The Love of God in the Jewish Mystical Tradition:

Mysticism of Freedom and Commemoration versus Mysticism

of Hope and Redemption

Rachel Elior

A.

The love of God is demanded as a profound human

obligation within the Jewish religious tradition; this

love formulates a moral point of departure as a central

obligatory commandment; and has been maintained as a

fundamental daily assertion since Biblical times. Moses

concisely delineated the inherent connection between the

uniqueness and unity of God, the love of God, and the

divine commandments as the source of eternal law and

social justice with the sacred text expressing the

inspiring divine word within intimate daily contact

"Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You

shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and

with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these

1

words that I am commanding you today in your heart.

Recite them to your children and talk about them when you

are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and

when you arise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix

them as an emblem on your forehead and write them on the

doorposts of your house and on your gates" (Deuteronomy

6: 4-9)

These verses are recited every day twice a day as found

in the Shema' Israel ['Hear, O Israel'] prayer, a

centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer

services. The first verse encapsulates the monotheistic

essence of Judaism. The love of God, the creator, the

liberator from slavery, God of history, the eternal law

giver, the source of moral consciousness, knowledge,

truth and justice, in the above context, is certainly an

integral part of the daily life, education, thought,

study and practice for every observant Jew. However, this

love of God, cannot be observed as a cardinal part of the

mystical tradition in the first thousand years of the

Jewish mystical tradition.

2

Mysticism in the Jewish context is the history of

creative imagination within a religious context

orientated towards the hidden realm where mysterious

entities and lost treasures embedded with most

significant meaning can be revealed. Where the

constraints of reality can be transcended, alternative

eternal existence could be observed and eternal meaning

could be found. The mystical tradition that was always

inspired by ancient textual heritage as well as by the

infinite creative power of the holy language, by new

visions, by transcending borders and orderly patterns

within chaotic world, had been written and rewritten by

the exiles, by the vanquished and by the losers in the

historical reality, those who imagined a heavenly world

that enhanced their mundane suffering with meaning and

promised a meta-historical horizon where eternal divine

presence, justice and redemption are within hand.1

The Jewish mystical tradition had its beginnings 2600

years ago with the prophetic vision of the Chariot of the

Cherubim as observed by "the priest Ezekiel son of Buzi,

in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar, and the

3

hand of the Lord was on him there" (Ezekiel, 1:1 cf.

Chapters 1, 3,10). The priestly-prophetic mystical vision

expressing transcending borders was written as a

consequence of the destruction of the First Temple (597-

587 BCE) by this priest-prophet who had been exiled to

Babylon (Eze. 1:1-3). The startling prophetic vision

which occurred in the early 6th Century BCE revealed the

divine golden Chariot of the Cherubim that reflected the

heavenly pattern of the golden Chariot of the Cherubim

that was placed in the holy of holies in the Jerusalem

Temple. This center piece of the Temple divine worship

had been built according to a divine pattern in the 10th

Century BCE according to biblical historiography and had

been placed in the Jerusalem Temple (I Kings 6: 19-30; I

Chronicles 28:18;) at that time. It remained there until

the end of the First Temple period (925-587 BCE) at the

time of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem (597-587

BCE). The golden Cherubim of the Chariot in the Jerusalem

Temple were associated with the Cherubim in the Garden of

Eden (Genesis 3:24) and with the vision of the Cherubim

that had been shown to Moses on Mount Sinai (Ex. 25: 8-

4

9;17-22). Ezekiel the exiled priest-prophet saw in his

vision an animated multivalent heavenly assemblage of the

divine inner sanctum where the golden Chariot of the

Cherubim once stood. He saw the Chariot in its heavenly

glory as an animated luminous beauty after it had been

demolished on earth when the Jerusalem Temple was raised

to the ground by the Babylonian army.2 The visionary

mystical tradition of the heavenly Chariot of the

Cherubim - a symbol of the Divine revelation occurring on

Mount Sinai (Exodus chaps. 19-20) and of the eternal

covenant between God and His People, that which was

represented in the inner sanctum of the First Temple and

which had begun as biblical prophecy within the priestly

context, had continued in a new mystical-liturgical

direction, when the "vision of the Chariot" appears in

the "Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice", that were found

among the Dead Sea Scrolls.3 The sacred mystical liturgy

pertaining to the heavenly sanctuaries, describes in an

enigmatic mystical language the eternal sevenfold cycle

of angelic benedictions and laudatory songs taking place

in seven heavenly sanctuaries, where seven heavenly

5

chariots of the cherubim had been placed in the visionary

world of the Chariot. The angelic service in the heavenly

sanctuaries was patterned according to the Priestly-

Levitical divine worship of the First Temple service that

was dedicated to calculating and observing the eternal

sevenfold cycles of the sacred days of freedom. The

mystical poetical texts of the angelic liturgy that were

described as Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice were found among the

Dead Sea Scrolls, and were written mainly by deposed

'Zadokite Priests and their allies' [haCohanim Bnei Zadok

veAnshei Beritam]. These texts were known later on as the

Sadducees, when the Second Temple was defiled by

Antiochus IV (175-164 BCE), the conquering king of

Seleucia. At this time, the Jewish ritual solar calendar

of Sabbaths was forcibly replaced by the Greek lunar

calendar of months; all of which coincided with the

appearance of a new, politically appointed priesthood,

which was to characterise the emergence of the extremely

controversial Hashmonean period (152-33 BCE).4

The eternal seven heavenly sanctuaries along with the

perpetual eternal sevenfold cycles of angelic liturgy,

6

corresponded to the pre-calculated solar calendar of

"Divinely appointed times of freedom". The recurring and

calculated 52 Sabbaths, appearing in a year of 364 days

commencing in the spring, figuratively replaced the

inaccessible earthly temple in the consciousness of the

authors who had transferred and deposited the earthly

priestly service in the hands of the heavenly serving

angels. In the ancient mystical priestly Songs, those

which became known as the Angelic Liturgy only after being

found in the Dead Sea Scrolls 1947-1956, and were first

published by John Strugnell in 1960 and finally edited by

Carol Newsom in 1985, appear the awesome sevenfold groups

of angels, described as serving in seven heavenly

sanctuaries where the seven chariots of the cherubim had

stood, consecrating God and His eternal cycles of

freedom, holiness, justice and literacy (Leviticus 23:4)

by means of laudatory hymns, blessings and benedictions

according to the sevenfold eternal division of time, as

appearing in the priestly pre-calculated sacred solar

calendar of 364 days.5 The meaning of this Jewish mystical

literature on eternal cycles of sacred time kept by

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angelic divine worship in heavenly sanctuaries, was the

