of Beit El have become the most influen-
tial single kabbalistic order of the past two hundred years. Their
influence crossed into Eastern Europe practically from the inception
of the fellowship, and they become the flagship institution for all
kabbalists who clung to the study and application of the most abstract
form of Kabbalah. The Beit El scholars arguably produced the most
complex and linguistically theoretical interpretation of Lurianic
Kabbalah, as well as a mystical practice based on the contemplation
of the most abstruse prayer intentions (i.e., kavvanot).
In approaching Beit El, I was guided by a few premises that form
the basis for the way Kabbalah is viewed by the academy and the
general Israeli community. First, whether one likes it or not, Beit El is
surely the last link to the old schools of Kabbalah in its classical pe-
riod, the last school of ‘‘pure’’ kabbalistic endeavor, in that its interest
was in kabbalistic study and practice for its own sake. Beit El main-
tained a direct historical link to earlier schools going back to the Safed
revival. As a living kabbalistic school, or ‘‘mystical’’ school, it would,
a scholar would assume, have a definition of mystical experience to
which adherents were aspiring and that would come out of the
application of adherents’ lifestyle. It is unusual to uncover a living
kabbalistic tradition, and, in proceeding to analyze it, one has to
determine the set of scholarly rules and negotiate various anxieties.
In order to examine Beit El as a source of Jewish mysticism, the ‘‘academy’’

asks certain initial questions and makes certain assumptions. In forcing Beit El
practice into the definitions inherent in ‘‘the study of mysticism,’’ I began to
come to some unsettling conclusions.
Among these assumptions are that Kabbalah is Jewish mysticism and that,
as ‘‘mysticism,’’ it shares common properties with other mystical traditions in
the religions of the world. As stated, the study of Kabbalah as a metaphysical
tradition has thus far been equated with ‘‘Jewish mysticism,’’ and scholars of
Kabbalah have fought for its place among the mystical teachings of world
religions. Kabbalah has been accepted as Jewish mysticism in the industry of
academia, and it is in that context that investigations of Kabbalah have gone
forward.
An organizing principle of the study of mysticism is based on the ‘‘mys-
tical experience.’’ Hence, the first question to be asked is, What is the mystical
experience in Beit El? How do the activities of the school reflect the substance
of Shar’abi’s teachings? After surveying its literature and observing its prac-
tices in the field, however, the observer will find little of the mystical experience
in Beit El Kabbalah. The metaphysical object of the practice is clear, however.
As has been discussed, this involves the surrender of the mind to the processes
of divinity coming down into the world, even though these processes are ap-
parently not felt or otherwise perceived. Beit El Kabbalah is obviously an
authentic form of Jewish esotericism. Nobody in the Jewish or kabbalistic
communities disputes the authenticity of Beit El in the kabbalistic lineage and
pantheon. It is a lineal descendant of the kabbalistic tradition coming out of
Safed into Jerusalem and applies the metaphysical system of Isaac Luria in its
most refined and theoretical form. However, it manifestly lacks the charac-
teristics of a mystical school as defined by the theorists of mysticism and
therefore drives a wedge into the association of Kabbalah with the academic
construct of ‘‘mysticism.’’ The distinction between mysticism and metaphysics
must be examined in defining Kabbalah as an area of study.
There are kabbalistic movements that are mystical, such as Hasidism, but
_
it is not necessarily a given that the content of a given kabbalistic school will
fit into the contemporary definition of mysticism. Kabbalah represents the
prevalent metaphysical traditions that have lain beneath the surface of tradi-
tional Judaism. Occasionally, the practice of Kabbalah overlaps into the realm
of mystical experience as defined by the Western academy, but not always.
Certainly the original definition of mystical experience by William James,
namely that it was pantheistic, optimistic, antinaturalistic, and in harmony
with ‘‘otherworldly states of mind,’’1 is simply too broad for an intelligent
assessment of the varieties of spirituality proffered in medieval Jewish thought.
conclusions 119
Scholem
Shar’abi and his heirs have been hiding in plain sight. They have remained
active and, in recent years, have grown as a group, yet they have not been given
scholarly attention. The reasons for this reluctance to confront Beit El are social
and historical, dictated by the mores of the academy, as well as the internal
politics of Kabbalah study. Professor Boaz Huss of Ben Gurion University has
addressed these reasons with a bracing clarity in recent years.2 Otherwise, they
are only beginning to be acknowledged, as the study of Kabbalah moves out
from the hegemonic influence of its founder, Gershom Scholem.
To tell the story simply, Gershom Scholem and his older colleague Martin
Buber began their activity in the early twentieth century, when the academy
was largely closed to the study of Jewish religion, if not closed to Jews alto-
gether. Enlightened Jews were apt to view Kabbalah and Hasidism in the way
_
that North American intellectuals might view Pentecostal snake handlers in
the Florida panhandle or late-night televangelists on obscure public-access
channels. There was a social gap between the ‘‘enlightened’’ world and the
world of the practitioners. Buber and Scholem ‘‘dropped out’’ of enlighten-
ment Germany with a socially quixotic interest in recovering and exhuming
Hasidism and Kabbalah, respectively, and presenting them to the academy, as
_
well as to the Jewish community. In the course of this endeavor, Scholem
continued the earlier equation of Kabbalah with ‘‘Jewish mysticism’’ in order to
introduce it to the Western academy.
The ‘‘study of mysticism’’ has often devolved into a Christological attempt
to define the religions of the world in Western terms, all in the name of
‘‘understanding.’’ But the ‘‘mysticism’’ proffered by William James and Evelyn
Underhill emphasized one experience as the common thread linking all
mystical traditions. As the latter put it: ‘‘The mystic act of union, that joyous
loss of the transfigured self in God, which is the crown of man’s conscious
ascent towards the Absolute, is the contribution of the individual to this, the
destiny of the cosmos.’’3 From William James and Evelyn Underhill to the
present, Western scholars have sought, with mixed success, to force the square
pegs of various mystical systems into the round holes set out by the ‘‘purest’’
forms, which often tend to be Christian or maybe Sufi. The original tendency
of the study of religions was to assume that all mystical experiences are the
same. This idea may have developed from missionary concerns. Often, the
premise of a unified comparative field that united various mystical schools
served as a device that allowed theorists to bludgeon all other positions into
the mold of their teleological bias. Even Aldous Huxley, in reducing mystical
experience to a series of physiological reactions (his chemical dimension of the

philosophia perennis) was practicing this sort of intellectual imperialism.
The theorists who came after, such as W. T. Stace and Jess Hollenback,
along with Aldous Huxley’s advocacy of the drug experience and R. C. Zaeh-
ner’s theological response,4 kept ‘‘mystical union’’ as the central definition of
the experience. The unifying element of such systems was the meeting be-
tween the individual and the transcendent, defined in Western theism as God.
Such union might be entirely creaturely in nature, available to anyone through
the act of philosophical contemplation, according to Jacques Mauritain,5 or
through the ingestion of a drug, according to Aldous Huxley and others.
In portraying Kabbalah to the eyes of the world, Scholem adopted vari-
ous strategies to make the field palatable to the academy. For example, the
ancient Merkavah tradition became, for Scholem and Saul Lieberman, ‘‘Jewish
Gnosticism,’’ even though, as has been pointed out by Moshe Idel, Gnostic
ideas could very well have had their origins in Judaism and therefore the
Gnostic tradition itself might really be ‘‘Gnostic Judaism.’’6 In this way, Kab-
balah was recast as ‘‘Jewish mysticism,’’ in order to place it in the continuum of
experience defined as ‘‘mysticism.’’ Scholem campaigned for Kabbalah’s place
at the table, even as he allowed that there may be no ‘‘mystical union’’ in
kabbalistic practice, which had been one of James’s main criteria. Nonetheless,
he insisted that Kabbalah was, in fact, ‘‘Jewish mysticism.’’
Huss has explored the association of Kabbalah with mysticism in his
article ‘‘The Mysticism of Kabbalah and the Myth of Jewish Mysticism.’’7 Huss
dates the adaptation of the term ‘‘Jewish mysticism’’ to the second half of the
nineteenth century. It springs from the general attempt to couch Jewish reli-
gious expression in Western terms. Adolph Jellinik termed Kabbalah ‘‘Jewish
Mysticism’’ in 1853.8 Buber echoed this view in his initial studies of R. Nahman
of Breslav, whom, in 1906, he termed ‘‘Die Judische Mystik.’’ Huss points out
the speciousness of equating Kabbalah with the romantic nineteenth-century
construction of mysticism. When in doubt about the mystical nature of Kab-
balah, scholars turned to the phenomenological methodology, which located
given mystical systems in the context of seemingly similar understandings.
Such a phenomenological impulse is in the air presently in the popular mer-
cantile syncretism of the new-age movement. Psychological forms, particularly
Jungian symbolism, have proven to be a fertile ground for analyzing the Zo-
har’s psychological imagery.
Scholem repeated the anecdote about a young secular scholar who comes
to a venerable kabbalistic academy asking to study with the acolytes. He is
accepted, provided that he ‘‘ask no questions,’’ a response that caused him to
withdraw in alarm, such a proviso being anathema to his whole conception of
conclusions 121
the didactic and justified nature of Jewish study and scholarly inquiry. The
student was Scholem himself, of course, and the academy was Beit El.9 Huss
observes that, ‘‘paradoxically enough, by his negative response Scholem ef-
fectively accepted the condition proposed by the kabbalist, for he chose not to
ask questions about—and not to study—Kabbalah as a living contemporary
phenomenon’’ and adds that ‘‘Scholem’s meetings with contemporary kabb-
alists left no impression whatsoever on his vast corpus of scholarly work.’’10 He
rejected the possibility of studying from contemporary sources, even their
textual record.
Huss has argued that this rejection was an ideological one, influenced by
Scholem’s embrace of the Zionist mythos, which required the marginalization
of all previous ethnic categories and the cultural identity of Diaspora Judaism.
According to the devastating critique offered by the late Arthur Hertzberg:
‘‘Scholem was quite clearly re-evoking these fascinating shades but ultimately,
to use the language of his charge against the scholars of the Wissenschaft
school, in order to bury them with due respect. It was part of the Jewish past,
the present was Zionism.’’11 Scholem’s reference to Beit El as the expression of
‘‘the Sephardic and arabized tribes’’12 even as his interlocutor at Beit El was the
Ashkenazi kabbalist R. Gershon Vilner points to his orientalistic distancing.
Huss notes that this tendency to reject the present-day manifestations of
Kabbalah has continued into the activities of contemporary scholars. For much
of the academy, the forms of Kabbalah taken up by the masses are, with the
exception, perhaps, of Chabad Hasidism, regarded as false or at least de-
classé.13 According to Huss:
This approach is typical of hegemonic Israeli discourse. . . . Early

kabbalistic literature and the academic investigators who work with it
are regarded as worthwhile, authentic and ‘‘professional,’’ but con-
temporary kabbalistic belief and practices (such as prostration on the
graves of the righteous, ritual reading of the Zohar and the exor-
cism of dybbuks) and the kabbalists who believe in and practice them
are considered to be the primitives, charlatans and even a menace
to modern Western-Israeli culture.14
Two impulses in Scholem’s school have emerged as problematic at the

present juncture. The first of these is the tendency to isolate ‘‘true’’ Kabbalah
in the historical past. The second problematic element is the general tendency
to define Kabbalah in terms of mysticism, in the frankly appropriationist,
Christological way. The anxieties in Israeli social life played their part in this, as
well, particularly the coercive tendencies of the religious establishment and the
rabbinate.
Contemporary Forms of Kabbalah
These anxieties have blinded scholars to certain new developments in the

history of Kabbalah that have come about as recently as the late twentieth
century, and there has been some resistance, in the scholarly community, to
the examination of contemporary trends in the development of Kabbalah.
Contrary to the apparent belief of many scholars, Kabbalah did not cease to
evolve in 1948, and its recent manifestations may in fact bear the sin of inel-
egance.
The most notorious of these developments is the recent flourishing of the
Kabbalah Centre, founded on the teachings of the impoverished Jerusalem
scholar and Marxist Yehudah Ashlag and flowering, in recent years, under the
direction of Yehudah Berg and his family. This particular circle has put the
word ‘‘Kabbalah’’ on the lips of the general populace, to the chagrin of both the
scholarly and the general Jewish communities. The Kabbalah Centre has pro-
moted a doctrine of psychological understandings for a number of classical
sacred names, apparently derived from the eighteenth-century work Herev Pi-
_
fiyyot by Isaiah Alesker of the kloiz in Brod. The Kabbalah Centre’s tradition of
citing without attribution is maddening to the scholar but not an insurmount-
able obstacle. Like Beit El, the Kabbalah Centre is a late-Lurianic school that has
emerged in modernity and that bears scrutiny on a purely historical basis.
The Jewish renewal movement, which has formed in the context of North
American liberal Judaism, is also evolving new approaches to Kabbalah. This
movement evolved from the Jewish student movement of the 1960s and
1970s, dovetailing with the activities of two prodigies of postwar Hasidism who
_
in turn embraced the counterculture, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and Rabbi
Zalman Schachter. Another example of contemporary Kabbalah is to be found
in the activities of Jewish evangelists such as R. Amnon Yizhak, who operates
in Israel and among expatriate Israel communities in the Diaspora. Such
figures draw their apparent spiritual lineage from the Moroccan wonder-
working rabbis of the twentieth century and the Beit El school of the Middle
East, but their function is a post-Zionist religious evangelism. Finally, there are
late-twentieth-century mutations of Hasidism. The messianic irruption in the
_
Chabad movement is well known. There has also been a revision of Breslav
Hasidism, which has split the group into various camps, some of which have
_
transgressed the social limits and restrictions of the conventional ultra-
Orthodox social milieu.
These movements represent late, manifestly inelegant interpretations of
aspects of the kabbalistic tradition, shaped by modernity yet emerging from
conclusions 123
within the closed walls of each sect. All of these circles are arguably ‘‘popular,’’
as they have been embraced by broader elements of the modern Jewish com-
munity, beyond the traditional closed circles of classical Kabbalah. Neo-Breslav
Hasidism, in particular, has made inroads into Israeli youth culture, particu-
_
larly as embodied in the phenomenon of the postarmy trip to India and the
sensibilities brought back to Israel by the returning youth. The evangelical
groups, neo-Breslav, and Kabbalah Centres have also served to blur the tradi-
tionally rigid lines between religious and secular in Israeli society.
The academy lags behind the polis in the acknowledgment and analysis of
these phenomena. Anecdotally, it seems that academic papers and articles on
the subject are greeted with some skepticism; postings of syncretistic material
on Web sites have been greeted with dismay or looked upon askance or with
ambivalence. It is understandable that scholars of Kabbalah might be resistant
to new manifestation purely because they are doing more elemental work
themselves; the field is in its infancy, and many central themes and schools
remain unexplored. Is contemporary Beit El Kabbalah is an accurate repre-
sentation of the intention of its founder, Shar’abi? Is the Kabbalah Center an
accurate portrayal of the ideas of Isaac Luria? Are Jewish Renewal, Chabad, or
Breslav true reflections of Hasidism? These questions remain open. It is not
_
enough to say that contemporary Kabbalah is ‘‘fluffy’’ or ‘‘not serious’’ or in-
authentic. In fact, it is possible that many of the historical irruptions of kab-
balistic activity were not pleasing to the refined religious esthetes of the period.
There were certainly many who found the early manifestations of Hasidism to
be not a pretty sight.15 In order to examine these phenomena, if only for the
larger good of the community, text scholars must sometimes turn into an-
thropological observers, as is the case in the recent studies of the Kabbalah
Centre by Jody Myers as well as in this author’s review of the Beit El school. For
the conventional historiographer, whose mission may be to recover and secure
the textual record, the monitoring of new developments in such a fashion is
likely to induce vertigo.
A further impediment to the clear consideration of the Kabbalah Centre, as
well as Beit El, is the relatively few Kabbalah scholars who work with the most
sophisticated and obscure Lurianic texts from which these groups derive their
doctrinal innovations. For instance, many scholars have held forth on the
subject of ‘‘kabbalistic hermeneutics,’’ but there have been few who, like Joseph
Dan and Lawrence Fine, have waded in and grappled with the raw material
of the various Name traditions of Kabbalah.16 Few scholars are prepared to
explain why the Kabbalah Centres have the success that they have had.
Scholars are drawn to Kabbalah for its elegance and profundity, as well as for
its psychological insight. Admittedly, there is no way that an encounter with
contemporary Kabbalah is not going to be painful to one who prefers Kabbalah

to be ideologically pure and elegantly rendered, unsullied by syncretism,
learned, and literate.
Another area of tension is social. There is clearly social discomfort between
the academy and, in particular, the adepts of the Beit El school, a discomfort
rooted in religion and class. The question of a social gap between the scholarly
community and the working and pietistic classes in Mahaneh Yehudah and
the Nahlaot may in fact prove to be a painful one. As a result of the academic
community’s origins in the Jewish enlightenment of early modernity, there
may remain disgust for the willfully inelegant naı̈veté of enthusiasts in con-
temporary Breslav and Chabad. With regard to much contemporary Kabbalah,
members of the academy had best check such biases at the door in order to
proceed.
Additionally. there is a historical problem in considering contemporary
enthusiastic movements within the Jewish community, Boaz Huss has alluded
to the complexities inherent in Gershom Scholem’s personal history and its
effect of the academic study of Kabbalah. Scholem, although certainly per-
sonally polite and respectful toward his conventionally religious friends and
acquaintances, nonetheless rendered himself anathema to the larger com-
munity by virtue of many of his boldest historical assertions. These include,
famously, his defense of the late authorship of the Zohar, his belief in the
Shabbatean origins of many of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s teachings, and his con-
firmation of Shabbatean connections for such religious icons as Yonatan
Eibschuetz and Ya’akov Koppel Lipschuetz. These positions made Scholem a
pariah in the religious community and shadow interactions between con-
temporary scholars and the pious populations that support the development of
Kabbalah. Although such scholars as Moshe Idel have called for the forming of
relationships between scholars and practitioners, interactions remain tinged
by suspicion.17
What Is Kabbalah?
In querying the lineal construction of Kabbalah according to Scholem’s his-

toriography, Huss has begun to examine the critical differences between the
various things that are called ‘‘Kabbalah’’ and has asked serious questions
about their relevance to one another and to the Western definition of ‘‘mysti-
cism.’’ Huss has taken issue with one aspect of Scholem’s historical arrange-
ment of Kabbalah. According to Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism,
disparate historical movements, such as the apocryphal compositions of the
conclusions 125
Merkavah tradition, the radical pietism of the German Hasidism, Abraham

Abulafia’s teachings, the theosophy of the Zohar, and its reception in the Safed
and Lurianic Kabbalah, are considered part of one historical continuum, which
he calls ‘‘Jewish mysticism.’’ In fact, these various phenomena may contain
certain common elements, but, as religious forms, they often end up at wild
variance with one another. For example, the zoharic sensibility, in which the
phenomenal world is portrayed as a universe of symbols segueing in and out of
the sacred text, is largely absent in Beit El. Yet the Beit El tradition sees itself as
the lineal descendant of the Zohar and Lurianic traditions, and the Zohar is
studied reverently as canon. Huss notes that the various kabbalistic move-
ments in Scholem’s historiographical scheme differ elementally from one
another. In many cases, there is no phenomenological commonality that
necessarily leads a given form of Kabbalah to be called ‘‘mysticism.’’
Huss contends that ‘‘Kabbalah’’ has been reduced by the academy to an
aspect of the Western construct of ‘‘mysticism.’’18 Huss has even questioned
the validity of the expression ‘‘experience’’ (Heb. havvaya), noting that the
Hebraic use of the term originated with the early Zionist ideologue A. D.
Gordon, as has been pointed out by Melila Hellner-Eshed.19 Huss concludes:
‘‘Mysticism’’ and ‘‘Jewish mysticism’’ are scholarly categories, Chris-

tological terms couched in an imperialistic and colonialist context
in order to categorize non-European cultures in terms, texts, doc-
trines and practices. The use of the category ‘‘mysticism’’ to catalog
different traditions, based on the premise of the universalism of
the mystical experience, creates a synthetic connection between
phenomena that are unrelated and alienates them from their his-
torical and social context. . . . In other words, Kabbalah has no con-
nection to prior definitions of world ‘‘mysticism.’’20
Huss presents two models of contemporary scholarship in mysticism.

There are those who equate all forms of mystical experience, comparing mys-
tical systems according to psychological, social, or other reductionist meth-
odologies. At the other extreme, there are scholars who argue for the specificity
of every individual tradition and contend that there cannot be one under-
standing of the mystical experience. As noted earlier, the initial impulse to
equate all forms of mysticism was impelled by a Western wish to appropriate
other cultures. This saccharine tendency underlies perennial and universalist
views, which appropriate the compliant systems and critique the obstinate
traditions that refuse to be so digested.
Scholem’s remark that ‘‘there is no mysticism as such, there is only the
mysticism of a particular religious system, Christian, Islamic, Jewish Mysticism,
and so on’’21 is echoed in the school of comparative mysticism founded by

