The Kabbalist

by Katz, Yoram

  Jeanne was going to say something, but Luria quickly intervened, trying to rescue the conversation which was fast escalating in an unexpected direction. “Just a moment,” he interjected hurriedly. “We have another interesting clue regarding the Safedi documents, one which you may find intriguing.”

  He succeeded. The professor now forgot his heated words and stared at him inquisitively with those big eyes of his.

  Luria let a few seconds pass for effect. “Well, we started this investigation by looking for sources that could corroborate the story of the French officer and the Jewish girl from 1799. We managed to find a source, who claims to have in his possession a journal of an inhabitant of Safed of that time. This source referred to an artifact that had been kept in Safed and disappeared during the events of 1799.”

  The professor was impressed. “Now I am curious. Do you have a clue as to what this artifact might have been?”

  “A short paragraph in this journal mentioned ‘Or Haganuz’, which had disappeared from the synagogue of the Holy Ari in Safed. I know this is not much.”

  The old man was now excited. “‘Or Haganuz’? Who is this source?”

  “As I said, he is the owner of an authentic journal from that time.”

  “I have never heard of such a journal,” said Orlev suspiciously. “Can I see it?”

  “I do not have this document in my possession,” replied Luria. “I was informed about it through a third party.”

  “I would be extremely interested in seeing it.” Orlev sipped from his tea in an attempt to wet his throat. “Am I wrong to assume that you have arrived at this source through Aryeh?”

  “I am sorry but I cannot reveal my sources at this stage,” said Luria awkwardly and hurried to steer the conversation back on track. “What is ‘Or Haganuz’?”

  “’Or Haganuz’ is, of course, Hebrew for ‘hidden light’. It’s a Kabbalistic term.”

  “Kabbalistic?”

  “Yes. According to the book of Genesis, light was the first element to have been created in this world. ‘And God said, let there be light; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.’ The light created during the days of Genesis is sometimes referred to as ’Or Haganuz’. The Babylonian Talmud says it is a supernatural light, which will show the way to the righteous at the end of time. This term is associated with Kabbalah.”

  “Could ‘Or Haganuz’ refer to a lost Kabbalistic scripture, then? Do you know of any?”

  The professor sank into his couch, lost in thought, and closed his eyes. About a minute later, he opened them. “Well…,” he explained, “’Or Haganuz’ may indeed refer to a Kabbalistic script. Do I know of such missing script? Well… I can think of a few original scripts that any Kabbalah scholar would kill to lay his eyes upon, so to speak.”

  “Excuse me, Professor,” said Jeanne. “Can I ask you something?”

  Yeshayahu Orlev shook himself free of his reflections and smiled at her absently. “Yes, my dear, of course.”

  “What is Kabbalah exactly? I mean, I have heard of it… everybody has… it has even become a trendy item these days, but… would it be too insolent of me to ask you to explain to me, in a nutshell, what it is all about?”

  The old man’s eyes lit up. “I will be happy to explain it to you.”

  Jeanne smiled thankfully.

  “Naturally, my short explanation will be a drop in the sea. But I always say that a good teacher can explain anything in ten minutes.” The professor gladly seized the opportunity to talk about his favorite subject.

  Luria hardly managed to conceal a sigh of despair.

  “Let us start with a common expression,” opened the professor. “‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ is a proverb from the Torah, Leviticus 19, 18, which represents a fundamental element of Kabbalah. This verse has become a basic Mitzvah in Judaism and was borrowed by Christianity, which made it a cornerstone of its ethics. It is a phrase any child can understand at face value. The level of face value interpretation is called in Jewish terminology ‘Peshat’, derived from the Hebrew word for ‘simple’. However, this ‘simple’ interpretation of ‘Love thy neighbor‘, is but the tip of the iceberg. We shall return to this later.”

