Joseph Caro (Yosef Karo) And the First Tikkun Leyl

 The Cast List

Joseph Caro 1488-157, Toledo, Turkey & Safed

Author of the Shulhan Arukh, other legal works and mouthpiece through which an angelic heavenly voice (a Maggid) recited Maggid MeiSharim.

 

Shlomo Alkabetz c. 1505–1584 Safed & Jerusalem.

Author of a number of Kabbalistic works and, most famously, the Lekhah Dodi. He was the brother-in-law and teacher of Moses Cordevero.

 

Sources

The meeting that this letter records was probably written in Nikopolis between 1529 and 1534.

The Hebrew text comes from the introduction to Maggid Meisharim. The English is from L. Jacobs, The Jewish Mystics (also Jewish Mystical Testimonies).

 

Possibilities of Understanding the Letter

 

I . Nonsense

Rabbi Solomon abi Ad Sar Shalom Bazila of Mantuah (1680-1749)

Emunat Hachamim

Either the Rabbi Karo was utterly wicked and invented these things from his heart or else he must assume that Rabbi Karo never wrote these things but others invented them and attributed them to a great man, similarly the telling of the Shavuot vigil must be assumed to be a forgery.

(btemah – Bazila doesn’t mean this to be taken literally)

 

II . Psychology

Automatic speech, motor speech, automatism

 

R. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, Lawyer and Mystic (1962)

Epileptoid type, affected by a chronic hallucinosis but with perfect maintenance of the total personality. (p. 284)

 

J. Pratt, The Psychology of Religious Belief 10-11

For consciousness cannot be adequately represented by a geometrical point without extension and with no varying grades of intensity, but should rather be symbolised by field of vision, which has a focal point of clearest sight and a marginal field extending out from the center indefinitely with no clearly marked outer limit.

 

Werblowsky

The Maggid [serves] as a compensatory function necessary for the maintenance of a psychological equilibrium throughout a life dominated by a tremendous intellectual and spiritual ambition, calling for extraordinary energy and discipline of abnegation in addition to he normal rigours of ascetic piety as imposed by Kabbalistic theology.

 

The Maggid is the shadow, the unexpressed alongside the expressed, alongside the halacha lies the mystical experience.

 

III . The Personification of Torah

'I am the Mishnah'

Israel Ben Jospeh Al-Nakawa, (d. 1391),

Menorat Ha-Meor Ed. Enelow Ot 213

A story about a Hasid who was alone in a certain place and he learnt there Tractate Haggigah. And he went over it and over it many times until he knew it well and it flowed in his mouth, and he knew no other Talmudic Tractate, and he would repeat it day and night. When he died he was alone in his house and no-one knew of his death. Then came an image of a woman and stood before him and raised up her voice wailing and eulogizing and weeping and crying out until a multitude were gathered around. And she said ‘praise this Hasid and bury him and honour his casket and you will all be remembered for eternal life, for this one honoured me all his days.... Immediately all the women sat with her and they made a great and mighty eulogy and the men made busy with funeral garments and all the burial needs and they buried him with great honour, while that woman wept and cried out. They said to her, ‘what is your name’. She said to them ‘My name is Haggigah.’ When the Hasid was buried, she disappeared from their sight. Immediately they knew she was Tractate Haggigah who had appeared before them in the form of a woman.

 

What is the border line between a person and their Torah?

 

IV. Nevuah Katanah

Techniques of using dreams to receive Divine advice

Techniques of emptying self in order to receive, we have a sense of recitation of Mishna as rote, as an effective technique.

 

TB. Brachot 55b

If a person gets up early and a verse falls into their mouth - this is minor prophecy

 

V. Chaim Vital

Chaim Vital - Shaarey Kedusha 3:5

Vital informs how one should prepare to receive to receive a vision… 'then the imaginative faculty will turn one’s thoughts to imagine and picture as if it had ascended in the higher worlds up to the roots of their soul. Eventually the imagined image reaches its highest source and there the images of the heavenly lights are imprinted on their mind as if they imagined and saw them in the same way they picture ‘normal pictures’ deriving from the world

 

This is the 'contemplative as if', Werblowsky p. 69

 

Chaim Vital Sefer HaGilgulim  (Frankfurt 1684) p32b

And now let us explain the subject of prophecy and the Holy Spirit … It is impossible that anything that comes out of a person’s mouth should be in vain … for every word that is uttered creates an angel … Consequently when one leads a righteous and pious life, studies the Law and prays with devotion, then angels and holy spirits are created from the sounds which they utter and these angels are the mystery of the maggidim.