manifestation of a visual and auditory compensation that

promised eternal heavenly commemoration for the sacred

earthly loses, as well as hope for those exiled, the

deposed and the vanquished who believed that divine

redemption will inevitably transpire following the pre-

calculated eternal sevenfold covenantal cycles of

freedom. These were, Sabbath every week, seven appointed

times of the Lord in the first seven months of the

biblical year commencing in the spring (Ex. 12: 2),

sabbatical year every seventh year and Jubilee every

forty-ninth year. The prophets, priests and inspired

poets who composed the first chapters of the visionary-

auditory Chariot Mysticism in the second half of the

first millennium BCE, assured their readers and listeners

that the Temple, which commemorated perpetual sevenfold

cycles of sanctity, freedom and public literacy

(Leviticus chapters 23; 25) having been lost on earth,

continues to exist for ever and ever in the seven

heavenly sanctuaries, where seven chariots of the

cherubim are eternally present on the seven firmaments,

8

where the sevenfold angelic divine service is eternally

observed. Further, the writers of the Songs of the Sabbath

Sacrifice maintained that the earthly chaos of destruction

and exile of usurpation and defilement cannot affect the

divine abode, where:

"Spirits of the knowledge of truth and righteousness in

the Holy of Holies

The images of living divine beings, images of luminous

spirits

All their deeds are of holy things, of wondrous

unifications."6

In this sublime heavenly setting, placed beyond the

limits of time and place, the eternal cycles of divine

worship and the sacred consecration of holy time, holy

place and holy ritual, bound by an eternal covenant of

commemoration between heaven and earth from the Sinai

Revelation (Exodus 19-20), were perpetuated in the

heavenly realm until the future, when they will be

reestablished once again in the eternal cycles of the

priestly worship commemorating appointed times of

9

liberty, sanctity, literacy and justice in the earthly

Jerusalem Temple. The word love, as well as any other

form of unification or communion, is not present in this

mystical library. Concepts such as the commemoration of

the splendor of the covenantal past in transcendent,

heavenly sanctuaries and committed to perpetuation of

cycles of justice and freedom, holiness, ethical and

intellectual engagement by counting, imagining, blessing,

praying, studying, narrating reading, writing and

singing together with "holy angels", "spirits of

knowledge", "angels of glory", "spirits of eternity",

"spirits of justice", "holy spirits", "the holy angels of

knowledge", "spirits of splendor", "spirits of the holy

of holies", "angels of truth", "angels of justice",

"spirits of insight, wisdom and truth", "divine spirits”,

"wondrous spirits" and "angels of peace" may be found in

abundance.7

.B

10

In the early centuries of the first millennium CE, after

the destruction of the Second Temple, a new mystical

direction proposed to transcend the constraints of

reality through new perceptions of the holy language and

its infinite creative power. This formulated an

alternative imaginary existence and granted hope. These

ideas were expounded in an anonymous unique text known as

the Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzirah). The book introduced a new

structure of thought concerning creation and covenant,

revealed and concealed, cycles of freedom and sanctified

rest. This creation was constituted and brought about by

means of (a) the twenty two letters of the Hebrew

alphabet and (b) the ten elementary and primordial

numbers, known as sefiroth, and (c) three books 'sefer, mispar

vesipur' (book, number and story), or written and oral

communication as well as divine and human speech, all

perceived as building blocks of the eternal covenant

between heaven and earth. Articulated speech, letters of

reading and writing, construction and deconstruction of

existent texts, as well as digits and the use of numbers

were introduced as divine, infinite, creative, dialectic,

11

multifaceted and eternal entities related to the sacred

language, shared alike by both God and men. The book

describes the holy origin and the infinite creative power

of the twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the

sacred nature of the first ten elementary and primordial

numbers from one to ten, both of which were forming the

process of creation and creating in language as well as

in reality. The book commences as follows:

With Thirty Two wondrous paths of Wisdom

engraved YAH

the Lord of Hosts,

God of Israel

the living God, El Shadai

high and exalted

King of the universe…

Merciful and Gracious

High and Exalted

Dwelling all the way to the heights

12

Whose name is Holy

He is lofty and holy

And he created His Universe

Through three books (Sefarim)

With text (Sefer)

With Number (Sefar),

and with story (Sipur)

Ten Sefirot of infinite Nothingness

and twenty-two principle Letters,

Ten Sefirot of infinite Nothingness

…Understand in wisdom and search with understanding…

And because of this the covenant was enacted: ten sefirot of

infinite nothingness…

Their measure is ten and they have no end.

Know and contemplate and create and establish things on

its entirety

And restore the Creator to His place..

13

Their measure is ten

And they have no end

And only one Master

Lord faithful King

Ruling over all

From his sacred dwelling place

For all eternity " (1:1-6).8

The book presented for the first time a profound

dialectic reflection on the nature of the letters of the

"holy language"; the Hebrew language, the language of the

Bible, with which the world was created and the divine

law was given. The book reflects on the divine origin of

the twenty two letters and the ten elementary and

primordial numbers, on their creative power and on the

divine voice in their foundation. The book further

maintained that the first ten numbers as well as the

twenty two foundation letters, represent finite forms and

infinite mystical entity.

"Ten Sefirot of infinite Nothingness:

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One is the Breath of the Living God (cf. Psalms 33:6)

Blessed and benedicted is the name

Of the Life of Worlds

The voice of breath and speech

And this is the Holy Spirit. (1:9).9

The anonymous book connects voice, breath, spirit and

speech, letters and numbers, words and language, counting

and recounting, human and divine alike, introducing the

creative power of language which is constituted from only

twenty two voice-signs/letters and ten elementary

abstract/concrete numbers. By these means may be

constructed an endless number of words and sentences from

this finite number of letters, as well as endless ever-

expanding numerical signs from the finite ten digits. The

book delineates the immeasurable potential for the

construction and deconstruction inherent in the holy

letters of the Hebrew language and the sacred numbers

mentioned by God, the source of all human and divine use

of language. The text delineates the endless dimensions

and infinite layers of the sacred letters and numbers

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that constitute every aspect of the ongoing divine-human

process of creation perceived by abstract thought and

concrete sense: "God drew them, hewed them, combined

them, weighed them, interchanged them and through

produced the whole creation and everything that is

destined to be created."10

C.

The Jewish mystical tradition known as Chariot Mysticism

was continued and further elaborated in the Hekhalot

Literature (seven heavenly sanctuaries) or Heikhalot and

Merkavah (Sanctuaries and Chariot) writings.11 In this

imaginary literature, written in a beautiful style of

prose and poetry, the Temple divine worship conducted by

the priests, that which had been eradicated with the

Roman conquest of Jerusalem (70CE), was transformed into

the seven heavenly sanctuaries where the singing angels

had replaced the worship of the priests and Levites of

the second Temple period (515 BCE-70 CE).