  The professor paused to sip some tea while watching his students’ faces. Jeanne was sitting upright on her couch, attentive, and Orlev was delighted. “Around the first-century BC, at the time of the Hasmonean or Maccabean dynasty, Jewish scholars started moving toward ‘Derash’, a term derived from a Hebrew word meaning ‘inquire’ or ‘seek’. Jews stopped accepting the Torah at face value only, and tried to find extra, hidden meanings in the biblical texts. The people who dealt with this type of interpretations called themselves ‘Prushim’ - Pharisees. They introduced new concepts, like the belief in the immortality of the soul, reward and punishment in the afterlife, etc. In time, they produced a huge volume of interpretational literature known as the ‘Oral Torah’, which later evolved into the Talmud. In their eyes, these interpretations were no less important than the written scripture. This movement grew and grew, until it overwhelmed all other Jewish undercurrents of the time.”

  “What other undercurrents?” asked Jeanne.

  “The main force in Judaism before the Pharisees, were the Tzdokim, or Sadducees, named after the high priest Tzadok. The Hasmonean Kings and High Priests were Sadducees. In Jesus’s time, the priests and high classes were still identified with the Sadducees, and the Pharisees were just beginning to have some impact. There were other factions, like the monastic Essenes, who left us the Qumran scrolls, the nationalistic Zealots and the violent Sicariis, who played a lead role in the famous drama of Masada. All these sects gradually disappeared, leaving the stage to the Pharisees.”

  “What was the secret of their strength?” wondered Jeanne. “You said that the Jewish elite of the time belonged to the Sadducees.”

  Orlev gave her an approving look. “This is an excellent question, my dear! One can detect the thinking of a historian here; very good.” He was now deep into the role of the professor appreciating a bright student. Luria smiled.

  “Yes, dear,” resumed the professor. “The Pharisees did have a source of strength and Yossef Ben Mattityahu, aka Josephus Flavius, the historian of the period, was perceptive enough to point it out. The Pharisee scholars were attentive to the people’s desires and needs. They were quick to interpret the Torah in tune with the spirit of the time. The destruction of the second temple brought about the destruction of the Sadducees and the High Priests, who could not adapt to the new reality of Judaism without a temple. The Pharisees, led by Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai, fled Jerusalem and established an alternative Jewish center in Yavne. There, they applied the new religious concepts of Judaism without a temple, giving birth to Rabbinical Judaism. This flexibility gave the Pharisees an advantage over other Jewish sects, so that via a natural process of evolution, they gradually became the majority of the Jewish people and eventually took over completely. Today’s Judaism is wholly Pharisee.”

  “This is odd,” said Jeanne. “Are you saying that Judaism today is occupied more with interpretational literature than in the biblical scriptures?”

  “Absolutely! Haredi Jews today invest almost all their time, long and grueling years, in the study of the Talmud. If you check the knowledge of the average Yeshiva student in general biblical scriptures outside of the Torah, you will be quite disappointed.”

  Jeanne looked very surprised.

  “Just look at the irony of it. The ancient Pharisees created tools, which enabled them to develop new ideas, go beyond the scriptures and survive the destruction of the Temple. Nowadays, those who consider themselves their modern spiritual successors, the Haredi Jews, are ultra conservatives, fighting every manifestation of flexibility and change. History sure has a fine sense of humor.” The professor found this very amusing, halting his fluent lecture to laugh his strange cooing laugh. “The Pharisees of 2,000 years ago were innovative. They opened Judaism to interpretation and c
hange, thus facilitating the most refreshing of Jewish novelties, allowing it to take root before orthodoxy took over once again.”

  Yeshayahu Orlev now challenged his audience. “And what was this novelty, this new creation I am referring to?” He asked dramatically, a rhetorical question that must have been taken from his repertoire of lecture gimmicks.

  The students, Jeanne and Luria, shook their heads slowly. They did not know.

  Orlev waved his hand in a theatrical gesture. “I am, of course, referring to Kabbalah – the Jewish mystical doctrine!”

  The professor now resembled an orchestra conductor, having finished a complex musical composition. He lay back ceremoniously on his couch and closed his eyes, listening to some imaginary applause, before resuming his act. “According to the Book of Zohar, a foundational text in Kabbalistic thought, Torah study can assume four levels of interpretation. These four levels are called ‘Pardes’, because the initial letters of their names in Hebrew spell out the Hebrew word ‘Pardes’- ‘orchard’.

