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The Name of God and the Linguistic Theory of the Kabbala

(Part 2)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Gershom Scholem
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The linguistic theory of the Kabbala, as it is explained in the writings of the Kabbalists of the 13th century—or at least basically implied in them—comes to rest upon a combination of the above-mentioned interpretations of the Book of Yetsira with the doctrine of the Name of God as a basis of that language. What is essentially new in this is the way in which the scope and range of a divine language—as understood by the Kabbalists—is brought into unique prominence over and beyond the realm of created man. In the Book of Yetsira there could still be some doubt as to whether the ten Sefiroth and the 22 letters were themselves thought of as created; and as we have seen, there is even considerable evidence in favor of this conception. In the doctrines and teachings of the Kabbalists, however, this is no longer the case. The ten original numbers have become ten emanations of the divine fullness of being. Where these are concerned one can only now talk in terms of creation in a meta-phorical sense. In the Sefiroth of the Kabbalists, God manifests himself in ten spheres or aspects of his activity. The 22 letters are themselves part and parcel of this area; they are configurations of the divine energies, which are themselves grounded in the world of the Sefiroth, and whose appearance in the world either beyond, outside or beneath this realm of the divine emanations is simply a gradual process of de-refinement and an intensified crystallization of those innermost signs of all things, as they correspond to the progressively evolving and increasingly condensed media of the creation. All creation, from the world of the highest angel to the lower realms of physical nature, refers symbolically to the law which operates within it—the law which governs in the world of the Sefiroth. In everything something is reflected—one might just as well say—from the realms which lie in the center of it. Everything is transparent, and in this state of transparency everything takes on a symbolic character. This means that every thing, beyond its own meaning, has something more, something which is part of that which shines into it or, as if in some devious way, that which has left its mark behind in it, forever. The Book of Yetsira was still far removed from this type of interpretation. For the Kabbalists, however, the Sefiroth and the letters, in which the word of God is explained, or which constitute the word of God, were simply two different methods in which the same reality might be represented in a symbolic manner. In other words: whether the process of the manifestation of God, his stepping outside under the symbol of the light, and his diffusion of knowledge and reflection is what is represented, or whether it is to be understood to be the activeness of the divine language, of the self-differentiating word of the creation or even of the self-explanatory name of God. In the last analysis, this, for the Kabbalists, is no more than a question of the choice between symbolic structures which are in themselves equally arranged—the symbolism of light and the symbolism of language.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 20 , Issue 80 , December 1972 , pp. 164 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

Footnotes

*

Part 1 appeared in No. 79 of “Diogenes.”

References

36 Cf. my Eranos lecture on ‘Creation from Nothing' in Eranos Yearbook, 25, 1957, which is published in an extended form in Über einige Grundbegriffe des Judentums, 1970, pp. 53-89 (Suhrkamp edition, 414).

37 For this explanation Isaac the Blind could be referring to passages such as Isaiah 41:23, in which the plural form othijoth is used in the sense of the advent or future. David ben Simra also discussed this prophetic quality of the letters in his Magen David (On the Mysticism of the Alphabet), circa 1500, Amsterdam, 1713, fol. 51b.

38 I published this text as an appendix to my Hebrew lectures on the Provence Kabbala in 1963.

39 Scholem, Ursprung und Anfänge der Kabbala, p. 244.

40 As in Isaac's commentary on the book of Yetsira, II, 5, p. 10 of the text mentioned in note 38.

41 According to Molitor, Philosophie der Geschichte oder über die Tradition, Part I, 2nd edition, 1857, p. 553.

42 Bet ha-Midrash, ed. A. Jellinek, III, 1855, p. 25.

43 As in Perush Shem ben ‘arba Othijoth, Ms. Florence, Plut. II, cod. 41 (of 1328), fol. 198.

44 As in a treatise on the names of 42 letters, which appeared under the name of Haj Goan, cf. my catalogue of the Kabbalistic manuscripts in Jerusalem, Kithwei Yad be-Kabbala, 1930, p. 217. This interpretation is based on a passage in the Midrash Pessikta rabbati, ed. Friedmann, fol. 104a, where one reads in a discussion of the name Tsebaoth: "Every letter, 'oth, of the tetragram forms a plurality, tsaba (that is, reveals a dynamic) which corresponds to the plurality of the whole name."

45 The book Ma' yan Chokhma has been printed quite frequently since 1651. Its contents, however, are only to any degree comprehensible from the text of the old manuscripts.

46 Perush Shem ha-meforash, ed. Chassida, 1934, p. 4.

47 As at the end of Ma'yan Chokhma. In the manuscript in Munich, fol. 124-25, there is a closer mystical foundation for this divine name, which belongs to the same cycle.

48 This is constantly evoked in texts about this name, e.g. even in the treatise of Elchanan ben Jakar of London (mid 13th century), MS. New York, "838" (according to the old numeration of the unprinted catalogue of Alexander Marx), fol. 98a, and in the fragment of Joseph Gikatilla's commentary on the Torah, MS. New York, "851", fol. 74b. Cf. also Gikatilla's Ginnath Egos, Hanau, 1615, fol. 55b.