Steven Katz. Throughout his long association with the subject, Katz has
maintained that world mysticism cannot be reduced to a single, common core
of pure, undifferentiable, unmediated experience, for such a common well of
experience does not exist.22 Experiences are processed through, organized by,
and available through complex epistemological processes, most often em-
bodied in the mystical doctrines of one’s own tradition. Katz’s rejection of the
universal mystical experience was a response to the reductionist element in the
perennialist school. His arguments against a ‘‘unified theory of mystical con-
sciousness,’’ a Buddhist concept in itself, may be the last redoubt of Kabbalah
scholarship in the study of mysticism.23
With all of his objections to the shortcomings of typologies, Katz does offer
a model of some common elements of mystical experience.24 Mystical expe-
rience can be an instantiation of the proper attitude or practice to be emulated
or an existential representation of its source tradition. It can be a demonstra-
tion of the lived reality of doctrinal truth or proof of the continuing presence
of the reality of the tradition. With regard to the existent structure of the
religious tradition, the mystical experience can critique the existing practices
of the tradition, be a potential source of a new revelation, or provide the basis
for a new interpretation of an existing doctrine.25 Within these models, I do
find common elements in the doctrines and practices of the Beit El kabbalists
and their lifestyle. The attempt on the mystics’ part to fuse their minds to the
processes of the Godhead, their devotion to the production of new sacred
names based on Shar’abi’s models and new didactic presentations of their
kabbalistic systems, and their continued development of Shar’abi’s linguistic
theories all are ways in which Beit El Kabbalah might still be counted in the
study of world mysticism.
The Mystical Experience in Beit El
Beit El Kabbalah certainly sees itself as the final link in the kabbalistic lineage.
It models itself on the traditions of the Zohar and the Safed Kabbalah. These
traditions valorized the exploits of wandering pietists, illuminated by mystical
visions and drawing their experience from the symbols proffered by the phe-
nomenal world around them. This is the avowed tradition of Beit El, from
Shimon Bar Yohai to Isaac Luria and thence to Shar’abi.
Yet, in practice, the Beit El milieu is one in which the literary tone, spir-
itual elegance, and contemplative poetics of the Zohar and the Safed Kabbalah
are subsumed in the battle against exhaustion. The mekavvenim are the
conclusions 127
watchmen over Jerusalem; it is their mental labor that guards the city and its
inhabitants. The point of Beit El practice as I have observed it is to keep going,
at all costs, to stay awake through the rigor of the practice itself. Many are the
times that I have seen Beit El mystics doze in the midst of prayer or study; they
are nudged awake and continue their activity without penalty. In this, they are
torn by two impulses, namely to commence their prayers as early as possible
and not to neglect the kavvanot. The only factor that keeps them from con-
stantly praying at the crack of dawn is the realization that to do so would leave
the mekavvenim insufficient time to complete Shar’abi’s kavvanot.26 Were one
to ask them how they felt, or to reflect on the nuances of their experience, they
would frown and turn back to their activity. They are no more contemplative
than soldiers at war.
Beit El kabbalists spend their waking hours enmeshed in the kabbalistic
myth. The central concern of the Beit El adept is to commit the very functions
of his mind to a union with the most abstruse processes of kabbalistic meta-
physics. When the very mind is being devoted to God, there is little point in the
cultivation of the personal. In a sense, the adept’s whole attention is given over
to a larger struggle, and personal reflection is not important. Otherwise, if the
adept falls asleep in the course of his exhausting prayer schedule, he is simply
nudged awake and recommitted to the task. If he desists from practicing a
given kavvanah, he is still counted in the community as completing the prayer
quorum and providing cover and contexts for the practitioners who are going
deeper and higher into the rite. Adepts do not display any of the radical self-
consciousness that characterizes Eastern European spiritual forms, either of
the Hasidic variety or as is found among their fatalistic opponents, the mit-
nagdim. In the Beit El literature, the personal, expressive, and contemplative
aspect of Judaism is ceded to earlier sources in the tradition, with no loss of
standing for Shar’abi and his students. From the Safed kabbalists to the Ben
Ish Hai in the nineteenth century, there has been no shortage of ethicists and
_
homileticists preceding and operating within the traditions, but it is not the
central business of the Beit El kabbalists.
Two decades ago, I knew one Beit El kabbalist who made a practice of
fasting every day, eating only at night. There is a contemporary obsession in
Israel with external signs of one’s religious allegiance; this kabbalist flouted
such concerns with an affect that was sui generis. Although obviously of
Middle Eastern origin, he wore the striped robes of the most recidivistic Jer-
usalem Ashkenazim (except for his headgear, which was a turban made up of a
fez with a sort of khaffiyeh wound around it). To the best of my knowledge, he
would get up from his garret somewhere in the nexus of the Mahaneh Ye-
hudah and Geulah neighborhoods and make his way to the Nahar Shalom
synagogue. He would recite Tiqqun Hazot, the midnight prayer, probably

immerse himself in the mikveh, return to the synagogue, and commence the
three-hour morning service. He would study for the rest of the morning and
make his way to the Bukharian quarter, two neighborhoods over from the Beit
El centers. In the Bukharian quarter, he would go to sleep on a bench in the
Shoshanim le-David synagogue, renowned as the headquarters of R. Ya’akov
Hayyim Sofer, author of the halakhic work Kaf ha-Hayyim. He would sleep the
_
heavy, hypoglycemic sleep of the fast until midafternoon, when he would get
up, wash his hands, and make his way back to the Geulah quarter. There he
would begin the three-hour commitment to the afternoon and evening ser-
vices, after which he would eat something and go back to sleep, presumably to
begin the process all over again. Had I asked him about his mystical experi-
ence, I doubt that he would have been able to articulate an answer. He simply
carried out his practice, with all of its effort and struggle, secure in the faith
that he was working to realize soteric rewards for the greater good of his
community.
One might say that in Beit El Kabbalah, meaning proceeded from the ‘‘top
down,’’ whereas in conventional Kabbalah it was gathered ‘‘from the ground
up.’’ An adept fortified himself with an aggregate knowledge of the Talmud
and the Zohar, with a strong sense of the symbolic associations of the kabba-
listic system. Combining these learnings with a pious and ascetic lifestyle, the
adept could hope to peer beneath the fabric of present reality and see, from
time to time, the inner meaning of things. Through the study of the material,
combined with the purifying practice of Jewish religious life, the kabbalist
might attain a state of perception through which he could gain a deeper mean-
ing of reality and even act on his predictive powers.
Beit El Kabbalah and other forms of late Lurianism manifestly do not work
this way. The contemplation of the sacred name is the focus of the practice.
These names are mathematically or linguistically derived and lack the sensi-
bility characteristic of the Zohar and the mainstream Safed Kabbalah. Con-
ventional Kabbalah is composed of symbolic associations culled from the sa-
cred texts and the phenomenal world. As a consequence, the Beit El practice
can be described as being apodictic and otherworldly. The Beit El kabbalist
mystic begins with the power and force of names that are largely without
psychological or literary valence or religious content. One would think that this
willfully obscurantist view would not be compelling or popular in the con-
temporary milieu, yet it has captured the imaginations of both the Beit El
circles and the doctrines of the contemporary Kabbalah Centres.
A self-conscious doctrine of mystical experience as a lens through which to
view the world is conspicuously absent in Beit El. Socially, the kabbalists are in
conclusions 129
many cases indistinguishable from the most unassuming elements in the

religious population of Jerusalem, with the exception of their sometimes
flamboyant leaders. The theology of Beit El is avowedly late Lurianic, but its
personal dimension is altogether conventional and ceded to earlier branches of
the Jewish intellectual canon. When the kabbalists want to draw on the per-
sonal aspect of Judaism and Kabbalah, they go elsewhere; they have not pro-
duced a literature or tradition of personal experience themselves. Hence, in the
parlance of scholars of mysticism, it doesn’t matter whether or not there are
mediated or unmediated ‘‘mystical’’ experiences. Beit El Kabbalah doesn’t
claim to have them.
The Beit El school is acclaimed in the Jerusalem community as existing at
the apex of Kabbalah, but nonetheless it has few of the characteristics of what
various romantic Englishmen call ‘‘mysticism.’’ It is contemplative and based
in religious practice, but it has not recorded a body of instances of transcen-
dent, ecstatic practice. The Beit El kabbalists trace their origins to a circle that is
frankly legendary, the central cast of the Zohar. The Safed kabbalists straddled
the fence between legendary accounts of mystical revelations and associated
thaumaturgic activities and a strong scholastic tradition devoted to the eluci-
dation of their sacred texts. The Beit El kabbalists are manifestly concerned
with a contemplative practice and the review of their mystical tradition.
However, they are manifestly not a ‘‘mystical circle’’ according to the terms
in which that is usually construed, because they do not emphasize personal
experience.
Yet, ‘‘Kabbalah’’ is not an artificial construct, and the roots of the spiritual
community that calls itself kabbalistic are very deep. Kabbalistic ideas saw the
light of day in the medieval period, in the free market of ideas in traditional
rabbinic discourse. If, in that context, one consistently favored the arguments
of Nahmanides over those of Abraham Ibn Ezra and Maimonides, what would
that person be called?27 The resiliency of antirational aspects of Judaism can-
not be denied, even when theologians such as the Maharal of Prague chose to
clothe them in nonkabbalistic language. The kabbalists established themselves
as the response to rationalist philosophy in the Middle Ages. Kabbalistic ideas
and schools of thought are not constructs that exist in the imaginations of
scholars. In fact, Kabbalah came to stand, in the public eye, for ‘‘that which is
not Maimonidean,’’ and this became the position that encompassed ‘‘that-
which-is-not-philosophical,’’ or ‘‘antirationalism.’’ The consistent ‘‘essentialist’’
points of kabbalistic belief, namely that ritual impurity is palpable, that
prophets need be of no particular gift or talent, because God is all powerful, that
God can subvert the natural order at any time and work miracles, that there is a
pantheon of angels in heaven standing by to do God’s bidding, and so forth,
presage the eventual kabbalistic view. Hence, if one adheres to these positions
consistently then one is surely not a philosopher, but one need not be, in
Evelyn Underhill’s terms, a ‘‘mystic.’’ One has merely taken a view of Judaism
in which given sets of metaphysics are salient and the transcendent is as-
sumed. Thus, we retain, in Beit El, an avowedly kabbalistic circle whose rela-
tionship to mysticism demands a rethinking of the term itself.
Appendix: Nesirah —
The Development
of a Kavvanah
To better understand the kavvanot, it is instructive to examine the

archaeology of a given practice. The Beit El kabbalists ‘‘lived the
kabbalistic myth’’ in its most developed form. Their aggregate practice
was based on Shar’abi’s reading of Luria. Luria’s tradition was a se-
lective adaptation of the ideas current in Safed in the sixteenth cen-
tury, most of which were derived from the Zohar, which in turn
had adapted them from the rabbinic mythologies of late antiquity.
Thus, the mythos of the Beit El kabbalists originated in antiquity
but was refined as kabbalistic theosophy evolved over the centuries.1
Many kavvanot are based on arcane traditions that originate in
antiquity.
One meaningful and widespread body of kavvanot centers on a
cosmic phenomenon known as the nesirah, or ‘‘slicing away.’’ The
‘‘slicing away’’ in question refers to the separation of the male and
female aspects of the Divine infrastructure, a phenomenon that oc-
curs on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis. The term ‘‘nesirah’’ is usu-
ally associated with one rite in particular, specific the Days of Awe.
During this period, between the New Year and the Day of Atonement,
Beit El and European kabbalists contemplate specific permutations
of God’s name. This contemplation takes place during the refrain of
the silent devotion for these festivals: Remember us for life, King who
desires life, and write us in the Book of Life, for your sake, living God. The
soteric purpose of this specific kavvanah is to dispose of the harsh
judgments that have accrued to the Jewish people during the year
132 appendix
by ‘‘off-loading’’ them onto the feminine aspect of God, the Shekhinah, or, more
specifically, to her incarnation in the Lurianic system as Nukvah. On the Day of
Atonement, at the end of the ten days of repentance, Nukvah is jettisoned from
the Divine structure. By separating from the Divine infrastructure, she carries
away all of the judgments that would have fallen upon the people of Israel, just
as the scapegoat of the Temple-period atonement rite was sent into the desert
bearing the communal sins.
Basic Themes
To understand the practice of a mystical intention, such as the nesirah, one

must be cognizant of a whole body of underlying and prior traditions. The
history of the nesirah follows the classic developmental arc of a kabbalistic
symbol. The original tradition was a cross-cultural archetype that was appro-
priated by the Midrash as a response to a textual problem in the Bible. Later,
the Zohar interpreted the midrashic theme in mythic terms, retaining the
central tropes and exegetical formulae that the Midrash introduced. Finally, the
Zohar’s mythic narrative of the nesirah was adapted by Lurianic Kabbalah,
which incorporated the myth into its mystical ritual. The Polish and the Beit El
schools then incorporated the nesirah into their respective rituals.2
In this case, the kavvanot of the nesirah developed around a number of
mythic themes. The most essential of these themes are the separation of Adam
and Eve and Adam’s postcoital slumber. In the Lurianic system, these themes
evolved into a proactive rite to nullify the forces of Divine judgment and to
reconcile the Divine parents.
The rabbinic ur-text of the nesirah is Genesis Rabbah (8:1):3
R. Yohanan began [Psalms 139:5] back and front you formed me. . . .
R. Yirmiya ben Elazar taught that when the Holy Blessed One created
Adam, He created him as androgynous. As it is written [Gen. 1:27]
male and female He created them. R. Shmuel bar Nahman observed,
when the Holy Blessed One created Adam, He created him with two
faces.4 He separated5 him [Heb. nasro] and made him into two backs,
a back here and a back there. They asked him, isn’t it written [Gen.
2:21] he took one of his ribs [Heb. zela]? He answered, from his side,
_
as it is written: [Ex. 26: 20] And to the zela [side] of the Tabernacle.
_
R. Tanhuma in the name of R. Benayah and R. Berekhiah in the
name of R. Elazar said, ‘‘The Holy Blessed One created Adam as a
golem. And he was stretched from one end of the Earth to the other.’’
nesirah—the development of a kavvanah 133
Most of the salient themes of the nesirah are present in this text. Adam was
originally androgynous. The stealing of Adam’s rib, described in Genesis, was
his separation into two separate beings. A second rendering of this account, in
the tractate Eruvin, introduces the theme of du parzufim, ‘‘two countenances,’’
_
which would remain central to the tradition:
R. Yirmiya ben Eliezer said, Adam had a two countenanced face,

as it is written back and front you formed me. . . . In the beginning, it
arose in [the Divine] thought to create two and in the end, only one
was created . . . and God built up the rib, teaching that God braided
Eve’s hair and brought her to Adam.6
The Zohar develops a number of themes from these initial readings. Some
texts explore the image of Eve’s creation from Adam’s zela’, which is inter-
_
preted as either ‘‘rib’’ or ‘‘side,’’ in that Adam ‘‘was whole from all of his sides,
7
even though the female cleaved to his side.’’ Later zoharic interpretations
equate the ‘‘side’’ with the two ‘‘faces’’ of Adam, a metaphor for his original
androgyny,8 as evidenced by the statement that ‘‘Adam existed as both male
and female, as it is written, and the Lord said let us make Adam in our form and
image,’’9 as well as the reference to ‘‘Adam, male and female, female contained
in male . . . female born of male.’’10 When the term zela’ is read as ‘‘side,’’ then
_
the mythic image of the division of the original anthropos may be derived from
the Genesis account. In this ancient cross-cultural myth, the original female
was conceived as secondary to the male.11
The later sections of the Zohar examined the esoteric meaning of the
midrashic image of du parzufim, or ‘‘two faces.’’ A number of authors made use
_
of the pyrotechnics of concrete poetry to extract the name D’’U (two) from the
letter YU’’D, the transliterated first letter of the name of God as written in its
full consonantal explication, or milui.12 This idea appears in the zoharic text
Sifra de-Zeniuta, which states: ‘‘Outside are hidden the Adam, the man and
_
woman who are two [D’’U].’’13 Internally, the letter dalet, with its numerical
coefficient of four, signifies the name YHVH, while the letter va’’v stands for
the number six, representing the middle sefirot unified under the banner of
Tiferet.14
A number of the midrashic themes of the nesirah survive from the rabbinic
literature into the Zohar. These include a play on the use of the word ahat
(one), which signifies the presence of the Shekhinah.15 Discussions of the verse
back and front you formed me (Psalms 139:5) continue throughout the Zohar
literature.16 Pivotal exegeses are triggered by discrepancies in the language of
the creation story, such as the observation that it is not good that Adam should be
alone, as well as the oblique Male and female he created them.17 Finally, Psalm
134 appendix
44, ‘‘Awake, why does God slumber?,’’ is invoked in these original accounts of
Adam’s sleep and is retained in the nesirah rite in the Rashkover prayer book.
Divine Marriage
The earlier Talmudic passage introduced the idea that God presented Eve to
Adam, braiding her hair and adorning her like a bride. A related rabbinical
tradition links the formation of Adam, and by implication the nesirah, to the
wedding ceremony. This ceremony contains two blessings that address the
theme of formation, ‘‘he who formed man in his image’’ and ‘‘Blessed art thou,
who forms man.’’ The sages speculate that the two blessings of formation in
the wedding service reflect two acts of formation in the creation of Adam, that
is, the formation of the undivided Adam and his division into male and female:
Levi visited the house of Rabbi on the wedding celebration of

R. Shimon, his son, and he blessed five blessings. R. Assi visited
the house of R. Ashi on the wedding celebration of Mar, his son, and
he blessed six blessings. Perhaps they differ on this point: one
maintains that there were two formings and one maintains that there
was one forming? No, everyone is of the opinion that there was
one forming. One is of the opinion that we follow the intention and
one is of the opinion that we follow the act. This is as that [statement]
of R. Yehudah who points to a contradiction. It is written [in one
verse] God created Adam in His image, and it is written Male and
Female He created them? How so? In the beginning, it arose in [the
Divine] thought to create two and in the end he created one.18
The repetition of the image of formation begs the explanation that, at the
creation of humankind, there were ‘‘two formations,’’ the initial creation of
the androgyne, followed by the separation of the male and female aspects. The
Zohar echoes the rabbinic tradition that God brought Eve to Adam and blessed
them, ‘‘as the cantor blesses the bride and the groom.’’19 Therefore, as early as
the rabbinic period, both the mythos of the Garden of Eden and its Platonic
subtext were reflected in religious ritual, namely the wedding service. The ex-
pression ‘‘nesirah,’’ or ‘‘slicing away’’ is not invoked here, as it is in the passage
in Eruvin. However, the physical nesirah, the ‘‘two formations’’ and the ‘‘two
countenances’’ (du parzufim), are all aspects of this tradition, according to the
_
reading of classical Kabbalah.
The wedding service contains two blessings of ‘‘formation’’ because, at the
creation of humankind, there were ‘‘two formations,’’ the initial creation of the
androgyne, followed by the separation. The Zohar repeatedly portrays God

‘‘transforming’’ the woman into a bride through the act of ornamentation,
which is also, tellingly, referred to as an act of fixing, or tiqqun, with all of the
implications inherent in the use of the term.20 The Idra Rabbah, one of the
penultimate sections of the Zohar literature, also invokes the Divine marriage.
The Idra Rabbah introduces the idea that the goal of the nesirah is to expedite
the face-to-face embrace of the various aspects of the Divine:
And in her place was left mercy and loving-kindness as it says (Gen
2:21) he closed up the flesh beneath it and elsewhere it is written
(Ezekiel 36:26) I will take away your heart of stone from your flesh and
give you heart of flesh. . . . When the Matronita dwells with the King
and they embrace, face to face, who will come between them, who
will draw near to them? When they embrace, they perfume each
other and everything. They perfume each other’s judgments [dinnim];
all above and below receive their tiqqun.21
The Idra Rabbah stresses that the nesirah is a prelude to Divine marriage.
Moreover, this phenomenon did not just happen once in history to a limited
number of individuals but continues to unfold, daily and yearly. The relocation
of a creation myth to the ongoing present is evident elsewhere in the Zohar
literature.22 In the case of the nesirah, its yearly recurrence is the basis for its
inclusion in the Lurianic rite.
In one of his early teachings, Isaac Luria interpreted the nesirah passages
as referring to sefirotic unions.23 In an early composition, Luria portrays the
vicissitudes of Jewish history in images of familial dysfunction. The Jewish
exile is referred to as the ‘‘divorce’’ of the transformative feminine ‘‘Matronita.’’
In this, as in other teachings, Luria equates the vicissitudes of exile with the
trauma of familial upheaval. The separation of the nesirah is the separation of
exile, and the role of the adept is to reconcile the celestial family and therefore
end the social upheaval of the Diaspora. In subsequent kabbalistic practice,
acts of repentance and mythical self-immolation are required in order to heal
and rectify the upheavals mentioned in the midrashic and zoharic sources,
such as the broken family, the fractured world, and the dispersed nation.
Initially, Luria understood the nesirah as the remedy for the Jewish peo-
ple’s exile. This would come about through the ‘‘bequeathing of crowns,’’ an
early and euphemistic metaphor for the processes of the emanation. The
‘‘bequeathing of crowns’’ means to dowry children, to bequeath crowns to
the children to ‘‘unify them that they may unify.’’24 This giving of the
dowry restores the children’s essential natures and repairs the upheaval of the
historical exile.
136 appendix
Neglect
Luria adopted another zoharic theme, one that is also a poignant reflection of
the upheavals of his own upbringing. This is the Zohar’s motif of Eve’s neglect
by Adam, as evinced in this remark:
Adam was created with two faces. . . . He did not service25 his wife,
and she was not a help-meet to him. . . . [Eve] was on his side and they
were united back-to-back and so, the man was alone. . . . What did the Holy
Blessed One do? He separated them and took the woman from him.26
The ‘‘back-to-back’’ embrace is described as a source of sexual dysfunction,

as a result of which Adam could not ‘‘service’’ [ishtadel] his wife.27 Later Lur-
ianic interpretation would clarify that it was not the case that Adam wouldn’t
service his wife; rather, he couldn’t do so, because both Adam and Eve were too
preoccupied with defending the family from the detritus of the breaking of the
vessels, the animating cosmic catastrophe in the Lurianic mythos. The Lur-
ianic tradition emphasized the original embrace of the female and male as-
pects of the original androgyne. For the Lurianic reading, the most important
aspect of the nesirah is its movement from a ‘‘back-to-back’’ to a ‘‘face-to-face’’
embrace. Only when Abba and Imma, the cosmic parents of the Divine su-
perstructure, move their embrace from back-to-back to face-to-face could the
conception and growth of Zeir Anpin, the wonder child, be expedited. Ac-
cording to Luria’s formulation, the back-to-back embrace is part of the basic
dilemma of the breaking of the vessels (shevirat ha-kelim), as evidenced from
this passage in his Zohar commentaries. Speaking of the creation of Adam,
Luria retells the account of the nesirah with particular poignancy:
In Adam, He placed and set forth the essence of male and female.
When He had completed them, he left it between his two arms.
According to the Zohar (II 254b), they were initially created back to
back. He was compelled to separate them and to return them face
to face . . . because all of the extraneous aspects were attached to the
upper rearmost parts to receive the Divine flow from there. So ini-
tially there was no Adam on the Earth to till the soil, to guard it from the
extraneous elements.28
The impetus for the creation was the unredeemed nature of the Divine
embraces. The back-to-back embrace is necessary because of the dangerous,
broken state of the world. Elsewhere, a Lurianic source portrays the dangers of
the Divine couple attempting to embrace in the broken state of the cosmos:
Therefore, had they been created face to face, their backs would have
been exposed, and the extraneous forces would have adhered to
them, for the backs are the sources of the dinnim, therefore the ke-
lipot would have adhered there. Therefore, they were initially cre-
ated back-to-back, the rear parts were covered this one in that, and
there was no place for the extraneous forces to adhere. Afterward,
when he separated them, these rearmost parts were sweetened in the
secret of the hasadim, in the secret of the closed up the flesh beneath
it . . . so that there would be not adhesion by the extraneous forces.29
The cosmic parents, the progenitors of existence, have to stand back-to-

back to protect the children from the shards of the shattered vessels. Hence,
the gender dysfunctions in the Divine realm originate from the general
dystopia in present reality. The nesirah kavvanot were intended to expedite
the turning of the countenances, the better to drive away the forces of judg-
ment.30
The adaptation of the nesirah by Luria also follows a number of rules of his
hermeneutic, particularly the reading of the Idra Rabbah and the Sifra de-
Zeniuta. Luria disagreed, in classical terms, with Moshe Cordovero, who por-
_
trayed the nesirah in terms of the play of sefirot.31 Luria’s interpretation led, in
turn, to his student Hayyim Vital’s emphasis on the Divine union and im-
_
pregnation. In all cases, the nesirah is interpreted as a metaphor for different
metaphysical interplays. In the late Lurianic recension Pri Ez Hayyim,32 the
_ _
nesirah is presented as the turning or reconciliation of the Divine couple from
their back-to-back position to a face-to-face union. The late editions also
present the nesirah in purely theoretical terms, outside the context of religious
practice, in such documents as the Sha’ar ha-Nesirah (‘‘Gate of the Nesirah’’) in
the late, and authoritative, work Ez Hayyim.33
_ _
Sleep
The culminating texts of the Zohar are the Idrot, a group of compositions
including the ‘‘Great Idra’’ (Idra Rabbah), the ‘‘Lesser Idra’’ (Idra Zuta), and the
‘‘Hidden Book’’ (Sifra De-Zeniuta). These works advance a kabbalistic theory
_
from that in the earlier sections, namely the theory of the Divine countenances,
or parzufim. This theory would become the animating myth of Lurianic Kab-
_
balah.34 Accordingly, the Idrot recast the nesirah account in terms of the doc-
trine of the countenances. In the version to be found in the Idra Rabbah, which
was influential in subsequent Lurianic doctrine, the countenance Zeir Anpin, a
138 appendix
heroic masculine archetype, takes the place of the biblical Adam as the one
who falls asleep:
The Ancient of Ancients, the most hidden One separated this one
from that one and joined them to be fragrant, and unified. When he
separated them, he caused slumber to fall upon Zeir Anpin and
separated the female from the anterior side and he made her tiqqun
and hid her away for her day, to bring her to the male, as it is
written (Gen 2:21) the Lord caused a slumber to fall on Adam and he
slept. What does it mean: and he slept? As it is written, (Psalms 44:24)
Awake, why does God sleep?35
In two Idra accounts, the references to the nesirah are preceded by a

