Origins of the Kabbalah by Gershom Scholem

Author:Gershom Scholem [Scholem, Gershom]
Language: ita
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2007-12-08T21:20:17+00:00

The First Kabbalists in Provence 245

dah Halevi formulated it in one of his poems, an encounter: "As I

went towards you, I found you on the road towards me."'94

It is entirely possible that here, too, the two elements come to-

gether. Only in extreme cases does the encounter of the human and

the divine will assume an unequivocally clear form that is entirely

magical or altogether free of magical elements. The history of the

doctrine of the kawwanah among the kabbalists may serve as a typi-

cal example of the various possibilities latent in every mystical doc-

trine of prayer. Already in the case of the first Spanish kabbalists,

among the disciples of Isaac the Blind, the magical elements in their

doctrine of the kawwanah occasionally come to the fore, as we have

seen. Similar elements are discernible in the "mysteries of the

prayer" of the German Hasidim, in that he who prays must think of

the various names of angels as they relate—in respect to the mysti-

cism of words and numbers—to the words of the traditional prayer.

But in the earliest kabbalist circles, as far as our information ex-

tends, this magical element is missing; at least it does not manifest

itself openly.

The teaching of the mystical kawwanah in prayer corresponds

perfectly, it seems to me, to the objective and psychological condi-

tions surrounding a doctrine born into an exclusive circle of men

who possess the gift of meditation. With it, a new layer is added to

the old gnostic elements that were contained in the tradition of the

Bahir, elements that these men continued to develop in greater de-

tail. The creation of this doctrine bears the seal of the vita contem-

plativa. No element of the old Kabbalah better corresponds to the

tradition of a revelation of Elijah, and we may regard this tradition

as testimony that in this circle something really new had burst forth

from the depths. An indication, if not an absolute proof, of this con-

nection may be found in the fact that the remarks concerning the

revelation Elijah is supposed to have vouchsafed to Isaac the Blind

or his teachers are found precisely in texts in which the kawwanoth

of prayer were collected by the Spanish kabbalists at the end of the

thirteenth century.95 No other specific doctrine among the kabbalists

94. Besethi liqrathekha, liqrathi mesathikha; cf. Diwan des Jehuda Halewi, vol. 3, ed. Brody (1910), 151.

95. Gilluy 'Eliyahu is discussed in connection with the mysticism of prayer by Shemtob ibn Gaon, Kether Shem Tob, printed in Ma'or wa-Shemesh (1839), fol. 35b;

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