16

The concept "love of God" is not mentioned in any way in

all this vast mystical literature spanning more than a

thousand years. Commencing with Ezekiel, these writings

continue with the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and various

chapters of angelic liturgy which were found among the

Dead Sea Scrolls, culminating in Heikhalot Literature

written during the first millennium. Rather it is the

commemoration of the ideal biblical past, marked by

ancient divine covenant founded on the invisible

sevenfold cycles of freedom, 'moa'de dror' as well as on the

four-fold eternal visible cycles of creation and

fertility known as the "heavenly chariots" merkavot

hashamaim' (I Enoch 75:3-9) that was at the center of the

mystical tradition. These perpetual pre-calculated cycles

of the ever-changing seasons of creation, visible to the

eye, expressing eternal divine covenant with the

universe, as well as the sevenfold eternal sacred

appointed days of rest and liberty, revealed by the ear

in the Sinai revelation at the holiday of the seven

weeks, Shavu't, expressing the foundation of the covenant

between God and the Jewish people - were in the focus of

17

the mystical effort. These cycles of sacred times of

liberty were monitored, calculated, observed and

consecrated by the Priestly ritual and Levitical liturgy

in the Temple in Jerusalem. Here, the holy of holies

representing paradise, a transcendental place beyond time

and place, where death had no domain and divine eternity

represented by the Chariot of the Cherubim, prevailed.

Here was the focus of the mystical effort. The Temple

worship served the cardinal purpose of observing the

eternal cycles of rest, freedom, knowledge, justice and

public sacred literacy associated with the Sabbath, the

seven appointed festivals of the Lord in the first seven

month of the year (Lev. 23), the sabbatical year and the

Jubilee year (Lev. 25). In all those seven fold cycles of

"The appointed days of the Lord", complete rest and

joyful freedom is celebrated, work is prohibited and holy

convocation for reading the law and commemorates the

history of the community is mandatory. These days

accumulate to seventy days of freedom every year, 52

Sabbath and 18 days of festivals, which were proclaimed

as holy convocations of public reading (Leviticus 23). To

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these annual sevenfold cycles of freedom commemorating

the passage from slavery to liberty as described in the

book of Exodus, a second sevenfold series was appended

in the book of Leviticus: every seventh year was a

sabbatical, fallow year and every forty-nine years a

Jubilee year was celebrated. Both expressed the

resignation of human sovereignty, the renunciation of the

power to enslave and the promotion of equality and

freedom. All these sevenfold cycles of freedom and

liberation were the obligatory commitment of the entire

Jewish community and were kept and announced by Temple

Priests (Leviticus 23 and 25). These “appointed days”

were preserved by the rituals and liturgy that were

performed according to a pre-calculated eternal sevenfold

cycles.12

.D

It is interesting to note that the word love is mentioned

in the Old Testament only 45 times, while the word

Jerusalem, as the place of the Temple mount is mentioned

660 times and Zion, its synonym, is mentioned a further

154 times. The Hebrew word signifying holy time, “moe'd”,

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derived from testimony “e'dut”, which relates to a

community that observe this testimony, e'da, indicates the

appointed times of freedom (Moa'di adonai or Moa'dei dror) as

well as to holy place (Ohel Moe'd) and is mentioned 223

times. Only half of the references to the word love refer

to human love while the remaining relates to divine love.

Half of the references to human love are found in the Song

of Songs where love is mentioned about 11 times, however

this is not an ordinary love story about human

protagonists, but rather inspirational poetry concerning

a dream pertaining to the yearnings and longings of a

female dreamer and her unrequited love.

The transcending power of sensual human love that can

overcome borders of time and place is first mentioned in

the Bible in the ancient story of Jacob and Rachel when

the story tells: "So Jacob served seven years for Rachel,

and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love

he had for her" (Genesis 29:20). With the exception of

the Song of Songs such binding human love is seldom

mentioned. The love in the Song of Songs will develop later

on by mystical exegesis as the foundation of the love of

20

God in the medieval Jewish mystical tradition known as

Kabbalah. It refers also to the foundation of devotional

love that was adopted by the Jewish martyrs during two

millennia, known as kiddush haShem or sanctifying of God's

name unto death.

The transcending power of the love between God and his

people and their eternal binding commitment is defined in

the ancient Hebrew word Berit, covenant and oath or Berit

Olam, eternal covenant and union.

E.

If we take a broad historical view in order to delineate

the changes in the mystical perception, it seems

reasonable to divide Jewish history to three periods

corresponding to the last three millennia.

In the first millennium BCE and in the preceding

centuries, the connection between God and his people was

founded on the concepts of covenant, faith, commandment

and law. There was no erotic meaning to this relation,

nor any equality, union, communion or unification. God

21

was perceived as the creator and liberator from the

bondage of exile; as the eternal law giver and as the God

of history and divine justice. This was gratefully

acknowledged by the Hebrew slaves, who had been freed

from slavery. The liberated slaves who had accepted the

divine law that promised freedom and equality, prosperity

and continuity, in place of cruel human sovereignty,

brutal subjugation and threat of extinction, further

chose sacred divine justice associated with eternal

cycles of sacred times of freedom, in place of human

slavery that granted no dominion on time and no chance of

survival.

The love of God as delineated above at the beginning of

the discussion, was certainly expected within the bounds

of an earthly context and expressed on a daily basis.

But it had no meaning without the full commitment to obey

the divine law and the conditions of the covenant. The

commandments were perceived as a reflection of the

highest moral values which constituted law and order,

social justice, liberty and literacy and established

ideal preconditions for peaceful existence, prosperity

22

and continuity, all of which originated in the divine law

and the sacred text of the covenant. The major commitment

upon which the covenant was established, was a perpetual

requirement to uphold the seven fold eternal cycles of

liberty that were mentioned above. The Sabbath every

seventh day; the seven appointed festivals of the Lord in

the first seven months of a year commencing in the

spring, in the month of the liberation from slavery

(Exodus 12:2); a sabbatical year every seventh year and a

jubilee year every 49 years. All these appointed times

of the Lord, 70 days every year in sevenfold sequence, a

full year of rest every seventh year , in which work in

the fields is prohibited by divine commandment while

complete rest and public reading convocations are

mandatory (Lev. 23; 25). This practice commemorated the

sanctity of freedom and liberation, as well as and the

vital importance of cycles of public recitation of the

law on those festivals which constituted an eternal

community of memory bound by a covenant of freedom, law

and justice.

