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Abraham Abulafia - Kabbalist and Prophet
Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy

Sources and Studies in the Literature o f 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 o f this book may be used ör reproduced in any manner

whatsoever without the written permission o f Cherub Press, except in
the case o f 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

Introduction

Contents

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
(attested most emphatically by his defiant attempt to see Pope Nicholas in
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

Introduction 3

pushes at the limits of reason’s reach, taking away with one hand what he
has given with the other. One of the greatest indications of Abulafia’s
deviation from Maimonides is his acceptance of a logic that is illogical,
which is expressed in the concurrent affirmation of opposites. This
coincidence is a repeated emphasis in Abulafia’s writings, but it is perhaps
best captured in his notion of the inversion of opposites by means of which
the contrasting qualities are identified. Thus, for Abulafia, the head is the
tail, right is left, the merciful one is the judge, the angel is Satan, and so on.
There is never a point of stasis in his thinking inasmuch as the thing can
become its contrary. Every thought is thus a waystation on the path that will
carry us further on the journey after a temporary respite.

It has been commonplace in modem scholarship to distinguish sharply
between two kinds of kabbalah, the theosophic and the ecstatic. Whereas
Gershom Scholem limited these types to thirteenth-century Spain, Moshe
Idel has expanded the historical categories and argued that these are the two
phenomenological trends in Jewish mysticism more generally. As I
remarked above, Abulafia himself is the kabbalist most responsible for this
typological classification. While it is helpful to use this typology in the
study of Jewish mysticism, and Idel’s critique of a relatively monolithic
presentation of the history of kabbalah that has ensued from a neglect of the
writings of Abulafia and his disciples is certainly justified, it is also
necessary to avoid a rigid reification of these divisions. The studies that
have been assembled in this volume illustrate a somewhat more fluid and
elastic exposition of Abulafia’s prophetic kabbalah in relation to the
theosophic kabbalah of his generation. Indeed, even though Abulafia is to
be credited with formulating the typological distinction, he is constantly
transgressing the boundaries he set out to establish. These essays attempt to
articulate this transgression of boundaries, and thus they have been written
(as all writing inevitably must) from the space of rupture, the place where
the word is fractured and the ray of reason is bent by the shimmer of
mystical insight.

In the first essay, “Abraham Abulafia’s Hermeneutic: Secrecy and the
Disclosure of Withholding,” I argue that the hermeneutics of esotericism in
Abulafia’s prophetic kabbalah is in an essential way similar to what one
finds in the theosophic kabbalah. Abulafia is surely influenced by
Maimoinides’ notion of secrecy. Indeed, the Maimonidean resolution to the
tension between the mandate to conceal secrets, on the one hand, and the
need to reveal them, on the other, was widely held by kabbalists of the

4 Abraham Abulafia

various schools in the thirteenth century. With respect to this critical issue,
it would be prudent on the part of intellectual historians of this period to
recognize the shared assumptions of the philosophical and mystical
traditions. Maimonides was not simply a negative catalyst in the evolution
of Jewish esotericism. Yet, in the end, Abulafia’s concept of language and
the understanding of mystical experience based thereon necessitates that his
formulation of the esoteric departs from Maimonides and is closer in
orientation to the theosophic kabbalists. That is, the secret is not only a
potentially problematic theological idea that must be concealed from the
ignorant masses even as it is revealed to the intellectual elite; the secret is a
secret because it relates to the divine name, which is the mystical essence of
the Torah, and thus comprises the convergence of the hidden and the
revealed. The disclosure of the secret is predicated on its concealment even
from the one to whom it has been disclosed. Orality is the only valid form
of transmission of this secret; in writing one can only allude to this secret in
such a way that the enlightened individual will apply his own power of
supposition to discern the allusions. With respect to this interplay of
passive reception and creative exegesis as well there is a common element
in the theosophic and the prophetic trends of kabbalah, although there were
some kabbalists (Nahmanides comes to mind) who ostensibly denied the
efficacy of human reason altogether as a means to comprehend the secrets
of the kabbalah. In some passages, Abulafia expresses a position similar to
that of Nahmanides, for in his mind the truth of the kabbalah exceeds the
categories of human reason even though in the very same passages he
depicts the mystical experience in terms that resonate with the
philosophical ideal of conjunction.

The analysis of Abulafia’s hermeneutics and the notion of secrecy yields
the conclusion that he cannot be described as exclusively conservative or
innovative. He occupies a site between these two poles; indeed, the constant
movement from one pole to the other suggests that for Abulafia, as for other
kabbalists of his generation, there is no contradiction in the view that what
is innovatively proposed is the ancient tradition that has been transmitted
through the ages. Kabbalists would see no logical problem with the claim
that revelation is an uncovering of the older truth. The very same kabbalist
who insists on the restricted dissemination of limited secrets from master to
disciple (which is often linked as well to the preference for orality over
writing) expands the boundaries of the tradition by creatively explicating
(through oral and written channels) secrets and reinterpreting earlier texts

Introduction 5

in a new way. Instead of positing the conservative and innovative
dispositions in oppositional terms, therefore, it is necessary to look upon
them as two tendencies that converge in the mind of one person. The
propensity to maintain orientations that appear to be antithetical bespeaks
the complex nature of the effort on the part of the human spirit in the
Middle Ages to grasp the ultimate truth both in terms of what has been
received and what can be innovated.

The stance I am taking with respect to the notion of tradition in mystical
texts resonates with the idea of tradition more generally in the history of
Judaism. As a number of scholars have noted, tradition in Judaism
embraces the paradox of presenting the novel as ancient. What becomes
traditional is constructed on the basis of textual expansion by way of
creative hermeneutics, which in many occasions entails the misreading of
previous sources. Millin hadetin 'atiqin, “new ancient words,” according to
the locution of the zoharic authorship (Zohar 3:166b), succinctly captures
the paradox of esotericism affirmed by the kabbalists, which is predicated
on the confluence of ostensible antinomies. One would be inclined to argue
that if the matter is new, then it cannot be old, and if it is old, then it cannot
be new. However, the kabbalists push the mind to its limit by using
language that points beyond itself: What is new is new because it is old, but
it is old because it is new. An appreciation of this insight is basic to
undertsanding the kabbalistic approach to the transmission of secrets that
by nature must be withheld, an attitude adopted by Abulafia as well.