strange prelude. Lurianic interpreters36 considered these passages as part of
the nesirah tradition, and they form the basis for many of the subsequent
kavvanot. Both of these texts describe a preponderance of Din, the sefirah of
harsh judgment, in the Divine superstructure. These forces of judgment
are linked to the feminine aspects of the Divine. When they depart during
the nesirah, the male aspect of the Divine is left as an entity of pure loving-
kindness. The first allusion to this theme is found in the Sifra de-Zeniuta,
_
which makes a mysterious and cryptic reference to an act of mischief prior to
the nesirah, based on Zeir Anpin’s postcoital slumber:
The male extended and set forth its tiqqunim like a mother in the
mouth of a maidservant . . . the dinnim of the male are mighty at the
beginning and rest at the end, while the reverse is true of the female.37
God’s stealing of Adam’s zela’ while he was asleep derives from the natural
_
disparity of male and female excitation and the trickery of the feminine
‘‘sheath,’’ which steals the Divine seed during postcoital slumber. According to
another Idra text, the Idra Rabbah, the womb of Imma, the Divine mother,
euphemized as the ‘‘mouth,’’ sheathes the extended phallus of Hokhmah and
_
in turn ‘‘sweetens’’ the aspects of Din that are inherent in the receptive sexual
nature of the feminine:
We learn in the Sifra de-Zeniuta that ‘‘the male extended and set forth
_
its tiqqunim,’’ the tiqqun of pure covering. . . . Everything is contin-
gent on the mouth of that Imma who is called yu’’d. When this yu’’d is
revealed in Imma’s mouth, the higher Hesed is revealed. This Imma
_
is called Hesed. It is contingent on that Imma’s mouth. It is not called
_
Hesed until it is revealed in the mouth of Imma. . . . Whoever un-
_
covers this yu’’d is protected and will never go the yu’’d of the other
realm. He is assured of the world to come, bound in the knot of

life. When this mother extends, the realm of Gevurah extends from
the gevurot of the left side of Nukvah. It takes root in one place in
Nukvah. These are called the hidden places [‘arayot] of everything, the
hidden place of Imma that is called Hesed, Hesed in the right and
_ _
Gevurah is the left, and they are scented, this one in the other and
called Adam, made up of two sides, Hesed and Gevurah. All the sefirot
_
have right and left, Din and Rahamim.38
According to this dense and difficult passage, which immediately precedes

a nesirah account, the letter yu’’d, transliterated according to the system of the
miluyyim,39 evokes the power of Divine loving-kindness, the sefirah Hesed. This
_
is the esoteric meaning of the ‘‘revelation of yu’’d in the mouth of this great
mother.’’ The womb/mouth of the sefirah Nukvah appropriates the seed of the
letter yu’’d in order to conceive. During the course of this process, the Idrot also
portray the nesirah as an outpouring of hasadim, Divine loving-kindness. When
this wave of loving-kindness recedes, it provokes an irruption of dinnim, or
judgments, from the realm of the feminine, which only exacerbates the sep-
aration and rupture in the cosmic structure.
These references to the beginning of the nesirah evoke the give and take of
sexual intercourse. The male extends and, upon withdrawing, provokes an
irruption of judgment from the feminine side. The implication of these texts
that precede the nesirah accounts is that the nesirah is preceded by a stormy act
of Divine sexual congress, which leaves the masculine countenance Zeir ex-
hausted and spent, as the renegade feminine makes her escape bearing the
‘‘seed’’ in her mouth. 40
Luria on Sleep
Isaac Luria conflated the doctrine of the uncovered yu’’d and the perfuming of
the dinnim into one concept.41 The ‘‘uncovering’’ of the yu’’d is a euphemism
for the enclosing of the male member in the womb, or ‘‘mouth,’’ of the female.
Subsequent interpreters called this the ‘‘tiqqun of the pure garment,’’ in that
the womb of Imma serves as a sheath for the engendering phallus, whose
tumescence is signified by the extension, or milui, of yu’’d.42 The yu’’d is
‘‘uncovered’’ at its tumescence, as well as at the moment of circumcision.
According to this tradition, the transliterated yu’’d is symbolic of the moment
when Imma carries the seed of Hokhmah, thereby conceiving the seed and
_
carrying it into the Divine embrace.43
140 appendix
Luria also expanded upon the image of the transfer of powers of judgment,
which he defined in the plural as dinnim or gevurot. These noxious elements are
transferred from the highest sefirot into the lowest, namely the feminine
Nukvah, who is then summarily jettisoned. Nukvah is forced into a position
analogous to the scapegoat of the Temple’s Yom Kippur rite, carrying off the
accumulated impurities of the sefirotic system.
The motif of Adam’s slumber also leads the nesirah to be associated with
the daily passing of day into night and vice versa.44 According to Luria’s read-
ing, Zeir Anpin, the central countenance, was the ‘‘sleeper,’’ so that Zeir took
over the myth from the primordial Adam. When Zeir was asleep, his souls and
consciousness ascended and thereby ‘‘sweetened’’ a number of the harsh
judgments [dinnim].45 In classical Judaism, as well as in Kabbalah, a sense of
dread is commonly associated with the coming of the night, as is reflected
in the blessing ‘‘lay us down’’ in the evening service, as well as in the blessing
of the night prayer itself. The first part of the night is the time when the kelipot,
or demonic forces, are ascendant. In the mystical rite, the dread of the night
is equated with the dread of exile.46 This situation changes at midnight, which
is considered a time for Divine favor and arousal. Shaul Magid47 has pointed
out that the slumber, tardemah, imposed on the primordial man during cre-
ation is replicated isomorphically in human sleep.48 According to the Zohar,
Adam’s sleep (the Latin dormita) is associated with all sleep, so that every
act of sleep recreates the conditions of the original creation myth. Sleep
also reflects the experience of the exile and the mythos of the Shekhinah in
exile. In Vital’s words, ‘‘We are asleep because we are the children of the
Shekhinah, our mother Rachel!’’49 In terms of the kabbalistic rite, sleep exists
so that the adherent may rise to perform his work at midnight. Hence, it was
standard practice among Lurianic kabbalists to sleep the early part of the
night.50
One nightly rite that assumed great significance in kabbalistic ritual was
the midnight vigil, Tiqqun Hazot.51 This ritual consisted of the adherent’s
_ _
rising at midnight, smearing ashes on his forehead, and bemoaning the exile
of the Torah. The ashes on the face reflect the burning of the Torah, or the theft
of is secrets among the nations, a possible reference to Christian Kabbalah.52
The Tiqqun Hazot ritual is divided into two sections, or ‘‘orders,’’ which are
_ _
recited at different times. One order is devoted to the Matriarch Leah, the
paradigm of the sefirah Binah. The other order is devoted to the Matriarch
Rachel, paradigm of the lowest sefirah, Malkhut, and equivalent to the She-
khinah. Natan Neta’ Hanover, in Sha’arei Ziyyon, provides for a third section in
_
which one’s body becomes ‘‘a chariot for the Shekhinah.’’53 Needless to say,
Shalom Shar’abi also left specific kavvanot for this midnight vigil.54
Much as in the midnight vigil, the night nesirah reflects the vicissitudes of
the Shekhinah, in her split incarnations as Rachel and Leah, as reflected in
Tiqqun Hazot. The multiple significations for the sefirot as presented in the
_ _
Zohar are interpreted as discrete and unique figures in the Lurianic interpre-
tation of the cosmic structure. Therefore, the figure of Jacob, who signifies the
sefirah Tiferet in the plainest meaning of the term, ‘‘splits’’ into two alter egos,
Jacob and Israel. Nukvah becomes Rachel, who is then shadowed by her bib-
lical sister Leah. 55 This set of extra gradations in the relationships of the
countenances complicates the dynamics of the nesirah as it is explained in its
later passages. Every night, therefore, is a rite of hieros gamos, sacred marriage,
albeit a ménage à trois. The early part of the night is devoted to the union of
Jacob and Leah, the countenance Zeir Anpin with the countenance Binah. Leah
then grows to full size, appropriating, at that moment, some of the properties
of Rachel, the countenance Nukvah, equivalent to the Shekhinah of the sefirotic
system. In the course of her vicissitudes, according to the Lurianic system, the
Shekhinah shrinks to a tiny point and then reinflates. This loss of mass is a
result of the Shekhinah’s experience of exile. Diminished thus, the Shekhinah
is really Nukvah, the faceless ‘‘orifice.’’ Hence, one function of the Lurianic
reading of the ritual is to resolve the distinction between the colorless Nukvah
of the countenance tradition of the Idrot with the fully realized Shekhinah as
portrayed in the general sections of the Zohar.56
The evening prayer brings about the conjunction of Zeir Anpin and Leah.
However, the early part of the night is demonic, and that precludes any further
tiqqun. Hence, the adherent had better sleep during the early part of the
night.57 Leah has to grow in order to bring about the union with Jacob. In order
to grow in this way, she borrows from the light of her sister countenance,
Rachel.58 The countenance Rachel inflates after the countenance Leah. This
process takes place during her ascent through the heavenly palaces.59
The role of the adept in both Tiqqun Hazot and the nesirah rite is to help
_ _
expedite the Shekhinah’s union with Jacob in order to expedite her eventual
expansion. Rachel, the Shekhinah, has to be positioned into the face-to-face
embrace with Jacob. This requires that Leah be pushed to the side. Eventually,
Leah is absorbed in Rachel, the true consort of Zeir Anpin.60 In expediting
the Shekhinah’s union, the adept sees himself as being in a moment of inti-
macy with her. Rachel, the Shekhinah, is not in exile; her status has merely
been reduced. It is the darkness of the night that is the reason for Rachel’s
‘‘diminishment in size and power.’’61 After the face-to-face embrace has
been achieved, Rachel falls to the feet of Zeir, at the corona of the Divine
phallus.62
142 appendix
The Morning Nesirah
The nesirah myth is ‘‘lived out’’ in another body of liturgy, the rituals attending
waking in the morning. One would think that the activity attendant on getting
up in the morning would be devoted to isomorphically awakening Zeir, as in
the ancient nesirah myth. In fact, the purpose of the morning nesirah is to excite
or raise the ‘‘feminine waters,’’ the impulse on the part of the lower, feminine
sefirot to rise to the upper, masculine forces. The morning nesirah is not con-
cerned with waking Zeir. Rather, it is devoted to expediting the face-to-face
union of Abba and Imma, the celestial parents.63 At the beginning of the
process, Imma relinquishes union with Zeir Anpin and unifies with Abba. The
Amidah prayer brings about the union of the celestial parents and their exci-
tation and the conception of Zeir Anpin as the child of Abba and Imma.
Imma’s ‘‘weaning’’ Zeir leads to another central Lurianic theme incorpo-
rated into the nesirah narratives. This theme concerns the development of the
mohin, or nervous system, in the newly conceived embryo of Zeir Anpin. Many
mystical practices are devoted to the development of these networks of inner
consciousness. In terms of Lurianic metaphysics, it is during the slumber that
the mohin enter the feminine, with all of the overtones of mischief inherent in
the original accounts in the Idrot and the Sifra de-Zeniuta.64 According to this
_
interpretation, Zeir does not lose the mohin but gives them away to Nukvah and
gets new, better ones. The mohin develop through the powers of the lower
sefirot Nezah, Hod, and Yesod. These sefirot bring about tumescence as the
_
various mohin of Zeir ‘‘load’’ through them. As a consequence of this process,
Zeir Anpin becomes identical with the biblical Adam. When Nukvah was be-
hind Zeir, the light of his mohin did not flow directly into her but rather was
filtered through him, so that she could not directly receive his light. After the
morning nesirah, when God, as it were, presented Nukvah to Zeir as the ce-
lestial bride, she became an independent countenance, nurtured directly by
Abba and Imma.65
Nesirah on the Days of Awe
Lurianic analysis of the nesirah passages in the Zohar, particularly the Idrot, gel
in a passage in the Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot that deals with the mysteries of the New
Year.66 This drush is elsewhere described as the ur-text of the nesirah tradi-
tion.67 The central premise of this homily is that since the rites of the Days of
Awe originated in the Temple service, the nesirah belongs in the New Year,
because the New Year resembles the creation of the world in that all of the
accounts have been turned back to their status at the beginning of time.68
Thus, the nesirah reoccurs every year, reflecting certain existential changes in
the condition of the world since the destruction of the Temple. In liturgical
time, the nesirah occurs during the ten days of repentance and the Days of Awe.
The position of classical Judaism is that petitional prayer was developed to
compensate for the loss of the soteric powers of the Temple rite. This is
particularly the case in the Days of Awe, which literally replace the passion of
the High Priest in the Temple with the petitions of the synagogue congrega-
tion. Luria’s presentation extends this understanding. Hayyim Vital, in the late
_
recension Pri Ez Hayyim, implies that, before the destruction of the Temple,
_ _
people did not even need to pray.69 At that time, prayer had the power to elevate
both the inner and the outer nature of the cosmic structure, but only at the
celebration of the New Year. Since the destruction of the Temple, however,
mere prayer is no longer efficacious. Now, it has the power to lift the soul of the
adherents to God but not to fulfill their desires. Hence, prayer no longer
‘‘works’’ for the purposes that it claims to rectify, namely the fulfillment of the
concrete needs of the Jewish people.
The loss of this idealized situation is reflected in the nesirah. In the ide-
alized past, the Temple rite and petitional prayer were enough to expunge
harsh judgment from the world. Today, all that remains of the process is the
mystical rite. The liturgical refrain that recurs on the Days of Awe, Remember us
for life, O King who desires life, and write us in the book of life, is an explicit
reference to the nesirah. The adherent beseeches God to return the people
Israel to the condition that they enjoyed before the destruction.70
Hayyim Vital echoed the theme, so present in the Idrot, that prayer is the
_
instrument to counter the harsh judgment that is present on the first day of the
New Year. The process is especially pronounced on the first day of Rosh ha-
Shanah because of the severity of the Din, the ‘‘harshest, most unsweetened’’
form of judgment. On the second day of the holiday, the effects of the Din are
already alleviated or ‘‘softened somewhat.71
Other accounts present this process in terms of the interactions of the
countenances, according to which, the action of the nesirah draws down the
dinnim, forces of judgment from the countenances Zeir to the countenance
Nukvah.72 Over the course of the ten days between the New Year and the Day of
Atonement, the dinnim pass though the sefirot and the countenances. The
process ends with the dinnim loaded into the feminine countenance, Nukvah,
which is then jettisoned from the system. According to the Lurianic view, the
off-loading of judgment onto Nukvah, the empty receptacle of the feminine,
is literally the separation of male and female depicted in the first nesirah
144 appendix
accounts. This process is concentrated into the ten days of repentance and
coincides with the descent through the ten sefirot. Eventually the dinnim are
transferred into Nukvah from Zeir until Nukvah is finally jettisoned on the Day
of Atonement.
Each day of the ten days of repentance is characterized by the aura of
sefirah or countenance that is being stripped of its dinnim. The first two days are
marked by the conditions of the apex of the Godhead.73 These days were
considered the essential holiday from late antiquity, an ‘‘extended day.’’74 One
the third day of the ten days of repentance, the dinnim move from the coun-
tenance Zeir and begin to fill up Nukvah. The third day is traditionally a fast
day, the Fast of Gedaliah. That day is still beset by the forces of judgment, but it
doesn’t have the blowing of the shofar to neutralize them, as was the case on the
first two days. It is the day that Gedaliah, the Babylonian governor in the first
Temple period, was killed, thereby hastening the destruction of the first
Temple. Having disposed of the dinnim by off-loading them into Nukvah, the
nesirah begins the central process of the Lurianic system, the conception and
regeneration of the countenance Zeir Anpin.75
The dynamics of the nesirah provide the metaphysical underpinnings
for some of the halakhic nuances of the New Year observance. On Rosh ha-
Shanah, the blowing of the shofar is thought of as awakening Zeir from his
slumber.76 The five forms of self-affliction that are practiced on Yom Kippur
reflect the function of the sweetening of five ‘‘ judgments’’ (gevurot), exempli-
fied in the five acts of penance or abstention associated with that day.77 The
adepts practice the kavvanot in the silent amidah, but not for its repetition.
However, one does practice the kavvanot for the repetition in on the Days of
Awe.78 Transpersonally, the one who prays has to sweeten the judgments
(dinnim) that are rife in the phenomenal world.79
Conclusion
The nesirah is a strong presence in such sources as Vital’s Pri Ez Hayyim and
_ _
was retained in the Polish traditions, particularly deriving from the traditions
of Shabbatai of Rashkov,80 the kloiz in Brod, and the first published Lurianic
prayer book in Zolkava.81 It is also a theme in Moshe of Dolena’s Seraf Pri Ez
_
Hayyim, an influential analysis of the kavvanot.82 An emphasis on slumber and
_
the nesirah is also evident in the influential prayer book commentary by the
Shabbatean Jacob Koppel Lifschuetz, Kol Ya’akov.83 The nesirah rite was so
widespread that Hayyim Vital wondered why it wasn’t mentioned in the exo-
_
teric prayer service!84 His son Shmuel Vital’s prayer book commentary con-
tains an explication of the nesirah that parallels the entry in Sha’ar ha- kavvanot:
Rosh ha-Shanah, although this composition might not be original.85
Surprisingly, the compilers of kavvanot did not universally embrace the
theme of the nesirah. Among the manuscript prayer books that lack a nesirah
rite for the New Year are the manuscript editions of Yom Tov Lippman Heller
II (the grandson of the author of Tosafot Yom Tov),86 Yisrael of Satanov,87 and
Moshe Yosef of Lubmila.88 Shalom Shar’abi acknowledged the nesirah but did
not build the entire structure of his kavvanot around the phenomenon. Ac-
cording to Shar’abi, the kavvanot attached to the shofar are not primarily in-
tended to awaken Zeir from his slumber but are meant for other soteric
purposes attendant upon the nature of the day.89 However, the nesirah rite is an
important part of the kabbalistic practice of the Jerusalem circles, and the
Nahar Shalom community in Jerusalem has prepared an extensive nesirah
rite.90
The nesirah emerged from pagan myth, was adapted into rabbinic tradi-
tion, and blossomed into kabbalistic practice, finally finding expression in the
Lurianic kavvanot. The high profile of the nesirah in the Lurianic prayer rite
recovers the original myth of antiquity.91 Like other such motifs, it then en-
tered the liturgy through the Lurianic system of kavvanot, which functioned as
an open canon for later kabbalists. The midrashic origins of the myth lent it
weight and authenticity and further expedited its incorporation into the mys-
tical rite.
The nesirah account posits an ancient Jewish myth, which speaks of a flaw
in the original relationship of man and woman. In this case, the flawed rela-
tionship is secondary to a prior ideal relation, which is androgynous. Lurianic
tradition attempted to unite the flawed couple and to repair the celestial rela-
tionship and, with it, the whole Divine family. The flaw was not intrinsic; the
Divine couple was compelled by catastrophe to stand back-to-back in order to
confront the kelipot that assailed them as a result of the breaking of the vessels.
In addition to this poignant portrayal of the family beset by stresses from
without, a negative view of the elementary feminine survives from the original
Eden account. In this case, Nukvah, the spouse, is viewed as a mere receptacle
for the discarded powers of judgment.
The persistence of the image of the nesirah, from aggadic motif to kab-
balistic rite, is also a by-product of the formal similarity between the various
expressions of the androgynous anthropos. Male and female are created in a
static union in the original midrashic accounts. Similarly, the hypostatic
structures of the sefirot and the countenances as portrayed in the Zohar and
adapted by Cordovero and Luria contain similar static relationships of union
between male and female sefirot and countenances. The unions are constant
146 appendix
and yet ever shifting and evolving, through the liturgical day and into the
rhythms of the year. In the aggadic narratives, God is the trickster, as well as
the matchmaker, expediting the separation and the reunion of the genders. In
the mystical rite, the kabbalist is the catalyst for the union, as well as for the
rebirth of the central figure in the system, Zeir Anpin.
Every prayer rite that was adopted by Kabbalah has its own archaeology
and career through history. For whatever reason, the image of the reconcilia-
tion of the countenances has proven very resilient among mystics from Eastern
Europe to the Middle East, remaining the focus of the mystical rite and un-
dergoing revival particularly in this generation. In the case of the nesirah,
different mystics in varying locales agreed that the primordial Man was always
fated to lose his consciousness, fall asleep, and require the efforts of human-
kind in order to be reborn. The process of evolution that has been herein
detailed for the nesirah was repeated for the various climactic moments of the
daily, weekly, and yearly prayer service. The night vigil of Tiqqun Hazot, the
_ _
counting of the Omer, and the priestly blessing all originated with one set of
cultic assumptions and then began the long process of evolution through
halakhic, magical, philosophical, and eventually, in these cases, kabbalistic
interpretations of Lurianic and non-Lurianic provenances.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion reached by Scholem that the Lurianic
system is a psychological projection of a historical reality. The flaw in the
relationship of the countenances came about as the result of deleterious in-
fluences in the cosmos. In one respect, seeing the Divine family as a metaphor
for Luria’s own sundered family lends credence to Scholem’s famous thesis
that Luria’s teaching reflected the vicissitudes of the Spanish expulsion. Martin
Cohen (n a monograph, unpublished) has recently theorized that Luria made
the countenance system of the Idrot central to his own mystical system because
the images of an extended family under stress from the vicissitudes of history
mirrored his own life experience. Cohen has argued that Luria’s teaching is
related to familial trauma. In the mind of a young child rendered fatherless and
exiled to Egypt with his widowed mother under the protection of an ambigu-
ously benevolent patriarch, the world offers mostly catastrophe. The terrors
inherent in the nesirah account, such as the dread of night, the breakup of the
family structure, and the anxieties attending the wellbeing of the celestial
parents, reflect a child’s anxiety and the hope that Abba is not gone forever but
is only sleeping. The lachrymose aspects of Lurianic teaching certainly indicate
great emotional pain on the part of the author. Whether engendered by ex-
ternal or familial factors, Luria was, indeed, a perennial orphan, whether of his
family or of history.
Notes
chapter 1
1. Moshe Halamish, ‘‘The Requirement of Intentions,’’ in Halamish,
_ _
Kabbalah: In Liturgy, Halakhah and Customs, p. 80.
2. Zevi Moscowitz, Hayyei ha-RaSHaSH, pp. 5–6; drawn from Ya’akov
_
Sapir, Even Sapir, 110b.
3. Aaron Heibi, Giant of the Spirit, p. 14.
_
4. Moscowitz, Hayyei ha-RaSHaSH, p. 6.
_
5. Shar’abi died on the tenth of Shevat, 1777. The anniversary of his
death is celebrated by the Beit El kabbalists. Avraham Shalom Shar’abi,
Divrei Shalom, Minhagim #58.
6. Moscowitz, Hayyei ha-RaSHaSH, p. 9.
_
7. Gershom Scholem emphasized this phenomenon in his ‘‘A Charter
of the Students of the AR’’I.’’ The Beit El charters have been translated by
Louis Jacobs (Jewish Mystical Testimonies, pp. 199–202) and Lawrence Fine
(Judaism in Practice, pp. 210–214).
8. The signers of the first draft include Shar’abi, Yom Tov Algazi,
Shmuel Al-Hadif, Avraham Balul, Aaron Ben Kavod Rabbi Eliahu ha-Levi,
_
Menachem ben Rabbi Yosef, Hayyim Yosef David Azulai, Yosef Amnon,
_
Shlomo Bela’ah, David Fernandes Dias, Ya’akov Biton, Rafael Eliezer Parhi,
Hayyim de la Rosa, Rafael Moshe Gallik, Avraham Yishmael Hayyim San-
_ _
gevinitti, and Ya’akov Algazi (Nahman Ha-Cohen, Minhagei Beit El, pp. 83–
85; Heibi, Giant of the Spirit, pp. 49–50).
_
9. Nahman Ha-Cohen, Minhagei Beit El, pp. 85–91; Aaron Heibi, Giant
of the Spirit, pp. 51–55; Meir Benayahu, R. Hayyim Yosef David Azulai,
_
HYD’’A, p. 17.
_
148 notes to pages 9–17
10. Hayyim Shaul Dweck and Eliahu Ya’akov Legimi, Kavvanot Pratiyot, 4a–5b.
11. See p. 72.
12. See pp. 71–72. Moscowitz, Hayyei RaSha’’Sh, pp. 80–81, taken from Divrei
_
Shalom of Raphael Avraham Shalom Shar’abi, 17d; Ya’akov Moshe Hillel, introduction
to Hayyim Shaul Dweck, Peat ha-Sadeh, pp. 40–41.
13. Moscowitz, Hayyei ha-RaSHaSH, p. 95; Y.A.Z. Margoliot, introduction to
_
Zevi Hirsch of Zidatchov, Zevi le-Zaddik, p. 38.
_ _
14. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 155–157.
15. Ibid., pp. 8–9.
16. Dweck, Peat ha-Sadeh, 2:223, citing the Hayyim Palag’s work Tokhahot
Hayyim, 2:96b. On Luria’s prior incarnations, see Lawrence Fine, Physician of the
_
Soul, Healer of the Cosmos, pp. 321–326.
17. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 15, 48, 50, 57–59.
18. Yosef Hayyim, Rav Pe’alim, 2, in the appendix Sod ha-Yesharim, 13 3c.
_
19. Avraham Ferreira in his work Toldot Aaron U’Moshe (in the appendix Kuntrus
Efer Yizhak, 9d).
_
20. Hayyim Shaul Dweck and Eliahu Ya’akov Legimi, Benayahu ben Yehoyada,
6a; Dweck and Legimi, Eifah Sheleimah, in the section Sha’ar ha-Nikkudim, 9:4, 13a;
Ya’akov Moshe Hillel, introduction to Dweck, Peat ha-Sadeh, p. 40.
21. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 145; the role of revelation, as opposed to scholas-
ticism in kabbalistic teaching, is not confined to this instance. See Pinchas Giller,
Reading the Zohar, pp. 30–33.
22. Moscowitz, Hayyei RaSha’’Sh, p. 71.
_
23. Masoud Alhadad, Simhat Kohen, 39a; Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 149. Alhadad
is joined in this opinion by Yosef Hayyim, the Ben Ish Hai, Sasson Bakher Moshe,
_ _
and Avraham Ferreira, author of Me’il ha-Kodesh U-Vigdei Yesha’.
24. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 146, 148–149. Hillel maintains that in antiq-
uity the sages relied on revelations from Elijah quite commonly. Luria’s revelation
from Elijah was more akin to the experience of a rabbinical mentor and his student.
25. Hayyim, Rav Pe’alim 3, Sod ha-Yesharim, 4, 3d.
_
26. See further, pp. 65–67.
27. Petah Einayyim, 68d, 98a. Sasson was also the author of Shemen Sasson, a
commentary on the Lurianic canon.
28. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 159.
29. Ibid., p. 160; see also pp. 150–151.
30. Sariah Deblitsky, Mahshevet Bezalel, p. 83.
_
31. Ahavat Shalom, p. 158; Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kab-
balah,’’ p. 171 note 121.
32. Petaya, Beit Lehem Yehudah, 2a; Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 158.
33. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 328–329.
34. I expect that R. Benyahu Shmueli of the Nahar Shalom community will
emerge as a communal force.
35. Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth, pp. 7, 8.
_
notes to pages 17–22 149
37. There is also the danger of being unwittingly coopted. Professor Michelle
Rosenthal of Haifa University has been monitoring the evangelist Amnon Yizhak,
_
presenting his activities vividly in a session at the American Academy of Religions
conference, in 2004, titled ‘‘Textual Poaching as Popular Religious Performance:
The Case of Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak.’’ In the course of her study, she found herself
quoted approvingly in his publicity materials, and a number of Kabbalah scholars
were interviewed for a film that, unbeknownst to them, was being produced by the
Kabbalah Center for one of its own promotions.
chapter 2
1. Originally found in Ya’akov Kezin’s Pri Ez ha-Gan 28a, cited in Menachem
_ _
Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 127 note 26, and in
A. Efg’in’s Divrei Shalom, 2, p. 180 note 1.
2. Louis Jacobs has noted the need for an exploration of the relationship between
the Sephardic saints and Eastern Judaism and Hasidic thought. See Hasidic Prayer,
pp. xii–xiv.
3. Ya’akov Moshe Hillel, introduction to Hayyim Shaul Dweck, Peat ha-Sadeh,
pp. 30–32.
4. Identification with the Temple rite is present in kavvanot practice from its
earliest stages, as evidenced by Elliot Wolfson’s demonstration that the visualization
of the Shekhinah was imported from the Temple rite to the practice of the German
pietists. See Wolfson, ‘‘Sacred Space and Mental Iconography: Imago Templi and
Contemplation in Rhineland Jewish Pietism.’’
5. Berakhot, 13a–b.
6. Halamish, ‘‘The Obligation of Intentions,’’ in Halamish, Kabbalah: In Liturgy,
_ _
Halakhah and Customs, p. 73; ‘‘The Halakhic Authority of the Zohar,’’ in ibid., p. 120;
Menachem Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 167 note 110.
7. Joseph Weiss, Studies in Eastern European Jewish Mysticism, p. 96.
8. Scholem, ‘‘The Concept of Kavvanah in the Early Kabbalah,’’ pp. 167, 171–174.
Gershom Scholem saw this work as key to the Zohar’s understanding of prayer. The
Beit El kabbalists also cited Nachmanides’ directive to recite certain verses for the
rectification of the ten sefirot, reproduced in Dweck and Legimi, Benayahu ben
Yehoyada II, 16a.
9. Joseph Dan, ‘‘The Emergence of Mystical Prayer,’’ in Jewish Mysticism: The
Middle Ages, p. 230. Another early instance of the appending of specific kavvanot to
the preexistent prayer service is an anonymous thirteenth-century commentary that
shows the influence of Abraham Abulafia’s early kabbalistic work Bahir and Sefer
Yezirah. On this work, see Adam Afterman, The Intention of Prayers in Early Ecstatic
_
Kabbalah: A Study and Critical Edition of an Anonymous Commentary to the Prayers, p. 9.
10. Yoni Garb has parsed the nuances of this relationship as ‘‘power in texts’’
rather than ‘‘power over texts’’ or ‘‘power through texts’’ in his ‘‘Power and Kavvanah
in Kabbalah,’’ pp. 2–3. See also Weiss, Studies in Eastern European Jewish Mysticism, pp.
95, 117 note 1 and in Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 277.
11. This subject has recently been the subject of a full-scale study by Moshe Idel,
Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation. The use of symbols in Kabbalah
is addressed in Joseph Dan, ‘‘Midrash and the Dawn of Kabbalah,’’ in Midrash
and Literature, pp. 127–139; Pinchas Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine, pp. 7–20;
Giller, Reading the Zohar, p. 175 note 6; Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives,
pp. 173–249; ‘‘Infinities of Torah in Kabbalah,’’ in Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford
Budick, Midrash and Literature, pp. 141–157; Hartman and Budick, ‘‘Reification of
Language in Jewish Mysticism,’’ in Mysticism and Language, pp. 42–79; Ronit Meroz,
‘‘Redemption in the Lurianic Teaching,’’ pp. 33–35; Mikhal Oron, ‘‘Place Me for a
Sign upon Your Heart: Studies in the Poetics of the Zohar’s Author in Sabba de-
Mishpatim,’’ in Goldreich and Oron, Massuot: Studies in Kabbalistic Literature and
Jewish Thought Presented in Memory of Professor Ephraim Gottlieb, pp. 8–13; Gershom
Scholem, ‘‘The Meaning of the Torah in Jewish Mysticism,’’ in On the Kabbalah and Its
Symbolism, pp. 32–86, Scholem, ‘‘The Name of God and Linguistic Theory of the
Kabbalah,’’ pp. 59–80, 164–94; Isaiah Tishby, ‘‘Symbol and Religion in Kabbalah,’’ in
Tishby, Paths of Faith and Heresy, pp. 11–22; Elliot Wolfson, ‘‘By Way of Truth: Aspects
of Nachmanides’ Kabbalistic Hermeneutic,’’ pp. 116–117 note 43; Wolfson, ‘‘Female
Imaging of the Torah: From Literary Metaphor to Religious Symbol,’’ in Wolfson,
From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism, Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox II, pp. 271–307;
Wolfson, ‘‘The Hermeneutics of Visionary Experience: Revelation and Interpretation
in the Zohar,’’ pp. 311–345; Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, pp. 283–285,
298, 356–392.
12. Scholem, ‘‘The Concept of Kavvanah in the Early Kabbalah,’’ p. 168.
13. Wolfson, ‘‘The Hermeneutics of Visionary Experience: Revelation and In-
terpretation in the Zohar,’’ pp. 311–345; Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, pp.
283–285, 298, 356–392; Wolfson, ‘‘Beautiful Maiden Without Eyes: Peshat and Sod in
Zoharic Hermeneutics,’’ pp. 155–203.
14. Liebes, ‘‘Mythos as opposed to Symbol in the Zohar and Lurianic Kabbalah,’’
p. 205.
15. Halamish, ‘‘LeShem Yihud and Its Generations in Kabbalah and Halakhah,’’
_
in Halamish, Kabbalah: In Liturgy, Halakhah and Customs, pp. 45–70.
_
16. See Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 213–215.
17. Ya’akov Hayyim Sofer, Kaf ha-Hayyim, 60:11, 1:103b, citing Vital, Sha’ar Ruah
_ _
ha-Kodesh; Hayyim de-la Rosa, Torat Hakham, 172a.
_ _
18. Sofer, Kaf ha-Hayyim, 621:14, 8:63b.
_
19. Rafael Avraham Shalom Shar’abi, Divrei Shalom, 82, Sofer, Kaf ha-Hayyim,
_
1, 18:15.
20. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 243, 254, 262, 272; see Shar’abi, Nahar Shalom,
18a–b, 27c–d, 34a–b; Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot, p. 153.
22. Maimonides, Book of Mizvot, Positive Mizvot 2.
_ _
23. Zohar III (Ra’aya Meheimna), 277a–b.
24. Meir Ibn Gabbai, Avodat ha-Kodesh (Jerusalem, 1973, p. 222; Jerusalem,
1992), p. 404; Isaiah ha-Levi Horowitz, Siddur Sha’ar ha-Shamayim, 1:329. See also
Isaac the Blind, in his commentary to the Sefer Yezirah (1:8), brought in by Scholem,
_
‘‘The Concept of Kavvanah in the Early Kabbalah,’’ pp. 165–166.
25. Zohar II 57a, see Halamish, ‘‘The Requirement of Intentions,’’ in Halamish,
_ _
Kabbalah: In Liturgy, Halakhah and Customs, p. 77.
26. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 213–215.
27. Zohar III (Ra’aya Meheimna), 277a–b.
28. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 78, 152; Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in
the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ pp. 191, 222 note 241, 259–261; 263 note 361. See Wolfson,
‘‘Coronation of the Sabbath Bride: Kabbalistic Myth and the Ritual of Androgyni-
zation.’’
29. See Zohar (Ra’aya Meheimna) II, 119a, III 109b. See Halamish, ‘‘Le-Shem
_
Yihud and Its Permutations in Kabbalah and Halakhah,’’ in Halamish, Kabbalah in
_
Liturgy, Halakahah and Customs, p. 5.
30. Kallus considers the ur-text of kabbalistic prayer to be Zohar II, 262a–b,
expanded by Cordovero, Tefilah le-Moshe, 101a–b; Vital, Sha’ar Ruah ha-Kodesh, 4; also
Vital, Ketavim Hadashim me-Rabbeinu Hayyim Vital, pp. 16–17.
_ _
31. Tiqqunei ha-Zohar, 87a.
32. Shar’abi, Nahar Shalom, 39a.
33. On the Sabbath, in particular, she is the world soul, and so union with the
Shekhinah is union with the inner nature of the phenomenal world (Zohar I, 132a,
228a–b; II, 44a, 260b; Tiqqunei ha-Zohar, 92a; Tiqqunei Zohar Hadash, 102a). For
_
Talmudic antecedents, see Berakhot, 5b, Eruvin, 53b, Avodah Zarah, 11b.
34. Zohar II, 245a.
35. Zohar I, 148a; Zohar III (Ra’aya Meheimna), 238a; Tiqqunei ha-Zohar, 92a;
Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, p. 957; Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the
Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 190.
36. Dweck and Legimi, Benayahu ben Yehoyada II, 18b.
37. Zohar III (Ra’aya Meheimna), 277a–b; Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 117–118,
129, 136–137, 141, 144–145; Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos, pp. 224–
225; Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 189.
38. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 269, 271.
39. Sha’ar Ma’amarei RaSHB’’Y, p. 262a.
40. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 249–253; Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the
Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ pp. 153 note 69, 155.
41. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 188–191, 195; Pri Ez Hayyim, chapter 12.
_ _
42. The literature on devekut as a religious phenomenon is vast. The idea is best
represented in Gershom Scholem, ‘‘ ‘Devekut’ and Intimate Linking to the Divine
in Early Hasidism’’ (Hebrew); Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, pp. 203–227;
Mordechai Pachter, ‘‘The Concept of Devekut in the Homiletical Ethical Writings
of 16th Century Safed’’; Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, pp. 67–90;
Elliot Wolfson, ‘‘Walking as a Sacred Duty: Theological Transformation of Social
Reality in Early Chasidism.’’
43. Halamish, ‘‘The Requirement of Intentions,’’ in Halamish, Kabbalah: In
_ _
Liturgy, Halakhah and Customs, p. 76.
44. Gottlieb, Studies in Kabbalistic Literature, pp. 38, 41; Tishby, Perush ha Aggadot
le Rabbeinu Azriel, pp. 39–40.
45. Gottlieb, Studies in Kabbalistic Literature, pp. 39–43, 45.
46. Ibid., p. 41. Further discussions of this theme, when expressed in terms of
the cross-cultural value of unio mystica, have formed the crux of a debate between
Gershom Scholem and Moshe Idel. See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 59–73;
Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 299–309 (esp. p. 302, ‘‘Debhequth is . . . not unio
but communio.’’); Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 140–141; Scholem,
The Messianic Idea in Judaism, pp. 226–227; Tishby and Lachover, The Wisdom of
the Zohar, p. 947; Gottlieb, Studies in Kabbalistic Literature, pp. 41, 237–238; Kallus,
‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 165 note 110; Elliot Wolfson,
‘‘Mystical Theurgical Dimensions of Prayer in Sefer ha-Rimmon,’’ pp. 43, 66 note 16.
47. Asi Farber, ‘‘On the Problem of Moshe de Leon’s Early Kabbalistic Tradi-
tion,’’ pp. 84–87.
48. Translated from the Perush ha-Aggadot le-Rabbeinu Azriel (pp. 39–41) with
parallels from the commentary of Rabbi Ezra, as published by H. Pedaya, ‘‘Seized with
Speech: Clarifying the Ecstatic Prophecy of the Early Kabbalists.’’ See Garb, ‘‘Power
and Kavvanah in Kabbalah,’’ p. 101.
49. Gottlieb, Studies in Kabbalistic Literature, p. 48.
50. Wolfson, ‘‘Sacred Space and Mental Iconography: Imago Templi and Con-
templation in Rhineland Jewish Pietism,’’ pp. 594–596.
51. Ibid., pp. 599.
52. In this regard, is is important to note a distinction between Wolfson and
Liebes on the nature of the kabbalistic symbol (Wolfson, ‘‘Sacred Space and Mental
Iconography,’’ pp. 597 note 10, 600).
53. Ibid., p. 600. Wolfson, unlike Matt, argues for a lack of apophasis in Jewish
sources (ibid., p.600 note 17). Daniel C. Matt, ‘‘Ayin: The Concept of Nothingness in
Jewish Mysticism,’’ pp. 67–108. See also Wolfson, ‘‘Negative Theology and Positive
Assertion.’’
54. Wolfson, ‘‘Sacred Space and Mental Iconography,’’ p. 604.
55. Joseph Dan, ‘‘The Emergence of Mystical Prayer,’’ in Dan, Jewish Mysticism:
The Middle Ages, pp. 248–249; Dan, ‘‘Prayer as Text and Prayer as Mystical Experi-
ence,’’ in ibid., p. 270.
56. See Giller, Reading the Zohar, pp. 116–117.
57. Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 77.
_
59. Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot, p. 153.
60. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 248–249, 262.
61. In his introduction to the work Pri Ez Hayyim, Meorot Natan, p. 4; Hillel,
_ _
Ahavat Shalom, p. 245.
62. Zohar III, 230; on the latter appellation, see Tiqqunei ha-Zohar, 26a, 78b;
Zohar Hadash, 34a.
_
63. Tiqqunei ha-Zohar, 3a.
64. Hillel, introduction to Dweck, Peat ha-Sadeh, p. 35; Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of
Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 127.
65. Garb, ‘‘Power and Kavvanah in Kabbalah,’’; Garb, Manifestations of Power in
Jewish Mysticism.
66. Garb, ‘‘Power and Kavvanah in Kabbalah,’’ pp. 172–216; Garb, Manifestations
of Power in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 142–247. Garb points out that this understanding
is present in the thought of the Renaissance figure Yohanan Alemanno.
67. Zohar I, 199b, II 62a; Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, p. 962.
68. Zohar I (Tiqqunei ha-Zohar), 24a, 108a.
of Power in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 60–64.
of Power in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 113–141.
71. This isomorphic relationship may have its origins in the original rabbinic
conceptualization of kavvanah, as has been demonstrated by Elliot Wolfson. See
Wolfson, ‘‘Iconic Visualization and the Imaginal Body of God: The Role of Intention
in the Rabbinic Conception of Prayer,’’ pp. 137–162; Wolfson, ‘‘Sacred Space and
Mental Iconography: Imago Templi and Contemplation in Rhineland Jewish Pietism.’’
See also Moshe Idel, Language, Torah and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia, pp. 6–7.
72. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 132–140; see Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in
Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 95 note 57. On cataphasis in Lurianic Kabbalah, see Kallus,
‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 100.
73. Garb, ‘‘Power and Kavvanah in Kabbalah,’’ pp. 98–143; Garb, Manifestations of
Power in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 72–113.
74. Garb is intrigued by the suggestion of kavvanot as a way to channel Divine
power, particularly when juxtaposed against the historical reality of Jewish power-
lessness. In this understanding, Garb is influenced by postmodern understandings
of the nature of power, particularly in terms of their critique of the notion of an active/
intending subject. According to an understanding posited by Michel Foucault, power
has no center but is itself a field, made up of manifold interactions between vari-
ous shifting sites. Garb suggests that Foucault’s understandings of the nature of
mysticism may have their roots in the interest in Kabbalah during the Italian Re-
naissance by the likes of Pico de la Mirandola. Hence, Garb suggests that kabbalistic
theosophy influenced Renaissance thought and, therefore, Western political tradition
as a whole. (Garb, ‘‘Power and Kavvanah in Kabbalah,’’ pp. 15–21, 30 note 164. See
Chaim Wirszubski, Pico de la Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism; Garb,
‘‘Power and Kavvanah in Kabbalah,’’ pp. 24–28; Garb, Manifestations of Power in Jewish
Mysticism, pp. 11–14; Garb, ‘‘Power and Kavvanah in Kabbalah’’ pp. 593–601; Jess
Byron Hollenback, Mysticism: Experience, Response and Empowerment, pp. 197–229).
An interesting review of this issue, not cited by Garb, is David Biale’s Power and
Powerlessness in Jewish History, which is acknowledged by Garb in his later work.
75. Garb, ‘‘Power and Kavvanah in Kabbalah,’’ pp. 4–5, 34–65; Garb, Manifesta-
tions of Power in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 5–8, 28–46.
76. See Rebecca Macy Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power: Angels, Incantations
and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism.
77. Avot, 2:4.
78. Avot, 4:2.
79. Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine, pp. 95–96.
80. Berachot, 6a.
82. Wolfson, ‘‘Sacred Space and Mental Iconography,’’ p. 605.
83. Garb emphasizes four particular contributors to this discourse: Joseph Ibn
Sayah of Jerusalem, Moses Cordovero in Safed, Meir Ibn Gabbai, and David Halevi in
Dar’a, Morocco. In fact, Garb and Rachel Elior argue for the influence of the Dar’a
community upon the Safed kabbalists, as evidenced by linguistic and astral usages
as well as by specific doctrines regarding the Shekhinah. Garb, ‘‘Power and Kavvanah
in Kabbalah,’’ pp. 217–285; Manifestations of Power in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 185–247;
Moshe Halamish, The Kabbalah in North Africa: A Historical and Cultural Survey,
_
pp. 29–30, 173; Rachel Elior, ‘‘The Kabbalists of Dar’a,’’ pp. 36–73.
84. Sefer Pardes Rimmonim, Gate 27, Chapter 1.
85. Ibid., Gate 32, Chapter 1.
86. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 272; see Shar’abi, Nahar Shalom, 18a–b, 27c–d,
34a–b; Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot, p. 153.
87. Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer In Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 18 note k.
88. See p. 29.
89. Steven Katz, Mysticism and Religious Traditions, p. 24.
90. Eitan Fishbane, ‘‘Tears of Disclosure: The Role of Weeping in Zoharic
Narrative,’’ pp. 25–47; Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 74–111.
chapter 3
1. Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 177.
2. Nachmanides, Commentary to the Torah, Introduction; Elliot Wolfson,
Abraham Abulafia: Kabbalist and Prophet, pp. 73–74. Moshe Idel and Elliot Wolfson
have examined the use of sacred names in the teachings of Abraham Abulafia.
Joseph Dan has done the same with regard to the German pietists and probed the
origins of these names. The tradition of multiple names of God predates both of these
medieval movements, as detailed in Scholem’s famous discussion of the linguistic
theory of Kabbalah. Nonetheless, sacred-name traditions remain a relatively unex-
plored aspect of Kabbalah studies, when considered in proportion to their occurrence
in the literature. Gershom Sch.olem, ‘‘The Name of God and Linguistic Theory of the
Kabbalah,’’ Diogenes, no. 79–80 (1972): 165; Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine, Ch. 1
note 29; also Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia: Kabbalist and Prophet, p. 58.
3. Joseph Dan, ‘‘The Emergence of Mystical Prayer,’’ in Dan, Jewish Mysticism:
The Middle Ages, p. 229.
4. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 247, 271.
5. Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, p. 15.