23

The essence of the covenant was the commemoration of Holy

Time (the sevenfold cycles of freedom), Holy Place (The

Temple-mount in Jerusalem where God chose to place His

name) and Holy Ritual (cycles of priestly ritual and

Levitical liturgy aiming to commemorate in the Temple the

above mentioned cycles of freedom. In Hebrew the word for

oath and covenant shvua'a is derived from the same root as

the word seven, sheva'; and the major public priestly

holiday, the day of the covenant is called Shvuo't (oath

and covenants) or Shavuo't (seven weeks), known in

English as Holiday of Weeks or as Pentecost. In the

priestly biblical tradition the seven fold counting was

the foundation of the covenant and only those who rested

according to the sevenfold cycle of the appointed time of

the Lord were to be included within the covenant.

In the first millennium BCE as mentioned above, the

mystical tradition pertained only to the heavenly

sanctuaries after the destruction of the First Temple and

to the angelic priestly service in the mystical world of

the heavenly Chariot that perpetuated in seven heavenly

24

sanctuaries and fourfold "heavenly chariots" the

sevenfold cycle of divine worship.

F.

In the first millennium of the Common Era, a number of

new directions were developed in the mystical tradition,

among them the Book of Creation and Heikhalot literature that

were mentioned above. But the only mystical tradition

which was concerned with the mystical love of God started

as a direct result of the destruction of the Second

Temple, when the Sages replaced the Priests as there was

no longer a Temple in Jerusalem and divine worship in the

Temple could not be conducted anymore on earth. The Sages

of the first few centuries of the Common Era, known also

as Tanaim and Rabbis, formed new groups who asserted that

human sovereignty would be founded on meritocracy and not

upon a predetermined holy priestly dynasty. They

maintained a cessation for divine prophecy, disregarded

any new claims for divine prophecy and prohibited the

composition of any new holy books within a process known

as the canonization of the written law, thereby

finalizing the 24 books comprising the Bible or the Old

25

Testament. The sages further created a new concept, "oral

law", later known as the Mishnah, which maintained the right

to teach the written law in a new way, according to free

hermeneutics based on human understanding. They

interpreted anew the "sealed" and canonized biblical

tradition- a process generated and instituted since all

previous religious and political powers within the

biblical world were no longer extant after the

destruction of the Second Temple. After 70 CE there was

no Temple in Jerusalem and there was no independent

state, no religious service or any other form of

sovereignty and nationality. In the first few centuries

of the Common Era after the destruction of the Temple,

the Jews had every reason to think that the divine

covenant between God and his People was no longer valid.

It is interesting to observe that the central word

covenant in the biblical sense of an everlasting bond

between God and his people who observe the laws and keep

the sevenfold cycles of rest and freedom, is not to be

found at all in the early stages of the literature of the

sages.

26

In this period the three pilgrimage holidays which had

been previously celebrated in the Temple Pesach, Shvuot and

Sukot (Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles) could no

longer be observed in public according to the priestly

tradition since there was no Temple or priestly service.

Likewise, neither the Priestly blessing nor the renewal

of the covenant and the presentation of the first corn or

fruits to the Temple could take place anymore in the

holiday of weeks, Pentecost, known as the festival of the

covenants (Shvuo't).

At that time and under these tragic circumstances, the

most important priestly holiday, the Holiday of the

Covenants (Shvuo't), the Day of the Sinai revelation, the

day of the revelation of the eternal divine law that

cannot be changed by any human authority, the holiday of

the rainbow covenant and the renewal of the covenant,

kept by the angels (Jubilees 6:15-21), the day of the

festival of the harvest which demanded a pilgrimage to

the Temple, that which was celebrated over the course of

the first millennium with great festival as the day of

the renewal of the Sinai covenant (II Chronicles 15) had

27

been transformed by the sages into a wedding day for the

mystical union between God and the community of Israel

Kenesseth Yisrael, i.e. the Shekhinah. The innovation was

twofold: a) In biblical Israel, God or the angels always

spoke with a male voice, a commanding voice, a

threatening voice. Other powerful expressions possessed a

distinctly transcendent male entity, there was never a

female consort in the heavenly arena nor a dialogue of

love. b) Rabbi Akiva, one of the most distinguished

sages (d. 132 CE), surprisingly maintained that the Song of

Songs - that which had always been considered to be an

earthly love song loaded with erotic nuances and

beautiful descriptions of the blossom in the spring and

the splendor of nature in the land of Israel, a wedding

song in which God's name is never mentioned within its

lines - is in fact the "Holy of Holies" (Mishnah, Yadaim 3:

5) since it was given from heaven in Sinai revelation, on

the day of the biblical covenant between God and his

people. In the rabbinic tradition from the Second until

the Fifth Centuries CE, the divine covenant of the Sinai

revelation - which is marked in the Bible with fearful

28

manifestations of fire, smoke and frightful voices of

horns and trumpets, constitutes an un-forgettable moment

of mysterium tremendum (Exodus 19-20) – was transformed into

a wedding covenant (in Hebrew the Brit had turned into Brit

nisuin). In every wedding (before the 20th Century) there

were always two loving entities: a bridegroom and a

bride. R. Akiva took the love songs in the Song of Songs and

asserted that they are in fact describing the eternal

love between God, the bridegroom who had come from Sinai

and the Congregation of Israel, His beloved bride.

(Mekhilta, parashat bahodesh, 3).

Soon after, the bride, the heavenly-earthly Congregation

of Israel, became identified with the oral law or Mishnah,

a law constantly created and changed by the community of

Israel by those who are always engaged in study and

exegesis of law and myth, while the bridegroom was

identified with the eternal sacred engraved written law,

the Torah, which could never be changed. The love between

the two parties was described in the erotic vocabulary of

the Song of Songs and each member of the wedded couple

accumulated new visages. The bride was identified with

29

the Shekhinah, divine dwelling, a new feminine concept,

pertaining to the divine presence that has for the first

time female features, in line with the description of the

beloved maiden in the Song of Songs. The new concept

fashioned by the sages embodies the meta-geographical

earthly and heavenly congregation of Israel in exile. The

scholars of the Kabbalah called the new feminine divine

principle "daughter of Zion" and "mother Zion", crown

and fallen diadem, kingdom and sovereignty, captive and

queen, as well as many other names. The groom was

identified with The Holy One; blessed be He that has the

biblical male features of the eternal divine voice of the

God of Law and History associated with the lover in the

Song of Songs. The followers of the sages were called to

unite and unify the mystical couple, the groom and the

bride, Tiferet and Malkhut, Glory and Kingdom, in their

prayers and in their imagination.13

It is interesting to note that about a century after the

Jewish sages of the Mishnah (last third of the first

century to the first third of the second century) were

identifying the female figure from the Song of Songs with

30

the heavenly congregation of Israel, that later became

known as the "Shekhinah" and the "oral law" created by the

male members of the community, the early Church fathers,

among them Origenes (182-251) who lived in the Land of

Israel in Caesarea, identified the female figure from

the Song of Songs with the Church, claiming that the ancient

Song of love is about the love between God and the new

Church.