In the second essay, “The Doctrine of Sefirot in the Prophetic Kabbalah
of Abraham Abulafia,” I explore the role accorded the sefirot in Abulafia’s
prophetic kabbalah. As I briefly noted above, Abulafia is to be credited with
presenting the typological distinction between what is called in
contemporary scholarship the theosophic and the ecstatic trends of
kabbalah. This taxonomy, however, must be seen in its proper historical and
literary context. When viewed in this light it is apparent that Abulafia
articulated matters in this way as part of his response to the criticism
directed towards him by one of the most powerful rabbinic leaders of the
Spanish Jewish community, Solomon ibn Adret, who was himself a master
of the kabbalistic lore. A closer examination of his writings, including the
epistle he wrote to Judah Salomon in which he specifically mentions the
“two types of kabbalah,” reveals that he was influenced by theosophic
terms and symbols in more than just a peripheral manner. I have argued,
moreover, that the term “theosophy” may even be applied to Abulafia’s

6 Abraham Abulafia

own conception of hokhmat ha- ’elohut, which denotes divine wisdom that
stands in contrast to divine science as understood by Maimonides. The
divine wisdom consists of the esoteric gnosis of the name, which cannot be
attained by the discursive metaphysics of the philosophers. Indeed, on
numerous occasions in his writings, Abulafia emphasizes that the
knowledge of the name cannot be apprehended by the philosophers; it is
unique to the prophets of Israel who have received and transmitted this
knowledge as an oral tradition.

By suggesting that the term “theosophy” can be applied to Abulafia’s
own kabbalah, I do not intend to deny the obvious distinction that he makes
between the kabbalists who place primary emphasis on the sefirot as the
potencies of God and those who focus on the divine names. My point is
rather that, for Abulafia himself, the kabbalah embraces both the knowledge
of the sefirot and the knowledge of the letters, an idea that he traces back to
thirty-two paths of wisdom mentioned in Sefer Yeçirah, which consists of
the ten sefirot and twenty-two letters. Both branches of the kabbalah are
related to the names of God, which are contained in the one unique name,
YHWH. Cleaving to the latter, which is presented in terms of the
philosophical ideal of intellectual conjunction, is the ultimate focus of
Abulafia’s kabbalah. Insofar as the self is unified with the Active Intellect
in the experience of conjunction, and the latter comprises the ten separate
intellects, which are identified as the ten sefirot of the Jewish esoteric
tradition, it follows that, for Abulafia, the sefirotic entities play an
instrumental role in the mystical experience of union. In that experience,
the ontological distinction between self and other is erased, for the
realization of the former depends on merging with the last of the separate
intellects, which is identified with the first of the intellects, a confluence
symbolically portrayed by the figure of Metatron, the angel who is both an
elder (zaqen) and a youth (na'ar), Israel and Jacob. To the degree that the
self and the intellect are unified in the moment of conjunction, it is
possible, even necessary, to speak of the sefirot as internal states of
consciousness. But the psychological cannot be separated from the
ontological, which is to say, these internal states correspond to the external
intelligences that govern the movement of the celestial spheres.

The sefirot, which Abulafia also identifies as the attributes {middot) of
God, are the channels by means of which the intellectual overflow is drawn
upon the mystic and thereby facilitate his cleaving to the divine name.
According to Abulafia, the ideal intelligible forms of the sefirot are distinct

Introduction 7

from God, yet they are not found apart from him as they are expressive of
his power. Abulafia describes the containment of the ten sefirot within the
divine as a great secret. In language that he borrows from Eleazar of
Worms, he links the ten sefirot to the ineffable name, decoding YHWH as
yod hawwayot, the ten essences that are the separate intellects. The name is
thus intrinsically connected to the sefirotic gradations. Abulafia’s
psychological interpretation of the sefirot as internal states of mind is
predicated on this ontological assumption.

In the third essay, “Mystical Rationalization of the Commandments in
the Prophetic Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia,” I argue that ritual
observance was imbued with new significance in Abulafia’s writings by its
being transformed into a means to occasion a mystical experience, the
contours of which in great measure were shaped by philosophical concepts
and modes of discourse. The reasons for the commandments have both an
exoteric and an esoteric sense. The latter relates to the mysteries of the
Torah, which consist of the divine names that are disclosed to the
enlightened kabbalists. A similar structuring of experience is attested in
theosophic kabbalah, and thus we are justified in speaking of a shared
phenomenological element in these two kabbalistic trends with respect to
the specific issue of the mystical valorization of ritual. The gap dividing the
theosophic and the ecstatic streams of kabbalah should be narrowed insofar
as in both there is a mystical spiritualization of traditional ritual. Moreover,
in both streams, this spiritualization involves the experience of union (or
conjunction) with the divine, an experience that was shaped by
philosophical assumptions. The transfiguration of ritual into a sacrament
that facilitates psychic ascent and the ontic reintegration into the divine is
an experience that theosophic and ecstatic kabbalists alike considered to be
on a par with prophecy. From this vantage point it is somewhat misleading
to call Abulafia’s kabbalah “prophetic” in contradistinction to the other
form of kabbalah. The term “prophetic” applies equally well to the
theosophic kabbalah as is attested by the fact that several of the theosophic
kabbalists explicitly identified themselves as prophets, a point that is made
emphatically by Abulafia himself. To be sure, Abulafia would have
contrasted his own understanding of prophecy from that of the theosophic
kabbalists. In my judgment, this contrast is valid only up to a certain point,
for there is much that is shared by the two streams of kabbalah with respect
to the understanding of prophecy as the mystical conjunction of the soul

8 Abraham Abulafia

with the divine name, which is understood as the inner essence of the
Torah.

There seems to me sufficient reason to call into question the designation
of theosophic kabbalah as theurgic in contradistinction to the prophetic
kabbalah of Abulafia. While it is certainly true that Abulafia rejects the
theurgical understanding of the theosophic kabbalists, and even when he
appropriates their language (as in his discussion of the mystical intent of the
sacrifices) he tends to emphasize the mystical over the theurgical valence, it
is nevertheless the case that he does affirm a type of theurgy related to the
unification of the divine attributes. As I have already noted, Abulafia
categorically rejects the theosophic understanding of the sefirot as
hypostatic potencies, but he does insist that the divine unity is expressed
within and through the ten sefirot, which he identifies as the ten separate
intellects. His frequent warning against the danger of separating the sefirot,
an act that he calls (in a manner analogous to the theosophic kabbalists) by
the rabbinic idiom for heresy, “cutting the shoots,” must not be seen as
mere rhetoric. On the contrary, according to Abulafia, the human intellect
plays an active role in unifying God through the ten separate intellects as a
consequence of the intellectual conjunction, which is presented as the
paramount mystical rationale for the commandments.

Collectively, then, these studies set out to cast Abulafia in a somewhat
different light. It is the hope of the author that the vision that will appear
within this light will not be viewed as a seeing against previous scholarship,
but a seeing beyond where we have been hithertofore, a vision that may
help others see beyond my own necessarily limited perspective.