 

'Vital's opinion of Karo's Maggid is thus in perfect keeping with his general theory, which is based, like most kabbalistic speculation on a really terrifying conviction of the potency and significance of every human act.' Werblowsky p.78

 

Concluding Thoughts

The repeating of holy texts (Mishnah) is an act of speech (Dibur). Speech is how one (both human and Divine) manifests in this Universe (Shekinah), and is connected to the sfera Malkut. This is where the Divine emanation is most immanent, perhaps so immanent that it can be heard as automatic speech (Maggid).

Mishna = Dibur = Shekinah = Malkut = Maggid

 

For too many years a tendentious and one-sided picture of Judaism as a religion of pure reason and sweet reasonableness has been assiduously fostered and spread. The lack of irrational paradoxes, the absence of manifest absurdities (or so it seemed) and a soberness which knew of no dizzy raptures at the brink of mystical abysses were brandished by apologists as marks of the incontestable superiority of Judaism. To the lovers of paradoxical profundity these vaunted virtues were of course, only proof conclusive of spiritual poverty. Werblowsky p.290

Homes for Ukraine – a New London Response and a Briefing from the Jewish Community Taskforce on Ukrainian Refugees (Co-ordinated by the Jewish Leadership Council)

 

Our thoughts and prayers remain with the people and the country of Ukraine. We are mindful of the enormous outflowing of offers of support, and the ‘wait’ in expectation that the United Kingdom will be able to open its borders to welcome in some of the millions who have been displaced.

 

We are not collecting funds or goods. If you have funds you wish to donate, we recommend World Jewish Relief’s Ukraine Crisis Appeal - https://www.worldjewishrelief.org/ways-to-donate/appeals/1267-ukraine-crisis-appeal (confirming this is a non-parochial appeal, funds will be used to support both Jewish and non-Jewish individuals) And Masorti Olami who are working to support displaced members of Masorti’s Ukrainian communities - https://www.facebook.com/masortiolami.

 

We are also not looking to collate offers of housing for refugees arriving in this country, such offers of support are being co-ordinated by WJR, please see the briefing below.

 

We are looking for a volunteer(s?) to help co-ordinate other offers of support and assistance. These may include offers of household goods / clothing / friendship / legal support etc. We will be shortly setting up an opportunity for members who have other offers of support and assistance to do that. If you are able to volunteer to help co-ordinate our response please do let me know rabbi@newlondon.org.uk.  

 

What follows is a Briefing from the Jewish Community Taskforce on Ukrainian Refugees (Co-ordinated by the Jewish Leadership Council).

 

Rabbi Jeremy

--

 

This document aims to explain the details of the Government’s “Homes for Ukraine” refugee sponsorship scheme, its implications for the community and how we can coordinate to facilitate individuals within/connected to the Jewish community to participate as hosts.

 

Please can we ask you to share this document with your stakeholders (e.g. trustees, other staff members, clergy) and for them to communicate this with their audiences (i.e. the broader public connected to the Jewish community) – it will also be made available on our website https://www.thejlc.org/ukraine. We will continue to keep you updated as and when developments happen via regular briefing documents, our website and social media. Please feel free to share our social media posts or to ask me for a copy of the text used that you can adapt for your brand.

 

1. Homes for Ukraine Scheme - Details

 

As you may have seen, various policy announcements were released to the media regarding the Government’s Homes for Ukraine Scheme over the weekend. Michael Gove will be laying out the details of the scheme in Parliament later this afternoon, but following meetings between civil servants, politicians and World Jewish Relief over the weekend, we think that most of what there is to know at this stage has already been released. The details of the scheme that are known at present are as follows:

 

Homes for Ukraine scheme details:

• People in the UK will be able to nominate a named Ukrainian individual or family to stay with them for at least six months rent-free
• Hosts and refugees will be vetted (i.e. DBS checks for hosts) to ensure the scheme is safe
• Refugees coming through this scheme will be supported through local authorities who will receive £10.5k per refugee + more for schoolchildren
• Hosts will receive £350 a month from the government as a “thank you”
• The earliest refugees will start to arrive is in about two weeks’ time.

 

What we don’t know:

• How school places will be allocated to children
• How refugees are going to get here – World Jewish Relief have not been told who will be paying for / arranging flights
• How organisations (as opposed to individuals) such as charities, synagogues and other groups can sponsor refugees – information on this will be released at a later stage
• Anything else that is an unknown unknown – this is a rapidly changing context and we will keep you updated on other announcements as and when we hear of them

 

Registration process:

• Potential hosts will be able to register their interest in hosting a refugee on the government website today – we will circulate the link once it has been released
• In order to sign up more formally they will need to have the name of the refugee/family they would like to help
• World Jewish Relief have offered to seek to coordinate the process of matching a refugee with Jewish community members willing to host (see more information below)
• Therefore, potential hosts should also register interest with World Jewish Relief to be potentially matched with a refugee / family (see more information below)

 

2. Jewish community involvement via World Jewish Relief:

 

As mentioned above, potential hosts will need to register via the Government with the name of the refugee or family they would like to sponsor. World Jewish Relief are well placed to try and provide a matching service, where they can provide names of suitable refugees that they are in contact with on the ground to members of the community to offer to host. World Jewish Relief are launching an expression of interest form so that individuals can let them know if they are willing to host refugees in their homes and they can start the process of trying to match them. To ensure a coordinated response, please circulate this link amongst your audiences / stakeholders:

 

https://www.worldjewishrelief.org/news/1291-homes-for-ukraine

 

As part of the full application process, World Jewish Relief might be able to look at including questions around religious observance of the potential host family to ensure suitable matches if at all possible.

