The Kabbalist

by Katz, Yoram

  “Ordinary people can tap into the light energy via the Sefirah of ‘Malkuth’, the lowest of the ten. But some elect people can tap in through higher Sefirot – higher-energy levels. According to tradition, three men, Rabbi Yossay, Rabbi Hizkiyya and Rabbi Yissa, who were part of the inner circle of Rabi Shimon Bar Yochai, one of the fathers of Kabbalah, died of exposure to high-energy light they could not contain and sustain.

  “The Kabbalist craves to bridge and minimize the gap created by the Sefirot, between the material world he lives in, and God the Creator. He longs to undergo a mystical, conscious experience of a union with Him by spiritual enlightenment, which comes with the devotion to God and His Commands. The Kabbalist wishes to expose the divine entity hidden in him, transcend into spiritual perfection, experience the flow of light and become one with the Creator.”

  “And this, ladies and gentlemen,” culminated the professor, grandly addressing his audience, “is Kabbalah in a nutshell.” He sank exhausted in his couch and closed his eyes. Silence fell over the room.

  “May I say something, Professor?” Luria, ever the skeptic, broke the silence.

  Orlev opened his eyes. “Of course.”

  “Well… this cosmology along with the rest of it… I am not saying it has no aesthetic value, but it sounds to me more like a myth than a coherent logical structure.”

  Orlev beamed. “Aha! The never-relenting conflict between the believer and the rationalist! Well, my young friend, you must remember that Kabbalah is, first and foremost, a mystical system. If you are going to examine it solely by using logical tools, you will be missing the point. As an individual, I may have my own personal belief systems. As a scholar and researcher, I do not presume to rule over the actual truth of Kabbalah or judge whether it actually comes from a divine source. It is irrelevant. I study Kabbalah for its beauty, its value as a human creation, and its important contribution to Jewish history and culture.”

  “I see,” said Luria. “I would like to ask another question, with your permission.”

  The professor nodded his approval.

  “Where do all the talismans, spells and other miracle doings, attributed to Kabbalah and leading Kabbalists, come from? You have not explained those.”

  Orlev’s face became somber. “Well, now we are stepping into the minefield of magical or Practical Kabbalah. This branch of Kabbalah assumes the world can be affected by making use of the various names of God, and the people practicing it try to change the order of creation in their favor by uttering these holy names, or by creating talismans based on them. The classical Kabbalah literature specifically warns against Practical Kabbalah. The Holy Ari, who lived in the 16th century, explicitly forbade its practice, claiming that anybody practicing it must be purified with the ashes of a red heifer, which has been extinct since the destruction of the Temple.”

  “But this is no better than… this is rather like a type of voodoo!” Luria couldn’t help saying.

  The Professor gave him a forgiving smile. ”Now, this is a personal opinion coming from your personal belief system. A sentiment that, as I have just pointed out, is not academically relevant.”

  There was silence, while Jeanne and Luria tried to digest all they had heard.

  “You must, of course, realize,” said Orlev, “that I gave you a congested summary of Kabbalah’s central ideas and that this is merely a drop in the ocean. I have been studying this subject for dozens of years now, and I am not even close to full comprehension.”

  “OK,” said Luria, “that was really enlightening, and we thank you for going through the trouble of explaining all this to us. Now, returning to the question which brought us here. What Kabbalistic scripture could have been taken from Safed by Pascal de Charney in 1799?”

  Orlev thought a while before answering. “I can think of some good candidates.”

  Luria and Jeanne looked at him in anticipation.

  “Well, my friends,” said Orlev at last, “this will require a short introduction to the history of Kabbalah.”

  Luria suppressed a sigh, and Jeanne smiled.

  Orlev was already on his way. “The first known Kabbalistic text is ‘Sefer Yetzira’, the Book of Creation. It is a very short text, yet difficult to decipher. ‘Sefer Hazohar’, the Book of Splendor, was inspired by the Book of Creation and is based mainly on the five books of the Torah. Tradition gives the credit for the Zohar to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, known also by his initials as the Rashbi, who lived in the 2nd century AD. The Rashbi was a student and disciple of the famous Rabbi Akiva, the spiritual authority behind the Bar Kochva rebellion.”

