Season 2: Episode 7 - The Lion's Roar

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I have always preferred myth to history, says John Cocteau, because history consists of truths which turn into lies, while myth consists of lies which turn into truths. While I cannot tell a lie, I love both myth and history, and I feel free to use them both, because I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Episode 7, The Lion's Roar So we left off last episode with a tension. And it's a tension that's an essential driver for the rest of our story, right down to this very day. The Beit Yosef, Rav Yosef Karo, had just completed his famous work, the Shuhan Aruch, the set table. And I described it as a monument to the power of tradition as the basis for authority. If a Jew wants to know what God, the sages, and the process of halachic development want from him in almost any given moment, if he goes looking for it in the Shulchan Aruch, he'll find it there.

The decisive voice of the past, processed, analyzed, and presented for clear action, will tell him what to do. Granted, there are whole sections of life, particularly life lived as a people in their land, which do not receive this treatment in the work of the Beit Yosef. But that's a problem we're going to have to discuss at another time. For now, the Shulchan Aruch and the edifice of halachic legal literature, which will grow upon its foundation over the coming centuries, are a counterweight to the driving force of modernity in which they find themselves, a force that seeks to undermine tradition as a source of authority, as it flees the past, for it dreams will be an ideal future. and this is what we labeled at the end of last episode as the descent of generations the further we move from Sinai the more the message gets garbled and the only hope we have to save ourselves from a millennia long game of broken telephone is the labor in the fields of the past striving to uncover the thoughts of the great ones who came before us you know, my first teacher in halacha in Jewish law was Rav Shukhi Reich, credit where credit is due.

And he told me this was true. He said that he'd sought out all of the great teachers of the past generation, Rav Salavechik, Rav Shach, Rav Tzvi Yehuda, and he was convinced that no one had replaced them. But he also loved to point out that there was a counterforce he had noticed to this dissent. He labored it the democratization of knowledge. There are more Jews per capita learning Torah today than there ever have been. And that includes the height of pre-World War II European yeshiva culture. And that's because the further we move from Sinai, the closer we come to redemption. And at what point does our standard of measure for the state of our people shift from what was to what might be? You know, I'm sure we've discussed what Arnold Toynbee, the great 20th century British historian, had to say about this, but I'm going to say it again.

Anyway, his magnum opus, A Study of History, is founded on the premise that civilizations are the unit of measure for historical development. And he goes at great length to prove this. It's a 12-volume set. And to label how many actual civilizations can be identified through time. Proud to say that we Israelites do make it on the list. And then he proceeds to chart the rise and fall of these various civilizations as they meld one into the next, which is where his thought becomes relevant to our episode. Because Toynbee makes the provocative assertion that a civilization can actually have passed the peak from rising to falling, even as it continues to grow. We want to take that one to heart. That growth, be it material, territorial, or cultural, is not a reliable measure for whether a civilization is actually moving forward, or whether it's just a dead man walking.

The true measure, says Toynbee, is whether they worship their ancestors or their pioneers. Does a society see its glory in the past which was, or in the future which has not yet come to be? And you know, we Jews were a problem for Toynbee, and not just personally, intellectually as well. He called us, along with the Inuit peoples of Alaska and the North Pole, a fossil civilization. In his vision, we were stuck in our musty tomes, searching for the wisdom of the past, or in our strange synagogues, chanting dirges of mourning over the destruction of our lost glory. But we certainly ought to have disappeared long ago. But my guess is that Toyinbi didn't appreciate the power of the mystic spirit in Am Yisrael.

Because just as the Beit Yosef gave a powerful form to the pillar of our civilization, civilization which looks to the past for its guidance, that sees tradition as the source of authority, so too the golden age of Svot produced a culture oriented towards seeking the experience of the divine voice in the present. And sure enough, along came a spiritual teacher, powerful enough to give a form and a voice to visit a longing that would return the experience of God in the present to its proper place as a source of authority alongside tradition. And this teacher was not a product of the radical skepticism that was undermining the faith of European culture. He had no intention to chuck the past in a headlong race for the future.

