Shalom Shar’abi and the

Kabbalists of Beit El
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Shalom Shar’abi
and the Kabbalists
of Beit El

pinchas giller

1
2008
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Giller, Pinchas, 1953–
Shalom Shar’abi and the kabbalists of Beit El / Pinchas Giller.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-0-19-532880-6
1. Kabbalah—History. 2. Yeshivat Beit-El (Jerusalem) 3. Sharabi, Shalom, 1720–1777.
4. Rabbis—Jerusalem. 5. Jewish scholars—Jerusalem. 6. Jews, Yemeni—Jerusalem.
7. Kavvanot (Kabbalah) I. Title.
BM526.G48 2007
296.8'3309569442—dc22 2007017669

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper
For Elliot Wolfson
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Preface

I would like to thank Paul Miller and Haim Gottchalk of the Uni-
versity of Judaism library for help with my research. Aryeh Cohen,
Shaul Magid, and Rabbi Bob Judd read early drafts of this work and
made valuable suggestions. Rachel Bat Or, Jennifer Bellas, Alexander
Braham, Allison Cottrell, David Fasman, Moonlight Go, Zevi Hear-
shen, Malka Hefetz, Jordana Heyman, Valerie Joseph, Shalom Kan-
tor, Cindy Kapp, Rachel Kobrin, Scott Kramer, Marissa Lembeck,
Michael Paletz, Scott Perlo, Danya Ruttenberg, Jason Shakib, Robin
Simonian, Sam Sternberg, Risa Weinstein, and Ariel Wosk also read
and commented on the later drafts, and their work is most appreci-
ated. Jody Myers was particularly helpful, particularly when I was
incapacitated in a bicycle accident. I remain forever grateful for the
advice and support of Elliot Wolfson, Shaul Magid, and Boaz Huss.
Some research in Jerusalem was made possible by the Roland
Fund for Faculty Research of the American Jewish University, which
was expedited by the faculty secretary, Judy Dragutsky. Aspects of this
study were published earlier in ‘‘Between Poland and Jerusalem:
Kabbalistic Prayer in Early Modernity’’ (Modern Judaism 24, no. 3
[October 2004]: 226–250), with the gracious help of Professor Steven
Katz, and in ‘‘Nesirah: Myth and Androgyny in Late Kabbalistic
Practice’’ (The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 12, no. 3 [2003]:
63–86).
The Beit El mystics are underrepresented in contemporary
scholarship, even as they are the most influential living school of
viii preface

Kabbalah in the world. Living schools have generally been problematic for
scholars of Kabbalah. With some exceptions, the scholarly community has
neglected the contemporary kabbalists of the Middle East, particularly in
comparison to such movements as Hasidism or the Jewish enlightenment.
_
This study will, I hope, mark a small beginning in correcting this inequity in
the contemporary academy. Nevertheless, it remains a beginning, and I would
not be surprised if, in the future, many of its conclusions are successfully
queried. I expect that this book should raise more questions than it resolves.
Nonetheless, I hope that this little book is useful for limning the contours of
rich possibilities for further study.
Contents

Transliterations, xi

Introduction: Kabbalistic Metaphysics, 3

1. Shar’abi and Beit El, 5

2. Kavvanah and Kavvanot, 19

3. The Names of God in the Beit El Kavvanot, 39

4. Kabbalists in the Community, 55

5. Beit El Practice, 65

6. Shar’abi’s School, 85

7. The Literary Tradition of Beit El, 95

8. The Kavvanot in Hasidism, 107

_
9. Conclusions: Mysticism, Metaphysics, and the Limitations
of Beit EL Kabbalah, 117

Appendix: Nesirah—The Development of a Kavvanah, 131

Notes, 147

Works Cited, 179

Index, 193
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Transliterations

a, e alef l lamed
b bet m mem
v vet n nun
g gimmel s samekh
h he ‘ ayin
v vav p pe
z zayin f fe
h het z zadi
_
t tet q, k qof
y, i yod r resh
k kaf sh shin
kh khaf s sin
t tav

