162 Moshe Idel
defi nitions) was projected onto the divine realm. Kabbalistic symbolism
of this sort facilitated a move from the earthly practice of studying Torah
(on its overt level) to a practice through which the mystic formed contact
with heavenly forms of the Torah (on its esoteric level). Th us, R. Moses ben
Shem Tov de Leon, a late thirteenth-century kabbalist in Spain (an infl u-
ential kabbalist who was closely associated with the authorship, redaction,
and/or dissemination of the Zohar, which is oft en viewed as the central text
of kabbalistic tradition), writes,
God has bequeathed this holy Torah to Israel from above to bequeath to
them the secret of His name, Blessed be He, and to [enable Israel to] cleave
to Him [or to His name], so that all the worlds will be equal according to
one secret and one outcome, and so that all are linked [to each other] and
descend according to the secret of His Name, Blessed be He, in order to
show that as this name [or He] is infi nite and limitless, so is this Torah
infi nite and limitless. . . . Since the Torah is “longer than the earth and
broader than the sea” [Job 11.9], we must be spiritually aware and know
that the essence of this existence is infi nite and limitless. And behold that
the essence of His existence descends from the source of the supernal
rank, from where all the essences expand. We should know that the source
of the [supernal] rank is the secret of the Torah, since you already know
that the supernal rank is the fi rst and supernal point and is the secret of
the Torah. 15De Leon employs here the biblical image of infi nity in relation to the sec-
ond sefi rah, H.okhmah or Wisdom. For de Leon, not only does the infi nity
of the Torah refl ect God’s infi nite wisdom, but intimation of part of this
infi nity provides a way for a kabbalist to cleave to Him, to assimilate to the
divine. Th e Torah is seen in a highly instrumental way, as a path toward a
unitive experience that avoids any specifi c reasoning that addresses its par-
ticular textuality. De Leon assumes that it is the presence of God as author
that ensures the infi nity of the text. At the two extremities of the sefi rot
chain that leads from the Infi nite and Transcendent Ein Sof down toward
the world, we fi nd two forms of the Torah, and the study of the lower form
of Torah (which includes both the Bible and rabbinic tradition) enables the
mystic to reach the higher.
A related understanding of the Bible is found in the work of a kabbalist
whose identity is not fi rmly established but who was a contemporary of
R. Moses de Leon. Th e author of Th e Book of [Divine] Unity presents this