No, he was an embodiment of that powerful longing for redemption expressed by Jeremiah's cry to God at the end of Echa, the Book of Lamentations. Chadesh Yameinu Kekedem Renew our days as of old. But you know, Yeme Kedem aren't just the days of old. They're the days of yore. The hazy mists of time where myth meets the needs that history can't supply. And mythic thinking is going to be a keystone in understanding the coming phase of Jewish consciousness. and indeed the holy Arizal is a personality of mythic proportions. As one biographer of the Beit Yosef warns us, the biographies of famous rabbis are rarely more than a thin cloth of hazardous combinations of guesses wrapped around a meager skeleton of assured fact.

Now this was said by the biographer of Rabbi Yosef Karo, who lived for nearly 90 years, left behind a massive corpus of legal correspondence and even a spiritual diary. All the more so in the case of the Holy Arizal. His 38 years were lived in almost total obscurity until in his final two and a half he lit up the sky of Spott as the central figure of a mystical revival. And, to make it worse, he wrote down almost nothing, and certainly nothing about himself. We do, however, have a wealth of biographical material, or, perhaps more accurately, hagiographical material, which so elevates and idealizes the Arizal that the Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, who lies behind him, might just be lost to us. Now, it's worth noting that this type of hagiography is all but unknown in Am Yisrael before the Ari.

We've never been a people of saints, and we tend rather to subject our heroes to withering criticism, rather than worship. Maybe toward the end, we'll have some insight into what mean they are really different. But for now, it's fortunate for us that we have the Shem HaGedolim, a collection of biographic sketches of great rabbis compiled in the 18th century by the Jerusalem-born Rav Chaim Yosef David Azulay, also known as the Chida. And this, at least, according to scholars, can give us some foundational fragments of information. Shlomo Luria, the father of our hero came from Poland or Germany to the land of Israel sometime in the early 16th century and thus the name Rabbi Yitzchak Ashkenazi Luria because his ancestry was from Europe and according to the Chida, the title Ari, by which he is known means the godly Rabbi Yitzchak and wasn't used in his lifetime his mother's name is unknown All we know was that she was of Spardic ancestry.

And the young Nittrak was born to his father in Jerusalem, in the Holy City, along with at least one brother. But not many years later, tragedy struck and his father died, causing his mother to take the family down to Cairo, sometime we think before 1547. And there they lived in the home of his mother's brother, Mordechai Francis, who was a wealthy tax farmer. The Ottomans were ruling Egypt at the time, and much of the government's financial administration was actually in the hands of the Jews, not an uncommon phenomenon. So Francis took the young man under his wing, helped to start him in trade, and actually gave him his daughter in marriage. He also recognized the young man's gifts in Torah and introduced him to the chief rabbi of Karo, Rav David ben Shlomo ibn Zimra, also known as the Radbaz.

The Radbaz was from among the exiles of Spain, whose family had sought refuge actually originally in Sfat and then Jerusalem before settling finally in Cairo. And there he rose quickly to prominence as a legal scholar and when the Ottomans conquered Egypt in 1517 he was soon appointed chief rabbi of Egypt. Now his yeshiva was one of the most important of his day and the extensive halachic correspondence he preserves over 2,500 responsa showed that his voice had authority throughout the entire Mediterranean basin and beyond. And the young Yitzhak Luria must have progressed rapidly in his studies because we have his signature on a haskama, an agreement from 1557 signed by nine rabbis from amongst the Radbaz's students and Rav Yitzhak Luria is one of them.

It's actually interesting, this haskama. They agree to make all rabbinic appointments only by consent of the majority. They agreed to accept this binding and a decision made by Bate Dean, a court of three individuals appointed by their teacher. Fine, that's fairly standard. And then they pledged to treat each other with love, kindness, and honor. A pledge which included a commitment to confront any disrespectful behavior by one of their fellowship in word or deed within 24 hours. Now that's quite noteworthy. noteworthy, because it shows their commitment is not simply to the structures of the law, but also to each other as its embodiment. And this is important considering the role that Holy Fellowship is going to play in the Ari's future.