Quotations from Hayyim Vital’s rendition of the Lurianic canon,

_
the Shemoneh Sha’arim (Eight Gates), and the Ez Hayyim (Tree of
_ _
Life), are from the comprehensive edition by Yehudah Ashlag
(Tel Aviv 1962), with the exception of various individual texts not
included therein, which will be identified by separate bibliographi-
cal data.
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Shalom Shar’abi and the
Kabbalists of Beit El
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Introduction: Kabbalistic
Metaphysics

The sefirot are the building blocks of classical Jewish mysticism.

The term is first evident in the Sefer Yezirah, or Book of Formation, a
_
brief text written in the Mishnaic style and steeped in Pythagorean
mysticism. The idea resurfaced among the mystics of Provence and
Gerona in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They, as well as the
mysterious composition Sefer ha-Bahir, contributed the idea of refer-
ence to the sefirot in terms of their kinnuyim, or symbolic euphe-
misms. Eventually, the sefirot were portrayed in anthropomorphic
form and were utilized in kabbalistic meditation much as the chakras
were employed in Tantrism.
The sefirot may be described as aspects, or stages, in the descent
of the Divine into present reality. In the classical works of theosoph-
ical Kabbalah, such as the Zohar and the works of Joseph Gikatilla,
Joseph of Hamadan, and Todros Abulafia, the sefirot are clearly hy-
postases of the Divine, emanations from the apex of the Godhead.
They were portrayed in many ways, and the various attempts to or-
ganize and structure them were collected in systematic works such
as Moshe Cordovero’s Sefer Pardes Rimmonim. They are most com-
monly organized in the form of a hierarchy of emanation, beginning
with Keter or Da’at, the highest aspect, which is the abstracted in-
ner nature of God. Keter is followed by the sefirot Hokhmah and Binah,
_
which represent the attributes of Divine wisdom and understanding,
respectively. The emotive features of the Divine are summed up in
the sefirah Hesed, the quality of loving kindness, and its apposite,
_
4 shalom shar’abi and the kabbalists of beit el

Din or Gevurah, the faculty of Divine Judgment. These are combined in the
central sefirah, Rahamim or Tiferet, which also interconnects with all of the
seven lower sefirot. The lowest four sefirot represent the four aspects of sentient
existence. Nezah is the aspect of linear time, while Hod is the aspect of scope or
_
grandeur. The sefirah Yesod governs sexuality, and the final sefirah, Malkhut or
Shekhinah, govern the simple fact of existence in the physical world.
Lurianic Kabbalah differed from the interpretations that preceded it in that
it emphasized a different structure of the Divine. Instead of the sefirot that
formed the basis for the Kabbalah of the Zohar and the mainstream Safed
Kabbalah, Isaac Luria emphasized a different system, which was first pre-
sented in the last sections of the main part of the Zohar. This universe is
visualized in anthropomorphic terms and structured according to a hierar-
chical family, including a patriarch (Attika Kadisha), a set of parents (Abba and
Imma), a son (Zeir), and his consort (Nukvah). The family, moreover, has been
traumatized by its history, following the well-known mythos of the ‘‘breaking
of the vessels’’ of Divinity and the need to restore the world through the act of
Divine repair. In the midst of this general catastrophe, Abba and Imma must
conceive and nurture their offspring, Zeir, and betroth him to Nukvah. The
various members of the cosmic Divine family, the parents (Abba and Imma),
the youth (Zeir Anpin), and his consort (Nukvah), have turned away from one
another to confront the chaos in the world following the breaking of the ves-
sels. With their backs turned toward one another, they face outward to confront
the chaos of the world outside. This turning out is called the back-to-back
embrace.
The goal of the adept, in the Lurianic rite, was to bring about the har-
monious and untroubled union of the various countenances, thereby causing
the conception and nurturing of Zeir Anpin, the central countenance. This
union is described as the goal of the kabbalistic practice in the later strata of the
Zohar, where unification with the Divine is a positive act that takes place
through the contemplative practice of certain commandments. The central act
of all Lurianic theurgy is to turn these dysfunctional figures toward each other,
thus effecting ‘‘face-to-face’’ union and thereby fixing the broken and sundered
universe.
1
Shar’abi and Beit El

