hello and welcome to jewish history lab i'd like to take a few minutes following up on our
discussion of the acharonim to look at a period of jewish history that i find like most periods of
jewish history absolutely fascinating and that is the incredible explosion of spiritual and
literary religious activity that occurred in the northern israel city of safid pronounced in hebrew
or this is a remarkable period of spiritual effervescence that emerged in the 1500s in the
wake of the spanish expulsion and in fact in many ways was related directly to the spanish expulsion
so let's let's have a look at it and some of the major thinkers that lived there and and why this
was so unusual as we have seen on many different occasions the uh rupture that occurred in jewish
history as a result of the spanish expulsion and the subsequent portuguese force conversion
then a slower migration under tremendous duress from portugal created this huge ripple effect
in which the the implications of that upheaval reverberated throughout the entire world really
because at this point jews were not only extending throughout the mediterranean basin and into europe
but also across the atlantic into the americas one particular group of refugees from spain and
portugal made their way all the way back to israel which you would think is you know a fairly logical
location but we should recall that in the 1500s israel was still largely denuded of jews there was
a very very small tiny jewish population there the ramban and nahmanadis had arrived in the
late 13th century and had begun to revive the very very tiny community that was there and so there
was remarkably few jews living in israel and when they lived there they were especially concentrated
in the big city like jerusalem that was one of the major centers after the ramban began to you
know revive the population there much less well known was this tiny town in sapat it's a fairly
high mountainous town and beautiful surroundings looking over the galilee but it received a huge
burst of population as a result not of jewish activity but of the ottoman empire activity here
you can see a beautiful map of the ottoman empire at its height and uh the region of israel was only
recently conquered and the turks wanted to settle it with people who would be amenable to developing
the economy jews were a very logical choice the ottomans openly welcomed the refugees from spain
and from portugal and in fact even mocked the monarchs of the iberian peninsula for giving up
what they felt what the ottomans felt was such a valuable human resource and so there were tax
breaks that were built into the newly settled areas in israel and in particular in spot uh
connected with the textile trade in particular so a lot of jews were attracted to spot for business
purposes and then related to that there was kind of an unusual sort of spiritual tourism that
took place in spot because of the large number of graves from the mishnayik and especially the early
talmudic period that were found in the region and attracted a lot of jews wishing to visit the
graves of these holy sites so this is in the 1500s there is more and more jews who are coming to spot
they're coming not only for economic activities they're coming because they have been displaced
as a result of the spanish expulsion and they're coming also because of spiritual reasons in order
to be near the uh ethereal atmosphere of sfat and it is in this region where you have this explosion
of interest in kabbalah now we should just take just a few minutes to talk about what is kabbalah
the term itself means can be translated as tradition uh literally it comes from the the
verb le kabel to receive meaning in the sense of something which is handed down teacher to student
teacher to student something which is received as opposed to something which is kind of like
logically developed the roots of kabbalah go back to the distant past there are some
mystical passages in the oldest parts of the tanakh the hebrew scriptures
there are some uh fascinating uh early kabbalistic mystical treatises that were written already in
the uh the ancient period and uh and we find some interesting experimentation with some of these
mystical ideas for example in the qumran community in uh the dead sea region uh but one of the most
fascinating and important works of the kabbalah only emerged in the 13th century to public view
that is the famous zohar the zohar is a huge work of kabbalah capitalizing on earlier works
and there is a certain amount of dispute particularly between
certain religious scholars and certain academic scholars as to the dating of this text it is
attributed to rabbi shimon bar yochai which would put it already in the second century of
the common era although most academic scholars and universities place it in the 13th century being
composed in spain by a man named rabbi moshe de leon there are some interesting arguments for both
perspectives but what is known for certain is that the zohar did not begin to circulate publicly
in a known and outward fashion until the late 13th century and it inspired a lot of thinkers in spain
and in provence in particular south of france to develop new ideas of of uh mystical appreciation
of god and the universe one of the sort of elements that derives from it perhaps
most systematically is this tree of life or ethem here is the diagram shown here in a
inspired by the model that is described by the zohar which essentially describes a series of ten
sephirot the term sephirah is hard to translate into english it may be related to the word sapir
which means like sapphire like the gem uh it may be related somehow to the word sphere like we have
in english something which is you know round on all sides but basically what it refers to is a
series of emanations of godliness descending as it were from the ainsoft the infinite meaning god
into the finite world in which we live and i hope to discuss in a minute different ways in which
kabulis have approached that but basically this is sort of like the architecture of the universe
as it is understood as the mediation of god's infinity to the finite world in which we live
the the terms all have various characteristics that are assigned here qatar means the crown
mabina means a wisdom and understanding and we can translate these into english in different ways but
basically kabbalists were very interested in how the universe was structured uh the impact this
had on the human soul what the human soul was all about and to a certain degree kabbalists were also
interested in what's called theorgia kabbalah that is well once we have this theoretical knowledge
is there something we can do with it like for example can we perhaps bring the messiah closer
can we accelerate the period of time under which the uh the world remains unredeemed
uh they're also fascinating kind of popular magic associations with kabbalah as well
spells amulets and so on that go back well into the ancient period now the
tree of life is not the only representation of this kind of architecture of the universe
you see here for example this is a classic cordoverin description of it in which all of
