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
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