R. Akiva, the distinguished sage, who was credited with

the consecration of the Song of Songs as a divine poem

revealed in Sinai (Mishnah Yadaiem 3:5), in the holiday

of Shavuo't and with the association of the bond between

the lovers in the Song of Songs as a bond of wedding

between God, the groom, and his bride, the Community of

Israel, (Mekhilta, parashat bahodesh hashlishi, 3) took one step

further. He reinterpreted the second part of the third

verse in the first chapter of the Song of Songs "Therefore

the maidens love you! " and read it in a new way

associated with qiddush ha-shem (sanctifying God's name), by

original vocalization for the word maidens-alamot- which

he replaced with al-mavet, unto death, contending: "I will

31

speak of His pleasantness and praises...before all the

nations of the world...'therefore maidens have loved you'

(Song. 1:3)--loved you unto death".

ןןןןןתת תתת ןןןןן = תתתתתןן ןן ןן ןן

R. Akiva died as a martyr in 132 CE (B. Menahot 29b: Hekhalot

Rabati: The story of the Ten Martyrs; Ele Ezkerah)14 and his

interpretation that love of God is love unto death had

affected profoundly the European Jewish communities in

the times of the crusades.15 The desperate Jews, who were

persecuted by the church and who were forced to convert

against their will to Christianity, had killed their

children so they did not fall to the hands of the church

people. They themselves committed suicide afterwards with

this love verse from the Song of Songs according to the

reading of R. Akiva, "loved you unto death" on their

lips. In the Jewish medieval chronicles that reported

these acts and their interpretation, is described the

expectation of a mystical communion with God by the

people who were ready to kill themselves and their

offspring's for the sanctification of God's name.16

32

G.

The third stage of the Jewish Mystical tradition, that

which is known as Kabbalah, had yielded many books on the

love relations between God, the groom, and the Shekhinah,

the bride, the heavenly-earthly congregation of Israel.

The Kabbalistic library was composed in the wake of the

Crusades in the end of the 13th Century, when the Jewish

communities in Europe were severely persecuted often to

the degree of threat of extinction by the Crusaders

(1096-1296). The persistent threat to life and the

continuity of Jewish existence in Christian Europe was

nourished by hostile Christian theology, by waves of

hatred generated by the fear of epidemics and hunger

believed to be caused by non-Christians. The persecutions

against the exiled Jews were generated by illiteracy and

jealousy, fear and superstition, false accusations of

ritual murder and the various decrees that were issued by

Papal authority and local bishops, as well as by members

of the Lateran councils along the millennium.

This threat of extinction generated dreams and visions

concerned with sexuality, fertility and progeny that

33

transcends human constrains, arbitrary destiny,

helplessness and endless cruelty suffered by the only

ultimate "other" within the European Christian world.

The anonymous writers of the Kabbalistic tradition that

had first appeared in the end of the 13th Century adopted

the metaphors of R. Akiva concerning the love between the

bride and the bridegroom in the Song of Songs as expressing

the love between God and the Shekhinah, only now, they

reshaped the perception of both parties. The bride had

become the desolated Daughter of Zion as appearing in the

Biblical Scroll of Lamentations, written after the

destruction of the first Temple in the 6th Century BCE ,

where she was described as a desolated woman in exile, as

a divorced woman, as a tormented widow and as a female

captive in prison. The groom was described as a helpless

God, one who laments the destruction of His people, His

Holy Land, the Holy City and His ruined Temple.17

The 13th Century writers of the Book of Splendor, Sefer

haZohar, ascribed their writings to the 2nd century sages

R. Simon bar Yohai, R. Yehuda, and other contemporary

figures of the Mishnaic time. The sages of that

34

generation, living a 1000 years earlier than the

historical writers of the Book of Splendor, were marked

by the invention of a new Judaism after the destruction

of the Second Temple. They encouraged the ongoing study

of the law as a commemoration of the past. They also

imagined the future, while discussing legal traditions

and their rational and moral consequences in relation to

the present. The Sages further encouraged the free

imaginary mythic interpretation of the sacred written

texts in an unrestrained and irrational way. The Sages

had created these two new avenues of Halakhah, law, and

Aggadah, myth, in the wake of the destruction of the

Second Temple in the first half of the first Millennium

of the Common Era. Their followers, known as Kabbalists,

appearing now a thousand years later, assumed a literary

guise as contemporaries of the Sages proclaiming their

new literary output with the suggestive name Devarim

Hadashim-Atikim=New-Old words.

The Kabbalists, who remembered the words of the Book of

Creation cited above about the world being built by God and

human alike "by three books: by text, by number and by

35

narrative", asserted that through the process of study

and by creating the "oral law" in an imaginative,

creative and playful manner, and through mystical law

that is identified with the Shekhinah, representing

simultaneously the feminine attributes of the presence of

God as well as the creative process of the oral law on

earth, the Sabbath Bride and the exiled congregation of

Israel - they are thus redeeming the captive Shekhinah or

liberating the imprisoned daughter of Zion. Through their

imaginative study and storytelling, through their

original textual interpretation and legend telling,

through their imaginative elaboration on the commandments

in relations to letters and numbers, they were redeeming

the congregation of Israel/the Shekhinah from the prison

of exile in heaven and on earth and they were hastening

the coming of redemption. The new verb that the Kabbalists

had used for their study and contemplation was clinging

to the Shekhinah or communion with God. Clinging or Devekut

which in Hebrew relates to the biblical verb describing

the first sexual union of Adam and Eve and which

justifies the later human institution of marriage by

36

showing it origins with the first human couple, was the

central verb for the desired mystical union: "Therefore a

man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his

wife and they become one flesh".(Genessis 2: 24).

A new image of God was generated by the harsh experience

of exile in the second millennium and the overwhelming

danger of extinction in the wake of the Crusades and the

persecutions of the Jews from Christendom. This was

reinforced by the constantly reoccurring blood libels and

coerced conversion which imposed silence on the Jews as

to their true identity and beliefs. For the first time

in Jewish thought and mystical creative imagination, God

was divided into male and female entities, groom and

bride. The Holy One blessed be He, the source of the

eternal written law, the symbol of the glorious past, and

the Shekhinah -“the world of speech", the oral law and the

transformative symbol of the torments of exile and

yearnings for redemption; the two dimensions of the

Godhead that were described in numerous metaphors, bride

and bridegroom, exile and redemption, beloved and her

lover, Shabbat bride and her beloved, all became the

37

subject of interest in the new "unifications and

intensions" appended to the old daily prayers and the

mystical narratives. The unifications were present in the

mystical exegetical writings which were part of the

endless effort to move from exile to redemption. Prayers

and blessings such as "Blessed are You, God, who returns

His Presence (shekhinato) to Zion" were commonly

pronounced. A paragraph in the Zohar (Book of Splendor)

begins: "One must prepare a comfortable seat with several

cushions and embroidered covers, from all that is found

in the house, like one who prepares a canopy for a bride.

