Concepts of Scripture in Jewish Mysticism 167limbs are parallel not only because they possess a similar structure but also
because of their dynamic affi nities. Ritual activities, the rituals or the com-
mandments performed by human limbs, are related theurgically to the di-
vine limbs. In other words, the realization of this isomorphism, based on
knowledge and contemplation of the higher by means of the lower struc-
ture, leads from one stage to another.
Th e relationship between contemplation of Torah on its esoteric level
and theurgy was made explicit by R. Menahem Recanati, an Italian kabbal-
ist of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. He wrote, “All the
sciences altogether are hinted at in the Torah, because there is nothing that
is outside of it [the Torah]. . . . Th erefore the Holy One, blessed be He, is
nothing that is outside the Torah, and the Torah is nothing that is outside
Him, and this is the reason why the sages of the kabbalah said that the Holy
One, blessed be He, is the Torah.”24 Th is is a crucial example of the map-
ping of the supernal realm onto types of human practices; God and Torah
are identical, which means that God is called by the word To r a h. A fascina-
tion with the profound affi nities among God, Torah, and man is found in a
classic of kabbalah, written by R. Meir ibn Gabbai, an infl uential sixteenth-
century kabbalist. He envisioned the Torah as isomorphic to both God and
man and acting as an intermediate entity:
Th e Torah is, therefore, the wholeness of the grand and supernal Anthro-
pos, and this is the reason why it comprises the 248 positive command-
ments and 365 negative commandments, which are tantamount to the
number of the limbs and sinews of the lower and the supernal man. . . .
And since the Torah has the shape of man, it is fi tting to be given to man,
and man is man by virtue of it, and in the end he will cleave to man. 25Th us, the Torah becomes an intermediary man, a link between human-
ity down here and the supernal Anthropos in heaven: “Th e intermediary
which stirs the supernal image toward the lower one,” or, according to an-
other passage, “the Torah and the commandments are the intermediary
which link the lower image to the supernal one, by the affi nity they have
with both.”26 Th ese quotations are simply examples of kabbalistic treat-
ments of the Torah as the image or icon of God. Others can be found in
later kabbalistic sources. According to these sources, the parallel among
God, Torah, and man — who all share the same structure — allows the kab-
balist to ascend on high.