6. Ibid., p. 14; on Heikhalot Rabbati, p. 16.
7. Joseph Dan, ‘‘The Book of the Divine Name by Rabbi Eliezer of Worms,’’
pp. 142, 157; Dan, ‘‘The Emergence of Mystical Prayer,’’ in Dan, Jewish Mysticism: The
Middle Ages, p. 229. See Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, p. 23.
See David ben Yehudah he-Hasid, Sefer Mar’ot Ha-Zove’ot, p. 95.
_ _
8. Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, p. 28; Wolfson, Abraham
Abulafia: Kabbalist and Prophet, p. 57; Adam Afterman, The Intention of Prayers in Early
Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 20, 26.
9. Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, p. 40; Idel, Language, Torah
and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia, p. x.
10. Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, p. 34; Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy
of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 176 note 135.
11. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 114; Pri Ez Hayyim I, p. 152.
_ _
12. Zohar II, 22a, III 183a. See Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia: Kabbalist and Prophet,
pp. 102–103.
13. Moshe Cordovero, Elimah Rabbati 89a.
14. See Giller, Reading the Zohar, pp. 138–150; Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish
Mysticism, pp. 269–271.
15. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 101, 151, 277; Sha’ar Ma’amarei RaSHB’’Y,
p. 254.
16. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 194.
17. Ez Hayyim, Ashlag 2:335–236; Jerusalem 99a–d.
_ _
18. Ez Hayyim, Ashlag 2:342; Jerusalem 100a; see Idel, The Mystical Experience in
_ _
Abraham Abulafia, p. 92; Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia: Kabbalist and Prophet, p. 62.
19. Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 242.
20. For example, see Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 99–100, 101, 103, 151–152, 156,
174, 238; Ez Hayyim, Sha’ar, 18, p. 5; Dan, ‘‘The Book of the Divine Name by Rabbi
_ _
Eliezer of Worms,’’ pp. 171–172; Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic
Kabbalah,’’ pp. 134–135.
21. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 157, 277.
22. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 65, 168; Ez Hayyim, 2 p. 4. Zohar Hadash, 90a.
_ _ _
23. Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos, p. 213.
24. Menachem Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 182,
note 137.
25. Ibid., pp. 184, note 142, 206.
29. See pp. 78–83. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 79, 118, 241, 276; Pri Ez Hayyim I,
_ _
pp. 9–11; Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 135.
30. Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ pp. 198–201. The
text in question appears a number of times in the Lurianic canon (Pri Ez Hayyim,
_ _
Sha’ar Hanhagat ha-Limmud, pp. 354b–355a; Sha’ar Ruah ha-Kodesh, 1 57b, Sha’ar
ha-Yihudim, 15c. It is also quoted in a number of Lurianic prayer books; see Rashkover,
Siddur R. Shabbatai, 36b–37a; Margoliot, Siddur Rav Asher, 27b.
31. Kallus notes, in the Sha’ar ha-Yihudim, ‘‘his two thighs’’ and, in the Sha’ar
Ruah ha-Kodesh, ‘‘the right thigh.’’
32. See pp. 77–80.
34. Sefer Ha-Kanah, 88a; Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 85.
35. Kiddushin, 71a.
36. Gershom Scholem, ‘‘A Commentary on the Forty-two Letter Name, Attrib-
uted to Hai Gaon, with the Commentary of R. Nissim,’’ Kabbalistic Manuscripts in the
Collection of the Hebrew University Library, pp. 213–217.
37. Sefer Ha-Pliah, 53d, 54a–b, Moshe Cordovero, Sefer Pardes Ha-Rimmonim,
Sha’ar Pratei ha-Shemot, 12–13, pp. 102b–103a, Sefer Ha-Kanah, 88a–b.
38. Tiqqunei ha-Zohar, 13a, 19a, 26a, 104a.
39. Ez Hayyim Ashlag 2:342; Jerusalem 100a.
_ _
40. Brought in Dan, The Esoteric Teaching of the German Pietists, pp. 122–126;
Dan, ‘‘The Emergence of Mystical Prayer,’’ in Dan, Jewish Mysticism: The Middle Ages,
pp. 254; Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, p. 17. See Eliezer
of Worms, Sodei Razei Semukhim, pp. 31–86.
42. Pinchas Hurvitz, Sefer ha-Brit, 1:4:14, pp. 75–76; See Bahyah ben Asher,
Commentary to the Torah, Vol. 1, p. 32.
43. Tiqqunei ha-Zohar, 130a, Tiqqunei Zohar Hadash, 107c.
_
44. See J. H. Chajes, Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists and Early Modern Ju-
daism, p. 82; Moshe Cordovero, Sefer Pardes Rimmonim, 102c–3b.
45. See Shmuel Vital, Siddur Hemdat Yisrael, 19b.
_
47. Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, pp. 15, 32, 35, 38.
48. See Boaz Huss, ‘‘All You Need is LAV—Madonnah and Postmodern Kab-
balah,’’ pp. 612–614.
49. Sukkah, 45b.
50. Sections 76–77, in the edition of Gerhard Scholem, Das Buch Bahir,
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1980), p. 78; Daniel Abrams, The
Book Bahir (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 1994), p. 165.
51. Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, p. 38. See Kallus, ‘‘The
Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 178 note 137.
52. Dweck and Legimi, Benayahu ben Yehoyada, 2a.
53. See, in particular, Yehudah Berg, The 72 Names of God: Technology for the Soul.
54. Lvov 1786, reprinted Jerusalem 2001. This information is gleaned from a
discussion between Professors Joel Hecker and Boaz Huss on the E-Idra list, 3–3– 04.
55. See p. 100.
56. Ez Hayyim Ashlag 2:327–328a; Jerusalem 96d–97a.
_ _
57. See Giller, Reading the Zohar, pp. 17, 53, 140, 181 note 88; Idel, Kabbalah: New
Perspectives, pp. 136–144.
58. Giller, Reading the Zohar, pp. 36–37.

