346 A History of Judaism
haHokhma was ascribed to Moses himself – seems to mask real mys-
tical contemplation, much as pseudepigraphy may have disguised real
visions in the creation of pseudepigraphic apocalypses in the period of
the Second Temple.
The aim of this theosophical kabbalah was theological understand-
ing, reached not, as in philosophical circles (Jewish as well as Christian
and Islamic), by logical arguments about the nature of the divine but by
deep contemplation of the concealed meanings of ancient texts, esp-
ecially the Bible. Such contemplation could bring to light the nature of
God and his relation to the world as revealed by God himself in the
interstices of scripture. This was mysticism as an offshoot of the esoteric
scholarly curriculum which constituted rabbinic study, to be combined
with that curriculum, and not to be attempted by anyone without suffi-
cient training to enter such elite circles. Kabbalah was to have immense
influence on the future of Judaism as lived by Jews at all levels of learn-
ing and none, but it began as an adjunct to the talmudic study which
was the staple of rabbinic Judaism in the Middle Ages.
The mystics who produced many of these writings are often described
by historians as a circle simply because of the similarity of their ideas,
but precisely how they related to each other is unknown. We are how-
ever on firmer ground in depicting the growth in Girona in north- eastern
Spain in the mid- thirteenth century of the first centre of kabbalah in the
Iberian peninsula under the leadership of Ezra b. Solomon and of Azriel
b. Menahem. Former students of Isaac the Blind, they combined the
doctrines of Sefer haBahir with Neoplatonic terminology, systematic-
ally amalgamating the new symbols of the kabbalah with stories from
the Talmud. The Girona mystics, who designated themselves a ‘Sacred
Association’ (havurah kedoshah ), assumed like other kabbalists that
esoteric knowledge must be the preserve of a privileged elite. But they
had a decisive effect in the spread of these theosophic ideas through the
Torah commentary of their compatriot Nahmanides (see p. 336), in
which mystical doctrines were revealed to a wider Jewish readership.^47
Wholly different from the sedentary speculations of Nahmanides and
the Girona mystics was the ecstatic mysticism of their younger contem-
porary Abraham Abulafia, whose speculations about the divine world
stemmed from an adventurous and dramatic life. Born in Saragossa,
and brought up in Tudela in Navarre, Abulafia travelled at the age
of twenty to the other end of the Mediterranean to seek in the land of
Israel the mythical River Sambatyon, only to be thwarted in Acre by the
wars between Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land and forced to