Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press

elements that seem contradictory to one another. I refer to the speculative/magical
contains
tradition that reached medieval Jewry through the little book
Sefer Yetsirah and various other small texts, mostly magical in content,
called
are associated with it. Sefer Yetsirah has been shown to be a very ancient
that
close in spirit to aspects of Greek esotericism that ¯ourished in the late
work,
era. While the practice associated with this school of thought is
Hellenistic
even including the attempt to make a golem, its chief text
magical/theurgic,
the most abstract worldview to be found within the legacy of ancient
contains
By contemplatingthe core meaningof both numbers and letters, it
Judaism.
toward a notion of cosmic unity that underlies diversity, of an abstract
reaches
that serves as cosmic center, in whom (or perhaps better: ``in which'') all
deity
rooted. The magical praxis is thus a form of imitatio dei, man's
beingis
to reignite the creative spark by which the universe has emerged from
attempt
the Godhead. Here we have the roots of a theology more abstract than
within
be found in the aggadah or the Merkavah tradition, an essentially
anythingto
and nonvisual mysticism.
speculative
Yetsirah was the subject of a wide variety of commentaries in the
Sefer
Ages, rationalists as well as mystics claiming it as their own. In the
Middle
century, the language and style of thought found in this work became
twelfth
to the ®rst generations of kabbalistic writing, as re¯ected by commen-
central
on it and by the penetration of its terminology into other works as well.
taries
must be seen as a dynamic mix of these ®ve elements, sometimes
Kabbalah
one dominating, sometimes adding the mix of another. It was especially
with
®rst and last listed, the aggadic/mythic element and the abstract/specula-
the
tradition that seemed to vie for the leading role in forging the
tive/magical
kabbalistic way of thought.
emerging
esoteric traditions began to reach the small and isolated communities
Jewish
western Europe (some of which dated back to Roman times) perhaps as
of
as the ninth or tenth century. How these ancient materials ®rst came to
early
Jewry is lost in legend, but it is clear from manuscript evi-
Franco-German
that much of the old Merkavah and magical literature was preserved
dence
earliest Ashkenazic Jews, alongwith their devotion to both halakhah
amongthe
aggadah. These esoteric sources were studied especially by groups in the
and
who added to them their own speculations on God, the cosmos,
Rhineland,
the secrets of the Torah. Out of these circles there emerged in the late
and
and early thirteenth century a movement known to history as Ḥasidut
twelfth
a pietistic revivalism based on small communities or brotherhoods of
Ashkenaz,
who committed themselves to high standards of ascetic practice and
mystics
devotion. These groups also played a key role in the preservation
contemplative
and further development of esoteric traditions.
was in the area of southern France called Provence, culturally akin in the
It
Middle Ages to northern Spain, that a somewhat different sort of esoteric
High
Introduction
xxxiii
speculations began to emerge. These came to be called by the name Kabbalah,