59. Ez Hayyim Ashlag 2:330; Jerusalem 98a.
_ _
60. Shalom Shar’abi, Nahar Shalom, 33c.
61. Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, p. 31; Ibn Latif, Zurat
_
ha-Olam, p. 32. See also Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, p. 33; Isaac
of Acre, Meirat Einayim, p. 89.
62. Zakhut, Iggerot ha-Remez 6 (Jerusalem, 1999), p. 16; Hillel, Ahavat Shalom,
p. 258.
63. Eliashiv, Hakdamot Ve-She’arim, 43a; see Cordovero, Sefer Pardes Rimmonim,
Sha’ar ha-Kavvanah, 2; Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 254–255.
65. See Zevi Hirsch mi-Zidhatchov, Pri Kodesh Hillulim, 2a–c; Hillel, Ahavat
_
Shalom, p. 257.
66. Wolfson, ‘‘From Sealed Book to Open Text: Time, Memory and Narrativity in
Kabbalistic Hermeneutics,’’ pp. 153–167; Nissim Yosha, Myth and Metaphor: The
Philosophical Exegesis of Avraham Cohen Herrera on the Lurianic Kabbalah, pp. 281–339;
Giller, Reading the Zohar, pp. 31–32.
67. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 254, Vital, Sha’ar ha-Hakdamot, p. 2.
69. See Luzzatto, Hoker u-Mekubal, frontispiece, 3a; Adir Ba-Marom 2a–b.
_
70. On the issues of the Vilna Gaon’s position, see Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 135,
note 51. The nineteenth-century Vilna kabbalist Pinchas Eliahu Hurvitz is a literalist;
see Sefer ha-Brit 1:4:14, pp. 75–76. On this kabbalist’s activity, see Ira Robinson,
‘‘Kabbalah and Science in Sefer ha-Berit: A Modernization Strategy for Orthodox
Jews,’’ Modern Judaism 9 (1989): 275–289; Shlomo Eliashiv, Sefer ha-Deah; Leshem
Shevo ve-Ohalamah 1:56d–59a.
71. Yosef Hayyim, Da’at U’Tevunah, 5a–c.
_
72. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 117; see also pp. 118–124, 139, 142–144.
73. On this topic, see Liebes, ‘‘Mythos as Opposed to Symbol in the Zohar and
Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ Mythos in Judaism-Eshel Be’er Sheva, vol. 4.
74. Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ pp. 62, 124.
See also Halamish, Kabbalah: In Liturgy, Halakhah and Customs, pp. 80–105.
_
chapter 4
1. See pp. 49–53.
2. Halamish, ‘‘The Requirement of Intentions,’’ in Halamish, Kabbalah: In Li-
_ _
turgy, Halakhah and Customs, p. 81; Dweck and Legimi, Benayahu ben Yehoyada, 1b.
4. Yosef Hayyim, Rav Pe’alim 3:13; see Hayyim, Ben Ish Hai, p. 60.
_ _ _
5. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 244, 265.
6. Luria himself was an adept Talmudist. In Egypt, he absorbed the influence of
Bezalel Ashkenazi, the author of the famous halakhic anthology Shittah Mekubezet.
_ _
Tradition has it that Luria himself was the author of the volume dealing with the
tractate Zevahim, which was destroyed in the great fire of Izmir, in the eighteenth
century (Ronit Meroz, ‘‘Redemption in the Lurianic Teaching,’’ p. 1; Giller, Reading the
Zohar, p. 18.
7. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 313, 331, 337–338, 341–345.
8. See Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine, pp. 59–79.
9. Dweck and Legimi, Benayahu ben Yehoyada II, 18a.
10. He prescribes reliance on the Drush ha-Da’at in Sha’ar ha-Hakdamot (65b),
cited in Nahar Shalom, 41b.
11. Ya’akov Moshe Hillel, introduction to Dweck, Peat ha-Sadeh, p. 39.
13. Ibid., p. 241.
14. ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 127 note 26.
16. See p. 48.
17. Divrei Shalom, Minhagim, #24.
18. Ibid., #75. These appear in the current Rehovot ha-Nahar holiday prayer
books, Vol. 4, pp. 127–133.
20. Dan, ‘‘The Emergence of Mystical Payer,’’ in Jewish Mysticism: The Middle
Ages, p. 230.
21. Weiss, Studies in Eastern European Jewish Mysticism, p. 96.
23. Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, pp. 12–15.
24. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 53, 250–253.
25. See pp. 77–78.
26. Hayyim de la Rosa, Torat Hakham, 34b; Rahamim Sarim, Sha’arei Raha-
_ _
mim, 4a–b.
28. Ibid., pp. 301–302, 305, 306, 308, 309.
29. Halamish. ‘‘The Requirement of Intentions,’’ in Halamish, Kabbalah: In
_ _
30. See p. 84.
chapter 5
1. See pp. 98–100.
3. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 99, 168, 238.
4. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 90 note 40.
5. Yedidiah Rafael Hai Abulafia, Kinyan Perot, p. 51; Hayyim de la Rosa, Torat
_ _
Hakham 113a. A similar goal is achieved through the study of the Vitalian primer Hok
_ _
le-Yisrael (Abulafia, Kinyan Perot, p. 54).
6. Eliahu Mishan, one of the major sages of Aleppo, referred to the lack of a set
of kavvanot for Shavuot in his work Zedek ve-Shalom (74b). Contemporary practi-
tioners fall back on the Shenei Luhot ha-Brit version for the Shavuot night ritual.
7. Reuven Kimelman, The Mystical Meaning of Lekhah Dodi and Kabbalat Shab-
bat, pp. 19–23; Sasson Bakher Moshe, Petah Einayyim, 61d; Daniel Remer, Sefer Tefilat
Hayyim, p. 151.
_
8. Zemakh, Olat Tamid (Jerusalem, 1997), p. 66.
_
9. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 10; Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic
Kabbalah,’’ p. 286 note 383.
11. On this phenomenon, see Haym Soloveitchik, ‘‘Rupture and Reconstruction:
the Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy.’’
12. See pp. 144–145.
14. Shar’abi, Divrei Shalom, Minhagim, #83. Shar’abi also composed a prayer for
taking out the Torah Scroll. See Hayyim Yosef David Azulai, Avodat ha-Kodesh, 111a.
_
15. Heibi, Giant of the Spirit, pp. 39–43.This living of the myth was selective,
_
however, and certain folk practices did go by the wayside. One popular custom,
tashlikh, the symbolic ‘‘throwing away’’ of sins by a body of water, was neglected.
Tashlikh was done in the synagogue, usually by a dry well in the Old City of Jerusalem
(Sofer, Kaf ha-Hayyim, 8:483).
_
16. Sofer, Kaf ha-Hayyim 8, 619:17. See the special version of the Kol Nidrei
_
prayer in Azulai, Avodat ha-Kodesh, 78b.
17. Sofer, Kaf ha-Hayyim, 2, 131:7.
_
18. Rafael Avraham Shalom Shar’abi, Divrei Shalom, Minhagim #64.
19. Sofer, Kaf ha-Hayyim, 240:6 (3, pp. 185–186). Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 218;
_
see Ya’akov Shealtiel Nino, Emet le-Ya’akov: Sefat Emet 7, 117b.
20. See Shaul Magid, ‘‘The Sin of Being/Becoming a Woman: Male Homo-
sexuality and the Castration Complex’’ (forthcoming, as part of Magid’s From Meta-
physics to Midrash: Myth, History, and the Interpretation of Scripture in Lurianic Kabbalah
(Indiana University Press, 2008). Thanks to Professor Magid for making this
material available to me. The contemporary head of the Nahar Shalom circle, Rav
Benayahu Shmueli, has recently compiled a series of manuals for the rectification
of sexual transgressions, Sefer Benayahu (Jerusalem: Nahar Shalom, 1995).
21. Shar’abi, Divrei Shalom, #81, Sofer, Kaf ha-Hayyim, #607:41.
_
22. There are extensive kavvanot regarding flagellation in Ya’akov Shealtiel Ni-
no’s Emet le-Ya’akov, which Nino himself ascribed to Immanuel Hai Ricci’s Mishnat
_
Hasidim, as well as to Natan Hanover’s Sha’arei Zion. The contemporary Jerusalem
_ _
kabbalist Ya’akov Moshe Hillel argues that Shar’abi drew his kavvanot of flagellation
from the Lurianic Sefer Likkutim. See Nino, Emet Le-Ya’akov, 121a; Immanuel Hai
_
Ricci, Mishnat Hasidim, Masekhet Teshuvah, 7; Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 61–62.
_
23. Sotah, 20a.
24. This may be found in a responsum contained in Shar’abi, Divrei Shalom, 17d.
25. Shar’abi, Nahar Shalom, 10a.

26. The only relevant kavvanah would be that of the nesirah, since the Sabbatical
year is a similar discharging of the powers of Divine. See pp. 131–146.
27. Moscowitz, Hayyei RaSha’’Sh, pp. 80–81, citing Raphael Avraham Shalom
_
Shar’abi, Divrei Shalom, 17d.
28. See p. 9.
29. Ya’akov Moshe Hillel, introduction to Dweck, Peat ha-Sadeh, pp. 40–41.
30. See p. 9.
31. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 54; Efg’in, Divrei Shalom, 1, pp. 206, 208. Ya’akov
Gartner has located the roots of this practiced in the early Kabbalah. See his essay ‘‘The
Custom of Donning Two Pairs of Phylacteries During the Period of the Rishonim.’’
32. There were, in fact, four interpretations of how the tefillin should be ar-
ranged, namely the various understanding of Rashi, the understanding of Rabbeinu
Tam, the understanding of the RaBaD, who advocated that the tefillin be written in
mirror script, and the type that conformed to the dictates of a halakhic work known as
Shimusha Rabbah, which refers to a minimum size requirement (Moshe Zakhut,
Iggerot ha-Remez, 5, p. 14; Naftaly Zevi Bakharakh, Emek Ha-Melekh, p. 620, both
_
citing Shimusha Rabbah 97b; Efg’in, Divrei Shalom, 1, pp. 239, 241; Masoud ha-Cohen
Alhadad, Simhat Kohen, 31c).
33. Nahman Ha-Cohen, Minhagei Beit El.
34. Efg’in, Divrei Shalom, 1, p. 239, citing Aharon Fereira, Me’il ha-Kodesh
U-Bigdei Yesha’, 88b.
35. Efg’in, Divrei Shalom, 1, p. 201.
36. Ibid., Minhagim, #27, Sofer, Kaf ha-Hayyim, Volume I, 25:37, 100.
_
37. Sofer, Kaf ha-Hayyim, 1, 25:92.
_
38. Efg’in, Divrei Shalom, #62, Sofer, Kaf ha-Hayyim, Volume I, 18:16, 38:21,
_
Volume 7, 455:4; see Minhagei Beit El, p. 46.
39. Similarly, when the ninth of Av falls on the departure of the Sabbath, the Beit
El kabbalists retain the hymns attending its departure, despite the onset of the fast,
unlike the conventional custom (Sasson Bakher Moshe, Shemen Sasson 80a, 116b;
Petah Einayyim 53c).
40. Efgin, Divrei Shalom, Minhagim, #53. Eliahu Mishan, Sefat Emet, 3; Moshe,
Shemen Sasson, 85c; Sofer, Kaf ha-Hayyim, 1, 60:11. Shar’abi also tended to forbid
_
cutting hair on all of the first forty-eight days of the Omer, which was at that time an
unusual practice (Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 16).
41. See pp. 113–114.
42. Sha’ar ha- Kavvanot (Jerusalem, p. 84) as interpreted by Shar’abi (Nahar
Shalom, 35b, 35d).
43. Samuel Vital, Siddur Hemdat Yisrael, 207b; see Giller, The Enlightened Will
_
Shine, p. 54.
44. See Ya’akov Zemakh, Nagid U-Mezaveh (Premishla, 1880), pp. 142–143;
_ _
Shulkhan Arukh Shel Rabbeinu Yizhak Luria (Munkaz, 1940), pp. 70–71; Zeev Gries,
_ _
‘‘The Formation of the Hebrew Conduct Literature Between the Sixteenth and Se-
venteenth Centuries and Its Historical Significance,’’ 563, 568. See also Yosef Avivi,
‘‘Ya’akov Zemakh’s Editing of R. Hayyim Vital’s Writings That Were Found in Jer-
_ _
usalem,’’ pp. 61–77; Avivi, ‘‘The Versions of R. Ya’akov Zemakh’s Nagid U-Mezaveh,’’
_
pp. 188–191.
45. See Remer, Tefilat Hayyim, pp. 242–243.
_
46. Nahar Shalom, 37b; Torat Hakham, 71a.
_
47. Vital, Siddur Hemdat Yisrael 204b; Moshe mi-Dolena, Seraf Pri Ez Hayyim,
pp. 423–425.
48. Vital, Siddur Hemdat Yisrael 204b; also Nahar Shalom, 36a.
49. Siddur Hemdat Yisrael, 204b.
50. Or ha-Hayyim, pp. 236–239, cited in the recent Armoni’s Derekh Ez Hayyim,
_ _ _
p. 74.
51. See Havivah Pedayah, Nahmanides: Cyclical Time and Holy Text.
_
52. The complete presentation of the development of the four-worlds traditions
remains Gershom Scholem’s ‘‘The Development of the Tradition of the Worlds’’
(Hebrew), Tarbiz 2:415–442; 3:33–66.
_
53. Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 77–79, 93; Weiss, Studies in Eastern European
Jewish Mysticism, p. 96.
54. Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ pp. 123, 169, 173.
55. Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 78.
56. Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 77–79, 93; Pri Ez Hayyim I, p. 2; see ‘Olat
_ _
Tamid, p. 12.
58. See p. 43.
59. Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 79, 118, 241, 276; Pri Ez Hayyim I, pp. 9–11;
_ _
Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 135.
60. See Zemakh, Siddur Kavvanot ha-Tefilah be-Kizarah, p. 1; Ez Hayyim Ashlag
_ _ _ _
2:342; Jerusalem 101c.
61. Zohar I, 23a; II, 246b; III, 272b, 283a; Tiqqunei ha-Zohar, 9b, 130a; Tiqqunei
Zohar Hadash, 107c; Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 97.
_
62. See Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 72: ‘‘Among
the novel dynamic features in the functional structure of the AR’’I theurgic practice in
daily prayer which are absent in Cordoverean practice; particularly the ascending-
descending Four-Worlds structure of the liturgy, which made its first appearance only
in the Lurianic Kabbalah’’ (note 143).
63. See Zohar I, 78b, 211a; II, 219b; III, 120b; Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 78,
83, 85, 87–89, 97–98; Pri Ez Hayyim I, pp. 116–119.
_ _
64. Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 77–78, 93.
65. Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 78–81, 83–84, 92–96, 105, 106–107; Pri Ez
_
Hayyim I, pp. 2, 9–11, 114–116, 139.
_
68. See pp. 113–114.
69. Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 106–107; Pri Ez Hayyim I, p. 139; Adam
_ _
Afterman, The Intention of Prayers in Early Ecstatic Kabbalah, p. 13.
70. There were also many differences between the versions of Barukh She-
Amar in classical Kabbalah, including widespread variation on the number of stanza,
which finally was agreed upon at the number thirteen in the Lurianic writings.
(Halamish, Kabbalah: In Liturgy, Halakhah and Customs, pp. 33, 41; Yosef Avivi, ‘‘Yosef
_
Ibn Tabul’s Homilies of Divine Intention’’: 76–77; Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer
in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 176; Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 78).
72. Cordovero, Tefilah le-Moshe, pp. 61–78; Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 78.
73. Tiqqunei Zohar Hadash, 108c; Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 207.
_
74. Zohar I, 45a; II, 244b–262b.
76. See Dweck and Legimi, Benyahu ben Yehoyada I, 3b–4a. There are dis-
crepancies even in something so essential as the kavvanot of the recitation of the
Shema’, as brought out in Bati le-Gani and Divrei Shalom and as pointed out by
Menachem Kallus (‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 269
note 370).
78. Ibid., pp. 141–160.
79. Ibid., pp. 164–182.
80. See Giller, Reading the Zohar, pp. 95–98, 146–147, 209–210 note 49.
81. Shar’abi, Rehovot ha-Nahar, 2b; see Vital, Mavo She’arim, 15d.
82. Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p.78; ‘Olat Tamid, p. 12.
83. See Zohar II, 211b; III, 102b; Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 80–81; Pri Ez
_
Hayyim I, pp. 7–8; Yosef Avivi, ‘‘Yosef Ibn Tabul’s Homilies of Divine Intention,’’
_
pp. 76–77.
84. Dweck and Legimi, Benyahu ben Yehoyada II, 2a.
85. Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 290 note 383;
on Shar’abi, Nahar Shalom, 30b.
86. Dweck and Legimi, Benyahu ben Yehoyada II, 4a.
87. Thanks to Chava Weissler for pointing this out to me.
chapter 6
1. Moshe Halamish, The Kabbalah in North Africa, pp. 22, 115; see Elior, The
_
Kabbalists of Dar’a.
2. Halamish, The Kabbalah in North Africa, p. 74.
_
4. Ibid., pp. 167, 232. Eliahu Mishan, Zedek ve-Shalom, Introduction; Moscowitz,
_
Hayyei RaSha’’Sh, pp. 14–16.
_
_
6. David Rosoff, at http://www.jewishmag.com/14MAG/ISRAEL/israel.htm.
7. His sermons were preserved by his son, Shalom Moshe Gagin (d. 1883). Gagin
also composed Minhah Tehorah on the tractate Menahot, the responsa Hukei Hayyim,
_ _
and Saviv le-Hole, a commentary to Shmuel Ben Meshullam Yarondi’s book Ohel Moed
(Zvi Zohar, The Luminous Face of the East, p. 224).
8. Meir Benayahu, R. Hayyim Yosef David Azulai, HYD’’A., pp. 15–18.
_ _
9. Moscowitz, Hayyei RaSha’’Sh, p. 76. Yom Tov Algazi authored a number of
_
works. These include Simhat Yom Tov, responsa on the Turim, Kedushat Yom Tov,
responses to Maimonides’ halakhic rulings, the small composition Da’at Le-Hishael,
which addresses unresolved matters in his father’s writings, Yom Tov de-Rabanan,
on aggadah and the work Get Mekushar, published in the end of his father’s work Naot
Ya’akov.
10. Moscowitz, Hayyei RaSha’’Sh, p. 41; Zohar, The Luminous Face of the East,
_
pp. 44, 199, 403 note 29.
11. Hillel, introduction to Dweck, Peat ha-Sadeh, p. 13.
12. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 238; see Alhadad, Simhat Kohen, 25c.
13. See Kinyan Perot, pp. 32, 88, 166. See also Hayyim de la Rosa, Torat Hakham
_ _
34b, as an eyewitness for Shar’abi’s practices on the Day of Atonement. Abulafia
(p. 32) invokes the authority of David Majar as an eyewitness to Shar’abi’s practices
(Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 233, 236, 237).
14. See Abulafia, Kinyan Perot, p. 5.
15. Ibid., pp. 5, 6.
17. Zohar, The Luminous Face of the East, pp. 75–99.
_
19. Zedek ve-Shalom, 74b.
20. Hillel, introduction to Dweck, Peat ha-Sadeh, p. 20, 22.
21. Ibid., pp. 51–53.
22. Ibid., pp. 33–38.
23. Y. M. Hillel voices reservations about this text; see ibid., note 14.
25. Hillel, introduction to Dweck, Pe’at ha-Sadeh, p. 46, note 22; Moscowitz,
Hayyei RaSha’’Sh, p. 113; Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 128
_
note 26.
26. Hillel, introduction to Dweck, Pe’at ha-Sadeh, pp. 55–56.
27. On Baghdad, see Zohar, The Luminous Face of the East, p. 20; on relations to
Bombay, see ibid., pp. 9, 35, 69.
28. Ibid., pp. 40–41, See also pp. 55–61. On Yosef Hayyim’s halakhic decisions,
_
see ibid., pp. 47–49, 82, 325. See also David Solomon Sassoon, A History of the Jews in
Baghdad, pp. 149–156; Shlomo Deshen and Walter Zenner, Jews Among Muslims:
Communities in the Precolonial Middle East, pp. 70–71, 78, 189–190, 191, 193.
29. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 161. Hayyim provides a typology with regard to who
_
should pray with Shar’abi’s prayer book in Rav Pe’alim, 3; Kuntres Sod ha-Yesharim, 13.
30. Yosef Hayyim, Lashon Hakhamim, 1:118–160; Dweck and Legimi, Benayahu
ben Yehoyada, 1a.
32. Zohar, The Luminous Face of the East, p. 50; Sassoon, A History of the Jews
in Baghdad, pp. 145–149. His brother, Yizhak Nissim, became Sephardic chief rabbi of
Israel in 1955.
33. Zohar, The Luminous Face of the East, pp. 35, 68–69, 70.
34. Kinyan Perot, p. 92.
35. Minhat Yehudah, Jerusalem, 1985.
36. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 9, 150–164; Hayyim Yosef David Azulai, Shem ha-
_
Gedolim 57a.
37. Tal Orot, 1c.
38. Jerusalem: Heilprin 1910.
39. Deblitsky, Mahshevet Bezalel, p. 83; Molkho was a disciple of Hayyim de
_
la Rosa.
40. Moscowitz, Hayyei RaSha’’Sh, pp. 84–85.
_
41. See the introduction to Zevi le-Zaddik (of Zevi Hirsch of Zidatchov) by Asher
_ _ _
Zelig Margoliot (p. 35, note 2); Moscowitz, Hayyei RaSha’’Sh, pp. 93–94.
_
42. Reprinted in full in Moscowitz, Hayyei RaSha’’Sh, p. 99–100.
_
chapter 7
1. The contemporary redactors of the kavvanot have worked from a number of
manuscripts in wide circulation. At the Jewish Theological Seminary (ms. 1544) is a
manuscript of emendations to the Zohar texts Sifra de-Zeniuta and Idra Zuta,
_
emendations to Luria’s Sabbath hymn Azamer Shevahim, kavvanot of circumcision,
and general principles, called Kelalai ha-RaSHaSH. Another manuscript (J.T.S. 1949)
includes the same Kelalei ha-RaSHaSH, along with Luria’s Sha’ar ha-Yihudim and
Sha’ar Ruah ha-Kodesh. A number of Shar’abi’s published works are in manuscript in
another mss. (2019, c. 1866), which includes Nahar Shalom, Emet Ve-Shalom, and
Rehovot ha-Nahar. Two pages of this manuscript are in Shar’abi’s own hand. The
Kelalim (general rules) are also available in mss 2027, from Tunis, 1778. Finally,
mss. 2042 includes the introduction to Rehovot ha-Nahar, Nahar Shalom, and the
kavvanah of the eighteen benedictions, dating from the eighteenth century (Heibi,
_
Giant of the Spirit, p. 16).
2. Emet Ve-Shalom was published in 1806, thirty years after Shar’abi’s death.
This early version is generally considered inferior to a later edition published in 1856,
republished in 1891 in Warsaw and in 1910 in Jerusalem (Hillel, Ahavat Shalom,
pp. 179, 182, 216).
3. The introduction, Rehovot ha-Nahar, was published in 1779, two years after
Shar’abi’s death.
5. Dweck and Legimi, Benayahu ben Yehoyada II, 20a, 40a.
6. Ibid., I 6a–b.
7. Hillel, introduction to Dweck, Pe’at ha-Sadeh, pp. 27, 46, 51.
8. Hillel, introduction to Dweck, Pe’at ha-Sadeh, p. 42.
9. Shlomo Eliashiv, Approbation to Dweck and Legimi, Benayahu ben Yehoyada.