Abraham Abulafia’s Hermeneutic:
Secrecy and the Disclosure of Withholding

P r e s e r v a t io n O f T h e Se c r e t T h r o u g h Its D isc l o s u r e

Perhaps the most appropriate term to characterize the body of literature that
scholars have heuristically referred to as medieval Jewish mysticism is
esotericism, hokhmat ha-nistar, a gnosis (encompassing both doctrine and
practice, belief and ritual) that is deemed secretive and that must therefore
be transmitted only to a small circle of initiates.1 In his essay “Das
Verhältnis Maimunis zur jüdischen Mystik,” published in 1936, Alexander
Altmann noted that the “esoteric nature of mystical teachings in Judaism is
expressed by the terms sod (‘secret’), sithrey Torah (‘mysteries of the
Law’), and their equivalents. Obscure though the historical origins of
Jewish mysticism are, and especially its connections with the various
schools of prophecy, apocalyptic literature, and Gnosis, a definite esoteric
posture, setting down a precise form of transmission, had evolved as early
as the tannaitic period.”2 Altmann went so far as to suggest that the
exclusive transmission of mystical knowledge from master to disciple
attested already in rabbinic sources may have been due to the influence of
Hellenistic mystery religions. Bracketing the historical veracity of

1 The extreme form of secrecy affirmed by Jewish mystics when compared to other
religious traditions has been noted by W. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy (London,
1960), p. 57. Helpful surveys on the nature of esotericism may be found in A. Faivre,
“Ancient and Medieval Sources of Modem Esoteric Movements,” in Modem Esoteric
Spirituality, edited by A. Faivre and J. Needleman (New York, 1992), pp. 1-70, and
idem. Access to Western Esotericism (Albany, 1994), pp. 3-110; A. Faivre and K.-C.
Voss, “Esotericism and the Science of Religion,” Numen 42 (1995): 48-77; and A.
Faivre, “Renaissance Hermeticism and the Concept of Western Esotericism,” in Gnosis
and Hermeticism From Antiquity to Modern Times, edited by R. van der Broek and W.
J. Hanegraaff (Albany, 1998), pp. 109-123.

2 A. Altmann, “Maimonides’ Attitude Toward Jewish Mysticism,” in Studies in
Jewish Thought, edited by A. Jospe (Detroit, 1981), pp. 201-202.

10 Abraham Abulafia

Altmann’s surmise, it is noteworthy that he discerned that in Jewish
mysticism, beginning in its early stages, the notion of secrecy is essential.
Indeed, Altmann’s remarks suggest that in his opinion the mystical
phenomenon must be circumscribed within the framework of esotericism, a
perspective to which I readily assent when the focus is set in a more limited
way upon the mystical trends of Jewish thought and practice that converged
in the High Middle Ages, especially in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, which witnessed an intense proliferation of literary activity in
various occult fraternities spread throughout the Jewish Diaspora.

Gershom Scholem, as we may surmise from certain passages in his
scholarly oeuvre, distinguished sharply between mysticism and esotericism.
It is evident from other passages that he also appreciated the singular
importance of the notion of the secret in the kabbalistic orientation, and on
occasion he was even prepared to identify esotericism and mysticism when
the terms were applied specifically to the history of kabbalah. As an
example of the former tendency, I note that in one publication Scholem
maintained that mysticism “means a kind of knowledge which is by its very
nature incommunicable,” insofar as the object of mystical experience is
inexpressible id human language, whereas esotericism involves a “kind of
knowledge that may be communicable and might be communicated, but
whose communication is forbidden.”3 In another work, Scholem readily
acknowledged that kabbalah “became to a large extent an esoteric
doctrine,” but even in that context he reiterated the distinction between the
mystical and the esoteric elements in the kabbalah on the epistemological
basis that the former, unlike the latter, embraces a knowledge that lies
beyond communication:

By its very nature, mysticism is knowledge that cannot be communicated
directly but may be expressed only through symbol and metaphor. Esoteric
knowledge, however, in theory can be transmitted, but those who possess it
are either forbidden to pass it on or do not wish to do so. The kabbalists

3 G. Scholem, “Jewish Mysticism in the Middle Ages,” The 1964 Allan Bronfman
Lecture (New York, 1964), pp. 3-4. Compare the characterization of A. Faivre, in The
Encyclopedia o f Religion, edited by M. Eliade (New York, 1987), 5: 158, s.v.,
Esotericism: “Strictly speaking, gnosis should be distinguished from mysticism, even
though they are usually found together. Mysticism, which is more ‘feminine,’ more
nocturnal, voluntarily cultivates renunciation, although this does not exclude a taste for
symbolism. Gnosis, more ‘masculine,’ more solar, cultivates detachment and is more
attentive to structures.”

Abraham Abulafia’s Hermeneutic 11

stressed this esoteric aspect by imposing all kinds of limitations on the
propagation of their teachings, either with regard to the age of the initiates,
the ethical qualities required of them, or the number of students before
whom these teachings could be expounded.4

Scholem’s attempt to contrast esotericism and mysticism on the grounds
that the former involves a knowledge that is communicable by nature
whereas the latter is characterized as knowledge that is incommunicable is
questionable. The conception of secrecy operative in this distinction is
more appropriate for medieval Jewish philosophical sources, epitomized by
the great figure of Maimonides, than it is for the corresponding medieval
kabbalistic texts. Subsequently, I shall explore in more detail the
philosophical esotericism espoused by Maimonides, which doubtless
exerted a major influence on the notion of secrecy operative in the
prophetic kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia and his disciples.5 What is
essential to repeat at this juncture is that Scholem’s depiction of esoteric
knowledge is far closer in spirit to the viewpoint articulated in medieval
Jewish philosophy, which is centered on the notion of a secret that
potentially can be communicated but whose communication is withheld
from those who do not possess the requisite intellectual and moral
perfection to comprehend it.

Consider Scholem’s observation that Jewish mysticism is a “secret
doctrine” in a “double sense”, for, on the one hand, “it treats of the most
deeply hidden and fundamental matters of human life” and, on the other, “it
is confined to a small élite of the chosen who impart the knowledge to their
disciples”.6 Scholem clearly recognized that the secrets expounded by the
Kabbalists involved the deepest mysteries of our existence, but one gets the
impression that what is really secretive about those secrets from Scholem’s
vantage point is the fact that their dissemination is restricted. Scholem is
quick to note that in certain historical periods one finds an orientation in
kabbalistic literature to have a manifest impact on Jewish society. Still, this
impact rarely impinged upon the fact that the innermost gnosis was limited
to the initiates who are always few in number. The double sense of the term
collapses into a single sense, for the understanding of the “most deeply

4 G. Scholem, Kabbalah (Jerusalem, 1974), p. 4.
5 Altmann, “Maimonides’ Attitude,” pp. 201, 203, 207-209. For other references,

see below, n. 239.
6 G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1954), p. 21.