Interestingly, another of the signatories of this haskama, this agreement, is Rabbi Tzalel Ashkenazi, also known as the Shittim B'Kubetze, who succeeded the Radbaz when he left Egypt for the Holy Land as Chief Rabbi of Cairo. Rav Yitzchak Luria eventually became his student and we hear from the Chida that he collaborated on a section of the Shita which if you learn in Yeshiva much it is important to you which dealt with the Tractate of Zvachim it a manuscript that the Chiraz says was actually lost in a fire in Izmir later But meanwhile there are enough other traces in the Halachic and Talmudic literature that tell us that Rav Luria gained a mastery of Rabbinic knowledge from a fairly young age.

But where did he learn his mystical side? Well, first of all, we can certainly look to the Radbaz. Because in his flight from Spain, this sage brought with him more than the traditions of the great legal scholars of Iberia. He carried the mystic secrets of the Kabbalists as well. The Radbaz was the author of many Kabbalistic works, among them one on the meaning of the shapes of the Hebrew letters, another on the Song of Songs, and there were others. And even in his legal writings, one can see references to esoteric concepts, in particular to the idea of the transmigration of souls, a concept which would be central to the Ari's teachings in Svat, as well as to the way in which he lived his life. But Rabbi Yitzchak Ashkenaz Iluya did not become the holy Ari, the godly Rabbi Yitzchak, simply by learning from his teachers.

Sometime in the 1560s, the young scholar retreated from the world. He began to seclude himself on Jazirat al-Walda, an island in the Nile owned by his uncle and now father-in-law, for six days a week he sat alone, immersed in reading the Zohar, returning home only on Shabbat. And the Chida tells us that this seclusion lasted for six years. And it's all but certain that during this time the Ari began to develop the contemplative, meditative practices which were so central to his later teachings. So central, in fact, that his students came to see him not just as a link in the chain of mystic tradition who had received wisdom from his teachers, but as a prophet whose words were inspired by heaven. And under the influence of his teaching, these students would assert that only works written with such interpretation really constituted authentic Kabbalah.

This is probably a good time to pause and review a fundamental split in the definition of Kabbalah and its subsequent development, which has its roots all the way back in the 13th century of Spain. If you want the full picture, go back to Season 1, check out Episode 24. But for now, just remember that Kabbalah means received tradition. And Rav Moshe ben Nachman, the Ramban, was the elder statesman of Spanish Kabbalists in the late 13th century. He asserted that Kabbalah is exactly as its name implies, a received tradition. To the Ramban, the only source of authentic Kabbalah in the present is the oral tradition which has been handed down from reliable master to proper student through the generations.

And he makes this clear in his introduction to the commentary on the Torah. I quote, I do hereby firmly make known to him that my words will not be comprehended, nor known at all, by any reasoning or contemplation, accepting from the mouth of a wise Kabbalist speaking into the ear of an understanding recipient. Reasoning about them is foolishness. Thus, to the Ramban, the source of mystic knowledge is the exact same as the source of all Jewish knowledge, revelation to Moshe our teacher, and faithful transmission based on rabbinic authority. But, the Ramban's view on the origins of mystic knowledge and on the meaning of the very term Kabbalah was not the only perspective out there. Because Rav Abraham Abu Lafya was also a product of 13th century Spain.

And he established the set of practices which would eventually be known as prophetic Kabbalah. He called it this primarily in order to distinguish it from systems he saw as purely speculative metaphysics philosophies of mystic thought. Now, Rav Abraham Abu Lafya did not disagree with Ramban that Kabbalah could mean receiving a tradition. But in his eyes, it could also mean the reception of something far more precious, intimate communion with God. I quote, In order to understand my intention regarding the meaning of voices, I shall hand down to you the known Kabbalot. Some of them haven't been received from mouth to mouth from the sages of our generation, and others that I've received from the books named Sifre Kabbalah, Kabbalistic books, composed by the ancient sages, the Kabbalists, blessed be their memory, concerning the wondrous topics and other traditions bestowed on me by God, blessed be he, which came to me from God in the form of a Batkol, the daughter of a voice, literally, those being the higher Kabbalot.

so the Ramban and Rav Avulafia it seems that the tension in the definition of Kabbalah is simply the question from whom is knowledge received and once the Ari arrived in Tzfat he made it clear that the true mystic Torah was received from An Hai the Radbaz had long taught his students It is the intention of all of us to return and dwell in the land of Israel. It is only on this basis that we permit ourselves to dwell in Egypt, for otherwise we would be violating the command of the Torah. We are not in Egypt to settle permanently, but only to dwell here temporarily, and as soon as we are able, we shall go up to the land of Israel. And in 1570, Rav Yitzhak Luria took his teacher at his word. He went up not just into the land, but specifically to settle in Sfat, the living heart of Jewish mystical life.