For the Shabbat is a queen and a bride. This is why the

masters of the Mishnah were accustomed to go out on the

eve of Shabbat to receive her on the road, and to say:

'Come, O bride, come, O bride!' And one must sing and rejoice

at the table in her honor ... one must receive the Lady

with many lighted candles, many enjoyments, beautiful

clothes, and a house embellished with many fine

appointments'.

To welcome lovingly the Sabbath Bride in order to unify

the Holy One, Blessed be He and His consort, the Shekhinah,

38

or to liberate the Sabbath bride, the adorned one, the

beloved one, who is the exiled one, from her six days of

exile, had become the standard weekly ceremony and the

standard saying uttered before doing many of the

commandments. The result of this erotically charged

metaphor of unification and wedlock between the bride

(the "oral law" and "world of speech", the "community of

Israel in heaven and on earth") and the groom (the

"written law", "the world of thought") was the birth of

new souls and new hopes for redemption. Those who had

witnessed the perils to the persecuted bodies, created a

mysticism of love which is intended to create in turn

hope for those living and for the birth of new souls for

those to come. The mystics asserted through hints and

allusions that, when human unification is taking place as

demanded by the laws of purity and sanctity under wedlock

on the eve of the seventh day with the hope of giving

birth to newborn infants, a similar unification between

the heavenly male, the groom, and celestial female, the

Sabbath bride, is taking place in the heavenly realm

39

according to the metaphors of the Songs of Songs, all for the

sake of giving birth to new souls.

H.

After the expulsion of the Jews from Catholic Spain in

1492, when a third of the Jewish people were lost in the

travails of the expulsion, a third remained in the

Iberian peninsula as enforced converts, "Conversos" or

"Cristiano Nuevo" in Spanish. These were called Marranos,

pigs in Spanish, by their Christian neighbors. The

remaining third that managed to escape the tragic destiny

of their relatives by fleeing to Moslem countries,

developed a new kind of the mystical thought after

settling in the Othman empire and north Africa during the

course of the 16th century. The Shekhinah, the word which

had been used to denote the dwelling or settling presence

of God in heaven and on earth, that had become the symbol

of an exiled nation with no dwelling place of its own for

two thousand years and constantly expelled from its

temporary settlements time and again, was marked with

40

distinct female attributes in numerous mystical texts.

The feminine divine presence that was delineated as the

focus of mystical love and devotional adherence of the

desperate exiles, that became known as 'the world of

speech', 'the oral law', or the heavenly female divine

voice embodied as bride, as widow and as a mother, as a

captive and as an exiled divorced wife, now began to talk

or to reveal herself as a distinct voice in the

consciousness of the 16th Century great Jewish mystics who

had escaped from Spain and Portugal. The mystics imagined

her as a divine entity who spoke, embodying despair and

hope. They claimed that they had heard from her divine

messages relating to exile and redemption - in a

generation in which four thousands Jews were assassinated

in Portugal (Lisbon Massacre 1506), thousands were

baptized against their will to Christianity, countless

numbers of Jewish children were abducted from their

parents and educated as Christian priests and many

thousands were persecuted by the Spanish inquisition.18

She, the Shekhinah, is expecting them, the devoted students

of the legal tradition and the Zoharic mystical

41

tradition, to uplift and redeem her from the "trash and

dung hills" where she has been thrown into exile, through

their constant clinging to the study of the oral law and

the study of the mystical tradition.

A famous example of such mystical revelation, hundreds of

years after prophecy had ceased, is an experience that

took place on the eve of Shavu'ot, the Holiday of weeks and

covenants, the pinnacle of the sevenfold cycles of

freedom, discussed above as the ancient foundation of the

covenant. This experience occurred in Adrianople in 1553,

and is described in a letter of R. Solomon Alkabetz

(1505-1576) who described to his friends what he had

witnessed in the mystical circle of his teacher, R.

Joseph Karo (1485-1575) on the eve of the festival of the

renewal of the covenant. According to the Book of

Splendor, Sefer haZohar, this was the night that the bridal

covenant is taking place after seven weeks of

purification, the heavenly male [The holy One blessed be

He; the written law] and the heavenly female [the

Shekhinah, the oral law] described in the erotic words of

the Song of Songs are being united. On this night it was

42

common to stay awake all night and to read aloud

biblical texts, Mishnaic texts and Zoharic-mystical

sections which describe the ancient Sinai Covenant when

the divine law was revealed, as it took place on this

day thousands year ago. The context was a happy wedding,

the ritual celebration conducted by reading aloud

different sections of the written law (the Sinai

Revelation) and the oral law (the reading the relevant

sections in the Mishnah pertaining to the revelation when

the divine law was given and to the festival of harvest

which took place in the same day). Sections from the

Book of Splendor, describing the renewal of the covenant

between God and his people, between heaven and earth,

between the glorious past and the yearned for future when

redemption will come, in relation to a wedding

celebration, were also read. While all this ritual

reading was taking place with great celebration, R.

Joseph Karo, the leading teacher of the law and an

important scholar of Kabbalah, received heart rending

news concerning the horrific death of Shlomo Molkho

(1500-1532), burnt at the Stake in Mantua, Italy. The

43

Spanish Inquisition through its Italian branch burnt him

alive for attempting to reconvert to Judaism after he had

lived since his childhood in Portugal as a Marrano

(enforced convert).

On such a festive day, a day marked by rest and

happiness, one is not allowed to cry and mourn, thus the

combination of the unexpressed emotions generated by the

tragic news from Italy, contradicted and conflicted with

the happiest night of the year - the night of the divine

covenant on the eve of Shavuo't, the night of the

heavenly wedding between the Holy One, blessed be He, and

his celestial bride the Shekhinah, known as the one

"adorned with crown" . The beloved according to the

descriptions in the Song of Songs, as the "world of speech"

and the "oral law”- had generated an uncommon state of

mind or a cognitive dissonance, causing R. Joseph Karo to

lose his ordinary consciousness. At that stage an unknown

voice had spoken from his throat in a female enunciation.

