The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice by Yaacob Dweck, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ; ISBN 978-0-691-16215-7 ©2011 (paperback edition ©2014), $24.95, p. 235, including appendices, bibliography, and index
By Fred Reiss, Ed.D.
WINCHESTER, California–Kabbalah is the hidden and esoteric theology of Judaism. Kabbalists believe that Moses received this secret wisdom on Mt. Sinai at the same time that God delivered the Torah and oral tradition to him. They further say that worthy individuals handed down this otherworldly knowledge by word of mouth to other select students until Simon Bar Yohai, a first century sage, produced a commentary on the Hebrew Bible, the Zohar, containing the salient features of Kabbalah concealed behind parables, allegories, hidden symbols, and vivid images. Over time, the Zohar has become as valued to kabbalists as the Talmud is to traditional Jews.
Scholars disagree. They point out that much of the essence of Kabbalah matches a number of prominent points in Greek philosophy, particularly Pythagoreanism and Neoplatonism. The core principles of these philosophies include such things as the existence of a demiurge, godly emanations, and transmigration of the soul. From a historical point of view, Kabbalah is neither Greek philosophy nor normative Judaism; it is a unique product of the two. Scholars also reject an early age for the writing of the Zohar and attribute its authorship to Moses de León, a thirteenth century Spanish Jew.
Kabbalah is both theory and practice. In theory, one school of kabbalists, Ma’aseh Bereshit, seeks to explain the secrets of creation portrayed in Genesis 1 by understanding how God spoke the Hebrew alphabet. Since humans speak and are created in the image of God, these kabbalists believe that by properly combining and speaking the Hebrew letters, people can become creators as well. A second school, Ma’aseh Merkavah, searches for knowledge of God’s heavenly palace and throne by investigating the meaning of Ezekiel’s vision of the heavens (Ezekiel 1).
In practice, kabbalists employ gematria (Jewish numerology), write esoteric sayings to include in amulets to effect healing or ward off the “evil eye,” compose new prayers, and invest fresh meaning in biblical passages. As one important example, we have sixteenth century kabbalists to thank for the Lecha Dodi prayer sung on Friday evening during the Kabbalat Shabbat service.
As Jews dispersed throughout the Roman Empire, they brought knowledge of Kabbalah to Jews in other countries. Some settled on the Iberian Peninsula and under Muslim rule developed a “Golden Age” in which erudition grew, including the study of Kabbalah. Many Jews chose exile after the Spanish Inquisition’s demand for conversion to Catholicism in August 1492, settling in such places as Italy and the Ottoman Empire.
Yaacob Dweck, Assistant Professor of History and the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University and author of The Scandal of Kabbalah, examines the anti-kabbalistic polemics of (Judah) León Modena (1571-1648), especially his treatise Ari Nohem (The Roaring Lion.) Born in Venice into a politically active and erudite family of French ancestry, León, whom Margolis and Marx call “versatile, but unstable,” was compelled to make a living through odd jobs, including preaching, teaching, and proof-reading, owing to the loss of the family fortune from frequent migrations and his own gambling habits.
Dweck tells us that Modena’s daughter Diana married Jacob Levi, a scholar and kabbalist, in 1613. The two men fought bitterly over the value of Kabbalah and the authorship of the Zohar. Jacob responded to his father-in-law’s doubts in a book he completed before 1620, which circulated as a manuscript. Despite disagreements, the two of them held a close bond, especially after the birth of his grandson, Isaac, in 1621. Modena’s son-in-law died of the plague in 1629, and soon after he took charge of Isaac, raising him as his own son. In the winter of 1633, with his grandson acting as transcriber, Modena completed his treatise arguing against Kabbalah, which he produced in manuscript form.
Although printed works enjoyed a greater circulation in seventeenth century Venice and provided some compensation for the author, they also came under greater scrutiny from the Inquisition, so manuscript “served as the preferred medium not only for subversive texts about magic and sex, but also for potentially seditious works about religion and politics.” One need only recall the fate of Paolo Veronese, Galileo Galilei, and Giordano Bruno, Modena’s contemporaries, to understand the power of the Roman Inquisition at that time.
