new certainties and new mysticism 395
as the transcendent nature of the Torah, Loew emphasized the unique
metaphysical role of the Jews as the chosen people, inventing new mean-
ings for standard philosophical terminology (such as his assertion that
‘Israel’ constitutes ‘form’, while the other nations constitute ‘matter’) to
propagate mystical ideas to a wide readership of non- specialists. Loew
was a communal leader as chief rabbi of Moravia and Poznan ́ as well as
Prague, and a mathematician and a public figure – the astronomer
Tycho Brahe was an acquaintance. It is ironic that both Jews and gen-
tiles in later generations were to remember him most because of a totally
unfounded legend that he dabbled in magic and created the Golem of
Prague. (According to the legend, which seems to have been transferred
to Loew only in the eighteenth century and bears obvious similarities to
non- Jewish stories about the creation of artificial men by alchemy, Loew
created the golem as a servant but had to reduce it to dust when it
proved impossible to control.)^24
The number of devotees to kabbalistic speculation itself was always
quite small, and kabbalists almost without exception combined their
mystical studies with study of practical halakhah. We have already seen
that Yosef Karo, supreme codifier of rabbinic law, was also a kab-
balist. He had studied in Safed from 1536 alongside Moshe Cordovero,
the teacher of Luria. So, too, Luria himself was a renowned expert in
halakhah, even if, as his disciple Vital recorded, the kabbalah had first
call on his attention:
Also in connection with the study of the halakhah in depth, together with
his companions, I witnessed my master, of blessed memory, engaging in his
halakhic studies until he became weary and covered in perspiration. I
asked him why he went to such trouble. He replied that profound applic-
ation is essential in order to shatter the shells [demonic forces], the
difficulties which inhere in every halakhah and which prevent one from
understanding that halakhah ... And my master, of blessed memory, used
to say that one whose mind is sufficiently clear, subtle, and keen to reflect
on the halakhah for one hour or, in the majority of cases, two hours, it is
certainly good that he bothers himself at first with this deep study for one
or two hours ... But one who knows himself to be hampered in his efforts
at deep study, so that for him to grasp the meaning of the halakhah he is
obliged to expend much time and effort, he does not behave correctly. He
is like the man who spends all his time cracking nuts without ever eating
the kernels. Far better for such a one to engage in the study of the Torah
itself, namely, the laws, the midrashim and the mysteries.^25