394 A History of Judaism
of another person and at times he may require reincarnation which is
even more painful.’ More positively, the concept of gilgul (‘revolving’),
developing notions about the transmigration of souls already found in
kabbalistic writings of the twelfth century, gave life a purpose in seeking
restoration in the soul of Adam.^22
The driving force behind Luria’s disciples seems to have been messi-
anic hope, for Lurianic doctrines gave a direct role to the kabbalists in
bringing about the redemption of Israel. It did not matter for this pur-
pose that knowledge of these doctrines was deliberately confined to the
privileged few; on the contrary, Vital and Luria’s other disciples appear
to have been reluctant to share his teachings at all, and in many accounts
of Luria’s ideas his central notion of ‘contraction’ remained unstated or
just hinted at even decades after his death. Claiming reluctance to share
mystical insights can sometimes be a ploy by mystics to promote and
publicize their ideas, and knowledge of the doctrines of specifically
Lurianic kabbalah spread more rapidly after the death of Vital in 1620.
In the following decades a series of presentations of Luria’s thought
were printed and widely circulated through the Jewish world.
The practices of the kabbalists, from liturgy to penitential manuals,
and their specialized vocabulary, spread even faster than their more
complex doctrines. A feeling that the doctrines of the kabbalah were
now available to all must have been greatly strengthened by the contro-
versial printing of copies of the Zohar in Mantua (in 1558– 60) and
Cremona (1559– 60), allowing a much wider readership – albeit of texts
marred by frequent printing errors, and in a different version from the
manuscript of the Zohar used in Safed.^23
Lurianic doctrines did not appeal to all, and, notwithstanding the
spread of Lurianic kabbalistic notions to the extent that Lurianic kab-
balah has been described as the default theology of Judaism by the early
seventeenth century, there were some who continued throughout the
century to favour earlier varieties of the kabbalah. So, for instance, the
strong mystical bent of the poems written in the seventeenth century by
Shalem Shabbazi, the greatest of the Jewish poets of Yemen, whose
compositions dominate the Yemenite liturgy, was based on pre- Lurianic
kabbalah. Similarly, although Judah Loew, known as the Maharal of
Prague, a prolific scholar of impressively independent temper, was
devoted to the dissemination of Jewish mystical teachings to ordinary
Jews, the numerous writings he published right up to his death in 1609
owe nothing to Lurianic ideas. Eschewing the technical terminology of
the kabbalah despite evident familiarity with such kabbalistic notions