Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press
Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press
Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press
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epresents a radical departure from any previously known version of<br />
Kabbalah<br />
especially in the realm of theology. While kabbalists remained loyal<br />
Judaism,<br />
of normative Jewish praxis as de®ned by halakhah, the theological<br />
followers<br />
that underlay their Judaism was reconstructed. The God of the<br />
meaningsystem<br />
is not primarily the powerful, passionate Leader and Lover of His<br />
kabbalists<br />
found in the Hebrew Bible, not the wise Judge and loving Father of the<br />
people<br />
aggadah, nor the enthroned Kingof Merkavah visionaries. The kabbalists'<br />
rabbinic<br />
God also differs sharply from the increasingly abstract notions of the<br />
created by Jewish philosophers in the Middle Ages, beginning in the tenth<br />
deity<br />
with Saadia Gaon and culminatingin the twelfth with MaimonidesÐ<br />
century<br />
work often stands in the background as the object of kabbalistic<br />
whose<br />
The image of God that ®rst appears in Sefer ha-BahirÐto be elabo-<br />
polemics.<br />
by several generations of kabbalists until it achieved its highest poetic<br />
rated<br />
in the ZoharÐis a God of multiple mythic potencies, obscure<br />
expression<br />
eludingprecise de®nition but described through a remarkable web of<br />
entities<br />
parables, and scriptural allusions. Together these entities constitute the<br />
images,<br />
realm; ``God'' is the collective aggregate of these potencies and their<br />
divine<br />
relationship. The dynamic interplay amongthese forces is the essential<br />
inner<br />
of KabbalahÐthe true inner meaning, as far as its devotees are concerned,<br />
myth<br />
both of the Torah and of human life itself.<br />
describingthe God of the kabbalists as a ®gure of myth, we mean to say<br />
In<br />
the fragmented narratives and scriptural interpretations found in the Bahir<br />
that<br />
other early kabbalistic writings refer to a secret inner life of God, lifting<br />
and<br />
veil from the ancient Jewish insistence on monotheism and revealinga<br />
the<br />
and multifaceted divine realm. In sharp contrast to the well-known<br />
complex<br />
adage of Ben Sira (``Do not seek out what is too wondrous for you; do<br />
ancient<br />
inquire into that which is concealed from you''), these writings precisely<br />
not<br />
to penetrate the inner divine world and to offer hints to the reader about<br />
seek<br />
rich and complex life to be found there. Of course, outright polytheism<br />
the<br />
that of the pagan Gnostic groups of late antiquity) is out of the question<br />
(like<br />
at the heart of a medieval Jewry that de®ned itself through proud and<br />
here<br />
attachment to the faith in one God. What we seem to discover in the<br />
devoted<br />
Kabbalah are various stages of divine life, elements within the Godhead<br />
early<br />
interact with one another. In the Bahir, these potencies relate quite freely<br />
that<br />
mysteriously with one another; a ®xed pattern of relationships is somehow<br />
and<br />
in the background, but not clearly presented. In the century of devel-<br />
vaguely<br />
followingthe Bahir's publication (1150±1250), the system comes to be<br />
opment<br />
®rmly ®xed. It is that pattern that lies behind the fanciful and multi-<br />
quite<br />
creativity of the Zohar.<br />
layered<br />
we are speakingof here is the realm of divine entities that are called<br />
What<br />
Introduction<br />
III<br />
xli<br />
se®rot by early kabbalistic sources. The term originates in Sefer Yetsirah, where