The heavenly voice introduced itself in a cluster of

female descriptions: as the Mishnah, the oral law, as a

rebuking mother, as the crowned bride, the atara, as the

44

Shekhinah on whom it was said: 'Hence we find that,

wherever Israel was exiled, it is as if the Shekhinah was

exiled with them' (Mekhilta, ed. Horovitz-Rabin, pp. 52),

", as the Shekhinah that had left the Holy Temple after

the destruction, saying while crying: "Greetings to you,

house of my holiness; greetings to you, house of my

kingship; greetings to you, house of my glory. From now

on, peace be with you" (Lamentations Rabbati, petikhta section

25, ed. Buber F. 15a) and as his soul, neshamah:

Peace to you, my beloved friend. May you be happy…

in this world and may you be happy in the world to

come, for you have taken it upon yourself to crown

me this night, it being some years since my crown

[atarah]19 fell from my head and there has been no one

to comfort me—I have been cast into the dust,

clutching at trash. But now, you have restored the

crown to its former [glory]…and you have been

favored to be in the King’s palace and the sound of

your Torah and the breath of your mouth have risen

up before the Holy One Blessed Be He, breaking

through several firmaments and several atmospheres

45

until it ascended [there]. And the angels were

quiet, the seraphs were silent, and the [supernal]

creatures stood still, as the entire heavenly host

and the Holy One Blessed Be He heard your voice.

And I, the Mishnah, the mother who rebukes a man have

come to speak to you…through you, I have been raised

up this night….Accordingly, my son, be strong and of

good courage and rejoice in love of me, in my Torah,

and my awe. And if you could imagine but one

infinitesimal fraction of the suffering I endure…and

so, be strong and of good courage…and do not

interrupt your study….Therefore stand on your feet,

my beloved children, raise me up, and say loudly, as

on Yom haKippurim [Day of Atonement], “Blessed be

the Name of His glorious kingdom forever and

ever.”... And he [the voice] repeated and said, may

you be happy, my children, return to your study, do

not pause even for an instant, and go up to the Land

of Israel.20

46

The Shekhinah’s words resonate simultaneously with the

mournful tones of the Book of Lamentations (1:17, 21;

4:5), in which the daughter of Zion, cast into the dust,

keens over the destruction and exile, and with the hope

for redemption and exaltation heard in the voice of the

bride, the crown, preparing herself for the celestial

nuptial night—the night of the festival of Shavuot,

according to the Zoharic tradition, the night of renewal

of the covenant according to the ancient mystical

tradition. The Zoharic tradition compared the covenant at

Sinai to the marital covenant and saw the night of

Shavuo't (when the Torah was given) as the night of

nuptials between the sefirot of malkhut and tif’eret, (the

spheres of kingdom and glory) the bride and the groom, or

between the congregation of Israel and its beloved God.21

The words spoken by the celestial voice suggest a

jumbling of the upper and lower realms and depict a new

staging for the kabbalistic myth. The Shekhinah- “the

world of speech,” which reflects varying dimensions of

divine existence - comes to be understood no longer as a

redeeming entity but as an entity that is herself to be

47

redeemed. Man, who concentrates on the divine love (yihud

kudsha brich hu u-shkintei) while clinging to the Shekhinah, when

thinking and speaking during his studies, is now

understood not as an exile (gole) but as a redeemer (goel).

The Shekhinah simultaneously embodies the sefirah of

sovereignty (malkhut) and the congregation of Israel, the

bride and the exiled daughter of Zion. She is the fallen

captive, suffering in exile and pleading for redemption

during the six days of the week and the beloved bride

every seventh day of the Sabbath, the sacred day of

freedom, representing the time of redemption. Man, who

focuses his thought on the supernal worlds by means of

ecstatic love, clinging and mystical elevation, raises

his voice in endless speech of prayer and study. It is he

who may redeem her, he who raises her from her captivity

while hastening redemption for the earthly Jewish

congregation.22 From here on, the fall and rise, exile

and redemption, the tormenting existential experience and

the alternative imaginary yearned for existence, had

become an interdependent relationship between the upper

and lower realms. In the context of that relationship,

48

the Shekhinah is seen as a passive entity (exiled,

imprisoned, bound, fallen, a rejected bride, one with “a

fallen crown”), while man is seen as the active player

(“raising up” through his emotional love and redemptive

thoughts, “restoring the crown to its prior [glory],”

piercing celestial firmaments with his voice and

immigrating to the Land of Israel with his entire body,

unifying, adhering, and altering the relationships

between holiness and impurity in the upper and lower

realms). This mystical conception attributes decisive

theurgical significance to devequt (communion with God,

clinging to the Shekhinah) and to concentrating one's

deeds on the commandments in their mystical

interpretation, while concentrating one’s thought on the

supernal realms by means of prayer and study, associating

them directly to the redemption of the Shekhinah and to

her union with God in the supernal realms. In that light,

we can readily understand the high degree of importance

assigned to thought, speech and constant communion,

devequt, in the mystical tradition.

49

The demand that Karo should concentrate his thought and

feelings at all times in order to attain total, all-

encompassing focus on the divine presence in order to

hasten redemption typifies the Shekhinah’s words to him

throughout his book Maggid Meisharim: “Therefore, my son,

devote all your thoughts exclusively to My service, My

awe, and My Torah” (140); “Devote your heart constantly

and exclusively, at every moment and every instant, to

thinking of nothing but me, My Torah, and my service”

(138).

Love of God in the Jewish mystical tradition had formed a

bridge between the biblical past of the Pentateuch and

the Sinai covenant, the divine revelation in the Holiday

of Weeks/covenants and the eternal written law, and

between the mystical medieval tradition that elaborated

on the new reading of the Song of Songs that was revealed in

Sinai in Hag haShvuo't/ha-Shavuo't, as a love poem revealed in

Sinai relating the everlasting love (shvua'; covenant)

between God and his people, symbolized by the earthly

community of Israel, and its heavenly counterpart, the

Shekhinah. As noted above, the love imagery of the Song of

50

Songs was attached to the devotional love unto death of

the devoted Jewish believers who had committed communal

suicide with their loved ones at the beginning of the

Second Millennium as an act of fidelity, love and

devotion to God, known in Hebrew as Kiddush haShem or

sanctifying God's name. The same love imagery from the

Song of Songs had expressed more than any other symbol the

profound experience of exile of the earthly and heavenly

community of Israel, the beloved bride that turned to the

persecuted divorcee and chained woman, and the engaging

hopes for redemption from the captivity of exile in the

centuries that had followed. In the last few centuries of

the Second Millennium the communion with God or clinging

constantly to the Shekhinah had become the central focus

of the Jewish Mystical tradition that is known as

Hasidism.23 The mystical experience of devotional love

focused on the love of God and adhering to the Shekhinah as

the sole subject of contemplative concentration; had

expressed profound defiance and resentment against the

atrocities of the history of hatred and experience of

subjugation, as well as profound hopes for another world

51

of redemption and liberation. This imaginary world of

hope for redemption that transcended borders of reality

had existed only in the infinite mystical language of

creative imagination nourished by letters and numbers and

by the depth of written memory in a language that has 130

synonyms for the word trouble and has thousands of books

describing imaginary worlds.24 The mystical vision of the

love between God and the Shekhinah had been created with

letters and numbers in the mystical books that aspired to

describe the inner experience reflected in the invisible

world. This vision had delineated constantly the profound

gap between the way things are in the world of exile,

imprisoned by rational bondage of hate, persecution,

subjugation and discrimination, and the way they ought to

be where free imagination creates alternatives in an

irrational world striving for love, redemption,

knowledge, truth and justice, equality, dignity and

freedom.