Dweck informs us that Modena, in Ari Nohem, did not so much oppose the exegesis in the Zohar as he did the belief that the Zohar was written in antiquity, that it seemed to supplant Jewish law, and that it became available, unsupervised, to a wide audience. However, Italian Jewry by and large rejected the modernity of the Zohar and some rabbis, particularly in Northern Italy, argued that once committed to writing, Kabbalah became public knowledge.
Modena staunchly defends his own version of Judaism, which hinges on Maimonides’ great twelfth-century work Guide of the Perplexed and unwaveringly rejects any notion that Maimonides held kabbalistic beliefs. Yet, Guide of the Perplexed is a book in which Maimonides argues against biblical anthropomorphisms, presents an Aristotelian view of the universe brought into harmony with Jewish beliefs, and offers indirect and hidden explanations of Ezekiel’s vision. To resolve this conflict, Modena asserts that there are “Secrets of the Torah,” which Moses received, but are now lost. Only through Maimonides’ own intellectual capacity were a portion of those secrets rediscovered.
In The Scandal of Kabbalah, Dweck identifies the critics of Maimonides enumerated in Ari Nohem and explains the strategies Modena uses to defeat their arguments, focuses on the selections from Guide of the Perplexed that Modena relied on in producing Ari Nohem, and discusses the distinction between Kabbalah and philosophic knowledge.
In Ari Nohem’s final chapter, Modena confronts Christian Kabbalah by attacking the deceased non-Jewish polymath and early embracer of Kabbalah, Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who lived in late fifteenth century Florence, as representative of all Christian kabbalists. Dweck details Christian Kabbalah’s place in Venice at this time, and clearly explains that Modena perceives Christian Kabbalah as a direct threat to Judaism, owing to the fact that Jewish converts to Christianity put kabbalistic notions into writing, thereby explaining Christian dogma through Judaism, just as early Christians had done when they co-opted the Hebrew Bible to explain how Jesus is the Messiah.
The last several chapters of The Scandal of Kabbalah follow the influence of Ari Nohem in Modena’s postmortem years, beginning in 1648. Dweck shows that scribes continued to copy Ari Nohem for at least two centuries after his death, with evidence that copies reached as far away as Worms.
Dweck poignantly shows that Ari Nohem is primarily an attack on the Jews of Venice for turning their backs on rational Judaism, articulated by the “golden eagle” Maimonides, and for embracing kabbalistic books as representative of normative Judaism, particularly the Zohar. Modena did not live long enough to hear Sabbatai Tzvi, on Rosh Hashanah 1665, announce that he is the Messiah, but as feared by Modena, there is little doubt that untutored knowledge of Kabbalah nurtured Tzvi’s ambitions and gave rise to his popular, but failed, movement.
Ari Nohem also played a role fighting the eighteenth century mystical movement known as Hasidism and was employed by scholars in the nineteenth century’s European Jewish Enlightenment. Yet, Dweck calls Ari Nohem a failure because it did not prevent Modena’s grandson from becoming a user and transmitter of kabbalistic ideas, or dissuade his student and closest associates from being devoted kabbalists, or even impede the swiftness with which Kabbalah gained in popularity. But the failure might not have been his. Kabbalah is emotional; rabbinic Judaism logical. Logic does not fight emotions well.
León Modena is hardly a Jewish household name and the time and place in which he lived are overshadowed by such imposing events as the Inquisition, the re-admittance of Jews to England under Oliver Cromwell, the destruction of Safed, and the messianic pretensions of Sabbatai Tzvi. Yet, Yaacob Dweck brings to life this little-known figure, for which we owe him a debt of thanks. Additionally, he not only presents a clear analysis of Ari Nohem, but provides us with an excellent study of the confluence of pro and anti-kabbalistic persona and forces bearing down on seventeenth century Italian Jewry.
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Dr. Fred Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. He is the author of The Standard Guide to the Jewish and Civil Calendars; Ancient Secrets of Creation: Sepher Yetzira, the Book that Started Kabbalah, Revealed; and a fiction book, Reclaiming the Messiah. The author can be reached via fred.reiss@sdjewishworld.com.