Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press

the divergence between these two tendencies within Kabbalah, we see
In
and abstractionist elements strugglingwithin the emergingself-articu-
mythic
of the mystical spirit. In raisingall to the very heights of the se®rotic
lation
the Catalonians were votingfor abstraction, a Kabbalah that led the
world,
to experience a God not entirely removed from the rari®ed transpersonal
mystic
deity of the Jewish philosophers. The Castilians may have incorporated
aspects of Gerona's Neoplatonism, but their spirit is entirely different.
some
in¯uenced in part by renewed contact with more mythically-oriented
Perhaps
elements, and in part re¯ectingalso the romantic troubadour ethos
Ashkenazic
the surroundingculture, they write in a spirit far from that of philosophy.
of
we ®nd a strong emphasis on the theurgic, quasi-magical effect of
Here
activity on the inner state of the Godhead, and its ef®cacy in
kabbalistic
divine unity and thus showeringdivine blessingupon the lower
bringingabout
Their depictions of the upper universe are highly colorful, sometimes
world.
earthy. The fascination with both the demonic and the sexual that characterizes
even
their work lent to Kabbalah a dangerous and close-to-forbidden edge
undoubtedly served to make it more attractive, both in its own day and
that
later generations. 2
throughout
last quarter of the thirteenth century was a period of great creative
The
amongthe kabbalists of Castile. The se®rotic KabbalahÐas detailed
expansion
the works of such well-known ®gures as Moses de LeoÂn, Todros Abula®a,
in
Gikatilla, Isaac Ibn Sahula, Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi, Joseph An-
Joseph
and Joseph of Hamadan, all dating from the period between 1280 and
gelino,
a considerable and highly varied body of writing, even leav-
1310Ðconstitutes
the Zohar itself. It was within this circle that fragments of a more
ingaside
composition, written mostly in lofty and mysterious Aramaic rather
poetic
Hebrew, ®rst began to circulate. These fragments, composed within one
than
two generations but edited over the course of the following century and a
or
The emergence of kabbalistic teaching is more complex and obscure than has been
2.
in the precedingparagraphs. The relationship between Kabbalah and certain late
described
of midrashic writingis still not entirely clear. The nature and degree of contact
forms
early kabbalists and the German Hasidic circles, especially as re¯ected in the
between
of Rabbi Eleazar of Worms (ca. 1165±ca. 1230), continues to puzzle scholars. The
writings
of abstract mystical writings known as Sifrei ha-Iyyun, or Books of Contemplation, ®ts
group
into this puzzle, but its precise date and relationship to other parts of the pre-
somewhere
corpus is still debated by scholars. The sources of the highly distinctive school of
Zoharic
or ``ecstatic'' Kabbalah taught by Rabbi Abraham Abula®a (1240±after 1292),
``prophetic''
havinglittle connection to the Zohar, also would require treatment in a full picture of
while
emergence of kabbalistic thought. But this very brief treatment of major schools and
the
should suf®ce to set forth the context out of which the Zohar emerged.
themes
Introduction
xl
half, are known to the world as the Zohar.