In the previous episode, we painted a picture of Sfat as the home of the Beit Yosef, and the place in which he composed the Shulchan Aruch. And I emphasize that in an age which had begun to uncouple knowledge from tradition, and thus undermine the authority of antiquity, Rabbi Yosef Karo and the Beit Yosef he wrote, as well as the Shulchan Aruch, represented a bulwark in the name of tradition. But there was another side to Svat. It's the one that you're probably more familiar with. And even, by the way, to Yosef Karo himself, as we mentioned, he may have spent his days seeking wisdom in ancient texts, but he spent his nights striving to hear the voice of his Magid, who promised to reveal to him divine secrets.

And the Beit Yosef was not alone in this quest. Before the arrival of the Ari, the undisputed mystic master of Svat and perhaps of the Jewish world altogether was Rav Moshe ben Yaakov Cordovero also known as the Ramak. Now the name Cordovero tells us that his family originated in Cordoba, Spain and perhaps fled from there during the expulsion. His early life is basically a mystery. Scholars believe that the Ramak was either born in Svat or moved there at an early age. But we do know that the Ramak did not set out to be a master of the Kabbalah. He was known in his youth as a Talmud scholar, one with a mastery of Jewish philosophical thought. But, according to his own testimony, in the introduction to his great work, Pardes Rimonim, the Orchard of Pomegranates, in 1542, at the age of 20, the Ramach heard a bat kol, he heard a voice from heaven, and it urged him to study Kabbalah with his brother-in-law, Rav Shlomo Elkabetz, Alkabetz, the author of the poem L'Chad Dodi that we mentioned in the last episode.

And it was through the Alkabetz that the Ramak was initiated into the mysteries of the Zohar. Now, before we continue with the story of the Ramak, and of course, our main focus on Rav Yitzhak Luria, I'd have to take a little catwalk. Because for many people, Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah and Zohar, are all but synonymous. And that's largely due to the influence of the Rizal, and how completely he identified with the traditional author of the Zohar, Rav Shimon bar Yochai. So it's worth it to say a word about another perspective of what preceded him. And, since the 16th century, Sfat has so overshadowed the other great home of Jewish mysticism and early modernity, that our sketch should center on Italy.

You will recall, I hope, that Italy was a primary landing place for the exiles from Spain. and that they brought with them two critical elements that would shape their culture there, Kabbalistic thought and print technology. Go back to episode 3 in this season for the full picture, but for now, just remember that post-expulsion, Italy rapidly became the world center for Jewish printing. And when the Pope banned the printing of the Talmud in 1553, these printers weren't going to just simply shut down. In a strange twist of his intention, almost overnight, entire genres of Jewish literature, which until now had circulated primarily in manuscript, hit the press. And this, of course, included all of the books of Kabbalah.

Nearly every major work of medieval mysticism appeared in print at the Hebrew presses in northern Italy in the second half of the 16th century, including, of course, the Zohar. But it was far from dominant. In fact, according to the scholars, Zohar had little impact on the development of Italian Kabbalah, even after its first printing until the end of the 16th century. And this is due in part to the fact that Italian Kabbalists were much more universalist and rationalist than their contemporaries in Svat. As far back as medieval Spain, philosophy and Kabbalah were seen by some to have deep affinities, and the Italian Kabbalists had long associated the ten emanations these ten modes of relationship between creator and created that seemed to have a life of their own in the Kabbalistic literature they had associated them with the Platonic ideas and we have a report about Yisrael Saruk who was seen by some scholars as the first pupil of the Ari to return with his teachings to Italy before the 16th century was even over.