those spheres are kind of like nestled one within the other if you look carefully you'll see there
each of these different colors uh and symbols represents a different letter of the alphabet
that is uh represented in the ten sphero that i showed you a moment ago but we're not going to get
into the uh the essence of uh theoretical kabbalah in this short video but just giving you a sense of
what it is that they talked about when they talked about kabbalah so in spot you had a remarkable
gathering in a very short period of time of all kinds of people who were deeply deeply involved
in kabbalah here for example is the famous grave of several of them located in svad you
can see at the top here you have [ __ ] rabbi [ __ ] alphabets the author among other things of
the famous hymn that sung on friday nights in synagogue he was one of the earliest of
the kabbalists that came to this region and then you have his son-in-law and his greatest pupil
the ramak rabbi moshe cordovero or cordovero who hails from portuguese
refugees in spot and then the ramak student the saintly arizal known as the holy lion or
rabbi isaac luria ashkenazi who came from egypt in order to study under the remark they only lived
a very brief time together and then the ramak passed away the ahri would pass away not much
later after that uh one of the tragic aspects of the lives of kapolis is that they tended to die
very young but at any rate there so many of them are concentrated within this short period of time
really about half a century in the middle of the 1500s in this one region and they are involved
in tremendous amount of activity related to kabbalah one of the key distinctions that i will
mention between the kabbalah of the ramak and the kabbalah of the arie is that the the two of them
the teacher rabbi moshe cordovero and the student rabbi isaac luria had a difference of opinion
as to how the universe came to be the way it is specifically with regards the question of
why does evil exist for the teacher rabbi moshe cordovero evil was as it were built into the
system that it is a natural consequence of the way the spheroth are designed whereas for the ari
evil was created as a result of some kind of early cataclysm which he termed the svirata kelim the
bursting of the vessels put very briefly when the universe was created and divine influence
was poured into to use a metaphor the clay containers of the spherote
they could not handle the overwhelming nature of godliness and they shattered and the
the earth as it were uh absorbed the combination of godliness and the
actual clay that held the outside of the vessels i know this sounds confusing but basically that's
where the material world comes from according to the kabbalah of the arie that you know everything
that we have like my phone or this book or you know my desk that i'm sitting at uh they all have
an admixture of godliness which is somehow buried in the physicality of it and allowing it to exist
uh but at the same time there is this shell a clipa that is formed from the original
vessels that were intended to create the uh the the contain godliness and the one of the major
ideas that emerges from the i from the kabbalah of the arie which really energized much of the
later hasidim who borrowed much more heavily from the arid than from the teacher rabbi
moshe cordovero was the idea that humans have an extremely important role to play in rescuing
those sparks of holiness that are buried within the physical universe that it is the the goal of
jews in particular and of humanity as a whole to raise up the holiness that is buried in
physicality and that is really kind of like the the driving dynamism behind hasidism in particular
related to the vision of kabbalah according to the ari fascinating material all kinds there's
so many other figures who are active at this time but let's just turn very briefly in conclusion to
one other fascinating things that occurs uh and that is the debate over the renewal of smiha
this image is from a movie that had a tremendous impact on me when i was a very young child
the 10 commandments great movie directed by cecil b demille this is a picture of joshua at
the biblical joshua one of the few pictures that i could find online in which he's wearing a shirt
and joshua was of course moses's deputy and at a key point in the bible moses transfers
his spiritual authority onto joshua through a process which is known in hebrew as michael
ordination is the way it's translated to english but literally means the laying on of hands you
know you put your hands on a person's head and you you put your weight on them and you transfer
your authority to them so a lot of interesting discussions of this and the talmud as well now
in ancient times uh the spiritual lineage of moses to joshua joshua to the elders elders
to the prophets and so on is something that is preserved in pirkei avatar and many other
literary creations from the time but it was lost as a result of the depredations of
exile from the uh the ancient period up until the 1500s where we're looking at the jews of tzfat
but an individual named rabbi yaakov bayram said wait a second wait a second we have the greatest
minds of the jewish people all concentrated here in this northern israel town of tzfat
including by the way the great elder sage rabbi yosef caro who we discussed in the last video
the author of the shulhana rook the author of the beit joseph he was in spot as well so rabbi berab
said you know what we should all get together we should all agree that for example rabbi yosef
caro is the greatest sage of the jewish people and there's a very good argument to be made for that
and then we will collectively proclaim him rabbi like not in the sense of just a throwaway
title but an actual rabbi like joshua was a rabbi because moses gave him smith and then once he has
that authority then he will give others michael including rabbi moshe cordovero including uh rabbi
yitzchak luria including robert jacob bairov by the way it was probably not rabbi osha cordovero
because he was incredibly young at this time but nevertheless there was a small group of people
about half a dozen that were to get this new smith and rabbi ako bairav said and in so doing we will
re-establish the great authority of the rabbinic tradition all the way back from
moses it was a fascinating idea and it created a certain amount of uh interest in the jewish
world but there are many rabbis outside of zvat and jerusalem in particular said wait a second
and uh unfortunately as a result of much uh controversy this particular idea did not go
very far but nevertheless it was indicative of the great excitement around torah and kabbalah
that was happening in spot in the 1500s okay i hope you enjoyed this very brief discussion i have
lots more videos online that deal in particular with robin moshe cordovero because i spent quite
a bit of time studying his work and but if you like this video please subscribe it is really
nice to see the numbers increasing i love knowing that there's so many people enjoy studying jewish
history as i do and i look forward to speaking with you in future videos thank you for watching