12 Abraham Abulafia

hidden and fundamental matters of human life” is limited to the “small élite
of the chosen who impart the knowledge to their disciples”.

The issue of secrecy as delineated in this manner resonates, moreover,
with the understanding of esotericism proffered in the formative rabbinic
literature, which is also invariably related to the limits imposed on publicly
disseminating knowledge of certain subjects that were deemed best
restricted to a limited audience.7 The very notion of “mysteries of Torah”
(sitrei torah or razei torah), a highly significant albeit infrequently
mentioned motif in classical rabbinic sources,8 appears to be linked to the

7 See M. N. A. Bockmuehl, Revelation and Mystery in Ancient Judaism and
Pauline Christianity (Tübingen, 1990), p. 122. Regarding the adoption on the part of
Maimonides of the rabbinic elitist principle of select transmission of nonmystical
secrets, see Altmann, “Maimonides’ Attitude,” pp. 203-204. On the influence of both
philosophical esotericism (indebted to Greek and Arabic sources) and rabbinic
esotericism on Maimonides, see S. Klein-Braslavy, King Solomon and the
Philosophical Esotericism in the Thought o f Maimonides (Jerusalem, 1996), pp. 15-105
(in Hebrew).

8 Mishnah, ’Avot 6:1; Midrash Wayyikra' Rabbah, edited by M. Margulies (New
York and Jerusalem, 1993), 3:7, p. 74; Babylonian Talmud, Pesahim 119a; Qiddushin
10b (in that context the reading is hadrei torah, “chambers of Torah,” rather than sitrei
torah, “secrets of Torah;” on the use of this expression, cf. Palestinian Talmud, Ketubot
5:4 [ed. Venice, 29d]; Tosefta, Ketubot 5:1; Siphre ad Numeros, edited by H. S.
Horovitz [Leipzig, 1917], 117, p. 137); Hagigah 13a; Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah 1:2.
Mention should also be made of the expression sodah shel torah, the “secret of Torah,”
in Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah 1:8, where it is employed to refer to the figurative or
non-literal sense of Scripture derived through an apparently non-mystical, exoteric
method of exegesis. For a comprehensive philological analysis of the relevant rabbinic
texts that espouse a form of secrecy, see G. A. Wewers, Geheimnis und Geheimhaitug
im rabbinischen Judentum (Berlin and New York, 1975); and the briefer but equally
insightful discussion in Bockmuehl, Revelation and Mystery, pp. 115-123. On the
rabbinic notion of transmitting a secretive matter through a whisper, see Midrash
Bere'shit Rabba’, edited by J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck (Jerusalem, 1965), pp. 19-20,
and the many parallel sources mentioned on p. 19 n. 10; Midrash Wayyikra’ Rabbah,
31:7, p. 726; Midrash Tehillim, edited by S. Buber (Vilna, 1891), 104:4, p. 440;
Midrash Tanhuma’, edited by S. Buber (Vilna, 1885), Bere’shit, 10, p. 6; Pesikta’
de-Rav Kahana’, edited by B. Mandelbaum (New York, 1962), 21:5, p. 324;
Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 14a. See G. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah
Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York, 1965), p. 58; A. Altmann, Studies in
Religious Philosophy and Mysticism (Ithaca, 1969), pp. 128-139. See the interesting
comment on this rabbinic theme in Nathan ben Yehiel, Aruch Completum, edited by A.
Kohut, 5:34, s.v. lahash: “The Torah was given in secrecy because of Satan.” In

Abraham Abulafia’s Hermeneutic 13

intentional hiding of information, which clearly sets apart those who know
the secret from those who do not; the power that ensues from knowing the
secret or the concomitant weakness that derives from the lack of such
knowledge are thus factors in establishing social boundaries.9 One talmudic
passage is particularly noteworthy: The words we-limekhaseh ‘atiq in Isa.
23:18 are interpreted as a reference to one who conceals the secrets of
Torah that the Ancient of Days ( ‘atiqyomin) concealed.10 * Hiding the secret,
therefore, is a form of imitatio dei, a notion that is confirmed by the
appellation hakham ha-razim, the one “wise in the secrets,” applied to God,
which is preserved in a liturgical formula in rabbinic literature." To hide
the secrets from those unworthy to receive them is a noble form of behavior
that bestows upon the individual a divine quality.12 With respect to this
matter, then, rabbinic and philosophic esotericism converge even if in
content there is a substantial difference between the two modes of thinking:
The secret potentially can be articulated, but it is not due to either the
intellectual or the moral limitations of the recipients.

It is surely no small irony that Scholem’s own taxonomy of esotericism
in the history of kabbalah is indebted to this rabbinic conception, which was
reinscribed in the medieval philosophical literature. With all of his efforts,
on the one hand, to contrast kabbalistic spirituality and rabbinic piety on the

emulation of the Sinaitic event, words of Torah in general (and not only secrets) must be
given in a whisper.

9 The point is well made in S. Bok, Secrets: On the Ethics o f Concealment and
Revelation (New York, 1983), pp. 5-7, 19-20, 34, 105-107, 281-282. For a recent
analysis o f esotericism from the vantage point of discursive strategy, which involves the
issue of social power and authority, rather than that of symbolic content, see H. Urban,
“The Torment of Secrecy: Ethical and Epistemological Problems in the Study of
Esoteric Traditions,” History o f Religions 37 (1998): 209-248.

10 Babylonian Talmud, Pesahim 119a.
" Tosefta ', Berakhot 7:2; Palestinian Talmud, Berakhot 9:1 (12c); Babylonian

Talmud, Berakhot 58a; Bemidbar Rabbah 21.2. The expression hakham ha-razim is
applied to God as well in some of the Hekhalot texts. See Synopse zur
Hekhalot-Literatur, edited by P. Schäfer with M. Schlüter and H. G. von Mutius
(Tübingen, 1981), §§ 237, 268, 277, 310, 321, 336, 512, 676, 687, 820. For a
comprehensive analysis of these passages, see M. Schlüter, “The Eulogy Hakham
ha-Razim we- 'Adon ha-Setarim in Hekhalot Literature,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish
Thought 6:1-2 (1987): 95-115 (English section).