And I quote, And I have heard too from the mouth of the Kabbalist Rav Yisrael Sarug, an outstanding pupil of Luria, blessed be his memory, that there is no difference between Kabbalah and philosophy, and that all that Sarug taught about Kabbalah he interpreted through philosophy. Now I can imagine that the Ari would have been shocked to hear this about one of his students. Because in a sense, The absolute centrality of the Zohar in the teachings of the Rizal was reflective of his rejection of the speculative systems of Kabbalah and all the more so of his rejection of philosophy. The Zohar is hermeneutics at its most powerful. It sees the text of the Torah as the repository of all meaning, not philosophy.

It envisions the world as God and our actions as imbued with divine meaning and power In short it offering a mythic worldview not a philosophical system Remember the words of Rabbi Abulafiah, the father of prophetic Kabbalah. The Ayri was interested in the revealed aspect of Kabbalah, and he saw the life of the Rashbi, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the traditional author of the Zohar, and the esoteric Midrash of the Zohar, as the keys to these revelations. not philosophical speculation. There was another issue which divided Italian Kabbalists and those in Svad at this time, and that was that there had been a thriving Christian Kabbalah in Italy since the 15th century, and the Italian Kabbalists were unavoidably linked to it.

We may come back to the impact that the Kabbalah is going to have on Christian society, but for now, we have actual testimony to Rav Morso Cordovero's concern from over in Svad about the Christian Kabbalah that was happening to his contemporaries in Italy. I quote, Just as foxes had damaged the vineyard of God, Lord of the hosts, nowadays in the land of Italy, the priests studied the science of the Kabbalah and they diverted it to heresy because of our sins. And the Ark of the Lord's Covenant, the very science of Kabbalah, had hidden itself. But blessed is he who gave it to us, because neither they nor the Gentiles distinguish between right and left, but are similar to animals because ultimately they did not fathom the inner essence.

So, the remark seems to have been connected to the Kabbalistic development in Italy, despite his words in the previous paragraph. Because we know he sent a copy of his works to students and admirers there. And this itself was a significant difference from the stance the Ari would take when he rose to the head of the mystics in Tzfat. Yari commanded his students never to spread his teaching beyond their circle, and by no means to allow them out of the land of Israel. And we have evidence that they actually signed pledges swearing to abide by his words. So there's a tension, and actually an interplay, between Sfat and Italy, which deserves deeper consideration. But for now, our main story is back in the Sfat.

and the young Rab Moshe Kordavaro quickly mastered the Zohar under the tutelage of his brother-in-law the Alkhabits and then took on a much more daunting task he set out to systematize Kabbalistic thought leading up to his time with the hope of reconciling the various early schools with the teachings of the Zohar which he already saw to be the crown jewel of mystic thought his goal was to demonstrate an essential unity and consistent philosophical basis of Kabbalah, remember his early training, and to present it in an organized fashion. And he succeeded. The result was his first work, I already mentioned, Pardes Rimonim, The Orchard of Pomegranates, completed in 1548. And it was a work which established the Ramak as both a brilliant Kabbalist and a lucid thinker.

So when, two years later, he founded a yeshiva spot, all of the students of the Kabbalah gathered around him. and he was their acknowledged master until his death 20 years later. Now there are many questions about whether the Arizal was influenced by the Ramach's teaching, about whether the Arizal's teaching overtook and erased, so to speak, the Ramach's teaching, whether the Arizal was even a student of the Ramach. But according to tradition, the Holy Ari arrived in Sfat on the exact day of the funeral of Rav Moshe Cordova in 1570. He joined an unknown into the funeral procession, but he soon realized that he was different than everyone around him, even than the most exalted of the Ramach students, Rav Chaim Vital, because no one but the young Rav Yiddhach Luria saw the pillar of fire which preceded the Ramach's body as it was carried out through the streets of Sfat.