 

Jewish community response summary:

• World Jewish Relief is the best placed organisation in the community to seek to coordinate matching of potential hosts with Ukrainian refugees (including Jewish refugees who might be looking to come to the UK). This will be done via their website and an expression of interest form is due to go live today.
• World Jewish Relief hopes to provide additional assistance  to refugees being hosted by the Jewish community to ensure a successful integration process, supporting both refugees and their hosts. In the longer term, World Jewish Relief also hopes to offer an employment programme to help Ukrainian refugees find work in the UK.
• The Jewish Community Refugee Taskforce will continue to explore collectively how we can support refugees through making them feel welcome, helping meet their immediate needs, supporting integration and longer term housing and employment assistance. Further meetings are planned for this week.

 

World Jewish Relief is a small organisation working at pace to ensure the Jewish community can respond swiftly and effectively. Please refer any questions from your key stakeholders to Michelle Mitchell at the JLC (michelle.mitchell@thejlc.org) so that she can help them respond to enquires coming in from individual members of the public. Thank you.

 

On Ukraine - Buber and Gandhi

 

Martin Buber was, of course, one of the great figures in 20th C Jewish Thought. His most popular work, I-Thou, written in 1923, is probably the single best-selling book of Jewish thought published in the last century, read by millions.

 

Born in 1878 in Vienna, Buber was raised by his grandfather in Lvov – that city whose national affiliation has ebbed and flowed so over the last century, as anyone who has read Phillipe Sands' remarkable East-West Street will know.

Lvov is now, of course, Ukrainian, that is to say, all our thoughts are drawn to the besieged nation of Ukraine. Ahh.

In 1930 Buber was appointed professor in Frankfurt, but resigned from the post immediately after Hitler's election as Chancellor in 1933. Buber loved the Germany he knew before the rise of Nazism. Beginning in 1925 he worked with that other giant of Jewish thought of the age, Franz Rosenzweig, on a translation of the Jewish Bible into German that could challenge Luther's translation. But in 1933 he turned towards trying to provide strength to the Jewish community. He founded the Central Office for Jewish Adult Education, which became increasingly important as the Nazis banned Jews from public education and lingered in Germany as long as he could, but by 1938 at the age of 60, Buber knew he had to leave. He moved to Jerusalem and spent the rest of his career at the Hebrew University.

 

Mahatma Gandhi was, of course, one of the great figures of the last century, A towering political genius and a man of extraordinary bravery. And a man deeply committed to a very particular vision of how to improve the world. At the heart of Gandhi's worldview was Satyagraha - non-violence. It was how Gandhi fought for the rights of human beings in the country of his birth - South Africa and, of course, in the independence movement in India, the movement to which he gave his life.

Gandhi had Jewish friends and fellow journeyers in South Africa, particularly Hermann Kallenbach who helped found the Tolstoy Farm. And the suffering of the Jews under Nazi rule clearly weighed heavily on his mind. In November 1936 Gandhi wrote, in his weekly Harijan newspaper;

 

"My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions."^[1]

 

And he wrote to advocate non-violent resistance to the Nazis, by the Jews of Germany.

 

"Can the Jews resist this organized and shameless persecution ? Is there a way to preserve their self-respect and not to feel helpless and forlorn ? I submit there is.”

 

Gandhi suggested the plight of the Jews of Germany had much in common with the Indians of South Africa who had harnessed the remarkable power of Satyagraha. And he urged the Jews of Germany to change the heart of their oppressors in the same way. In fact, Gandhi wrote,

“The Jews of Germany can offer Satyagraha under infinitely better auspices than the Indians of South Africa.” “The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of Jews (but) to the God-fearing, death has no terror… No person who has faith in a living God need feel helpless or forlorn. ” (1938)’.

 

And in February 1939, Buber responded,^[2] with a public letter ^[3] to the man he called, “My dear Mahatma Gandhi,”

 

The letter opens full of respect for the Indian sage,

 

“When a voice that he has long known and honoured, a great voice and an earnest one, pierces the vain clamour and calls him by name, he is all attention. Here is a voice, he thinks, that can but give good counsel and genuine comfort, for he who speaks knows what suffering is; he knows that the sufferer is more in need of comfort than of counsel; and he has both the wisdom to counsel rightly and that simple union of faith and love which alone is the open sesame to true comforting.” But ...