12 The rabbinic association of God and secrecy has its biblical precedent. Perhaps
the most important verse with respect to this matter is Prov. 25:1 where the glory of
God, in contrast to the glory of mortal kings, is to keep things hidden.

14 Abraham Abulafia

basis that the former represents a mythical reconfiguration of the
emotionless and demythicized legalism of the latter,13 and, on the other, to
distinguish between the allegorical approach to mysteries of the Torah in
the medieval Jewish philosophical literature and the symbolic approach in
the corresponding kabbalistic material,14 his own understanding of
esotericism in the history of kabbalah as it was expressed in the aforecited
passages is informed in great measure by the rabbinic-philosophic
standpoint.151 would argue, by contrast, that the distinctive view of secrecy
that emerges from kabbalistic sources is that the inability to communicate

13 Scholem’s presentation of rabbinic material and its relationship to Jewish
mysticism, in general, and to kabbalah, in particular, is a very complex issue that cannot
be dealt with adequately in this footnote. Let me simply state that Scholem equivocates
on this question, sometimes speaking of a very sharp contrast between the two and other
times presenting a more fluid and ambivalent picture even entertaining the idea that
preserved in rabbinic texts are fragments of a “theosophic aggadah” of a gnostic-mythic
nature. See Scholem, Major Trends, pp. 22-23, 29-32, 35; idem, On the Kabbalah and
Its Symbolism, translated by R. Manheim (New York, 1965), pp. 94-95, 104-105,
120-121, 132-133; idem, Origins o f the Kabbalah, translated by A. Arkush and edited
by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (Princeton, 1987), pp. 82, 86-97, 123, 197, 234, 238; idem,
On the Mystical Shape o f the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah, translated by
J. Neugroschel and edited by J. Chipman (New York, 1991), pp. 158, 170-171; idem,
On the Possibility o f Jewish Mysticism in Our Time and Other Essays, edited with an
introduction by A. Shapira, translated by J. Chipman (Philadelphia and Jerusalem,
1997), pp. 122-123, 138-139. For a different presentation of Scholem, see M. Idel,
Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven and London, 1988), pp. 156-157; idem,
“Rabbinism Versus Kabbalism: On G. Scholem’s Phenomenology of Judaism,” Modern
Judaism 11 (1991): 281-296; idem, “Subversive Katalysatoren: Gnosis und
Messianismus in Gershom Scholems Verständnis der jüdischen Mystik,” Gershom
Scholem: Zwischen den Disziplinen, edited by P. Schäfer and G. Smith (Frankfurt am
Main, 1995), pp. 80-121, esp. 86-90. Idel and a number o f other scholars have
independently emphasized the mythical component of rabbinic sources in a manner that
narrows the conceptual and semiotic gap separating classical rabbinism and medieval
kabbalism. For some of the pertinent references, see J. L. Rubenstein, “From Mythic
Motifs to Sustained Myth: The Revision of Rabbinic Traditions in Medieval
Midrashim,” Harvard Theological Review 89 (1996): 132 n. 4.

14 Major Trends, pp. 25-28.
15 The linkage of the rabbinic approach and that of medieval philosophy is not

uncommon in Scholem’s thinking. See, for instance, On the Kabbalah, p. 88, where
Scholem argues that the tendency of the “classical Jewish tradition,“ which is traced
back to the “ethical monotheism” of the Prophets, to “liquidate myth as a central
spiritual power” is “accentuated by the rationalist thinking of medieval Rabbinical
Judaism.”

Abraham Abulafia’s Hermeneutic 15

the secret is not due simply to the unworthiness of a particular recipient, but
it is associated rather with the inherent ineffability of the truth that must be
kept secret. This is not to suggest that kabbalists through the ages have not
also embraced the rhetoric of rabbinic esotericism based on the
presumption that secrets must be withheld from those unworthy to receive
them. The hermeneutic of esotericism displayed in many kabbalistic
sources does indeed consistently attest to this elitist posture, but it certainly
goes beyond it as well. The concealment of the secret is dialectically related
to its disclosure. Simply put, the utterance of the mystery is possible
because of the inherent impossibility of its being uttered. Even for the
adept, who demonstrates unequivocally that he deserves to be a recipient of
the esoteric tradition, there is something of the secret that remains in the
very act of transmission. The secret has an ontological referent that is
separate from the phenomenal realm and thus transcends the limits of
human understanding and modes of conventional discourse.16 As an
illustration of the point let me mention a secret that many scholars have
signaled as one of the characteristic doctrines of medieval kabbalah, the sod
du-parsufin, the mystery of the androgyne in the Godhead. To receive the
secret about the androgynous nature of the divine is not to solve the
problem of the mystery; on the contrary, this gnosis is precisely what opens
the mystery to its deeper depths, for what is it to say that the oneness of the
God of Judaism is predicated on the comprehension of and experiential
participation in the sacred union between the King and the Matrona, the
bridegroom and the bride? From the one example we may generalize: In
kabbalistic texts, apprehension of the secret does not resolve the apparent
conflict between external and internal meaning, peshaf and sod, which
correspond respectively to the poles of revelation and reason, but it forges

16 The idea of separateness as essential to the nature of the secret is explored rather
deftly by P. Boutang, Ontologie du Secret (Paris, 1973). See also G. L. Bruns,
Inventions: Writing, Textuality, and Understanding in Literary History (New Haven and
London, 1982), pp. 17-43. The distinction I have made is expressed by K. W. Bolle,
“Secrecy in Religion,” in Secrecy in Religions, edited by K. W. Bolle (Leiden, 1987),
pp. 11-24, as the difference between actual mysteries and the social concealment of
information. In my analysis, the former depicts the kabbalistic understanding of secrecy
as opposed to the latter, which accounts for the philosophic approach, although I readily
admit that the latter is sometimes appropriated by kabbalists as well. The typological
distinction cannot be applied in an inflexible manner.