A living form of Kabbalah is enjoying a renaissance, in spite of its

exotic and obscure nature. In Jerusalem, Safed, New York, and Los
Angeles, kabbalists regularly pray in elevated states of high concen-
tration and silence. As they complete the Jewish prayer rite, these
adepts contemplate complex and abstruse linguistic formulae. These
formulae, known as the kavvanot, or ‘‘intentions,’’ are based on a
complex set of associations, employing Divine Names, esoteric sym-
bols, and complex vocalized mantras. Across the development of
the tradition, it has been defined in various ways. It is a rite, performed
by the adepts with the power of their minds. The adepts may also
experience an ascent of the soul and even, according to some sys-
tems, an experience of union with God. The most widespread un-
derstanding is that, in the practice of the kavvanot, the contemplative
mind is sacrificed to the cathartic processes of the Divine in order
to expedite the uniting of Divine and earthly forces according to the
teachings of mainstream Kabbalah.
There has been a renewed enthusiasm for this form of contem-
plative prayer, and it is being propagated with a new urgency.
Prayer with kavvanot has been the provenance of the wonder-working
rabbis who have come to social prominence in the past three de-
cades, a line of recently departed sages that includes R. Mordechai
Shar’abi, R. Yisrael Abuhazeira, the ‘‘Baba Sali,’’ the Hakham (Sage)
_ _
Yizhak Kaduri of the Bukharian community, and his student
_
6 shalom shar’abi and the kabbalists of beit el

R. Shmuel Darsi. Posthumous sainthood has been conferred upon such

mendicant figures as Yosef Dayyan, an impoverished Jerusalem pietist who
made gravesite pilgrimage his special area of concern and who was a natural
subject of hagiography. With the passing of this immigrant generation of re-
ligious saints, there are new figures waiting in the wings to assume leadership
at the nexus of religious and political power.
There are a number of institutions devoted to the practice of kavvanot, and
they host a shifting number of practitioners. In Jerusalem, prayer with kav-
vanot takes place formally in the institutions Nahar Shalom, Beit El, Ahavat
Shalom, Ha-Hayyim ve-ha-Shalom, and Nayot be-Ramah, as well as in a circle
_
that meets every morning at the Western Wall. Among Jews of Middle
Eastern extraction, congregations that meet before dawn are likely to include
practitioners of the kavvanot. I have observed individuals practicing the kav-
vanot among the pious worshippers at the Aboab synagogue in Safed and at
the Natan Eli congregation in Los Angeles. Manuscripts of influential prayer
books with kavvanot are being published in photo offset. At the same time,
new editions of kavvanot are being prepared in conjunction with the recent
political and economic empowerment of the Jews from Middle Eastern com-
munities in locales ranging from Jerusalem to Los Angeles. As the practice of
kavvanot grows, it is clear that the wider public has accepted the primacy of the
most esoteric of practices and ceded the practice to a small elite of venerated
adepts.1
This tradition is grounded in the lineage and eros of classical Kabbalah.
The kabbalistic tradition sees its origins in the disciples of Rabbi Shimon Bar
Yohai in second-century Galilee. The exploits of this circle were documented
in the vast classic of Kabbalah, the Zohar. The Zohar began to circulate in
the thirteenth century. Following the Spanish expulsion, the Galilee hill town
of Safed saw a renaissance of kabbalistic activity, in which various refugee
scholars attempted to recover and reinstitute the practices laid out in the Zohar,
as well as the eros of a circle of adepts and the charisma of ecstatic rabbinic
leadership. The foremost kabbalist of Safed was Isaac Luria, whose teachings
were purveyed mostly by his foremost student, Hayyim Vital. Acolytes of the
_
Beit El tradition, like their European contemporaries in Polish Hasidism, see
_
themselves as the lineal descendants of the main systems of Kabbalah. From
Shimon Bar Yohai the tradition passed to Isaac Luria, known as the AR’’I (an
acronym for ‘‘our master R. Isaac’’). Luria’s revelations, according to the aco-
lytes, then passed to the founder of Hasidism, the Ba’al Shem Tov and Shalom
_
Shar’abi of Jerusalem.
shar’abi and beit el 7

