176 Moshe Idel
as Infi nite or Ein Sof ) are referred to as the fi rst through third. Th e remaining ones
are sometimes referred to as the lower seven, and these might be seen as more im-
manent or involved with this world.
- On the crucial distinction in rabbinic Judaism between Written Torah (that
is, the Hebrew Bible) and Oral Torah (that is, rabbinic tradition, including but not
limited to the Mishna, the Talmuds, and the midrashim), see chapter 3 by Steven
Fraade in this volume. - R. Moses ben Shem Tov de Leon, Sefer Ha-Rimmon, 326.
- In this sentence, the author refers to various special ways that words and
paragraphs are required to be written in a Torah scroll used for liturgical reading
in synagogues. - Here the author refers to a tradition found in a rabbinic text, Tanna de-Bei
Eliyahu, ch. 25. - For the text from the unpublished work, see Idel, “Concept of Torah,”
62 – 64. - For the text from this unpublished work, see ibid., 64 – 65.
- For the text from this unpublished work, see ibid., 65.
- Th e Hebrew translated here as “plain meaning” is peshat; see further con-
cerning this term in Robert Harris’s chapter 7 in this volume. - For this teaching in rabbinic literature, see BT Sanhedrin 99a.
- For this unpublished text, see Idel, “Concept of Torah,” 66 – 67.
- See Recanati’s Commentary on the Rationales for the Commandments, ed.
H. Liebermann (London: Mekhon Otzar Ha-h.okhmah, 1962), fol. 2ab; I checked
the version found in MS Paris, BN 825, fols. 1b – 2a. Th is quotation was reproduced
in R. Isaiah Horowitz’s early seventeenth-century work Shnei Luh.ot Ha-Berit
(Ha-Shelah). - For the text from ibn Gabbai’s Avodat Ha-qodesh, see Idel, “Concept of To-
rah,” 75. - Th ese quotations are also from Gabbai’s Avodat Ha-qodesh, 36d.
- On this issue, see also Elliot Wolfson, “Beautiful Maiden without Eyes: Pe-
shat and Sod in Zoharic Hermeneutics,” in Th e Midrashic Imagination, ed. Michael
Fishbane (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), especially 190. On the distinction between
reading for understanding and reading for ritual purposes, see Moshe Halbertal,
People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1997), 13 – 14. - Th e notion that Written Torah was originally Oral Torah and in essence
always remains this way has roots in classical rabbinic literature; see the discus-
sion in Benjamin Sommer, “Unity and Plurality in Jewish Canons: Th e Case of the
Oral and Written Torahs,” in One Scripture or Many? Canon from Biblical, Th eologi-
cal and Philosophical Perspectives, ed. C. Helmer and C. Landmesser (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004), 123 – 25; and David Kraemer, “Th e Formation of