  “The four levels are Peshat, Remez (meaning ‘hint’), Derash and Sod (meaning ‘secret’ or ‘mystery’). Sod refers to the inner, metaphysical meanings expressed only in Kabbalah. Kabbalah, as you can see, is a natural evolution of the Pharisee thought. According to Kabbalistic tradition, knowledge was transmitted orally by the Patriarchs, prophets, and sages, finally to be interwoven into Jewish religious writings and culture.

  “Foreign conquests drove the Jewish spiritual leadership of the time to hide this knowledge and make it secret, fearing that it might be misused if it fell into the wrong hands. There was concern that the practice of Kabbalah by Jews deported to the Diaspora, unsupervised and unguided by the masters, might lead them into forbidden practices. As a result, Kabbalah became secretive and forbidden to most, for a very long time.”

  The professor paused for a moment. “If you think about it, this concern was very much justified. Just look at what Paul did with Jesus’s ideas,” he remarked to Jeanne’s obvious annoyance.

  Orlev now looked at his audience with satisfaction. “Here I conclude the introduction.” He raised a glass of cold tea to his lips. “Are there any questions?” He was apparently feeling in the midst of his usual audience of admiring students and was enjoying it immensely. “Good, then let us return to your original question, my dear. We will now try to understand what Kabbalah is about, and we will start by discussing the cosmology of Kabbalah.”

  Luria raised an eyebrow, and Orlev hurried to explain. “Cosmology is a doctrine explaining the origin and structure of the universe, its history, and how humanity fits into it. Almost every belief system and religion comes with its own cosmology.”

  “If you define it this way,” reasoned Luria, “then Judaism already has its own cosmology, as told in the story of Genesis. How can Kabbalah be part of Judaism and claim a different cosmology?”

  “An excellent question,” cheered the professor. “Well, I have no doubt that if Kabbalah were to emerge in our present time, it would, along with its cosmology, be utterly rejected as heresy by today’s Orthodox Judaism mainstream, which cannot tolerate any change or innovation. The Kabbalists themselves, recognizing the issue, made a strong effort to demonstrate that their cosmology was, in fact, an interpretation of Jewish cosmology, which, as you have rightly pointed out, is presented in the Book of Genesis. The Pharisee concepts of ‘Derash’ and ‘Sod’ made this maneuver possible.”

  Orlev now took a break to make sure this fine point was understood; he seemed satisfied. “And now ladies and Gentlemen,” he exclaimed, “the cosmology of Kabbalah.”

  33. Kabbalah

  Yeshayahu Orlev cleared his throat. “Let us start by discussing the concept of the Creator. The Creator of the universe is a complete and perfect being, with no deficiencies. Evil can only come from a deficiency, so, by definition, the Creator is purely good. From his being whole and full to the brim, stems the feature by which we are made aware of His existence – His evident desire to give and affect the world by propagating this goodness, so that it is received everywhere. From this emerges the concept of ‘Kabbalah’ - literally the Hebrew word for ‘receiving’.

  “Another term in Kabbalah for this goodness of the Creator is ‘light’ and the desire to give and bestow light is the essential nature of the Creator. The other imperfect forms of creation, from man to the inanimate, are characterized by their capacity to receive. You may consider this analogous to physical balancing of pressures. The light always flows from where it is found in abundance to where it is in demand, and Man is the creature most in need of receiving it.

  “Before Creation, there existed a higher light, the light of infinity, which filled the world and left no space for anything else. Remember the first verses of Genesis: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘let there be light,’ and there was light. Do you see how these verses now receive new meaning?”

  The professor rubbed his hands in satisfaction.

