Jewish Concepts of Scripture

Concepts of Scripture in Jewish Mysticism 175

Heikhalot Literature and Its Metamorphoses in Kabbalah,” Mechqerei Yerushalayim
Bemachshevet Yisrael 1 (1981), 23 – 84 [in Hebrew]; and chapter 5 from a forthcom-
ing book, Powers of Language. Material from the third chapter of Idel’s book En-
chanted Chains: Techniques and Rituals in Jewish Mysticism (Los Angeles: Cherub,
2005) has also been incorporated. Notes in this chapter are kept to a minimum; full
documentation can be found in the works which this essay summarizes.

2. Th is is the same Rabbi Yishmael whom Azzan Yadin-Israel discusses in
   chapter 4, but the heikhalot mystics’ view of Yishmael is vastly diff erent from the
   memories of him that appear in the midrashic texts Yadin-Israel discusses.


3. Th e relevant passage from Sefer Shimmushei Torah appears in the edition of
   Adolph Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrash (Jerusalem: Wahrman, 1967 [1853 – 1877]), 1:58.


4. It is possible that the Talmud, in BT Shabbat 88b – 89a, alludes to these se-
   crets that Moses received in heaven. Th is passage states that upon ascending on
   high, Moses received, in addition to the Torah, certain “gift s.” See further Idel,
   “Concept of Torah,” 25 – 26, 33 n. 33a.


5. Genesis Rabbah Par. 1 sec. 2 and parallels. Th is motif became especially im-
   portant in kabbalah. See, e.g., Zohar 1:134a – b and 3:35b. On the preexistence of the
   Torah in midrash, see also Genesis Rabbah Par. 8 sec. 2 and parallels.


6. See Midrash ‘Asert Ha-Dibbrot, ed. Judah David Eisenstein (New York:
   Eisenstein, 1915), 450; Tanchuma Vayyelekh §2 (123a); see further references in Idel,
   “Concept of Torah,” 43 – 44nn. 59 – 61.


7. On the thoroughly anthropomorphic conceptions of God in biblical and
   rabbinic literature, see Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “Th e Body as Image of God in Rab-
   binic Literature,” Harvard Th eological Review 87 (1994): 171 – 95; Yair Lorberbaum,
   Th e Image of God: Halakhah and Aggadah [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Schocken Books,
   2004), 12 – 104; Benjamin D. Sommer, Th e Bodies of God and the World of Ancient
   Israel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), esp. 1 – 10, 38 – 79.


8. See Gershom Scholem, “Th e Meaning of the Torah in Jewish Mysticism,” in
   On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Schocken
   Books, 1996), 32 – 86, esp. 37.


9. Text available in Idel, “Concept of Torah,” 49 – 50 (also in C. D. Chavel, Kitvei
   Rabbeinu Moshe ben Nachman [Jerusalem: Mossad Ha-Rav Kook, 1963], 2:548).


10. Th e fi rst quotation is from Jacob’s work Faith and Trust, the second from
    his Who Responds with Upright Utterances. For the texts, see Idel, “Concepts of To-
    rah,” 50 (Hebrew text in Chavel, Kitvei, 2:418), 51 – 52.


11. See chapter 9 in this volume, on Nahmanides, by Aaron Hughes.


12. See Moshe Idel, “On Angels and Biblical Exegesis in Th irteenth-Century
    Ashkenaz,” in Scriptural Exegesis: Th e Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagina-
    tion; Essays in Honour of Michael Fishbane, ed. D. A. Green and L. S. Lieber (Ox-
    ford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 211 – 44.


13. Sefi rot were oft en organized in sets that can be viewed from top to bottom
    and left to right. Th e three highest ones (which are closer to the transcendent God