10. A prayer appended to the midnight vigil, composed by Shar’abi, appears in
Moscowitz, Hayyei RaSha’’Sh, p. 47.
_
11. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 173, 195.
12. Shar’abi’s emendations to Ez Hayyim were published together with Ez
_ _ _
Hayyim (Salonica, 1838).
_
13. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 193–195. Ferreira’s readings were mixed into the
Salonica and Jerusalem editions.
14. Ibid., pp. 173, 176.
15. Ibid., p. 171.
16. Ibid., pp. 197–199. Ya’akov Moshe Hillel maintains that the phrase ‘‘requires
further study’’ (zarikh iyyun) found in Shar’abi’s writings is merely didactic (Hillel,
_
Ahavat Shalom, p. 198; see Yedidiah Raphael Abulafia, Kinyan Perot (on Emet le-
Ya’akov), p. 183; Yosef Hayyim, Rav Pe’alim 2, Sod ha-Yesharim 13, 130b.
_
18. Ibid., p. 213.
19. Ibid., pp. 209, 222 note 17. Hillel (Ahavat Shalom, pp. 186–192) provides
many insights into the archaeology of Nahar Shalom. He identifies a number of
sections as specifically from Shar’abi’s earlier teaching, or ‘‘first edition’’ (mehadurah
kammah), and I cite his conclusions here:
Earlier Edition: The scattered gleanings (Nahar Shalom, 16b–17a) are from the
first edition (see Abulafia, Kinyan Perot, p. 155). The yihudim, or rites of union, for the
High Holy Days (39b–40b) are also early.
Later Edition: The introduction to Rehovot ha-Nahar is entirely from the later
edition. On page 4a (Warsaw), however, the editors changed the text without indi-
cating that they were doing so according to the teaching of Yedidiah Raphael Abulafia.
The introduction to the ‘‘Tiqqun for the Hewers of Souls’’ (Nahar Shalom, 9b–11a) is
from the latter edition. The second introduction to the four worlds (Nahar Shalom,
11a–13b), with the exception of the material on Sabbatical year (Nahar Shalom, 13c) and
the two types of unions (Nahar Shalom, 14d–15a), is late and is published in his
corrections to Ez Hayyim (15:1). The prayer for Rosh ha-Shanah (37d–38b) also dates
_ _
from this period.
Other materials: The introduction to the commandments (Nahar Shalom, 13d–
14d) also appears in Dweck’s introduction to the devotional work Benayahu Ben Ye-
hoyada I 2a, as well as in Eliahu Mani’s Me’il Eliahu, p. 54. The material commenc-
ing with the phrase ‘‘And it is known’’ (ve-yadua) (19b–28a) is from Yedidiah Raphael
Hai Abulafia’s introductions to the prayer book. The ascent of the Hasadim (28a–
_ _
29b) and the discussion of holiness (29b–c) are close to Yedidiah Raphael Hai
_
Abulafia’s prayer book (p. 166), while the questions on idolatry originate with Yosef
ha-Cohen and Yosef Sadavon. More responsa take up Nahar Shalom, 32a–34c, in-
cluding material on the silent devotion (38c–d), blowing of the shofar (39b), and the
Divine Unions (39b–d). The material on Purim (41a) is a responsum, part of which
is found in the work Efer Yizhak (28a). The emendations on certain kavvanot (46a–c)
_
are from Shar’abi’s personal edition of Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot.
Other Authors: Abulafia also interspersed a number of introductions throughout

Nahar Shalom, such as the sections ‘‘Hewer of Souls’’ (Nahar Shalom 9d), the ‘‘Smaller
Introduction’’ (Nahar Shalom 11a), the ‘‘Introduction to the Positive and Negative
Mizvot (Nahar Shalom 13d), the ‘‘Introduction to Midnight’’ (Nahar Shalom 19d), and
the Introduction to the format of the Blessings (Nahar Shalom 20b). Shar’abi’s
learning program (23, 37) is based on the teachings of Abulafia and Eliahu Mishan.
The introduction on tefillin (Nahar Shalom 17a–c) and the section on holidays (34c–
37c) are from Shar’abi, with the exception of a section (35d–36c) that is taken from
Eliezer Hazan (see Yosef Kolomaro, in Fereira, Me’il ka-Kodesh U-Vigdei Yesha’ 78b).
_
The kavvanot of Rosh ha-Shanah (37c) are from Avigdor Azriel, the author of Zimrat
ha-Arez. Sections on knowledge (41b–441) are all from Vital, Sha’ar ha-Hakdamot, and
_
the ‘‘general principles (kelalim) (44c–46a) are gathered from Luria’s writings. Hillel
(Ahavat Shalom, p. 191) suspects that some materials (46c–47b) are Shabbatean in
origin and observes that the statement ‘‘another kavvanah mi-MoHaRaN’’ refers to
Nathan of Gaza!
20. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p 209. There are a number of examples of this pro-
cess of emendation (Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 210).
21. Nahar Shalom, 28b; Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 171.
23. Ibid., pp. 84, 211, 215, 224, 219.
24. Ibid., p. 226. See Yizhak Alfaya, Reah le-Yizhak, 166b; Yizhak Harari Raful,
_ _ _
Alei Nahar, 50:51, 52; Eliahu Mishan, Zedek ve-Shalom, p. 121.
26. Hillel, introduction to Dweck, Pe’at ha-Sadeh, p. 43; See also Dweck, intro-
duction to Benayahu ben Yehoyada, 1b.
27. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 207, 209. The early editions do not include the
materials on the parts of the soul. See Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 253; Abulafia, Kinyan
Perot, p. 8.
28. Hillel, introduction to Dweck, Pe’at ha-Sadeh, p. 43; Dweck and Legimi,
Benayahu ben Yehoyada II, 12b.
30. Ibid., p. 218.
31. Asher Anshel Broin, Siddur Kavvanot ha-RaSha’’Sh (Jerusalem: Broin 1990).
32. Yosef Bar El, Siddur Edut be-Yehosef (Jerusalem: Yeshivat Ma’ayan ha-
Hokhmah 2002).
_
33. Professor Boaz Huss has distinguished between canonical and sacred writ-
ings; see Boaz Huss, ‘‘Sefer ha-Zohar as a Canonical, Sacred and Holy Text: Changing
Perspectives of the Book of Splendor Between the Thirteenth and Eighteenth Cen-
turies,’’ pp. 257–307.
34. The printed version is to be found in Ez Hayyim 2, p. 413 (119a in the
_ _
Jerusalem edition). This translation follows the manuscript edition (Columbia mss. X
893 M 6862) published by Meroz (‘‘Redemption in the Lurianic Teaching,’’ p. 169, cf.
p. 79). See Giller, Reading the Zohar, p. 14.
35. Nahar Shalom, p. 34. See also p. 32.
36. Nahar Shalom, p. 32a, also p. 34a.

37. Sefer Sha’ar ha-Pesukkim/Sefer ha-Likkutim, Approbations.
38. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 202, 206, 208. There is some discussion over
revision of the kavvanot between the later and earlier editions; see Abulafia, Kinyan
Peirot, p. 76.
39. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 90 note 41, 92–93; Yedidiah Rafael Hai Abulafia,
_
Kinyan Perot, pp. 46, 48. Yosef Hayyim (Rav Pe’alim 1 10a) seems to accept Pri Ez
_
Hayyim as authoritative.
_
40. Mishnat Hasidim (Amsterdam 107a); Boaz Huss, ‘‘Holy Place, Holy Time,
Holy Book,’’ p. 254; Barnai, The Jews in Palestine in the Eighteenth Century, p. 120.
41. Bezalel Naor, Post-Sabbatian Sabbatianism, pp. 53–57, 178–184; Arie Mor-
_
genstern, Mysticism and Messianism from Luzzatto to the Vilna Gaon, pp. 19–25.
42. Ricci, Hoshev Mahshavot (Munkacz, 1896), 112d, brought in by Naor, Post-
_
Sabbatian Sabbatianism, pp. 53, 177 note 1.
43. Naor, Post-Sabbatian Sabbatianism. p. 178 note 6.
44. On the Shabbatean activity of the latter kabbalist, see Gershom Scholem,
Studies in Sabbateanism, pp. 107, 364 note 144.
45. See also Ya’akov Emden’s critique of Ricci in his polemic Mitpahat Sefarim,
(Altoona, 1768, 31a; Jerusalem, 1995, pp. 115–119).
46. Aryeh Leib Epstein, Sefer ha-Pardes, 2:8a.
47. (Jerusalem: Safra, 1969), pp. 52–58.
48. Zevi Hirsh of Zidatchov, Ateret Zevi, Exodus, 9a; Zevi Moscowitz, Hayyei ha-
_ _ _ _
RaSHaSH, pp. 53–55.
49. Divrei Sofrim (Bnei Bark, 1967), brought in by Naor, Post-Sabbatian Sabba-
tianism, p. 182. See Moshe Halamish, ‘‘Typology of Kabbalistic Books in the Teaching
_
of Rabbi Zadok ha-Cohen of Lublin,’’ in Studies in Hasidism (Hebrew) Jerusalem
_
Studies in Jewish Thought, p. 221.
50. Ya’akov Moshe Hillel (Ahavat Shalom, p. 62) argues that Shar’abi drew his
kavvanot of flagellation from the Lurianic Sefer Likkutim. Interestingly, the frontispiece
of Sefer Likkutim indicates that it was published from a single manuscript from
Shar’abi’s library (see Kuntrus Sefat Emet 110, 121:b in Jacob Shealtiel Nino, Emet
le-Ya’akov; Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 61–62).
51. Nino, Emet Le-Ya’akov, 121a.
52. See also Nino, Emet le-Ya’akov 55a, 110a; Zevi Moscowitz, Hayyei
_ _
ha-RaSHaSH, p. 52.
53. In the work Kinyan Perot, p. 180; see also Dweck and Legimi, Seder Kriat
Shema’ Al ha-Mitah, end; Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 63, 88.
54. See p. 165 note 19.
55. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 3, 59, 65–66; Zevi Hirsch of Zidatchov, Pri Kodesh
_
Hilulim, 9a; Lawrence Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos, pp. 305–315.
_
A particular bête noir among these ancillary Lurianic writings is Sarug’s Drush
ha-Malbush. Hillel avers that Vital accepted the Drush ha-Malbush but prohibited its
transcription. The Drushei ha-Malbush are also found in the writings of Moshe Yonah
and Yosef Ibn Tabul (Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 106, 109–111, 115).
56. Gershom Scholem, ‘‘Was Israel Sarug a Student of the AR’’I?’’ pp. 214–243;
Yosef Avivi, ‘‘Luria’s Writings in Italy to 1620,’’ Alei Sefer 11 (1984): 91–134; Jacob
Elbaum, Openness and Insularity, pp. 190, 205 note 90; Yehudah Liebes, ‘‘On the Image,
Writings and Kabbalah of the Author of Emek ha-Melekh,’’ 101–139; Ronit Meroz, ‘‘Was
Israel Sarug a Student of the AR’’I? New Research,’’ 41–56; Meroz, ‘‘Faithful Trans-
mission Versus Innovation: Luria and his Disciples,’’ in Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends
in Jewish Mysticism 50 Years After, pp. 257–274; Meroz, ‘‘An Anonymous Commentary
on Idra Rabbah by a Member of the Sarug School,’’ 307–378.
57. Zohar ha-Raki’a, 23b.
58. See Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 69–70, 95–96.
59. Ibid., pp. 97, 99, invoking Zadok of Lublin, Sefer ha-Zikhronot, 31a–d.
_
60. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p.10, 87, 89. See Vital, the end of the introduc-
tion to the Sha’ar ha-Hakdamot, introduction to Edot le-Ya’akov, end of the introduc-
tion to Ez Hayyim. Hillel indicated that at certain times Shar’abi would skip blocks
_ _
of text in Ez Hayyim that he felt originated from the other students. Hillel (ibid.,
_ _
note 39) also located the source for two kavvanot, Hanukkah and the ritual washing
of hands, in Natan Neta Shapira’s Torat Natan (see Nahar Shalom, 19c, 40b).
61. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, p. 105, 106.
62. Ibid., p. 103.
63. On Zohar 1:15a see Giller, Reading the Zohar, pp. 29–30.
65. Ibid., p. 101
66. See Miles Krassen, ‘‘Peri Eitz Hadar: A Kabbalist Tu B’shvat Seder,’’ in
Arthur Waskow, ed., Trees, Earth and Torah: A Tu B’shvat Anthology, pp. 135–153.
Yizhak Algazi copied and published an early edition of Hemdat ha-Yamim.
_ _
68. One such adjuration appears at the end of Dweck and Legimi, Kavvanot
Pratiyot (Jerusalem, 1911).
69. See Liebes, ‘‘The Messiah of the Zohar’’; Scholem, ‘‘Isaac Luria and His
School,’’ in Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.
70. Hillel, Ahavat Shalom, pp. 28–30, 52, 54, 56.
71. Ibid., pp. 36–40.
chapter 8
1. Moscowitz, Hayyei RaSha’’Sh, p. 17 note *.
_
2. The Beit El charter indicates a Rav Avraham Gershom, and many con-
temporary records of the Jewish community of the Land of Israel refer to Gershom
Kitover in that fashion. Zevi Moscowitz in his Hayyei RaSHaSH expresses doubts
_
about the matter, while A. J. Heschel and his editor S. Dresner accept the reports of
Shivhei ha-Besh’’t at face value, although their presentation contains a number of
errors. They erroneously list Shar’abi’s death as occurring in 1753 (p. 83 note 158) ; in
fact, it took place in 1777, providing the possibility of extensive interaction between
Kitover and Shar’abi.
3. There is a wide range of views regarding the historicity of Shivhei ha-Besh’’t.

Some view it as a fabrication, a roman à clef referring to the conflicts of a later period
(Moshe Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba’al Shem Tov,
pp. 16–18, 59–60, 143–155). Other scholars have defended the historicity and integrity
of Shivhei ha-Besh’’t (Immanuel Etkes, The Master of the Name, pp. 217–265; Joseph
Dan, The Chasidic Tale, pp. 64–131). If one takes the majority of the views expressed,
it becomes clear that Shivhei ha-Besh’’t, while having been heavily revised, still offers
a wealth of useful and authentic historical material.
4. Avraham Rubinstein, ed., Shivhei ha-Besht, p. 114.
5. Ibid., pp. 96–98; Abraham J. Heschel, The Circle of the Baal Shem Tov,
pp. 90–91.
6. Halamish, ‘‘The Requirement of Intentions,’’ in Halamish, Kabbalah: In Li-
_ _
turgy, Halakhah and Customs, p. 105.
7. Halamish, The Kabbalah in North Africa, p. 11, 119.
_
8. Etkes, The Master of the Name, pp. 169–178; Weiss, Studies in Eastern European
Jewish Mysticism, pp. 9, 27–46, 96–97.; Rubenstein, Shivhei ha-Besh’’t, pp. 56–59,
224–226, 245–247, 264, 266, 291–292.
9. Moshe Halamish, ‘‘Luria’s Status as a Halakhic Authority’’ (Hebrew), in Ye-
_
hudah Liebes and Rachel Elior, eds., The Kabbalah of the AR’’I: Jerusalem, Studies in
Jewish Thought 10 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1992), p. 284.
10. Zemakh organized this material into five compositions: Ozrot Chayyim, Ke-
_ _
hilat Ya’akov, and Edut le-Ya’akov on the grandiose aspects of the Lurianic system;
‘Olat Tamid on prayer, Zohar ha-Raki’a, interpretations of the Zohar; and Adam Yashar
on the anthropomorphic structure of the universe. These apparently include material
written before the year 1598 (Avivi, Binyan Ariel, pp. 17, 56–57, 96, 98; Gershom
Scholem, ‘‘On the Biography and Literary Activity of the Kabbalist Rav Ya’akov
Zemakh,’’ pp. 285–294; Avivi, ‘‘Ya’akov Zemakh’s Editing of Hayyim Vital’s Writings
_ _ _
That Were Found in Jerusalem,’’ 61–77; Avivi, Binyan Ariel, pp. 17, 56–57, 96, 98;
Ya’akov Moshe Hillel, Introduction to Zemakh’s ‘Olat Tamid and Kehilat Ya’akov;
Giller, Reading the Zohar, pp. 23–24).
11. Nagid U-Mezaveh was completed in Damascus in 1638. Originally there were
_
two versions, a short and a long. The short version was the one that was widely pub-
lished, while the short remained in a hitherto unpublished manuscript, Lehem min ha-
Shamayim. Zeev Gries, ‘‘The Formation of the Hebrew Conduct Literature between the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and its Historical Significance,’’ pp. 563, 568.
12. Ya’akov Zemakh, Siddur Kavvanot ha-Tefilah be-Kizarah; Menachem Kallus,
_ _
‘‘The Relation of the Ba’al Shem Tov to the Practice of Lurianic Kavvanot in Light
of His Comments on the Siddur Rashkov,’’ p. 154. Kallus identifies the three recen-
sions of Ya’akov Zemakh’s prayer book as extant in the following manuscripts:
_
mss. Jerusalem-Mussayoff 146 #22964; mss. Oxford, Bodleian 168 ’’24783; mss.
London, Montefiori 221 #5191. Avraham Azulai also recorded a parallel version of
these kavvanot. Azulai’s kavvanot, which closely resemble versions to be found in the
standard Lurianic canon, have been published in the volumes Kenaf Rananim and
Ma’aseh Hoshev.
_
13. See pp. 100–101.

15. Kallus, ‘‘The Relation of the Ba’al Shem Tov to the Practice of Lurianic
Kavvanot in Light of His Comments on the Siddur Rashkov,’’ pp. 151–167. See also
Yizhak Alfasi, ‘‘A New Source for the Lurianic Prayer Book of the Hasidim,’’ pp. 287–
_ _
305; Moshe Halamish, ‘‘Thirteen Gates in the Firmament,’’ in Halamish, Kabbalah: In
_ _
16. The facsimile was reprinted in Bnei Barak 1995. According to the En-
cyclopedia le-Hasidut (p. 141 in Helek Ishim; also Alfasi, ‘‘A New Source for the ‘Nusakh
_
AR’’I’ of the Hasidim,’’ pp. 291–292), Avraham Shimshon settled in the land of
_
Israel after 1760 (Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 281
note 383).
Kavvanot in Light of His Comments on the Siddur Rashkov,’’ p. 157.
18. Publisher’s Introduction, Asher Margoliot, Siddur Rav Asher. Kallus alludes,
as well, to another important manuscript, presently in private hands (Kallus, ‘‘The
Relation of the Ba’al Shem Tov to the Practice of Lurianic Kavvanot in Light of His
Comments on the Siddur Rashkov,’’ p. 161 note 66).
19. Ibid., p. 157.
20. Ibid., pp. 154–159; The Besh’’tian kavvanah for the annulment of harsh de-
crees is extant in the writings of Yisrael of Satanov, Sefer Ateret Tiferet Yisrael, (Warsaw,
1871), p. 91a; in Kallus, ‘‘The Relation of the Ba’al Shem Tov to the Practice of Lurianic
Kavvanot in Light of His Comments on the Siddur Rashkov,’’ p. 162. This is not to be
confused with Israel ben Raphael of Satanov, who composed the manuscript Siddur
ha-AR’’I (Satanov, 1778). In fact, Luria did not leave any kavvanot for the Day of
Atonement (ibid., p. 163).
21. Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, pp. 1–44.
22. Etkes, The Master of the Name, pp. 158–159. Idel feels that this material
resembles Cordoverean and even Abulafian practices (Idel, Hasidism, pp. 104,
149–170; Sefer ha-Ba’al Shem Tov, pp. 123–199).
23. Etkes, The Master of the Name, pp. 138–139. Apparently the Besh’’t con-
flated the Lurianic idea of the gathering of the sparks with his doctrine of the
uplifting of strange thoughts. See Etkes, The Master of the Name, p. 157; Rivka Schatz-
Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, pp. 179–181; Mendel Piekarz, The Beginning of
Hasidism, pp. 276–279; Moshe Halamish, ‘‘The Requirement of Intentions,’’ in
_
Halamish, Kabbalah: In Liturgy, Halakhah and Customs, p. 86.
_
24. Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye, Ketonet Passim (New York, 1950), 43b.
25. Etkes, The Master of the Name, p. 140.; Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in
the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 107 note 85.
26. Etkes, The Master of the Name, p. 146.
27. Dibrat Shlomo 6b, brought in by Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism,
pp. 219–221.
28. This would speak, as well, for the authenticity of the commentary on Psalm
107, which is largely based on a series of gematriyyot. The authenticity of the Besh’’t’s
authorship of this work has been contested and debated See Schatz-Uffenheimer,
‘‘The Besh’’t’s Commentary to Psalm 107,’’ in Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as
Mysticism, pp. 342–382; Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, pp. 122–123.
29. Weiss, Studies in Eastern European Jewish Mysticism, pp. 101–104.
Kavvanot in Light of His Comments on the Siddur Rashkov,’’ pp. 154–159; Kallus,
‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ pp. 114–121. Kallus considers
Zevi Hirch Zidatchover’s commentary to Zohar II, 262a–b, to be key in understanding
the early Hasidic approach to prayer; see his Pri Kodesh Hillulim, 10a.
_
Kavvanot in Light of His Comments on the Siddur Rashkov,’’ p. 152.
32. Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, pp. 114–186.
33. Moshe mi-Dolena’s Seraf Pri Ez Hayyim is, according to Kallus, ‘‘the only
_ _
extant Eastern European full-length commentary on the Lurianic kavvanot, and the
only work of its kind that contrast the non-Vital recession of Lurianic kavvanot re-
corded in Sefer Kanfei Yonah (Korez, 1786) with the recensions of Hayyim Vital’’
_ _
(Kallus, ‘‘The Relation of the Ba’al Shem Tov to the Practice of Lurianic Kavvanot
in Light of His Comments on the Siddur Rashkov,’’ p. 151). Moshe mi-Dolena was also
the author of the popular compendium Divrei Moshe.
34. Kallus; ‘‘The Relation of the Ba’al Shem Tov to the Practice of Lurianic
Kavvanot in Light of His Comments on the Siddur Rashkov,’’ p. 227; see Scholem,
‘‘The Historical Image of Yisrael Ba’al Shem Tov,’’ pp. 319–320 note 59. See also
Abraham J. Heschel, ‘‘Rabbi Gerson Kutover: His Life and Immigration to the Land of
Israel,’’ in The Circle of the Ba’al Shem Tov, pp. 107–108.
35. See Etkes, The Master of the Name, pp. 217–265; Joseph Dan, The Chassidic
Tale, pp. 64–131; Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, pp. 143–155.
36. Pri Kodesh Hillulim (Arsciva, 1927), brought in by Schatz-Uffenheimer,
_
Hasidism as Mysticism, pp. 226–227.
37. Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, pp. 214–241.
38. See Or Ha-Emet 14b, brought in by Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as
Mysticism, p. 217.
40. Ibid., p. 107.
41. Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, p. 227.
42. Alan Nadler, The Faith of the Mithnagdim, pp. 61–77.
43. Or ha-Meir, 14a–b; 132c; brought in by Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as
Mysticism, pp. 221–222.
44. The Maggid, Or ha-Emet 77b and Liqqutei Yeqarim 15a, brought in by Schatz-
Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, p. 218.
45. Shabbat, 75a; Rosh Ha-Shanah, 24b; Sanhedrin, 68a.
46. Liqqutei Moharan II, 120.
47. Moshe Halamish, ‘‘The Requirement of Intentions,’’ in Halamish, Kabbalah:
_ _
In Liturgy, Halakhah and Customs, pp. 98–105; Halamish, The Kabbalah in North
_
Africa, pp. 115, 138.
48. Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, pp. 149–156; Scholem, Sabbatai
Sevi, pp. 272, 277–278; Ya’akov Emden, Mitpahat Sefarim (Jerusalem ed., 1985), p. 119.
Nathan of Gaza had abolished the Lurianic system of kavvanot in 1666, compar-
ing those who practiced them to ‘‘one who would do work on the Sabbath.’’ Joseph
Weiss, Studies in Eastern European Jewish Mysticism, p. 99.
49. Halamish, ‘‘The Requirement of Intention,’’ in Halamish, Kabbalah: In
_ _
50. Halamish, ‘‘Problems in the Analysis of Kabbalistic Influence on Prayer,’’ in
_
Halamish, Kabbalah: In Liturgy, Halakhah and Customs, p. 28.
_
51. Turei Zahav 57c, brought in by Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism,
p. 218. See Meshulam Feibush of Zbarazh, Derekh Emet, pp. 22–23, brought in by
Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, pp. 239–240.
52. Moshe Halamish, ‘‘Luria’s Status as a Halakhic Authority,’’ in Halamish,
_ _
Kabbalah: In Liturgy, Halakhah and Customs, pp. 199–200. A reconstituted version of
Luria’s own prayer book has been produced by Rabbi Daniel Remer of Betar, Israel;
see his Siddur Tefilat Hayyim, as well as the scholarly apparatus in Remer, Sefer Tefilat
_
Hayyim.
_
53. ‘‘One must only pray for the version of the prayer book of Luria in the
Lemburg edition or in the Prayer book of Rav Shabbatai, not from the other versions
which are in the new prayer books.’’ Rafael of Berszada, Pe’er le-Yesharim, brought in
by Weiss, Studies in Eastern European Jewish Mysticism, p. 105.
54. See p. 109.
55. Alfasi, ‘‘A New Source for the ‘Nusakh AR’’I’ of the Hasidim,’’ pp. 287–203.
_
56. Zvi Zohar, The Luminous Face of the East, pp. 331–336.
57. See Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, pp. 1–44.
58. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 89, 141, 153, 195–196, 220–221, 224, 228–229, 233.
59. For examples, see Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 78–80, 97, 143; Pri Ez Hayyim I,
_ _
pp. 6, 9–11.
60. Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kavvanot,’’ pp. 122–123 note 23.
61. For general discussions of this topic, see Giller, ‘‘Recovering the Sanctity of
the Galilee: The Veneration of Sacred Relics in the Classical Kabbalah’’; Elliot Wolf-
son, ‘‘Walking as a Sacred Duty: Theological Transformation of Social Reality in Early
Chasidism.’’
chapter 9
1. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 400.
2. Huss, ‘‘Ask No Questions: Gershom Scholem and the Study of Contemporary
Jewish Mysticism,’’ Modern Judaism 25, no. 2:141–115; Huss, ‘‘The Metaphysics of
Kabbalah and the Myth of ‘Jewish Mysticism’ ’’ (Hebrew), Peamim no. 110 (Winter
2007) : 9–30.).
3. Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism p. 534.
4. W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, pp. 46–47; R. C. Zaehner, Concordant
Discord, pp. 40–46; Zaehner, Mysticism: Sacred and Profane. p. 12.
5. ‘‘The Natural Experience of the Void,’’ in Richard Woods, ed., Understanding