49 Here Abulafia uses the meaning in the Talmud in Kidduschin 71a, where (Exodus 3:15) it is indicated by a play of words that God wanted to keep his name hidden. For shmi le ‘olam read shmi le ‘allem.

50 In the Hebrew text this is a play on words: the two words are only differentiated by the writing of the s in sekhalim. The one word is written with sin, and means "intelligences"; the other is written with samekh, and then means "ignorant." In the following sentence, also, the word for "fools" is kessilim, which, according to the consonantal content, is identical to the " ignorant," sekhalim.

51 Abraham Abulafia, Or ha-sekhel, MS. Munich. Hebr. 92, fol. 54 a/b, in which the text is wrong in two passages, which I have amended.

52 Moses Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim, chap. 21, section 3.

53 As in the explanation of the name of 72 letters, which was drawn up as a kind of preface in the context of the book Temuna, Where there is a closer amplification in the old marginal notes to this text, e. g. MS. Paris, 775, fol. 10a.

54 As, for example, in Abulafia's Or ha-sekhel, MS. Munich, 92, fol. 66a, and Cordovero's Pardes Rimmonim chap. 19. section 1. Here Cordovero says that the tetragram only becomes effective as a force in the world by virtue of the fact that it formerly disguised itself in one of the other names; for it is only in this way that these spiritual letters can adorn themselves in the earthly ether and have their effect there; and this would not have been possible for it outside the region of the temple, on account of its especial majesty and holiness.

55 In all hitherto known manuscripts the commentary is anonymous. The author does however remain established by virtue of the fact that Moses Zinfa of Burgos quotes detailed passages from it in his writings, as he also does from the work of his teacher, Jakob Kohen.

56 Cf. the Hebrew text in my catalogue of the Kabbalistic manuscripts in Je rusalem, 1930, pp. 208-209. In one passage I have corrected on the basis of the manuscripts a wrong interpretation that disturbed the overall significance.

57 This astonishing score for mystical meditations, the so-called Siddur of Shalom Shar'abi, was printed in Jerusalem in 1916.

58 Gikatilla, Sha'arei Ora, Offenbach, 1715, fol. 2b and 4b.

59 E. Gottlieb, Tarbiz, 39, 1970, published this conclusion of the book Sha'arei Tsedek; cf. there, in particular, pp. 382-383.

60 Scholem, Zur Kabbala und ihrer Symbolik, p. 63.

61 Ibid., pp. 91-92, in which the sources of this are also indicated on p. 271.

62 This doctrine is first of all developed in the book Limmudei atsiluth, Munkacz 1897, fol. 3a, 15a/b and above all 21d-22a. This book is printed under the name Chajim Vitals, but its author is without doubt Israel Saruk. Worthy of note is the fact that one of the most ancient manuscripts, which contains transcripts of Saruk's tracts which are to be found in Italy, namely MS. Jerusalem 4° 612 (written in Asti in 1602), completely overlooks this new doctrine of the original stuff of the En-sof as the original Torah. Leon Modena in Venice, who was an acquaintance of Saruk and testifies to the fact that his treatises tried to unite the Kabbala of Luria with the philosophy of Plato, presumably had thought about this doctrine: what for Plato was the world of original ideas, is here the world of the names of God, which form the malbush. The notion of the shi ‘ashu'a of God stems from Moses Cordovero's later writings (between 1560 and 1570). Cf. Joseph Ben-Shlomo, The Mystical Theology of Moses Cordovero (in Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1965, pp. 60-61. Cordovero, however, has not yet made Saruk's inferences about the coming into being of the movement of language from this inner movement of the En-sof. Saruk's theory has been developed in considerable detail in many later works, as for example in Menachem Asarja Fano, Shiw'im u-schtajim jedi'oth, 1867; Naftali Bacharach, 'Emek ha-melekh, 1648, chap. 1, sections 1-61 (on the different reading of the Torah in the four worlds at the end of section 4); Moses Graf, of Prague, Wajakhel Moshe, Dessau, 1699, fol. 1-10.

63 These propositions stem from Jesaja Horowitz, Shnei luhoth ha-brith. I made reference to them as a result of an explanation of his thought by Benjamin Cohen in the weekly paper Der Israelit, 1935, No. 44, p. 4.

64 Schar I, 16b. The concept of the silent and audible voice is developed in several instances in the Sohar and in Moses de Leon and Josef Gikatilla in connection with the symbolism of the Shofar. The inarticulate original sounds which ring out from the Widderhorn—the Shofar—on new year's day, contain principally all the utterances of language in their potentiality. In the view of later Kabbalists the voice of the Shofar embraces all the prayers of the year to come; cf. with these ideas Gershom H. Leiner, Sod Jesharin I, (Kabbalistisches über das Neujahrsfest), 1902, fol. 2d/3c.

