Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press

who probably immigrated to Safed from elsewhere in the Ottoman
(1522±1570),
and Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534±1572), who came from Egypt, chose to live
realm,
Safed because of the nearness of holy graves and the possibility (described
in
Cordovero in his Sefer Gerushin) of achievingmystical knowledge through
by
upon them. Amongthe sacred dead of the Galilee, Rabbi Shim'on,
prostration
acclaimed as the undisputed author of the Zohar, took a central place.
now
speci®cally hoped to achieve a true understandingof passages in the
Luria
by visitingwhat he believed to be the grave of its author.
Zohar
``return'' of Kabbalah to the Galilean landscape of the Zohar's heroes
The
the imagination of Jews throughout the Diaspora. Reports of the holy
®red
of Safed, especially the mysterious ®gure of Luria, known as ha-ARI ha-
men
(the Holy Lion), were widely copied and printed in several versions. A
Qadosh
literature of both kabbalistic writings and ethical or pietistic works in¯uenced
vast
by Kabbalah poured forth from the printingpresses of Venice, Constan-
and AmsterdamÐto be distributed throughout the Jewish world. It did
tinople,
take longuntil the claim emerged that the soul of the ARI was in fact a
not
of that of Rabbi Shim'on son of Yoḥai.
reincarnation
was in this period that the Zohar came to be considered not only an
It
and holy book, but a canonical text, bearingauthority comparable to
ancient
of the Bible and the Talmud. The authority of the Zohar as the prime
that
of mystical truth had already been considered by fourteenth-century
source
some of whom came to view its word as superior to that of Naḥ-
kabbalists,
for example, because of its allegedly greater antiquity. Naḥmanides
manides,
portrayed by these as a ``modern'' source, whose word could be set aside
was
a contrary quotation from the work of Rabbi Shim'on son of Yoḥai. But in
by
sixteenth century, it was said that Elijah himself had appeared to Rabbi
the
and the Zohar's authority became that of heaven itself. Meir ibn
Shim'on,
traced the kabbalistic tradition back to Sinai, claimingthat Zoharic
Gabbai
were given to Moses along with the written Torah.
secrets
status, in the context of Judaism, bears with it halakhic authority
Canonical
well as mystical prestige. If the Zohar contained the ``true'' meaningof both
as
and oral Torah, might it be used as a source of legal authority, es-
written
in ritual and liturgical matters, as well? This question came up among
pecially
scholars, especially in the few cases in which the Zohar seemed to
halakhic
the majority opinion of rabbis decidingthe law on the basis of
contradict
precedent and its formulation in responsa and codes. In fact, as
Talmudic
have shown, these cases mostly turn on local customÐthe Zohar re-
scholars
Franco-German or old Spanish customs, while the halakhah had
¯ectingeither
in favor of others. A classic example of such halakhic dispute involving
decided
Zohar concerns the donningof te®llin on the intermediate weekdays of
the
and Sukkot. TheZohar expresses itself most strongly on the issue, consideringthe
Pesaḥ
wearingof te®llin on those days an insult to the festival and a
Introduction
lxxiii
virtual sacrilege. Although the halakhic codes mostly tended otherwise, some