Mysticism.
6. Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 30–32.
7. Peamim no. 110 (Winter 2007): 9–30.
8. Idel, ‘‘On Aharon Jellenik and Kabbalah,’’ Peamim 100 (2004): 15–22.
9. Scholem, ‘‘On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism,’’ p. 87; Scholem, Essential
Chapters in the Understanding of the Kabbalah and its Symbolism (Hebrew), p. 86;
Scholem, Devarim be-Go, (Tel Aviv: Am Oved 1975) p. 45. Steven Wasserstrom, Re-
ligion After Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade and Henry Corbin at Eranos, p. 32.
10. Huss, ‘‘Ask No Questions,’’ p. 141.
11. Ibid., p. 145, citing Arthur Hertzberg, ‘‘Gershom Scholem as a Zionist and
Believer,’’ 12.
12. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 71.
13. Huss, ‘‘Ask No Questions,’’ p. 149.
14. Ibid, pp. 149–150.
15. With regard to these phenomena, the recent study by Yonatan Garb, The
Chosen Will Become Herds, serves as an important corrective. (Jerusalem: Carmel,
2005).
16. See Fine, ‘‘The Contemplative Practice of Yichudim,’’ in Arthur Green, ed.,
Jewish Spirituality, p. 89; Joseph Dan, ‘‘The Book of the Divine Name by Rabbi Eliezer
of Worms,’’ pp. 142, 157; Dan, ‘‘The Emergence of Mystical Prayer,’’ in Dan, Jewish
Mysticism: The Middle Ages, p. 229; Dan, The Esoteric Teaching of the German Hasidim,
_
pp. 122–126.
17. Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 25–27.
18. A similar querying of a historical construct is Michael Allen Williams’s
questioning the definition of Gnosticism; see Williams, Rethinking ‘‘Gnosticism’’: An
Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category.
19. Melila Hellner-Eshed, A River Issues Forth from Eden: On the Language of
Mystical Experience in the Zohar, pp. 28–32.
20. Huss, ‘‘Mysticism and Metaphysics’’: 26–27. Another interesting view of this
problem is that of that of Matt Goldish, ‘‘Kabbalah, Academia, and Authenticity,’’
Tikkun 20.5 (Sept–Oct 2005): 63(5). The distinction is also made by Elliot Wolfson in
the title of a recent studyVenturing Beyond: Law & Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism,
implying that the terms Kabbalah and Mysticism may complement one another but
are not, necessarily, synonymous.
21. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 6.
22. Katz, Mysticism and Religious Traditions, p. 24.
23. S. Katz, ‘‘Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism,’’ in Katz, ed. Mysticism
and Philosophical Analysis, p. 26; Katz, ‘‘The Conservative Character of Mystical
Experience,’’ in Katz, ed., Mysticism and Religious Traditions, pp. 3–60. See E. R.
Wolfson, Through A Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval
Jewish Mysticism, pp. 7, 52, 54–55.
24. Katz, Mysticism and Religious Traditions, p. 40.
25. Ibid., p. 33.

27. In a recent study, the Haifa scholar Menachem Kellner has answered, ‘‘a
mystic,’’ as opposed to a Maimonidean. His conclusions arrived too late for an ade-
quate response in this volume, but his excellent study Maimonides’ Confrontation with
Mysticism advances the discussion considerably.
appendix
1. See pp. 46–47.
2. Avivi, Binyan Ariel, p. 292.
3. Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel, pp. 44–46. See Ephraim Urbach, The Sages:
Their Beliefs and Opinions, pp. 228, 231, 787 notes 39–40; Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia:
Kabbalist and Prophet, p. 15. The Greek parallel to this tradition, of course, may be
found in Plato’s Symposium, in Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds., Plato:
Collected Dialogues, pp. 189–193.
4. See Berakhot, 61a.
5. Boyarin translates this as ‘‘sawed him apart,’’ which agrees with other in-
stances of the Semitic root NSR.
6. Eruvin, 18a.
7. Zohar III, 117a; see also Zohar III, 19a, 44b.
8. Zohar I, 165a; II, 55a, 231a; III, 44b; Tiqqunei ha-Zohar, 39a, 78a. See also
Sifra de-Zeniuta, Zohar II, 178b, although this passage is excised from the Gaon of
_
Vilna’s text.
9. Zohar II, 55a; III, 44b.
10. Zohar III, 19a, Zohar III, 117a; see also Zohar III, 19a, 44b.
11. Some Talmudic traditions describe the zela’ not as the hindmost side of the
_
original androgyne but as Adam’s tail. This echoes a theme explored by Elliot Wolfson,
namely that the feminine is often viewed as a subsidiary crown on the phallocentric
structure of the cosmos. See, in particular, Wolfson, ‘‘Woman—The Feminine as Other
in Theosophic Kabbalah: Some Philosophical Observations on the Divine Androgyne.’’
12. See pp. 42–45.
13. Zohar II, 178b.
14. Zohar II, 178b; III, 10b.
15. Zohar I, 34b; III, 19a.
16. Zohar II, 55a.
17. Zohar III, 44b.
18. Ketubot, 8a.
19. Zohar II, 55a.
20. Zohar I 34b; II, 55a; III, 19a, 44b, 83b.
21. Zohar III, 142b–143a.
22. See Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine, pp. 33–58.
23. Ez Hayyim, Ashlag 1: 22–23; Warsaw 10a–b.
_ _
24. See Giller, Reading the Zohar, pp. 156–157; Liebes, ‘‘Two Young Roes of a
Doe,’’ in Liebes and Elior, The Kabbalah of the AR’’I: Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought
10, pp. 117–118, 126–127, 144; Zeviyah Rubin, ‘‘The Zohar Commentaries of Yosef Ibn
_
Tabul,’’ in Liebes and Elior, The Kabbalah of the AR’’I: Jerusalem Studies in Jewish
Thought 10, pp. 363.
25. The term ishtadel, a Tibbonism, is one of the most widely mutable terms in
the Zohar, meaning literally to ‘‘strive’’ or ‘‘exert oneself ’’ but also to ‘‘quest.’’
26. Zohar III, 44b.
27. Zohar III, 44b.
28. Ez Hayyim I, p. 22.
_ _
29. Sha’ar Maamarei RaShB’’Y, pp. 164, 221.
30. Shabbatai Rashkover, Siddur R. Shabbatai, 52a–65a.
31. This approach survives to Vital’s drush for Rosh ha-Shanah (Sha’ar ha-
Kavvanot I, p. 228).
32. Pri Ez Hayyim II Rosh ha-Shanah, 2–5, pp. 446–465; Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I,
_ _
p. 206.
33. Ez Hayyim II, pp. 69–87. The emergence of the nesirah from the Idra texts
_ _
into Lurianic doctrine is also clear in Ya’akov Zemakh’s commentary to the Idra
_
Rabbah, Kol be-Ramah (pp. 377–381).
34. See Giller, Reading the Zohar, pp. 139–157.
35. Zohar III, 142b.
36. See Ya’akov Zemakh, Kol be-Ramah, p. 377.
_
37. Zohar II, 178a.
38. Zohar III, 142a.
39. See p. 42–45.
40. This idea may be linked to earlier zoharic passages that portray the tradition
with the startling departure that the woman in the account is not Eve but the
demoness Lillit. According to such a thesis, the nesirah took place only in the first
creation account, in the first chapter of Genesis, to which the Lillit traditions are
appended (Zohar I, 34b; see Zohar III, 19a; Zohar Hadash, 16c).
_
41. In Luria’s dense presentation:
The higher yu’’d is crowned in the knot of ‘Attika, [it is] the gleaming higher
closed membrane. ‘‘The higher yu’’d is Abba, while the lower yu’’d is Zeir
Anpin, as it says in the Idra Zuta [289a], ‘‘in the hidden book we learn of the
higher and lower yu’’d.’’ And it says that the higher yu’’d is crowned and
influenced in the knot [kitur] of ‘Attika, that is the incense [kitur] that goes out
of ‘Attika through the purifying membrane. (Sha’ar Maamarei RaShB’’Y
p. 108)
42. See p. 70.

43. The nuances of ‘‘revelation’’ at the moment of circumcision are extensively
addressed in Elliot Wolfson’s Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination
in Medieval Jewish Mysticism, pp. 357–368; Wolfson, ‘‘Circumcision and the Divine
Name: A Study in the Transmission of an Esoteric Doctrine,’’ Jewish Quarterly Review
78, nos. 1–2. (July–October 1987): 77–112; Wolfson, ‘‘Circumcision, Vision of God
and Textual Interpretation, from Midrashic Trope to Mystical Symbol,’’ pp. 198–215;
Wolfson, ‘‘From Sealed Book to Open Text,’’ p. 149, 169 note 23. Wolfson points
out the valorization of the feminine according to the interpretations of the Gaon of
Vilna; see Sifra de-Zeniuta ‘im Biur ha-GR’’A., 6a; Yahel Or, 6a–b, 23a; Tiqqunei
_
ha-Zohar ‘im Biur ha-GR’’A, 19b; Sefer Yezirah ‘im Perush ha-GR’’A, 3c, 7b.
_
44. Abulafia, Kinyan Perot, p. 8; Shar’abi, Nahar Shalom, 55a, Emendations to
Ez Hayyim, 100a.
_ _
45. See Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 81 note 26.
46. Fine, Safed Spirituality, pp. 17–18; Magid, ‘‘Conjugal Union, Mourning
and Talmud Torah in R. Isaac Luria’s Tikkun Hazot,’’ xxvi.
_ _
47. Magid, ‘‘Conjugal Union, Mourning and Talmud Torah in R. Isaac Luria’s
Tikkun Hazot,’’ xxxv.
_ _
48. Zohar I, 34b; Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, pp. 206–209, 341–342.
50. Sha’ar Ruah ha-Kodesh, pp. 108–109.
51. The midnight vigil and the recitation of the Shema’ at night have been in-
vestigated by Magid, ‘‘Conjugal Union, Mourning and Talmud Torah in R. Isaac
Luria’s Tikkun Hazot,’’ and by Idel, Messianic Mystics, pp. 309, 313–314.
_ _
52. Vital, Pri Ez Hayyim, p. 348; Zemakh, Siddur Kavvanot ha-Tefilah be-Kizarah,
_ _ _ _
p. 78.
53. Idel, Messianic Mystics, p. 317; Hanover, Sha’arei Ziyyon, 3b–4a. See also Israel
_
Weinstock, ‘‘R. Yosef Ibn Tabul’s Commentary on the Idra,’’ 129–130. On gender
issues in Lurianic Kabbalah, see Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic
Kabbalah,’’ p. 142.
54. Heibi, Giant of the Spirit, pp. 45–48.
_
56. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 209; Idel, Messianic Mystics, p. 309.
57. Magid, ‘‘Conjugal Union, Mourning and Talmud Torah in R. Isaac Luria’s
Tikkun Hazot,’’ xxvii.
_ _
58. Zohar I, 178b, 245b, 173b; II, 217b; III, 193a; Magid, ‘‘Conjugal Union,
Mourning and Talmud Torah in R. Isaac Luria’s Tikkun Hazot,’’ xxix.
_ _
59. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 206–207.
60. Vital, Ez Hayyim I, pp. 21; Pri Ez Hayyim, pp. 21, 346–350; Idel, Messianic
_ _ _ _
Mystics, p. 312.
61. Idel, Messianic Mystics, p. 313.
62. Wolfson, ‘‘From Sealed Book to Open Text: Time, Memory and Narrativity
in Kabbalistic Hermeneutics.’’ pp. 155–158; Wolfson, ‘‘Woman—The Feminine as
Other in Theosophic Kabbalah: Some Philosophical Observations on the Divine
Androgyne,’’ pp. 186–187.
63. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 206- In the morning, Zeir has mohin from Abba and
Imma and doesn’t need to go to sleep to have them removed to the lower aspect,
because a reshimu, or residue, will remain with him. See also Abulafia, Kinyan Perot,
p. 10.
64. Ez Hayyim I, pp. 21; Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I pp. 206, 208, 340–342; II, p. 221;
_ _
also Dweck and Legimi, Kavvanot Pratiyyot, 1b.

66. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot II (Rosh ha-Shanah, Drush 3), p. 220–233.
67. Sha’ar Maamarei RaShB’’Y I, p. 221.
69. Pri Ez Hayyim, 91c; Magid, ‘‘Conjugal Union, Mourning and Talmud Torah
_ _
in R. Isaac Luria’s Tikkun Hazot,’’ xxiii.
_ _
70. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 206; II, p. 220.
71. Zohar III, 231b; Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot II, pp. 220, 224.
72. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot II, pp. 224, 227–228, 340–342.
73. For instance, the empirical wisdom, or Hokhmah, in the Keter is called
_
Roshim, ‘‘heads,’’ as in Rosh ha-Shanah, literally ‘‘head of the year.’’ Sha’ar Maamarei
RaShB’’Y, p. 237.
74. Bezah, 4b–5a.
_
75. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot II, p. 220, 228–230.
76. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot II, pp. 224, 227.
77. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot II, p. 231.
78. Abulafia, Kinyan Perot, p. 5.
79. Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in Lurianic Kabbalah,’’ p. 102 note 73; also
Zemakh, Zohar ha-Raki’a, 68c.
80. Rashkover, Siddur R. Shabbatai, 3:50b–52a.
81. Siddur Tefilah (Zalkova, 1781), 163b.
82. Moshe of Dolena, Seraf Pri Ez Hayyim, pp. 439–444; Kallus, ‘‘The Re-
_ _
lationship of the Baal Shem Tov to the Practice of Lurianic Kavvanot in Light of His
Comments on the Siddur Rashkov,’’ 151.
83. Jacob Koppel Lifschuetz, Siddur Kol Ya’akov (Lemburg, 1859), pp. 215–226.
84. Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot I, p. 206; Kallus, ‘‘The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic
Kabbalah,’’ p. 181 note 137.
85. Vital, Siddur Hemdat Yisrael, pp. 219b–220b; see also Menachem Azariah de-
_
Fano, Sefer Kanfei Yonah, p. 378.
86. Yom Tov Lippman, Siddur ha-AR’’I, mss., Crakow, 1738.
87. Siddur ha-AR’’I, mss., Satanov, 1778.
88. Seder Tefilah me-ha-AR’’I Z’’L (Yampol, 1750; reprinted Jerusalem, 1999).
89. Shar’abi, Nahar Shalom, p. 38a; Pri Ez ha-Gan, pp. 3,7.
_
90. Benyahu Shmueli, ed., Siddur Rehovot ha-Nahar: Kavvanot Nesirah ve-Shofar
le-Rosh ha-Shanah, p. 91. A similar tradition is the interpretation of the flood in
Tiqqunei ha-Zohar as being located in an existential explanation for present reality. See
Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine, pp. 33–58. Elliot Wolfson has fully examined this
process with regards to circumcision; see his ‘‘Circumcision, Vision of God and
Textual Interpretation: From Midrashic Trope to Mystical Symbol,’’ pp. 189–215;
Wolfson, ‘‘Circumcision and the Divine Name: A Study in the Transmission of Eso-
teric Doctrine,’’ Jewish Quarterly Review 78, no. 1–2 (July–October 1987): 77–112;
Wolfson, ‘‘The Mystical Significance of Torah Study in German Pietism,’’ pp. 74–76.
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Index
Abadi, Mordechai, 88 atonement cycle, 21, 24, 67–69,

Abba, iv, 27, 43, 52, 73, 81, 102, 136, 96, 131–132, 143–144, 163 n. 13,
142, 146, 175 n. 41, 176 n. 63 170 n. 20
Aboab Synagogue, 6 Attia, Mordecai, 15
Abrams, Daniel, 156 n. 50 Attika Kadisha, 4, 27, 66, 175 n. 41
Abuhazeira, Yisrael, 5 Avivi, Yosef, 103, 104, 160 n. 44
_
Abulafia, Abraham, 37, 40, 47, 104, Avraham ben David of Posquieres
149 n. 9, 154 n. 2 (RaBa’’D), 30
Adam de-Azilut, 103 Avraham Hayyim of Zlatchov, 113
_ _
Adani, Shlomo, 103 Azikri, Elazar, 20
ADNY, 40–43, 70 Azriel, Aaron, 87
Ahavat Shalom circle, 9, 17, 99 Azriel of Gerona, 22, 29, 30, 87
AHYH, 40–42, 46 Azulai, Avraham, 169 n. 12
Aleppo, 9–10, 58, 66, 72, 77, 85, Azulai, Hayyim Yosef David. 59, 87,
88–92, 97 147 n. 8
Alesker, Yizhak, 122
_
Alfasi, Yizhak, 114 Ba’al Shem Tov, Israel, 6, 47, 107,
_
Algazi, Ya’akov, 87, 147 n. 8 109, 110–111, 124, 170 n. 20,
Algazi, Yizhak, 168 n. 66 n. 23, 169 n. 3
_
Algazi, Yom Tov 71–72, 87, back-to-back embrace, 4, 28,
147 n. 8, 163 n. 9 136–137, 145
Alhadad, Masoud ha-Cohen, 11, 86, Bahir, 4, 34, 47, 149 n. 9
148 n. 23 Bakharakh, Naftali Zevi, 103, 172
Al-Hadif, Shmuel 147 n. 8 Balul, Avraham 147 n. 8
_
Alkabetz, Shlomo, 115 Barukh She-Amar, 65, 79–81, 109,
Amnon, Yosef, 147 n. 8. 162 n. 70
Ashkenazi, Hillel, 101 Bar Yohai, Shimon, 6, 10, 102, 115,
Ashlag, Yehudah, 122 126, 132
194 index
Beharad, Aryeh Leib, 9 Cordovero, Moshe, 3, 22, 35, 36, 41, 42,
Beit El 81, 84, 104, 112, 114, 115, 137, 145,
community, 55–63 151 n. 30, 154 n. 83
history, 5–7, 7–10 countenances, see parzufim
_
Kavvanah and, 19–20, 24–27, 33, 36,
37–40 Da’at U’Tevunah, 90, 103
lineage, 85–94 Dan, Joseph, 40, 60, 123
literary tradition, 95–106 Darsi, Shmuel, 6, 15, 17
mysticism and, 117–129 Days of Awe, 68–70, 75, 131,
practice, 65–83 142–144
present day, 13–18 Dayyan, Yosef, 6
sacred names, 48–53 death penalties, 31, 69–70
Shar’abi and, 8–13 Deblitsky, Sariah, 12, 91
Bela’ah, Shlomo, 147 n. 8 de-Fano, Menachem Azariah, 103
Benayahu ben Yehoyada’, 10, 58, 96 de la Rosa, Hayyim, 58, 62, 72, 78, 88,
_
Ben Ish Hai, 10, 20, 51, 55, 84, 89–90, 92, 147 n. 8, 163 n. 13, 164 n. 39
_
103, 148 n. 23 Der’i, Yosef, 98
Benjamin of Salositz, 113 devekut, 28–29, 32, 36, 45, 112, 113,
Ben Kavod, Aaron, 147 n. 8 151 n. 42
Ben Rabbi Yosef, Menachem, 147 n. 8 devekut ha-mahshavah, 29
Ben Tuvo, Eliezer, 92 de-Vidas, Eliahu, 20, 59
Berab, Jacob, 72 Dias, David Fernandes, 147 n.8
Berg, Yehudah, 14, 47, 122, 156 n. 53 Din, 4, 138, 139, 143
Binah, 3, 31, 41, 66–67, 81, 140–141 discourse, 57–58
Biton, Ya’akov, 147 n. 8 Divrei Shalom (I), 66, 86, 147 n. 5,
Bittul, 31, 115 148 n. 12, 159 n. 24
breaking of the vessels, 2, 27, 39, 45, Divrei Shalom (II), 19, 67
48–49, 77, 80, 82, 136–137, 145 Dresner, Samuel, 168 n. 2
Breslav Hasidism, 17, 57, 112, 120, Drush ha-Da’at, 58, 158
122–124 du parzufim, 133–134
_
Brody, kloiz, 47, 122, 144 Dweck, Hayyim Shaul, 9, 10, 16, 20, 27,
Buber, Martin, 119, 120 33, 58, 62, 72, 73, 77, 82, 87–89, 92,
Bukharian quarter, 5, 9, 10, 15, 16, 66, 88, 96, 98, 149 n. 8
89, 115, 128
Buzaglo, Shlomo, 103 Efg’in, Avner, 19, 67
Eibschuetz, Yonatan, 124
Canon, 11, 22, 42, 48, 50, 51, 58, 63, 66, Eifah Sheleimah, 88–92
68, 69, 77, 91, 95, 96, 102–104, 125, Eiger, Akiva, 87, 92.
129, 145, 148 n. 27, 155, n. 30, 166 Eilat Chayyim, 14, 83
n. 33, 169 n. 12 Eliahu, Suleiman, 60, 90
Limitation, 65, 98–99 Eliashiv, Shlomo Bar Heikel, 12, 42, 50,
_
Carlebach, Shlomo, 122 96, 103
Chabad, 121–124 Eliezer of Worms, 40, 46
Charters, 8, 9, 42, 87, 147 n. 7, Elijah (the prophet), 11–12, 148 n. 24
168 n. 2 Elohim, 40–42,
Community, 55–63 El Shaddai, 40
index 195
embraces, 2, 15, 28, 34, 82, 114, 135–136, Halamish, Moshe, 86