It was a sign. A sign which the Zohar called a revelation to the one who sees it. Not just a sign, a message. A message that the person who sees such a pillar is meant to inherit the leadership of the righteous one who has just departed the world. But the Arizal had not come to Sfat looking to become the master. At least, not of the entire city. On the contrary, his student reports later that he'd come looking for the chosen disciple to whom he could reveal his new teachings. And so, Rav Yitzchak Luria stayed in the background until six months later, when Rav Chaim Vital approached him. Chaim Vital was the ultimate hometown boy. He was a native product of the holy city of Svat. His father Yosef was a famous scribe amongst the Kablis of Svat.

and the Magi had actually informed the Beit Yosef that half the world existed by virtue of the Tefillin which Yosef Vittal wrote. Tradition has it that it was also the Beit Yosef who first recognized young Chaim's special potential and requested that his student Rav Moshe Al-Shich oversee the young man's education. And it would be the Al-Shich who at the end of his life would add Rav Chaim Vittal to that link in the chain of the attempt to renew rabbinic ordination. which may not have gone so far, but it went far enough to bind him in. In true swat form, Rav Chaim Vital dreamed of being a Kabbalist. And when I say dreamed, I mean he actually reports that a vision of Eliyahu Anavi, Elijah the prophet, came to him and is what drove him to become a student of the Ramach.

And he remained a faithful student until the very end, when after Rav Moshe Kordavar died, he was left without a master. Enter the Holy Arizal. Now, the relationship between these two is shrouded in mystery, legend, even controversy, particularly because everything we know about was written down, not everything, but most of what we know, by Rav Chaim Vidal himself. But at least we have a report of how they came together. It's from the Nagiru Metzaveh. It's a work written by Rav Yachot Tzema, 60 years after the Arizal's death. when I, Chaim came to my teacher of blessed memory to study this wisdom my teacher of blessed memory went to Tiveria and took me with him remember Tiveria is on the Sea of Galilee not far from the spot and when we were on a boat in the water opposite the pillars of the old synagogue my teacher of blessed memory then took a cup and filled it with water from between the pillars and gave me that water to drink and said to me now you will attain this, that wisdom.

For this water you have drank is from Miriam's well. And from then on, I began entering the depths of this wisdom. And Rav Chaim became the chief disciple among the students who gathered around the holy Arizal in Sfat. And they were more than just a circle of students. They were the Chavur HaKedisha, the Chavaraya Kedisha, the holy brethren. Now, we'll speak a little bit at the end about the actual content of the Rizal's teaching. But right now, I want to touch on the form in which they came into the world. Because the quote I just read from the Nagi Mitzade is fantastic in the literal sense. The Ariya and his students were not just learning esoteric wisdom and developing philosophical systems. They were living a mythic existence.

The dead spoke through their voices. Elijah appeared in their dreams, and they drank from Miriam's well. And most importantly, in the eyes of their teacher, they themselves were the inheritors, the incarnations of holy souls from the past. The transmigration of souls, Gilgul Nishamot in Hebrew, was not just a central teaching of the Rizal. It was a lived experience which can unfold for us his relationship to God, his students, and redemption. Rav Chaim reports that the Rizal was himself a spark of the soul of none other than the author of the Zohar, Rav Shimon bar Yochai, who, by the way, was held to be an incarnation of the soul of Moshe Rabbeinu himself. And, he further tells us that the members of the holy circle who had gathered around the Rizal were also manifestations of the circle of students who had gathered around Rav Shimon bar Yochai in the Zohar.

The Rizal's personal identification with Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai was so powerful that Rav Chaim Vitao describes in the Sha'ar HaGil Gulim, the gate of transmigration of souls, how one time the Ari took his students to the place where he believed that the Idra Rabba had occurred. This is one of the central revelatory events of the Zohar, which involves three of Rabbi Shimon's students ascending out of their bodies into heaven and dying. And the Ari sat himself in the place of the Roshvi of Rabbi Shimon, and positioned his students where he believed their sole ancestry located them amongst the students of the Roshvi. This circle of holy brethren with their master at the center were not simply the deepest mystics of their day.

