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

255 Pages·2000·7.06 MB·English

by  Elliot R. Wolfson

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