65 Abulafia, who has studied the writings of Aristotle and relies on them quite happily in philosophical considerations, has, rather surprisingly, not read Plato at all, even though M. H. Landauer, who made the first study of Abulafia's writings, asserts the contrary view. Cf. Literaturblatt des Orient, VI, 1845, col. 488. In his book about Alfarabi, written in 1869 (p. 249) Steinschneider has indicated tha: the only quotation from Plato in Abulafia's work is taken from the Liber de causis, an epitome of the Institutio Theologica of Proclos.

66 A general characteristic of Abulafia's Kabbala is to be found in chapter 4 of my book: Die jüdische Mystik in ihren Hauptströmungen.

67 As, for example, in Or ha-sekhel, chap. 8, section 5, which is published by A. Jellinek, Philosophie und Kabbala, book I, 1854, pp. 39-40, as well as in his commentary on the Yetsira, Gan na'ul, MS. Munich, Hebrew 58, fo. 320b.

68 Ner Elohim, MS. Munich 10, fol. 164 b. I hesitate in my judgement of the question whether this book was written by Abulafia himself or by one of his pupils.

69 Philosophie und Kabbala, p. 17. The open letter printed there on the " seven ways" in which an understanding of the Torah can be achieved, contains a condensed compilation of Abulafia's trains of thought, as they are developed in considerable detail in his other writings.

70 Or ha-sekhel, MS. Munich 92, fol. 43b.

71 Philosophie und Kabbala, p. 8.

72 Ibid., p. 4. In this assertion Abulafia is reliant upon the famous chapter (II: 36) of the Führer der Verwirrten (Leader of the Confused) which discusses the essence of prophecy. Nevertheless the moment—decisive for Abulafia—of the linguistic being (essence) of the prophecy is in fact missing here. As his explanations (I, 65) there prove, Maimonides has stuck by his rejection of a real " speech of God," and devalued it into the realm of the metaphorical.

73 Or ha-sekhel, fol. 66b.

74 In the progress of language, which is composed and formed by the names and letters, it is Abulafia's view that an important part is played by the methods of the Gematria, the acrostic, the substitution of letters in accordance with certain rules. In this way the substitutions occurring accordingly can be exchanged and transposed once again from other viewpoints. With the aid of these methods all language can be understood from the unfolding of the one name of God into the combinations of the alphabet. When Abulafia talks of ten-fold substitutions, which thus pass through the elements of language, it is his view that this limitation can only be ascribed to the weakness of man's faculty of comprehension. In principle, that is, this process of the substitution of letters can be carried on into the realm of the infinite. Cf. Philosophie und Kabbala, p. 4, before the passage noted in note 72.

75 Philosophie und Kabbala, p. 15.

76 Chaja ha-nefesh, Ms. Munich 408, fol. 71b - 72 a. Cf. in this respect Al. Altmann in the Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, 80, 1936, p. 311.

77 Philosophie und Kabbala, p. 6.

78 This is in contrast to the conception of the Sohar, which (at III, 204a) acknowledges a mystical meaning only of the holy language, but not of the language of other peoples.

79 Sefer ha-'oth, ed. Jellinek, in the "Jubelschrift zum 70. Geburtstag von H. Gratz," 1887, p. 71.

80 Thus expressed in the foreword to Abulafia's Maftesch ha-chochmoth, Ms. Parma de Rossi, 141, fol. 3a.

81 Philosophie und Kabbala, p. 20.

82 Ibid. As well as in his Chajjei ha-'olem ha-ba, cf. the relative passages from this in my catalogue of the Kabbalistic manuscripts in Jerusalem, 1930, pp 25-26.

83 Imrei Shefer, Ms. Munich 285, fol. 75b.

84 Sefer ha-meliz, Ms. Munich, 285, fol. 10. Similarly in Sohar I, 4b, it reads in connection with Isaiah 51:16: " I make my words in your mouth," the new and authentic word, which man speaks in the Torah, is before God, who kisses it and crowns it with seventy mystical crowns. And this word then extends in the movement to its own new world, a " new heaven and earth."

85 Philosophie und Kabbala, p. 21.

86 In the open letter published by Jellinek (Auswahl kabbalistischer Mystik, Book I, 1853) written by Abraham Abulafia to Barcelona, pp. 16-17.

87 This thought is particularly developed at the end of Or ha-sekhel, fol. 67b.

88 As in Ner Elohim, Ms. Munich 10, fol. 141b. The polemic against the creation of Golem is also pertinent here, fol. 172b.

89 Chajjei ‘olam ha-ba, Ms. Oxford, Neubauer 1646, fol. 205b.

90 Chajjei ha-nefesh, Ms. Munich 408, fol. 53b.

91 Cf. the passage from Chajjei ‘olam ha-ba in my catalogue of the Kabbalistic manuscripts, p. 29.

92 Or ha-sekhel, fol. 42b.

93 At the beginning here I have used the formulation of Cordovero in Pardes Rimmonim, chap. 19, section. 1.