In the eyes of their masters, they had all come into the world in order to complete the work which the master of the Zohar had begun. This is from Rav Chaim Vital's Sha'ar Ruach HaKodesh, the gate of holy inspiration. This wisdom has been concealed from the days of Rashbi, that's Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, peace be upon him, until now, as it is said, there is no permission to reveal them until the final generation. That's from Daniel. That time is now. For through our holy teacher, the holy saintly, our master of Yitzhak Luria of blessed memory, on account of the spirit of prophecy that appeared in him, our eyes have begun to become enlightened in the light of this supernal wisdom hidden from the eyes of all living beings.

There is a need for arousal on high from below so as to assist the arrival of the Redeemer so that it may take place quickly in our days. And redemption will occur by means of the revelation of the light of this wisdom mediated through the true saintly one. Peace be upon him. So with words of introduction like that, what exactly did the Arizal have to teach? Now, I have to make a very large caveat. I'm not a scholar of the Arizal, or even particularly a student of his writings. Furthermore, even if I were, his thought is too complex to lay out in half a dozen episodes, much less the tail end of this one. And what's worse, his wisdom is brought down in so many ways, often conflicting fashions, making a simple presentation all but impossible.

Nonetheless, I think it's critical to introduce a couple of concepts which in my eyes represent a shift in Jewish consciousness which will have real impact on our story going forward. And what's really most important to me is that you notice they all come to us as myth. so the Rizal begins in the beginning and in the beginning there was only the light of the infinite of the Ein And when the Ein determined to create the world the infinite withdrew its light from the center outwards in an act of Tzimtzum, of contraction of self, leaving a space in which to create. This is the first motion of creation in the Torah of the Rizal. So, of course, the question is why? One answer which is common amongst his students is that this act of making space was driven by God's desire to share a being.

L'hanchil lo hava yesh, to bequeath to my lovers existence, as it says in Proverbs 8.21. Because it's important to remember that all relationship is premised on separation. You don't have a relationship to your foot. It's part of who you are. God desired relationship. In order to have relationship, God needed to create other, and this required a space in which to do so. And therefore, the first motion of creation was a withdrawal of the divine light which filled all. In the next step, it's into this space that the Ein Sof radiated one ray of pure divine light as the means and substance of all creation. In some versions of this teaching, this light is known as Adam HaKadmon, the primordial man, which opens up for us so much of the Torah of the Rizal in its anthropomorphic and deeply mythic language.

But the vessels which were intended to receive this light were overwhelmed by even this small expression of the infinite, and they shattered. It's from the shards of these vessels and the sparks of the divine light which clung to them in their descent, that the complex infrastructure which includes our world is form. In the eyes of the Rizal, this was the original crisis of creation. This withdrawal of Tsimtsum to create space for other, the projection of light into the pure space and the failure of the vessels to hold, which caused the sparks of divine light to be trapped in the shards in the klipot of which our world is made. And it's important to note that all of this occurred completely independent of humanity.

And then, in his retelling of creation, a process of repair began, culminating in the creation of Adam Harishon, the first man. Adam had been recreated as a replica of the original divine will, expressed in that initial ray of light. And all the souls of humanity were bound up in him. and if Adam had withheld from sin until Shabbat the Rizal teaches that he would have been able to lift the world back up perhaps even higher than they were originally able to be but he failed and his sin caused a second breaking and now in addition to the sparks of divine light caught in the shards the soul sparks which participated with Adam in his sin has fallen amongst the klipot as well. As Gershom Shalom, the great scholar of mystic knowledge, puts it, Adam's sin replicated on an anthropological level what had occurred on a theological level in Shrirata Kelim, the shattering of the vessels.

And it's after this withdrawal to make space, and the projection of the divine desire that there be, and the failing of the vessels to hold in that shattering, that we can meet the other critical element of the Uri's teaching, tikkun, the power and obligation to fix the world. Now, tikkun, in light of everything we've said, involves two separate but related processes. On one level, it's the gathering of the divine lights, which have fallen into the realms of the shards of the klipot, as a result of that initial breaking of the vessels. On another level, it's the gathering up of all the holy souls, which were imprisoned in the klipot by the failure of Adam to listen to God. And in the teachings of the Rizal, the process of fixing the world is achieved when religious action is done by pure souls who are able to focus on the cosmic dynamics that can take place through acts of devotion done with right consciousness.