16 Abraham Abulafia

the paradoxical awareness that the external veil and the internal face are
identical because they are different.17 18

When this paradox is fully comprehended, then even the distinction
between speech and silence is transcended. That is, the esoteric nature of
the secret is predicated on the ultimate ineffability to which the secret
refers, but the ineffability itself is the measure of what is spoken. That the
kabbalists bestow a positive valence on language as the medium by which
the enlightened mystic can participate in the creative process (especially
through scriptural exegesis) does not mean that they oppose in principle the
restraint on speech that is often associated with the strict code of
esotericism.'* On the contrary, it is precisely the affirmation of language as
inherently symbolic that facilitates their acceptance of that which inevitably
exceeds the boundary of language. The phenomenon to which I refer has
been expressed by Michel de Certeau in his telling reference to the “split
structure” of mystical language by which he intends that the “only way to
establish a ‘symbolic’ expression is to separate two terms that are
necessary, but contrary to each other.” From that perspective mystical
speech is always a “manifestation of a cut,” and consequently the ineffable
is “not so much an object of discourse as a marker of the status of
language.”19

I am prepared, therefore, to grant Scholem’s identification of
incommunicability as a distinguishing feature of the mystical phenomenon,
a quality that a host of other scholars have marked as typical of mysticism,20

17 See E. R. Wolfson, “Beautiful Maiden Without Eyes: Peshat and Sod in Zoharic
Hermeneutics,” in The Midrashic Imagination: Jewish Exegesis, Thought and History,
edited by M. Fishbane (Albany, 1993), pp. 155-203; D. Matt, ‘“New-Ancient Words’:
The Aura of Secrecy in the Zohar,” in Gershom Scholem 's Major Trends in Jewish
Mysticism, 50 Years After: Proceedings o f the Sixth International Conference on the
History o f Jewish Mysticism, edited by J. Dan and P. Schäfer (Tübingen, 1993), pp.
200-206.

18 Such an argument is made by Y. Liebes, “Zohar and Eros,” Alpayyim 9 (1994):
71-72 (in Hebrew).

19 M. de Certeau, “History and Mysticism,” translated by A. Goldhammer, in
Histories: French Constructions o f the Past, edited by J. Revel and L. Hunt (New York,
1995), p. 443.

20 In many of the classical treatments of mysticism, the criterion of ineffability has
been singled out as one of the distinguishing phenomenological marks. For example, see
W. James, The Varieties o f Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New
York, 1902), p. 371; E. Underhill, Mysticism: The Development o f Humankind’s
Spiritual Consciousness (London, 1911), pp. 79-80. For some more recent analyses of

Abraham Abulafia’s Hermeneutic 17

but I cannot accept his distinction between mysticism and esotericism as
these terms apply specifically to the kabbalistio material, for in this case
esotericism, too, is based on the notion of truth that can only be articulated
in its utter ineffability. The secret cannot be fully disclosed because it is in
the nature of the secret to express that which cannot be expressed (indeed,
even my expressipn of the inexpressibility of the secret is not adequately
expressed). The distinguishing characteristic that Scholem applied to
mysticism applies equally well to esotericism.

As it happens, on occasion Scholem himself acknowledged this fact and
thus he merged the two together into a singular entity. For instance, in the
essay he wrote for a volume honoring Mircea Eliade,21 he spoke of the
“Judaic esoteric teachings or secret doctrine, regardless of whether we want
to call it Jewish Gnosis or Mysticism, as it is expressed in the literature of

this phenomenon, see S. T. Katz, “Mystical Speech and Mystical Meaning,” in
Mysticism and Language, edited by S. T. Katz (New York and Oxford, 1992), pp. 3-41;
B. Krishna, ’Mysticism and Ineffability: Some Issues of Logic and Language’,
Mysticism and Language, pp. 143-157; B.-A. Scharfstein, Ineffability: The Failure o f
Words in Philosophy and Religion (Albany, 1993); M. A. Sells, Mystical Languages o f
Unsaying (Chicago and London, 1994); G. Kalamaras, Reclaiming the Tacit Dimension:
Symbolic Form in the Rhetoric o f Silence (Albany, 1994).

21 It is hardly coincidental that in a collection of studies honoring Eliade Scholem
decided to articulate his position in this manner, for Eliade himself placed great
emphasis on the notion of secrecy in his understanding of the religious phenomenon in
general. For example, see M. Eliade, Journal 11, 1957-1969, translated by F. H.
Johnson, Jr. (Chicago and London, 1989), p. 268 (entry of 1 October 1965): “When
something manifests itself (hierophany), at the same time something ’occults’ itself,
becomes cryptic. Therein is the true dialectic of the sacred: by the mere fact of showing
itself, the sacred hides itself We can never claim that we definitively understand a
religious phenomenon: something - perhaps even the essential - will be understood by
us later, or by others immediately” (author’s emphasis). On the distinction between a
“cryptic” and “clear” hierophany, see M. Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion,
translated by R. Sheed (New York, 1958), pp. 8-9. On the paradoxical coming-together
of the sacred and the profane underlying each hierophany, which entails the
concealment of the former in the disclosure of the latter, see ibid., pp. 29-30. For an
explication and adaptation of Eliade’s view, see W. L. Brenneman, Jr. and S. O. Yarian,
in association with A. M. Olson, The Seeing Eye: Hermeneutical Phenomenology in the
Study o f Religion (University Park and London, 1982), pp. 8-9, 59-60,165-166; see also
B. S. Rennie, Reconstructing Eliade: Making Sense o f Religion, foreword by M. L.
Ricketts (Albany, 1996), pp. 7-40. Scholem similarly embraces the dialectic of
disclosure and concealment in his understanding of the religious phenomenon.

18 Abraham Abulafia

the Kabbalists.”22 With this formulation Scholem seems much closer to the
mark, for in the history of classical kabbalah, as we may ascertain from the
written record of teachings that may have been transmitted originally in an
oral manner, the aspect of mysticism must be contextualized in the
framework of secrecy, far the ultimate datum of mystical experience is the
secret.23 Philologically, the words for secret, primarily the Hebrew sod and
its Aramaic equivalent raza ’, are employed by kabbalists in an ontological
sense to refer to the hidden aspect of God’s being that is manifest in the
theosophic structure of the sefirotic emanations.24 Even the exegetical
application of these terms to the esoteric sense of a scriptural passage has as
its underpinning the ontological implication. That is, the inner meaning of
the verse relates to the unveiling of the potencies of the divine,25 but the

22 G. Scholem, “On Sin and Punishment: Some Remarks Concerning Biblical and
Rabbinical Ethics,” in Myths and Symbols: Studies in Honor o f Mircea Eliade, edited
by J. M. Kitagawa and Ch. H. Long, with the collaboration of J. C. Brauer and M. G. S.
Hodgson (Chicago and London, 1969), p. 163. This point has been expressed as well by
Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 253: “Kabbalah is by definition an esoteric body
of speculation; whether in its theosophical-theurgical explanation of the rationales for
the commandments, or in the ecstatic trend dealing with techniques o f using divine
names, esotericism is deeply built into this lore.”