  “The ever-giving Creator had to create a vessel to receive the light He was craving to bestow. Since, at the time, the Creator filled the whole universe to infinity, He had to contract. He did so by narrowing the infinite light to a center spot, and thus made room for a receiving vessel. This first vessel is called in Kabbalah ‘Adam Hakadmon’, which means ‘Ancient Man’ in Hebrew. It does not really describe a man, but some basic embodiment delegated by Divinity. This first vessel now overflowed with light and in turn, craved unlimited giving. To allow an outlet, other vessels had to be created. These were called ‘Sefirot’, ’counts’ in Hebrew, and we will return to them in a moment.

  “Now an accident occurred. The higher light was so strong that these vessels could not contain it. They broke and scattered throughout the world, releasing the light in them to rise back and rejoin the Creator’s light. He now realized that in order to keep light flowing and to facilitate giving, He should create vessels in various levels of strength and buffer each one from the other. The new vessels were programmed to imitate the Creator. They developed sensitivity to the presence of other vessels and craved to bestow their internally stored light. In the process, they naturally became deficient in light and needed to receive and charge themselves with new light. They could receive light from the Creator or from higher vessels, and they temporarily experienced a disturbing unpleasantness for not being able to give. Once recharged, the vessels could overcome this unpleasantness by resuming the giving of light to other deficient vessels. Finally, a dynamic balance was achieved between infinite receiving - Kabbalah, and infinite giving, which is indeed the optimal state for any vessel to be in.”

  “Just a moment,” interrupted Jeanne. “How does all this relate to Judaism?”

  Orlev smiled. “Some claim it doesn’t and that Kabbalah has nothing at all to do with religion, but the philosophers of Kabbalah saw the Mitzvot, the laws of the Torah, as the link between receiving and giving. According to this logic, praying and keeping the Commandments and laws prepare Man for being the optimal vessel. He becomes an active vessel of receiving - of Kabbalah, on one hand, and of giving, through fulfillment of the Torah’s Commandments, on the other. Once in this state, the soul experiences the flow of light and the perfection of the Creator. You can see now that the highest form of receiving is the one done for the purpose of giving to the other. When this process is not followed and there is no giving, an energetic imbalance occurs, and the capacity to receive light eventually disappears.”

  The professor took a deep breath. “And now, my friends, you can understand why the phrase ‘Love thy neighbor’, which glorifies giving, is so essential to Kabbalah. Once again, you can see the difference between the initial interpretation assigned to this phrase – the Peshat, and the Derash and Sod, which give it a much deeper, Kabbalistic meaning.”

  He paused to look at his two listeners.
“Have you followed me so far?”

  “I think I have,” said Jeanne.

  Luria nodded too, though his expression conveyed skepticism. To him, all this conjecture seemed a shaky house of cards, with words replacing cards as building blocks.

  Orlev, however, looked pleased. “And now,” he said, “let me explain to you a central Kabbalistic concept we have earlier mentioned, the vessels of the Sefirot - the counts or numbers. I already pointed out that the light streaming from the Creator was too strong to be received by material vessels like human beings. Humans exposed to this type of energy simply could not contain it. To solve this, energy was channeled through mediating vessels or buffers, called ‘Sefirot’.”

  The professor stood up and approached one of the book shelves surrounding them. He picked a book and turned its pages until he found what he was looking for. He then placed the book on the table, so that Jeanne and Luria could see the diagram on the open page.

  "There are ten Sefirot in Kabbalah, which also represent different aspects of morality. These are: ‘Kether’ – Crown, ‘Chokmah’ – Wisdom, ‘Binah’ - Understanding, ‘Chesed’ – Kindness, ‘Tiphereth’ – Magnificence, ‘Geburah – Heroism, ‘Nezach’ –Eternity, ‘Hod’ – Grandeur, ‘Jesod’ – Foundation and ‘Malkuth’ – Kingship.

  “These ten Sefirot are like ten spiritual transformers channeling the light of the Creator into the universe and to humans, according to their capacities. We can receive light through this tree-like vessel structure, sometimes also called ‘The Tree of Life’. The higher the Sefirah is in the diagram, the stronger the light and the closer it is to the Creator. Different people have different capacities for receiving light and can respectively connect to different Sefirot.