In other words, a person who does the mitzvot, who prays, who follows the instructions of the Rizal, understanding that what they're doing is fixing the world below and above, brings about redemption. The Rizal saw each person to be in the position of Adam Arishon, where each and every one of us in need of fixing our own souls, in order that we can return to the proper state and fix the world. And this is why there are so many reports from his students of how the Rizal would identify the sins of a person by seeing them written on their forehead or other esoteric ways, and why he played the role of a physician of the soul to his holy circle of students. He was constantly recommending what he called tikune avonot, the mending of sins, often involving heavy burdens of fasting and other ascetic practices.

And these were not just for the personal good of his students, nor was he exercising his power by punishing them for the wrongs they'd done. these tikune avonot these fixings of their personal sins were the first step of personal tikun which would allow them to receive the esoteric knowledge he could give them which in turn would empower them to fix the world and this empowerment of the individual to fix God's manifest present in the world to actually bring redemption is what in history will finally move us out of the subject-object model of medieval religion into the subject-subject model of modernity. It's no longer adequate as a religious person to do what we're told. We can't be the passive recipients of the divine command waiting, sitting on our hands until redemption comes.

Life has flipped, so much so that it's now God who passively awaits our completion of creation. It's conscious human action through Torah and mitzvot and the teachings of the Ari, which will bring redemption. Now, going forward in our story, this type of empowerment is going to open the door for all kinds of behavior. After all, if I'm really a subject, I can exercise my subjectivity, not just by choosing to obey or moving the world toward redemption, but also by choosing to disobey, or even by choosing to propose entirely new rules, like God is dead, or sin is holy. Once more, in the words of Gersh Mshalom, the process of tikkun corresponds to the process of mundane history. The historical process, and its innermost soul, the religious act of the Jew, prepare the way for the final restitution of all the scattered and exiled lights and sparks.

One last word on why, in my eyes, it's so important that the Arif follows in the footsteps of the Zohar in creating a mythology as a framework for his teachings rather than a philosophy. Always remember that the mystic is seeking the face of God. And therefore, mystical systems can at best be a finger pointing the way. But if you start to worship the finger instead of God, well, they're a barrier. They're not just a barrier, they're idolatry. And I'll give the last word on myth, for now, to Wendy Doniger, author of a book with a wonderful title, The Implied Spider, Politics and Theology in Myth. And she says a myth is a much retold narrative that is transparent to a variety of constructions of meaning.

This transparency, the quality of a lens, allows a myth, more than any other form of narrative, to be shared by a group, who as individuals have various points of view, and to survive through time, through different generations, with different points of view. And indeed, the richness and variated nature of the teachings of the Rizal carry us down to this very day. so the Ariv fell victim to a plague which swept through the Galilee in the summer of 1572 and he died having only been an active teacher for two and a half years at the age of 38 and the community of disciples which had gathered around him that holy brotherhood whose souls he sought to mend in order that they in turn could heal the world was left without a teacher Rav Chaim Vital despite the difficulty of his relations with some of the other students attempted to gather a new circle around him but to no avail and despite the Arizal's desire and his command that his teachings remain locked up amongst his students they began to spread almost immediately upon his death the stories told that while Rav Chaim Vital was on his deathbed in the spring of 1620 one of his students managed to bribe Rav Moshe, his younger brother with 500 gold coins to lend him Rav Vital's writings.

Rav Moshe brought out a large part of his manuscripts, and a hundred scribes were immediately engaged. In just three days, they were able to reproduce more than 600 pages. Now you should know that the Rizal, on his deathbed, also told his students that they never really understood one thing he taught them. But the first printed edition of these works was known as the Shmona Sha'arim, and they still circulate. amongst some Kabbalists today. However, the best-known version was published later under the title of Eitz Chaim, the Tree of Life. And in addition to attributing all the words in the contents to the Rizal, of Chaim Vital's holy teacher, the Eitz Chaim also says that it's one of God's greatest pleasures to witness the promotion of the teaching of the Kabbalah, since this alone can assure the coming of the Messiah.

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