  Jeanne looked somewhat bewildered and the professor proceeded to explain. “Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD, the city lay in ruins. Around 130, the Roman Emperor Hadrian decided to build upon its ruins a pagan city, Aelia Capitolina. He also burdened the Jews with new edicts, including a prohibition on circumcision. This led to a rebellion led by the legendary Jewish warrior Shimon Bar Kochva. The Romans brutally suppressed it and, as the supreme punishment, they expelled the Jewish population of Judea and changed the name of the land from ‘Israel’ or ‘Judea’ to ‘Palestine’, after the Philistines, Israel’s ancient enemies, already obsolete at the time. Rabbi Akiva was executed in an especially gruesome fashion, and most of his students were massacred. The Rashbi was one of the few who survived. He fled with his son Elazar to the Galilee, where, for thirteen years, they hid in a cave near the village of Peqi’in. Tradition has it that during that time, father and son dived into Kabbalah and into the secrets of the unknown, which the Rashbi had begun studying with his mentor, Rabbi Akiva.

  “After Hadrian’s death, the two left the cave. The Rashbi added eight more pupils to his circle, forming a group called the ‘Idra Rabba’ – the big assembly. They met in a small cave between Meron and Safed and, under the inspiration of the Rashbi, compiled the Book of Zohar, the central scripture of Kabbalah. The Zohar itself says that permission to decipher the secrets of the Torah was granted to the Rashbi. However, because he considered the Jewish people of his time not ripe for it, the book was immediately hidden. The Rashbi became a mythical figure, and the Zohar is now considered the most important Kabbalistic script.”

  The professor took the last sip from his glass. “The Book of Zohar became public at the end of the 13th century, when it was published by the Castilian-Spanish Kabbalist Rabbi Moshe Ben Leon of Valladolid, aka Ramdal, who claimed to have copied it from a Rashbi text he had somehow acquired. The book became a sensation and shortly reached the Jewish communities in the Holy Land, the most prominent of which resided in Acre. Acre was then the capital of the crusaders’ Kingdom of Jerusalem or rather of what was left of it. Almost immediately, a controversy arose regarding the identity of the author. Some accepted the Ramdal’s claim that it was an original Rashbi’s 2nd century text. They believed that the Rashbi’s scripts had been somehow discovered by the Ramban, a former head of Acre’s Yeshiva, who was originally from Catalonia, and that he sent the scripts to the Ramdal, whom he had known before and respected as a great scholar. Of course, the Ramban was already dead and could not confirm or disprove any of this.

  “Others claimed this was an elaborate forgery by the Ramdal. Rumors were spread to the effect that the Ramdal’s wife was heard to say that the Book of Zohar had been her husband’s own creation. According to these rumors, when she asked her husband why he was not taking full credit for himself, he explained to her that he had figured it would sell better this way.

  “One of Acre’s Kabbalists, Rabbi Yitzhak Ben Shmuel, a former student of the Ramban, was deeply disturbed by the possibility that the Zohar was a forgery. He planned to travel to Spain to learn the truth for himself, but in 1291, Acre fell to the Muslims and he was sold into slavery. Ten years later, he surfaced in Spain, still pursuing the question which haunted him. Arriving in Valladolid, he met the Ramdal, who swore to him that he was in possession of the ancient Zohar originals and promised to show them to
him. Unfortunately, the Ramdal suddenly died and no Rashbi scripts could be presented. From a letter he wrote, it seemed that Rabbi Yitzhak was eventually convinced of the antiquity of the Book of Zohar. But his letter was abruptly cut off where he was about to elaborate on the evidence for that.

  “The controversy survived to our time. Professor Gershom Shalom, a teacher of mine, I am honored to say, and undoubtedly the greatest and most prominent Kabbalah researcher of our era, attempted to settle this controversy. He tried to prove the Zohar’s antiquity by applying semantic analysis to the text. As it sometimes happens, Professor Shalom ended up on the other side of the fence, concluding that the Zohar was not compiled during the 2nd century AD, but at the time of the Ramdal. Most Kabbalists, of course, still reject this conclusion and attribute the Zohar to the Rashbi.”