 

And the letter continues with a juddering ‘But’

 

But what he hears - containing though it does elements of a noble and most praiseworthy conception, such as he expects from this speaker - is yet barren of all application to his peculiar circumstances. These words are in truth not applicable to him at all. They are inspired by most praiseworthy general principles, but the listener is aware that the speaker has cast not a single glance at the situation of him whom he is addressing, that he neither sees him nor knows him and the straits under which he labours.

 

Buber accuses Gandhi of missing, terribly. Gandhi has, Buber accuses, allowed his general love of praiseworthy generalities to deprive him of paying attention to the very facts on the ground.

 

Buber writes that he has "read and re-read these sentences in your article without being able to understand.” He has weighed the words of his friend and inspiration, but

 

no, it is not a just [suggestion for behaviour]! And the armour of (my) silence is pierced. The friendly appeal [that is to say Gandhi's words] achieves what the enemy's storming has failed to do; [I] must answer.

 

Particularly, Buber claims, in his suggestion that the fate of Indians in South Africa, as victims of a racist precursor to formal Apartheid, is similar in its cause and in how it can be overturned, Gandhi has missed the nature of the Nazi oppression of the Jews.

 

He continues;

 

In the five years I myself spent under the [Nazi) regime, I observed many instances of genuine satyagraha among the Jews, instances showing a strength of spirit in which there was no question of bartering their rights or of being bowed down, and where neither force nor cunning was used to escape the consequences of their behaviour. Such actions, however, exerted apparently not the slightest influence on their opponents. All honour indeed to those who displayed such strength of soul!

 

An effective stand in the form of non-violence may be taken against unfeeling human beings in the hope of gradually bringing them to their senses; but a diabolic universal steamroller cannot thus be withstood.

 

I don't think it will come as a surprise why this remarkable, and crushing rebuttal of Gandhi's good intentions, comes to my mind this holy Shabbat.

 

It didn't take the woman, standing next to me at the demonstration outside the Russian Embassy yesterday with her placard reading ‘Poland 1939 = Ukraine.’

 

It didn't take Putin's deceitful gaslighting of the Ukrainians as Nazis to put me in mind of where the civilized world stood just a blink of an eye ago - 80 years, less than the life of our beloved member Michael Morris whose passing we commemorate today.

 

And while I'm not suggesting Putin a reincarnation of Hitler, he is, I believe he has exposed himself to be this week, entirely as incorrigible, and without a care for what anyone outside his inner circle think. He is an autocrat megalomaniacal and deeply terrifying.

 

As Jews we love debate, we love peace, we believe that peace can come through debate. But through time we've been aware of the line that exists between the debate partners we can debate with, and the debate partners who are in some other place

 

a place where debate is laughed at - as Putin so clearly has been laughing at the West for months now,

 

a place where protestations of human dignity and decency are seen as weaknesses – as Putin so clearly does,

 

From the time of Amalek, to the time of Edom and on and on, Jews have known that such a debate exists. To be clear, I'm not advocating an all out war against Russia, I'm not advocating a specific geo-political solution at all. But I am clear in my mind that the invasion of the last week has revealed the political leadership of Russia to be, in a phrase that I mean in its deepest historical sense, Beyond the Pale.

 

It's inappropriate to hope that this will calm down. It's unacceptable to decry this invasion with words that are not matched with strength

 

It's unethical to mourn our own losses at the hands of autocratic bullies and not be prepared to stand with Ukraine at this time in ways that are meaningful and profound.

 

I accept that this invasion is an attack on the civilized way of life we have taken for granted, it is not an attack on a mere Soviet satellite out of mind and out of the concerns of our heart and our tradition.

 

I'm at the Stand with Ukraine demonstration in Central London this afternoon in spirit. I've given to the emergency campaign to support the terrified Jews of Ukraine run by World Jewish Relief.

 

Al Taamod Al Daam Reicha - do not stand by the blood of your fellow, teaches our scripture.

 

For we all created in the image of the divine, and we all have a right to self-determination, security and peace.

 

 

Shabbat Shalom

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^[1]https://www.jstor.org/stable/2708297readnow=1&refregid=excelsior%3A97e4c6b0cf5e3cd8c978452e4d67f132&seq=1#page and https://www.mkgandhi.org/mynonviolence/chap27.htm.

^[2]https://www.clarion-journal.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/2010/03/jewish-zionism-martin-buber-and-mahatma gandhi-by-ron-dart.html

^[3] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/letter-from-martin-buber-to-gandhi