23 The point was made by A. K. Coomaraswamy, Figures o f Speech and Figures o f
Thought (London, 1946), p. 169: “This has too often been misinterpreted to mean that
something is deliberately withheld from those who ask for a sort of universal
compulsory education in the mysteries, supposing that the mystery is nothing but a
communicable, although hitherto uncommunicated, secret.... So far from this, it is of
the essence of a mystery ... that it cannot be communicated, but only realized; all that
can be communicated are its external supports or symbolic expressions.” The emphasis
on the realization of the mystery, as opposed to its mere symbolic expression, is helpful
for grasping the intent of the notion of the secret operative in kabbalistic thought, for the
secret relates to a form of ritual enactment reminiscent of the ancient mysteries.

24 The technical theosophic connotation of the word sod is already apparent in one
passage in Sefer ha-Bahir. See D. Abrams, The Book Bahir: An Edition Based on the
Earliest Manuscripts (Los Angeles, 1994), § 14, p. 125. Needless to say, in the literary
evolution of the medieval kabbalistic material, this usage is considerably augmented.

25 In Kabbalah, p. 4, Scholem notes that the kabbalah is characterized by two main
elements: the “dual and apparently contradictory experience o f the self-concealing and
self-revealing God,” which “determines the essential sphere of mysticism,” and
theosophy, “which seeks to reveal the mysteries of the hidden life of God and the
relationship between the divine life on the one hand and the life of man and creation on
the other.” From my vantage point both parts of Scholem’s remark are problematic.
Firstly, in the history of kabbalah, there is no justification to speak of the experience of

Abraham Abulafia’s Hermeneutic 19

infinite Godhead remains concealed in the very act of self-manifestation.
The secret, therefore, is not merely cognitive or epistemological in nature; it
is decidedly ontological insofar as it signifies an aspect of the divine that is
most appropriately referred to in paradoxical terms as the disclosed
concealment. Ontological, in my understanding, implies an experiential
component, for access to being comes by way of intimate experience, which
in the case of the medieval kabbalist involved primarily contemplative
study, prayer, and fulfillment of traditional rituals. These are the major
paths that lead the kabbalist to the goal of devequt, communion with the
sefirotic potencies of the divine.26

The secretive nature of that which is deemed a secret is thus allied with
the potential experience of that grade of being to which the secret is related.
Such a conclusion is inevitable if one begins, as one must, from the premise
that God and the Torah are ontologically equivalent, a principle that is often
expressed as well in terms of the mystical identification of the Torah as the
Tetragrammaton.27 To gain knowledge of the mystery is an act of ultimate

the self-concealing and self-revealing God as contradictory; on the contrary, the
distinctive phenomenological pattern of the experience entails a paradoxical
coincidence of opposites, for the very God who is revealed is the concealed God;
indeed, the full force of the dialectic is that the manifestation preserves the concealment. *
The recognition of this point underlies much of my previous work on the nature of
mystical experience in the kabbalistic sources, including, most especially, my
monographic study Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in
Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, 1994); see also studies referred to below in n.
29. Secondly, I see no justification to separate the mystical and the theosophical
elements in the manner that Scholem has done. For a more extensive discussion of this
aspect of Scholem’s interpretative stance, see Through a Speculum That Shines, pp.
278-280.

26 See G. Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish
Spirituality (New York, 1971), pp. 203-227; Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp.
35-58.

27 Regarding this foundational concept in kabbalistic thinking, see Scholem, On the
Kabbalah, pp. 37-44; idem, Messianic Idea, pp. 293-294; idem, “The Name of God and
the Linguistic Theory of the Kabbala,” Diogenes 79 (1972): 77-80, and Diogenes 80
(1972): 178-179; I. Tishby, The Wisdom o f the Zohar, translated by D. Goldstein
(Oxford, 1989), pp. 283-284,292-295, 1079-1082; and M. Idel, “The Concept of Torah
in Hekhalot Literature and Its Metamorphosis in Kabbalah,” Jerusalem Studies in
Jewish Thought 1 (1981): 23-84, esp. 49-58 (in Hebrew). On a possible source for this
motif in Ashkenazi esotericism, see E. R. Wolfson, “The Mystical Significance of Torah
Study in German Pietism,” Jewish Quarterly Review 84 (1993): 43-77, esp. 50-62.

20 Abraham Abulafia

empowerment, for through such an acquisition one contemplatively
visualizes the imaginai form of God, which is rendered possible on the
basis of the assimilation of the soul into the divine nature through the
hermeneutical penetration to the sign that is hid beneath the veil of the
text.2* The sefirot are the luminous emanations that constitute the multiple
faces of the singular and unique faceless Godhead, which are disclosed in
the letters of the Torah contemplated by the enlightened mystic (maskit)
through the imaginative faculty. From this vantage point the interpretation
of the hidden secret is a revelatory moment in which the ancient word is
heard and seen anew.28 29 Nothing is more important for understanding the
mentality of the kabbalist than the emphasis on esotericism cast in this way.
Theosophical symbols and mystical rituals together (any effort to treat them
separately bespeaks a fundamental lack of understanding of the kabbalistic
orientation) lend expression to this inexpressible secret that reflects the
dialectical manifestation of the concealed aspect of the divine. In the final
analysis, such a conception underlies Scholem’s understanding of the
symbol as that which “signifies nothing and communicates nothing, but

28 On the correlation of interpretation and the notion of the secretive meaning latent
in the text, see F. Kermode, The Genesis o f Secrecy: On the Interpretation o f Narrative
(Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1979). I am not convinced, however, that this is the
implicit sense of the rabbinic midrashic approach, as Kermode suggests (p. x). See also
the reservation regarding this interpretation in D. Stem, Parables in Midrash: Narrative
and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1991), pp. 49-50.

29 See E. R. Wolfson, “The Hermeneutics of Visionary Experience: Revelation and
Interpretation in the Zohar,” Religion 18 (1988): 311-345, and the greatly expanded
version of that essay in Through a Speculum That Shines, pp. 326-392; idem, “Forms of
Visionary Ascent as Ecstatic Experience in Zoharic Literature,” in Gershom Scholem ’s
Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 50 Years After, edited by J. Dan and P. Schäfer
(Tübingen, 1993), pp. 209-235. On the revelatory nature of kabbalistic exegesis, see
also M. Idel, “Infinities of Torah in Kabbalah,” in Midrash and Literature, edited by G.
H. Hartman and S. Budick (New Haven and London, 1986), p. 144; idem. Kabbalah:
New Perspectives, pp. 234-249; Matt, ‘“New-Ancient Words;” M. Hellner-Eshed, ‘“ A
River Issues Forth From Eden’: The Language of Mystical Invocation in the Zohar,"
Kabbalah: Journal fo r the Study o f Jewish Mystical Texts 2 (1997): 287-310 (in
Hebrew). On the prophetic status of the zoharic circle, see the words of C. Mopsik in
the introduction to his critical edition of R. Moses de Leon ’s Sefer Sheqel ha-Qodesh
(Los Angeles, 1996), pp. 6-8 (in Hebrew); idem, “Moïse de Leôn, le Sheqel ha-Qodesh
et la rédaction du Zohar: Une réponse à Yehuda Liebes,” Kabbalah: Journal fo r the
Study o f Jewish Mystical Texts 3 (1998): 216-217.