  Professor Orlev paused and gazed at his audience. “Nobody has ever found any remnant of the scripts the Ramdal claimed to have copied,” he said. He then added almost in a whisper. “In one of my researches I once stumbled upon a document which hinted that a related script was hidden somewhere in Safed. However, this was a vague entry in a dubious document, which I could not confirm elsewhere.”

  “But,” said Luria, “from what you have just told us, the place to start looking for these texts, if they at all exist, is Spain. Could it be that Rabbi Yitzhak had somehow gotten hold of them and returned here?”

  The professor shook his head. “No, Rabbi Yitzhak settled in Spain. He died in Toledo.”

  “So this is not the document we are after,” noted Luria.

  “Just a moment,” intervened Jeanne, “if we are talking about a relic that was found in the ruins of the Temple, then the times are incompatible, too. Even if the original Zohar was written by Bar Yochai, he lived in the 2nd century AD, almost a century after the destruction of the Temple.”

  Orlev scratched his head. “You are right, of course,” he said gloomily.

  A short silence followed, which Luria interrupted. “Can I raise one more subject?”

  “Of course,” said Orlev. “Go ahead.”

  “We tried to figure out where the scrolls could have ended up. De Charney had given them to a friend of his before he was killed. This friend, in turn, was severely wounded, and the documents were lost. That got us thinking about the monastery of Stella Maris…”

  “I see.” Orlev was evidently excited. “Napoleon’s rear hospital.”

  “Exactly; this, in turn, reminded me of an event which took place there four years ago. One of the monastery’s residents, Father Fernando Diaz, was murdered. I understand that you knew Father Diaz personally, and I wondered if I could ask you…”

  A dark cloud descended on Orlev’s face, and his shoulders sagged perceptibly.

  “Professor Diaz was a brilliant scholar of Christian history,” said the professor in a broken voice. “His death was a tragedy to this discipline of historical research and a personal, painful blow to me. Why have you mentioned him?”

  “Four years ago I was involved, as a police officer, in the inquiry into his death. I still wonder what really happened there. I understood from Aryeh, my cousin whom you know well, that you knew Professor Diaz personally.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Orlev concurred. “Fernando and I met often, mostly at academic conferences, and I grew to appreciate the man and his work.”

  “Do you happen to know what research he was conducting at the time of his death?”

  The shadow on Orlev’s face grew darker. “Not really,” he said after a while. “Aryeh must have told you about the last time we met him. Professor Diaz mentioned a new research he was working on, but did not elaborate. He always liked to be a bit mysterious.”

  “So you don’t think he was really researching something.”

  “Professor Diaz was a true scholar. He was always working on something. Perhaps he felt it was not mature enough to discuss… and he hardly ever published anyway.” Orlev looked at Luria suspiciously. “What are you driving at?”

  “As I said, I was involved in the investigation, and this is a promising lead, which I do not believe was pursued at the time.”

  “Are you hinting that the subject of Professor Diaz’s research had something to do with his death?” Orlev looked shaken. “It seems far-fetched to me. I understood it was a case of a burglary which escalated into that terrible outcome.”

  “Yes,” acknowledged Luria. “That is the official story.”

  The professor suddenly glanced at his watch and looked alarmed. “Well, my friends, my time today is limited. Even so, the topic is challenging. Let me think about it, and we may resume our conversation in a few days.”

  “Sure,” said Luria, acutely aware that the professor was dodging the subject. “We will be honored to meet you again.”

  Jeanne, too, smiled at the professor and nodded. The three rose to their feet.

  “Oh, I have a small request, my dear,” Orlev addressed Jeanne. “Could you let me copy those translations you showed me? I have a copy machine in my study.”

  Jeanne hesitated for a second. “Of course.” She handed the documents to the professor, who promptly disappeared into his study.

  Luria turned to say something to Jeanne but what he saw in her face made him freeze. She was facing the door through which the professor had just left. Her eyes were staring at a point behind Luria’s back, and her expression was a mix of amazement and alarm. Luria turned around and looked back.