NOTES

52

1 See: Rachel Elior, Jewish Mysticism, The Infinite Expression of Freedom, Oxford

2007.

2 R. Elior, "From Earthly Temple to Heavenly Shrines – Prayer and Sacred

Song in the Hekhalot Literature and its Relation to Temple Traditions",

Jewish Studies Quarterly, vol. 4,3 (1997), pp. 217-267

3 Carol Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, Atlanta 1985. Cf. idem, Shirot 'Olat

haShabbat '(=Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice'), in: Discoveries of the Judaean

Desert, volume XI, Qumran Cave 4, VI, Poetical and Liturgical Texts, part 1,

eds. E. Eshel, C. Newsom et. al., Oxford 1998, pp. 173-402.

4 Rachel Elior, The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism, Oxford 2004,

pp.1-29.

5 On the sevenfold calendar of Sabbaths see: J. VanderKam, Calendars in the

Dead Sea Scrolls: Measuring Time, New York 1998; On the religious significance

of the calendar, see: Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (n. 3 above);

Elior, The Three Temples (n. 4 above), pp. 40-60; 82-87.

6 4Q405, 19, lines 4-5 ;C. Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (n. 3 above),

p. 293, 295, 442 , 424.

7 On these concepts , see: Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice ( N. 3 above),

in the index pp. 449 -450 under spirit, angel, and justice; On their

significance cf. Elior, The Three Temples (n. 3 above), pp. 165-200.

8 Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation, in R. Elior, Jewish Mysticism (note 1 above),

pp. 28-29, cf. Sefer Yetzirah, ed. A. Kaplan, York Beach 1997, pp. 5, 44.

9 See: Kaplan, (note 8 above), p. 68 with my amendments.

10 On the Book of Creation See: G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, New York

1961, pp. 69, 75-77; R. Elior, Jewish Mysticism, The Infinite Expression of Freedom

(n. 1 above), pp. 26-29, 105-109 ; Y. Liebes, The Book of Creation, Tel Aviv

2000 [Hebrew].

11 See: G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, New York; Idem, Jewish

Gnosticism, Merkabh Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition, New York 1965.

12 Rachel Elior, "Early Forms of Jewish Mysticism", in: Cambridge History

Series: Jewish History: The Late Roman Period (ed. Steven Katz), Cambridge 2006,

pp.749-791.

13 On the Shekhinah see : G. Scholem, "Shekhinah: The Feminine Element in the

Divinity", in: idem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead, New York 1991, pp. 140-

196 .

14 See: Ra'anan S. Boustan, From Martyr to Mystic, Rabbinic Martyrology and the

Making of Merkavah Mysticism, Tubingen 2005 .

i

15 The rabbinic tradition maintains that R. Akiva was asked by the Roman

tyrant on the reason for his calm devotion at time of great agony when he

was executed to death by fire. He replied, " I rejoice at the opportunity

now given to me to love my God 'with all my life,' seeing that I have

hitherto been able to love Him only 'with all my means' and 'with all my

might,'" and with the word "One!" he expired (Yerushalmi, Berakhot ix. 14b, and

somewhat modified Bavli, Berachot 61b).

16 See: R. Chazan, In the Year 1096, The First Crusade and the Jews, Philadelphia

1996; I. Yuval, "Two Nations in your Womb", Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late

Antiquity and the Middle Age, Berkeley 2006.

17 See: I. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, (English translation by D. Goldstein), Oxford 1989.

18 Y. Baer, The History of the Jews in Christian Spain, (translated from Hebrew by L.

Schoffman), Philadelphia 1992.

19 Atarah (crown) is a well-known name for the Shekhinah in the mystical

tradition, related to her being understood in the Zoharic tradition as a

bride (cf. “the crown with which his mother has crowned him in the day of

his espousals,” Song of Songs 3:11).

20 Isaia Leib Horowitz, Shenei Luhot ha-Berit, part 2 (Amsterdam, 1649), Masekhet

Shevu’ot, Amud ha-Torah, 180a. Cf. Joseph Karo, Magid Meisharim, Petach Tikva

1990, p. 391. Maggid Meisharim, the journal kept by Rabbi Joseph Karo ,was

written in the middle third of the sixteenth century. The first of its two

parts was printed in Lublin in 1646; the second, complementing the Lublin

edition, was printed in Venice in 1649. A consolidated edition, including

both parts, was printed in Amsterdam in 1708. On the book and its author,

see the classic study by R. J. Z. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo – Lawyer and Mystic,

Philadelphia, 1980. . Cf. R. Elior, "Joseph Karo and Israel Ba'al Shem Tov",

Studies in Spirituality 17 (2007), pp. 267-319 .

21 On Shavuo't night in the Zoharic tradition as the nuptial night of theShekhinah and the Holy One blessed be He, and on tiqqun leil shavu`ot in

kabbalistic tradition, see Sefer ha-Zohar, ed. M. Margaliot, 1 (Jerusalem,

1951) 8a-9a; Y. Tishby, Mishnat ha-Zohar, 2 (Jerusalem, 1961), pp. 512-513,

529-532, 570-571; Y. D. Wilhelm, “Sidrei tiqqunim” [Order of tiqquns], in Alei Ayin:

minhat devarim le-sh-z shoqen [Essays in honor of Sh. Z. Schocken] (1948-1952),

pp. 130-143; Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, pp. 107-115, 141-153;

J. Liebes, “Ha-mashiah shel ha-zohar”,in: The Messianic Idea in Jewish Thought: A Study

Conference in Honor of the Eightieth Birthday of Gershom Scholem, Jerusalem 1982, pp.

111, 208-215 [Hebrew].

22 See R. Elior, “Messianic Expectations and Spiritualization of Religious

Life in the 16th Century,” Revue des études juives, 145 (1986), pp. 35-49;

reprinted in Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, (ed.

D. Ruderman) ,New York, 1992, pp. 283-298.

23 Rachel Elior, The Mystical Origins of Hasidism, Oxford: Littman 2006

24 In the National Library in Jerusalem, in the collection of printed

mystical books registered and catalogued in The Library of Gershom Scholem on

Jewish Mysticism- catalogue, (eds. J. Dan, E. Liebes and S. Reem), Jerusalem

1999, 12, 270 books and studies are mentioned .