Abraham Abulafia - Kabbalist and Prophet Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy Sources and Studies in the Literature of Jewish Mysticism edited by Daniel Abrams 7 Abraham Abulafia - Kabbalist and Prophet Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy Elliot R. Wolfson Cherub Press Los Angeles 2000 Abraham Abulafia - Kabbalist and Prophet Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy © Copyright 2000 by Cherub Press All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used ör reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of Cherub Press, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This book may be purchased directly from the publisher. For information and price lists write to Cherub Press, 9323 Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, 90232, USA. ISBN 0-9640972-7-3 To Peter For helping me see the glimmer underground “Erkenntis als eine in Gott gegründete Frage, die keiner Antwort entspricht.” G. Scholem Contents Introduction I. Abraham Abulafia’s Hermeneutic: Secrecy and the Disclosure of Withholding Preservation Of The Secret Through Its Disclosure 9 Philosophical Esotericism: The Secret That There Is No Secret 38 Esotericism In The Prophetic Kabbalah: The Secret That Cannot Be Kept 52 II. The Doctrine of Sefirot in the Prophetic Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia Typological Classification Of Theosophic And Ecstatic Kabbalah In Modem Scholarship 94 Typological Classification Of Two Kinds Of Kabbalah In Abulafia’s Writings 99 Abulafia’s Appropriation Of Symbols, Concepts And Terms From Works Of Theosophic Kabbalah 114 The Doctrine Of Sefirot In Abulafia’s Writings 134 Abulafia’s Interpretation Of Sefirot And The Maimonidean Doctrine Of Separate Intellects 152 III. Mystical Rationalization of the Commandments in the Prophetic Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia Exoteric And Esoteric Approaches To The Commandments 186 Letter-Combination And The Mystique Of The Miswot 197 Hypemomianism And The Prophetic Kabbalah 204 Bibliography 229 Index 242 Abbreviations MS London-BM: London, British Museum MS Milan-BA: Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS Moscow, Russain State Library: MS Moscow-RSL MS Munich-BS: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek MS NY-JTSA: New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America MS Oxford-BL: Oxford, Bodleian Library (Neubauer) MS Paris-BN: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS Vatican-BA : Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Introduction There is little doubt that one of the most colorful figures in the landscape of Jewish mysticism was Abraham Abulafia, the self-proclaimed prophet with messianic pretenses who was active in the second half of the thirteenth century, the precise moment in medieval Jewish history that witnessed an impressive proliferation of mystical activity in several geographical settings both within the land of Israel and the Diaspora communities, especially on the European continent. In contrast to most other kabbalists from this period, about whom we know more of their literary productions than their biographies, in the case of Abulafia, we have a relative wealth of information concerning his personal life, largely due to the meticulous fashion that he demonstrated in his compositions. There is an intricate connection between Abulafia’s writings and his peregrinations in the world. Although it is probably wise to exercise a measure of doubt regarding the veracity of some of Abulafia’s claims, given his fanciful imagination, there is much of historical validity that we can glean from his works. As the information we have about his personal life attests, Abulafia was a man of contradictions, an impression that is corroborated by the style of thinking and argumentation employed in his voluminous corpus. Although he seems to have been a dedicated and charismatic teacher who sought the company of others and desired to have an impact in the socio-political arena in (attested most emphatically by his defiant attempt to see Pope Nicholas in 1280), he also advocated a path of meditation based on solitude and withdrawal. His biography suggests that he was an unusually restless man, yet the goal of his teaching was the attainment of a state of equanimity and detachment. Abulafia’s kabbalah provides the means for one to attain the spiritual state of the world-to-come, which for him is the untying of the knots that chain the rational soul to the body. The pursuits of the physical world are obstacles on the path towards mystical enlightenment that need to be removed by an ascetic discipline before one engages in the meditational practice that leads to the union with the divine. Nevertheless, Abulafia does not preach the absolute nullification of the body. He recognizes not only that the psychological well-being of the individual depends upon the 2 Abraham Abulafia reintegration into the physical world, but that the mystical union itself is experienced in somatic, even erotic, terms. The equally puzzling and contradictory nature of his intellectual profile is perhaps best exemplified by the synthesis he sought between the philosophical ideas of Maimonides and the doctrines of ancient Jewish esotericism, especially as they were filtered through the prism of the German Pietists. Abulafia had no reservations about accepting the ideal of conjunction with the Active Intellection the one hand, and the techniques of letter-permutation and combination of the letters of the divine names, on the other. Indeed, the latter, in his opinion, was a superior means to achieve the former than the philosophical path of cognition. Here is a man who could constantly extol the superiority of Hebrew as the natural language by means of which God created the world, and yet affirm that one could practice the letter-permutations in any language since all the languages are contained in Hebrew even though they are conventional. In response to the attack against him led by Solomon ben Abraham ibn Adret in the 1280’s, Abulafia created a typological distinction between his own form of prophetic kabbalah and the kabbalah based on a theosophic understanding of the sefirot. Yet, as I suggest in the essays included in this volume, Abulafia was deeply influenced by the language and symbolism of what is today called the theosophic kabbalah. Just as he both appropriated and rejected the philosophical orientation of Maimonides, so, too, he appropriated and rejected the theosophic perspective of the kabbalists. The ability to appropriate and reject does not bespeak an inconsistency or instability in Abulafia’s cognitive abilities. On the contrary, it indicates a mind that could assimilate complex and conflicting conceptual schemes. Where we see clashing polarities, Abulafia saw truth doubling itself in ambiguity. The power of Abulafia’s intellect is evident in the manner that he anchors difficult theological ideas through the exegetical techniques of numerology (gematriyyah), letter-transposition (temurah), and acrostics (notariqori). Anyone who has tried to read Abulafia knows it is impossible to get through one page without a pen and pad ready at hand to decode the many mathematical and linguistic associations that he establishes in an effort to link together disparate expressions and concepts. If logical consistency is the mark of brilliance, then Abulafia may prove to be a disappointment. In order to appreciate his genius, it is necessary to adopt an approach that sees beyond polar dichotomies. Abulafia’s mind constantly