139, 141 Ha-Levi, Aaron, 147 n. 8
Emden, Ya’akov, 167 n. 45 Hasdei David, 103
_
Emet ve-Shalom, 95 Hasidei Askenaz, 9, 22, 46, 60
_
Ephraim of Ostrow, 101 hasidism rishonim, 29, 60
Epstein, Aryeh Leib, 101 Hasidism, 6, 29, 31, 57, 69, 83, 89,
_
Eshed-Hellner, Melila, 125 121–123
Ez ha-Gan, 89, 149 n. 1 Hathalat ha-Hokhmah, 103
_ _
Ez Hayyim, xi, 9, 11, 13, 42, 46, 48, 59, Hayyim, Yosef, 10, 20, 51, 55, 84, 89–90,
_ _ _
60, 79, 88, 91, 95, 96, 99–100, 108, 103, 148 n. 23, 163 n. 28.
109, 137, 165 n. 12, 168 n. 60 Hayyun, Gedaliah, 8, 85, 107
_
Ezra of Gerona, 29, 90, 152 n. 48 Heikhal ha-Brakhah, 89
Ez Tidhar, 104 Heikhalot, 40, 82, 167 n. 6
_
Heilperin, Menachem Menkhin, 103
fasting, 44, 79, 83, 127, 128, 144, 160 Heller, Yom Tov Lippman II, 145
feminine waters, 24, 26, 142 Hemdat ha-Yamim, 101, 102, 104,
_
Fine, Lawrence, 123 168 n. 66
Fishbane, Eitan, 37 Hemdat Yisrael, 56
_
four species, 74 Herev Pifiyyot, 47, 122
_
Four Worlds, 14, 32, 48, 78–83, 165 n. 19 Herrera, Avraham, 51
Frank, Zevi Pesah, 9 Hertzberg, Arthur, 121, 173 n. 11
Heschel, Abraham Joshua, 168 n. 2
Gagin, Hayyim Avraham, 59, 85, 87, Hillel, Ya’akov Moshe, 11, 12, 15, 17, 25, 31,
_
88, 90 52, 56–59, 62, 66, 72, 96–98,
Gagin, Shalom Moshe Hai, 86, 162 n.7 102–105, 148 n. 21–24, 159 n. 22,
_
Gallik, Rafael Moshe, 147 n. 8 163 n. 23, 165 n. 16, 165–166 n. 19,
Gaon, Hai, 46–47, 156 n. 36 167 n. 65, 168 n. 60
_
Gaon of Vilna, Elijah Kramer, 42, 51, 89, hirik, 43
157 n. 70, 174 n. 8, 176 p. 43 Hokhmah, 2, 43–46, 59, 62, 77, 138–139
_
Gaon, Sheikh Yizhak, 7 Hok le-Yisrael, 60
_
Garb, Yonatan, 33–36, 93, 149 n. 10, Holem, 43
_
165 n. 74, 154 n. 83 Hollenback, Jess, 120
Genesis Rabbah, 47, 132 Horowitz, Isaiah ha-Levi, 25, 104
German pietists, see Hasidei Askenaz Hozeh Ziyyon, 100
_ _ _
Gerona, 2, 22, 29, 36, 40 Hurvitz, Pinchas Eliahu, 46, 157 n. 70
Gershom of Kitov, 107, 111, 167 n. 2 Huss, Boaz, vii, 119–121, 124–125,
Getz, Yehudah Meyer, 86 156 n. 54, 156 n. 53
Gikatilla, Joseph, 3, 23, 103 Huxley, Aldous, 119–120
Gordon, D. A., 125 HVYH, 40–44, 49, 69, 70, 89
Gottlieb, Ephraim, 29, 36, 60
Ibn Attar, Hayyim, 107
_
ha-Cohen, Nahman, 67 Ibn Gabbai, Meir, 25, 103, 154 n. 83
Hadaya, Ovadiah, 28, 86 Ibn Habib, Levi, 72
_
Hadaya, Shalom, 28, 86 Ibn Latif, Isaac, 50
Hagahot ha-Shemesh, 96 Idel, Moshe, 37, 41, 111, 120, 124, 152 n. 46,
Ha-Hayyim ve-ha-Shalom, 6, 15 154 n. 2
_
196 index
Idra Rabbah, 135, 137, 138 Kriat Shema’ ’Al ha-Mitah, 89

Idra Zuta, 42, 137, 164 n. 1, 175 n. 41 kubuz, 43
_
Ilat ha-Ilaot, 30
Imma, 2, 27, 39, 43, 51 Lashon Hakhamim, 90
_
Isaac the Blind, 29, 52, 150–151 n. 24 Legimi, Eliahu Ya’akov, 10, 88–89, 96
Israel ben Raphael of Satanov, 111, 145, le-shem yihud, 24, 25
182 n. 20 Lesses, Rebeccah, 35
Lekhah Dodi, 66
Jacobs, Louis, 147 n. 7 Leshem Shevo ve-Ohalama, 12, 42, 96
Jacob the Nazir, 30 Lieberman, Saul, 120
James, William, 118–199 Liebes, Yehudah, 23, 152 n. 52
Jellinik, Adolph, 120 Lifschuetz, Jacob Koppel, 103, 124, 144
Jewish Renewal Movement, 14, 23, 83, Luria, Isaac, 4, 8, 10, 22, 27, 31, 42, 56,
122–123 65–66, 68, 76, 79, 81, 96, 99, 103,
105, 113, 118, 126, 135–140, 145–146,
Kabbalah Centre, 47, 48, 52, 123, 137 157–158 n. 6, 170 n. 20, 172 n. 53
Kaddish, 47, 61, 72, 79, 80 Lutzker, Shlomo, 110
Kaduri, Yizhak, 5, 14 Luzzatto, Moshe Hayyim, 51
_ _
Kaf ha-Hayyim, 15, 66, 88, 128, 150,
_
159, 160 Ma’arekhet ha-Elohut, 103
Kallus, Menachem, 36, 42–42, 59, 82, Ma’ayan ha- Hokhmah, 103
_
109, 111, 151 n. 30, 156 n. 31, Maggid of Mezeritch, Dov Bear,
162 n. 76, 169 n. 12, 170 n. 18, 111–112
171 n. 30, 171 n. 33 Mahshevet Bezalel, 12, 91
_
Kamaz, 43 Maimonides, 25, 78, 141, 163 n. 9,
_
Kanfei Yonah, 103, 171 n. 33 174 n. 27
Kareliz, Avraham Yeshaye (Hazon Ish), Majar, David, 66, 77, 90, 98, 103,
_ _
92 163 n. 13
Katz, Steven, 37, 126 Malkhut, 4, 41, 66, 81, 82, 140
Kavvanah, 19–38, 45–47, 59, 61, 62, 72, Mani, Eliahu, 90
75, 76, 109, 112, 127, 131 Mantra, 5, 44
Kavvanot, 5–13, 19–38, 39–50, 55–66, Margoliot, Yeshayahu Asher Zelig, 17,
71–77, 83–84, 86–90, 95–98, 92, 101, 109
100–101, 104, 107–115, 117, 127, 131, Marriage, 75, 134–135, 141
132, 137, 138, 140, 142, 144–145, Martyrdom, 31, 79
149, 153 n. 74, 159 n. 6, 159 n. 22, Masekhet Azilut, 78
_
164 n. 1, 177 n. 19, 165 n. 19, Mauritain, Jacques, 120
167 n. 50 Mavo Shearim, 11, 99
Kavvanot ha-Sefirah, 89 Mikdash Melekh, 103
Kavvanot Pratiyot, 88, 96 Miluyyim, 52–43, 48, 49, 79, 139
Kellner, Menachem, 174 n. 27 Minhagei Beit El, 67
Kerem Shelomo, 60, 90 Mishan, Eliahu, 88–89, 96, 159 n. 6,
Keter, 3, 41, 177 166 n. 19
Kol Nidrei, 68, 159 n. 16 mishmarot, see ‘‘watches’’
Komarno, Yizhak Eizik Safrin of, 89 Mishnat Hasidim, 52, 100–102, 108,
_ _
Kook, Avraham Yizhak, 72 159 n. 22
_
index 197
mohin, 42, 43, 49, 73, 76, 81, 82, 142, Palaces, 22, 48, 49, 81, 82, 142
176 n. 63 Palag, Hayyim, 10, 148, 16.
_
Molkho, Shlomo, 10, 12, 91, Parhi, Rafael Eliezer, 147 n. 8
164 n. 39 Parhi, Samuel, 8
Moshe ben Dan of Dolena, 111, 144, Parzufim, 42, 51, 52, 81, 114, 131,
_
171 n. 33 132, 137
Moshe, Sasson Bakher, 12, 86, 88, 96 Passover, 8, 66, 67, 74, 75, 77
Moskowitz, Zevi, 101 patah, 43
Mozfi, Suleiman, 33, 88 Pekudat Eliezer, 92
_
Myers, Jody, vii, 123 penitential rites, 10, 17, 58, 62, 87, 88, 89,
mystical experience, 18–19, 23, 117–119, 90, 96, 98
125–126, 128 Petaya, Yehudah, 13, 88, 90
mysticism, 3, 18, 29, 37, 65, 117–130 Polish school of kavvanot practice, 40, 61,
mythos, 2, 12, 23–24, 27, 40, 50–53, 62, 83, 107, 108, 132, 144
62, 67, 68, 83, 121, 131, 134, Poppers, Meir, 48, 100, 103, 108, 109
136, 140 Power, 34–36
hydraulic, 34–35
Nadler, Alan, 112 isomorphic, 34–35, 44, 82
Nahar Shalom (book), 49, 91–92, 95, 96, spatial, 34
99, 164 n. 1, 165 n. 19 prayer books, 14, 17, 22, 25, 32, 33, 35, 56,
Nahar Shalom (community), 2, 15, 16, 61, 66, 75, 77, 83, 86, 87, 89, 92, 95,
56, 57, 59, 60, 69, 108, 127, 145, 97–98, 107–109, 111, 113, 114, 134,
148 n 34 144, 145, 156 n. 30, 175 n. 29,
Nahman of Breslav, 17, 57, 112–113, 120, 165 n. 19, 172 n. 53
122–124 Priestly Blessing, 41, 42, 146
Nahmanides, 129 Pri Ez Hayyim, 79, 100, 108, 109, 137,
_ _
Nahum, Nissim, 9, 96 143, 144, 155 n. 30
Names of God, 5, 14, 30, 39–54 prostrations, 28, 121
of forty-two letters, 42–43, 48, 65 Provence, 3, 10, 36, 40
of sixty-three letters, 42–44, 79
seventy-two names, 42, 44, 46, 47, Raful, Nissim Harari, 88, 89, 98
48, 79 Rahamim, Yehezkel Ezra, 90
Natan Eli School, 6, 56 Rashkover, Avraham Shimshon, 109
Nayot be-Ramah, 56 Rashkover prayer book, 35, 61, 66, 109,
Nehuniah ben ha-Kanah, 46–47 111, 114, 134
Nesirah, 131–146, 160 n. 26, 175 n. 33, Rashkover, Shabbatai, 109
n. 40 Rav Pe’alim, 90, 163 n. 29
Nino, Ya’akov Shealtiel, 87, 101–102, Raza de-Atvan Glifin, 103
159 n. 22, Rehovot ha-Nahar (institution), 9, 10, 16,
Nusakh AR’’I, 80, 96, 113–114 62, 66, 72, 73, 87
Nukvah, 4, 27, 28, 43, 52, 132, 139–145 Rehovot ha-Nahar (book), 56, 77, 92, 95,
96, 98, 99, 158 n. 18, 164 n. 1, n. 3,
Olat Tamid, 66, 100 165 n. 19
Omer, 24, 74–77, 109, 146, 160 n. 40 Reincarnation, 10
Or ha-Levanah, 89 Remer, Daniel, 172 n. 52
Ozrot Hayyim, 92 Rhineland. See Hasidei Ashkenaz
_ _ _
198 index
Ricci, Immanuel Hai, 51, 52, 100–101, Sha’ar ha-Pesukkim, 99

_
108, 159 n. 22, 167 n. 45 Sha’ar ha-Shamayim, 98, 103
Rokeah, Sar Shalom, 92 Sha’ar ha-Shemot, 48–49
Rosenthal, Michelle, 132 Shalom Yerushalayim, 103
Rosh ha-Shanah, 24, 69, 143–145, Shapira, Ben Zion, 92
165 n. 19, 175 n. 31 Shapira, Natan Neta’, 32
Shapira, Zevi Melekh, 12, 92
Sabbath, 24, 66, 71, 74, 80, 101, 151 n. 43, Shapiro, Hayyim Eliezer 12
_
160 n. 39, 164 n. 1, 172 n. 48 Shar’abi, Avraham Shalom, 66, 83, 84,
Sabbatical year, 9, 71–73, 89, 147, 148
165 n. 19 Shar’abi, Hizkiahu Yizhak Mizrahi, 19,
_ _
Sacrifices, 47, 82 20, 86, 97
Sadavon, Yosef ha-Cohen, 58, 86, Shar’abi, Mordechai, 5, 16
165 n. 19 Shar’abi, Shalom, 6, 9, 17, 18, 26, 32, 33,
Safed, 4, 6, 8, 10, 20, 22, 24, 26, 27, 35, 37, 40, 46, 59, 61, 62, 63, 65–68, 73,
49, 59, 61, 65, 67, 69, 84, 86, 105, 77, 83, 84, 85–92, 105, 107, 118, 119,
114, 115, 117, 118, 125–129, 131, 144, 126, 128, 129, 131, 137, 140, 145, 147
154 n. 83 n. 7, 159 n. 14, 159 n. 22, 164 n. 1,
Sana, 7 165–166 n. 19, 168 n. 2
Sangevinitti, Avraham Yishmael Hayyim, biography, 7–8
_
147 n. 8 hegemony, 10–13
Sarim, Rahamim, 62, 87, 88 Sabbatical Year, 71–73
Sarug, Yisrael, 102–104, 167 n. 55 use of names, 49–52
Schachter, Zalman, 122 writings of, 95–104
Schatz-Uffenheimer, Rivka, 111, 112 Shas Party, 14
Schneur Zalman of Liadi, 51, 114 Shavuot, 66–67, 74–75, 77
Scholem, Gershom, 13, 23, 31, 39, 45, Shekhinah, 4, 24, 26, 27, 30, 35, 46, 66,
103, 111, 119–121, 146, 147 n. 7, 75, 132, 133, 140, 141, 149, 151, 154
149 n. 8, 152 n. 46, 154 n. 2, Shema’, 25, 28, 34, 47, 61, 65, 78–81, 89,
156 n. 50, 161 n. 52 98, 162, 167, 176
Seduction, 26 Shemen Zayit Zakh, 91, 92
Sefat Emet, 88, 89 sheva’, 43, 50
Sefer Benayahu, 90, 159 n. 20 Shever Yosef, 103
Sefer ha-Heshek, 47 Shevirah, 45, 136
_
Sefer ha-Hokhmah, 2, 46 Shivhei ha-Besh’’t, 107, 111, 168 n. 2,
Sefer ha-Likkutim, 99, 100, 167 n. 50 169 n. 3
Sefer Yezirah, 3, 44, 99, 151 n. 24 Shmuel b. Meshullam Feibush, 104
_
Sefirot, 3, 4, 21, 22, 24, 27, 30, 32, 41, 42, Shmueli, Benyahu, 15, 16, 17, 57,
45, 48–50, 61, 65, 75, 76, 78, 82, 109, 148 n. 34, 159 n. 20
112, 133, 135, 137, 139–145, 149 n. 8 Shnei Luhot ha-Brit, 66, 104
segol, 43, 50 Shofar, 46, 59, 67, 68, 144, 145, 165
Sha’arei Gan Eden, 103 Shoshanim le-David synagogue, 15, 88,
Sha’arei Rahamim, 62, 77, 88 128
Sha’ar ha-Hakdamot, 58, 166 n. 19 Shpilman, Ya’akov Meir, 91
Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot, 29, 48, 66, 77, 95, Shuruk, 43
100, 142 Siddur ha-RaShaSh, 97–98
index 199
silence, 5, 32–33 Weiss, Joseph, 21, 60, 110, 112

sleep, 67, 127–128, 134, 137–141, 146, Weissler, Chava, 14, 162
176 n. 63 Western Wall, 6, 56, 63
Sofer, Moshe (Hatam Sofer), 87 Wolfson, Elliot, v, vii, 23, 30, 35, 51,
_
Sofer, Ya’akov Hayyim, 15, 66, 87, 128 149 n. 4, 177 n. 90
_
souls, redemption of, 82 Worlds, 14, 16, 22, 25, 31–33, 43–44, 48,
Stace, T.W., 120 49, 58, 62, 77–83, 105, 110, 114,
symbols, 23, 51, 63, 125, 150 161 n. 52, 165 n. 19
Talmud study, 9, 21, 29, 46, 47, 56, 58, Yeshayahu Ya’akov of Alesk, 47, 122
60, 63, 64, 69, 70, 90, 128, 134 Ya’akov of Vilna, 101
Tal Orot, 91 Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye, 121
Tefilat Hayyim, 159 n. 7, 172 n. 51, Yeshivat Ha-Hayyim ve-ha-Shalom 6, 15
_
172 n. 52 YHVH, 22, 40, 41, 42, 43, 48, 50,
Tefillin, 66, 73–74, 83, 100, 160 n. 32, 79, 133
166 n. 19 yihud, 25, 58, 165 n. 19
Teitelbaum, Joel, 101 Yisrael of Satanov, 111, 145, 170 n. 20
Temple, Jerusalem, 10, 21, 26, 30, 72, 74, Yissacharoff synagogue, 9, 15
83, 132, 140, 142–144, 149 Yizhak, Amnon, 17, 122, 149 n. 137
_
thought, 25, 28–31, 33–34, 40, 133, 134 Yonah, Moshe, 103, 167 n. 55
Tiferet, 4, 41, 42, 76, 81, 133, 141 Yonat Ilem, 103
tiqqun, 31, 69, 76, 81, 138, 139, 165 n. 19 Yosha, Nissim, 51
Tiqqun Hazot, 9, 12, 128, 140–141, 146
_ _
Tiqqunei ha-Zohar, 25, 46, 58, 62, 68, Zadok ha-Cohen of Lublin, 101
_
177 n. 90 Zakhut, Moshe, 50, 160 n. 32
Ze’ev Wolf of Zhitomir, 112
Underhill, Evelyn, 119, 130 Zeir Anpin, 4, 27, 28, 31, 42, 52, 66,
unio mystica, 29, 152 n. 46 81, 83, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, 142,
union, 4, 5, 24–30, 141–142, 144, 16
145–146, 151 zeirei, 33
_
Zemakh, Ya’akov, 48, 59, 66, 76
_
Va-Yakhel Shlomo, 115 Zevi Hirsch of Zidatchov, 50, 101, 111,
_
vidui, 68 171 n. 30
Vilner, Gershon, 121 Zimrat ha-Arez, 89, 166 n. 19
_
Vital, Hayyim, 6–11, 29, 51, 57–60, 75–77, zimzum, 45
_ _ _
80, 81, 88, 91, 95–97, 99–104, 108, Zohar, 3, 4, 7, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 32,
137, 140, 141, 150, 143, 144 33, 34, 36, 42, 46, 50, 52, 51, 52, 55,
Vital, Shmuel, 59, 62, 63, 101, 96, 144 65, 81, 82, 84, 96, 99, 102, 105, 112,
115, 128, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 145,
Wallenstein, Moshe Nahum, 9 150, 151 n. 30, 184 n. 1
watches, 9–10 Zohar, Zvi, 89, 163 n. 7

(Pinchas Giller) Shalom Shar'Abi and The Kabbalist

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Shalom Shar’abi and the

Oxford New York

Copyright # 2008 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Introduction: Kabbalistic Metaphysics, 3

1. Shar’abi and Beit El, 5

2. Kavvanah and Kavvanot, 19

3. The Names of God in the Beit El Kavvanot, 39

4. Kabbalists in the Community, 55

7. The Literary Tradition of Beit El, 95

8. The Kavvanot in Hasidism, 107

Appendix: Nesirah—The Development of a Kavvanah, 131

Works Cited, 179

Quotations from Hayyim Vital’s rendition of the Lurianic canon,

The seﬁrot are the building blocks of classical Jewish mysticism.

A living form of Kabbalah is enjoying a renaissance, in spite of its

R. Shmuel Darsi. Posthumous sainthood has been conferred upon such

Shalom Shar’abi (1720–1780; also known as RaSHaSH) developed the most

It is not unusual for revered religious innovators to have a somewhat

littered with misunderstandings and controversies; trouble seemed to follow

approbation to Hayyim Shaul Dweck and Eliahu Ya’akov Legimi’s book of

Shar’abi’s relationship to the Lurianic canon is parallel to that of the

revelation from Elijah may take place in the consciousness of the

Yosef Hayyim deﬁned Shar’abi’s revelation as preconscious, an underly-

Despite these examples of Shar’abi’s authority, certain prominent Lur-

pects.’’31 In the same vein, the inﬂuential Baghdadi/Yerushalmi kabbalist

In a given passage, I will not digress to another matter but will

Notwithstanding these respectful detractors, it is clear that the majority of

Kabbalah in the Present Tense

In 1947, Gershom Scholem presented a lachrymose view of the prospects of

Rabbi Shalom Shar’abi . . . founded a center for Kabbalists which ex-

Scholem’s elegiac appraisal was premature in many ways. A number of his

Study and Observation

Kabbalah studies have thus far equated Kabbalah, which is a system of

An astonishing admission, by Shar’abi’s son Hizkiahu Yizhak

Even if we intend [mekavven] according to our intellects, each

This revelatory remark suggests that for all of the complexity

As earlier stated, in medieval Kabbalah, kavvanot are ideas, texts, or formulae to

Symbols and Kavvanah

Kavvanah . . . bridged the gap between the ancient forms of Jewish

In the history of kabbalistic practice, Scholem considered the practice of

Maimonides identiﬁed the consciousness of God’s unity, mizvat ha-yihud, as a

Similarly, according to the Zohar, kavvanah is necessary for the successful

This idea has many antecedents, and many commandments, according to

Things that help attainment: It is a great mizvah to teach oneself

Dweck’s admonition appears in one of the popular devotional works that

Union in the Lurianic Rite

Devekut and Thought

One constant in the contemplative aspect of kavvanot practice is the prin-

from the early kabbalists to the Lurianic practitioners, and, of course, it is

Kavvanah is the path to the actualization of this cleaving through

Ephraim Gottlieb portrayed the relationship of devekut and kavvanah in the

In fact, the Lurianic system appears as a highly developed technique