  Someone was standing in the doorway. It was not Professor Orlev.

  Luria blinked. The figure standing there was so strange that he was not sure what to make of it. It was a child with an angelic face, blue eyes and fair hair, whose age Luria would have estimated under normal circumstances at around ten. However, the boy was a giant, whose height Luria judged at well over two meters. He had a muscular, well developed body, but his face and the look in his eyes were those of a little child.

  The odd-looking boy now stepped into the room, his eyes fixed on Jeanne. He was smiling.

  “Mommy…” he said, his voice of a grown man but his intonation childish.

  “Mommy?”

  34. Naphtali

  The alarm on Jeanne’s face was replaced by a gentle smile.

  “Mommy?”

  Luria stepped into the path of the giant, instinctively trying to protect Jeanne. The child stopped in his tracks. For a moment, he stared at Luria, frowning, and then pushed him effortlessly aside.

  Luria swayed on his feet, lost his balance, stumbled back and tried to hold on to a nearby chair. Failing to stabilize himself, he fell backward, taking the chair with him. He immediately jumped back to his feet, ready to charge, when he heard Jeanne.

  “Don’t move and don’t try to hurt him,” she said quietly. “Do not worry. He is just a little child. I can handle him.”

  The giant child, who was already moving menacingly towards Luria, now halted. Jeanne’s voice had a mesmerizing effect on him. He listened to her voice and smiled. Then, forgetting Luria altogether, he stepped towards Jeanne. When he was close enough, he extended his massive right hand and stroked her cheek. Jeanne raised her hand slowly, held the hand that was wandering across her face, and stroked the back of it. The child smiled contentedly.

  “What is your name, sweetie?” She asked gently.

  “Naphtali! What are you doing?!” Orlev burst breathlessly into the room.

  The giant cringed. He then moved away from Jeanne toward the distant corner of the room, trying to increase the distance between himself and the infuriated professor. Eventually, he stood against the far wall, his back turned to them, so that he would not have to see the angry face of the old man. He looked much like a reprimanded pup.

  “I am so sorry.” Orlev was hugely embarrassed. “I hope he did not scare you. Naphtali would not hurt a fly.”

  Luria, still patting and stroking his sore behind, was not so sure about that.

  “It is all right,” said Jeanne softly. “He did not hurt us. He
is so gentle…”

  “I am so sorry.” Orlev was beside himself. “Naphtali is my son… my only son…”

  Luria and Jeanne felt awkward, not knowing what to say.

  “Naphtali was an exceptionally big baby. His delivery was problematic, and… and he was hurt... but he is a good boy…” the professor’s voice faded away, and tears came to his eyes.

  Jeanne approached Orlev and took his hand with hers. Luria could see she was deeply moved. “It is all right, Professor,” she assured him. “He has done no harm, and I am sure he is a wonderful son. Everything is fine.”

  The old man raised his eyes gratefully, gave her a sad smile and then addressed his son. “Come here, Naphtali. Daddy is not angry. Come to Daddy.”

  The child would not budge, so Orlev walked over to him, took his hand and walked him out of the room. The boy lowered his head not daring to look at the guests. Jeanne and Luria exchanged embarrassed glances. Not a word was spoken.

  A few minutes later Orlev returned. “He is fine now,” he informed them. “Naphtali is fine. He spends much of his time in a … boarding house and when he is home, I need to keep an eye on him. I apologize for the inconvenience.” He was now alert and cheerful, as if nothing had happened. He handed Jeanne back the letters. “As I said, we can meet again to discuss this.”

  “We will be very happy to do that,” said Jeanne and Luria nodded in agreement.

  The professor shook their hands and smiled. “Shalom, and see you soon.” He walked them to the door and watched them close the garden gate behind them.

  * * *

  “What a charming, sad child,” said Jeanne as they were making their way to the car, both wrapping themselves in their overcoats against the cold Jerusalem wind.

  Luria did not answer. The liveliest impression he had from this ‘child’ was his enormous strength. The ease with which the child had flung him across the room astonished him. He opened the car door, and they both sat shivering inside, rubbing their hands to drive away the chill. Luria started the car, and they were on their way.