Abraham Abulafia’s Hermeneutic 21

makes something transparent which is beyond all expression.”30 Elsewhere
Scholem describes the “secret dimension of language” in the following
way: “The mystic discovers in language ... something pertaining to its
structure which is not adjusted to a communication of what is
communicable, but rather - and all symbolism is founded on this paradox -
to a communication of what is non-communicable, of that which exists
within it for which there is no expression; and even if it could be expressed,
it would in no way have any meaning, or any communicable ‘sense.’”31 The
“inexpressible mystery” of the Godhead becomes visible in the phenomenal
reality of creation as well as through the religious acts commanded by the
Torah.32 The transparency of the symbol to which Scholem consistently
refers in his work relates to the paradoxical necessity of expressing the
inexpressible by means of the self-disclosure of that which is concealed.33
The display itself is an act of veiling, for the word is never sufficient to
express the mystical experience except as that which cannot be expressed.34

The very notion of an esoteric tradition understood in this manner
entails that one cannot truly understand, let alone communicate, the
conception of a tradition that is secretive. In the specific case of kabbalistic
fraternities, the esotericism cultivated by various groups of Jewish men in
diverse historical periods and geographical localities has not simply
involved the hiding of information from those who are outside the relevant
group. I would certainly acknowledge that an important aspect of secrecy in
the teaching of the kabbalists is the investiture of power to those who seek

30 Major Trends, p. 27.
31 Scholem, “Name of God,” p. 61.
32 Scholem, op. cit., pp. 62-63, expresses this matter by stating that creation and

revelation “are both principally and essentially auto-representations of God himself, in
which, as a consequence and in accordance with the infinite nature of the divinity,
certain instants of the divine are introduced, which can only be communicated in terms
of symbols in the finite and determined realm of all that is created. A directly associated
factor with this is the further conception that language is the essence of the universe.”

33 See, for example, Scholem, “Name of God,” p. 165: “Everything is transparent,
and in this state of transparency everything takes on a symbolic character.” See D. Biale,
Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History (Cambridge, Mass, and London,
1979), pp. 90-92.

34 A similar paradox is prominent in medieval Sufism, expressed particularly by the
identity of the face and the veil, the act of concealing and that of self-disclosure. See A.
Schimmel, “Secrecy in Sufism,” in Secrecy in Religions, pp. 81-102; W. C. Chittick,
The Self-Disclosure o f God: Principles o f Ibn al-'Arabi's Cosmology (Albany, 1998),
pp. 104-108, 120-121, 128-132.

22 Abraham Abulafia

to disseminate the secrets they possess, but the dissemination invariably
occurs in such a way that the hidden nature of the secret is preserved. To
state the obvious, a secret presupposes the concomitant transmission and
withholding on the part of the one in possession of the secret. If I possess a
secret and transmit it to no one, the secret has no relevance.35 By the same
token, if I readily divulge that secret without discretion, the secrecy of that
secret is rendered ineffectual. What empowers me as keeper of a secret is
not only that I transmit it to some and* hot to others, but that in the very
transmission I maintain the secret, holding back in the advancing forward.
From that vantage point the secret is a secret only to the extent that it is
concealed in its disclosure, but it may be concealed in its disclosure only if
it is disclosed in its concealment.36

The secret as such cannot be transmitted, for in the act of transmission it
is betrayed. To be itself the secret must be withheld; it is precisely in the
holding back that the power of disclosure lies. The more one attempts to
express the secret the further one is from it. Something of the secret endures
even as the secret is disclosed, and thus in the most exact sense there can be
no tradition of secrecy. The secret that the secret cannot be transmitted,
which may be referred to as the apophatic secret, plays a part in securing
hope in the expectation of a genuinely open future, a hope that indeed may
lie at the core of the apocalyptic messianism that has informed both
Judaism and Christianity in varying degrees.37 If, however, the secret that

35 This obvious point is made by J.-F. Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time,
translated by G. Bennington and R. Bowlby (Stanford, 1991), p. 27: “A secret would
not be a ‘real’ secret if no-one knew it was a secret.” See ibid., p. 2 0 1 .1 am grateful to
Guy Matalon, presently a graduate student in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic
Studies, New York University, for drawing my attention to the remark of Lyotard.

36 Consider George Simmel’s notion of the triadic structure of secrecy discussed by
H. G. Kippenberg and G. G. Stroumsa, “Introduction: Secrecy and Its Benefits,” in
Secrecy and Concealment: Studies in the History o f Mediterranean and Near Eastern
Religions, edited by H. G. Kippenberg and G. G. Stroumsa (Leiden, 1995), pp. xiii-xiv.

37 J. D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears o f Jacques Derrida: Religion without
Religion (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1997), pp. 101-112, has argued rather
persuasively that this sense of a secret is an integral aspect of the deconstructionist
belief in the future as the tout autre, which may be considered a form of secular
messianic hope. E. Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, translated by
A. Lingis (Pittsburgh, 1969), p. 257, also speaks of the secret appearing without
appearing, a motif that he connects to the phenomenon of profanation, which is
characterized by the simultaneity of the clandestine and the exposed. The play of
concealment and exposure is related, moreover, to the nature of femininity, for the

Abraham Abulafia’s Hermeneutic 23

there is no secret were to be revealed, then there would be no secret to
reveal since there would be nothing to conceal. The logic of esotericism is
predicated on the dialectical relation that pertains between the secret that is
disclosed and the secret that is withheld. For a secret to be genuinely
secretive it cannot be divulged, but if it is not divulged in any manner it is
hardly a secret.

The texture of secrecy, which is exemplified in this interweaving pattern
of revelation and concealment, is poetically captured in the words attributed
to Simeon ben Yohai in the preamble to the great assembly, ’Idra’ Rabba’,
the part of the zoharic corpus that sets a dramatic stage for the disclosure of
the most perplexing mysteries about the Godhead, which have been
understood by both traditional and contemporary scholars as having an
implicit messianic dimension.31 * After the members of the fraternity are
adorned in their proper attire and have entered the place to thresh out the
mysteries to be revealed by R. Simeon, the master sits down, weeps, and
utters the words, “Woe if I reveal, and woe if I do not reveal.”39
Analogously, in another z
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