Shar’abi

Shalom Shar’abi (1720–1780; also known as RaSHaSH) developed the most

popular and normative system of kavvanot. Shar’abi was a Yemenite kabbalist
who arrived in Jerusalem via Syria in the mid-eighteenth century. His personal
history is obscured by the sort of hagiographies that attend the biographies of
holy men in other traditions: picaresque escapes, the temptations of the flesh,
and the protagonist’s obscuring his spiritual identity as an act of piety. The
circumstances of Shar’abi’s journey to the land of Israel, his progression from
obscurity to the head of the Beit El yeshivah, and his acts of saintliness and
intercession are legendary.
Shar’abi was raised in Sana, Yemen, although his family originated in
Shar’ab, whence his name. He came to the land of Israel from Yemen by way of
Aden, Baqra, Baghdad, and Damascus. In Baghdad, he studied the Zohar with
a circle of mystics under the leadership of Sheikh Yizhak Gaon, and his ecstatic
_
manner earned him his first recognition. Controversy seemed to follow him:
his flight from Yemen was attended by an incident ‘‘like that of the wife of
Potiphar.’’2 The account bears repeating:

In the holy city of Sana I knew the family of the Rav RaSha’’Sh, wise
and steadfast people, and they told me of the circumstances of his
coming to [Jerusalem]. He was a comely and God fearing youth
and his livelihood was to peddle spices and small notions in the city
and the villages, as did all the Jewish youths in that district. Once he
passed though the gentile city Sana with his peddler’s sack on his
shoulder and a wealthy Ishmaelite noble woman saw him through
the lattice. She called him up to make a purchase. She let him in to
her chambers and locked the door behind him and attempted to
induce him to sin with her, threatening otherwise to kill him. When
he saw that there was no escape he asked to relieve himself. She
showed him to the privy and waited outside. He forced himself
through a small window in the privy; fell unharmed three stories to
the ground and fled. She waited for him in vain, and when she
saw that he had fled she flung his pack outside. He fled, and wan-
dered from city to city until he came to Aden, thence to Basra,
Babylonia and from there to Jerusalem.

It is not unusual for revered religious innovators to have a somewhat

checkered early history, and, for such a unifying figure, Shar’abi had a career
that, as he moved through the great Jewish centers of the Middle East, was
8 shalom shar’abi and the kabbalists of beit el

littered with misunderstandings and controversies; trouble seemed to follow

him. In Damascus, he was employed as the servant of Samuel Parhi, the
economic adviser of the Pasha of Damascus. R Parhi did not recognize the
young man’s real nature and was unkind to him. This led to an emotional
denouement some years later in Jerusalem. Parhi was himself an avid sup-
porter of the Beit El yeshivah and found his former servant sitting at the head
of the academy, leading the Damascus householder to beg forgiveness for his
mistreatment of Shar’abi.3 It was also in Damascus that Shar’abi became
embroiled in a halakhic controversy over the minimum acceptable weight of
the Passover mazah, which hastened his departure for Jerusalem.4
_
Upon his arrival in Jerusalem, Shar’abi behaved in a self-effacing manner.
He was assigned to be the sexton (mesharet) at the Beit El yeshivah and kept to
himself, although he visited the sacred graves on the Mount of Olives and
listened to lessons in Lurianic Kabbalah from a corner in an adjoining room in
the academy. Only after the clandestine circulation of some of his writings did
his star begin to rise among the scholars of Beit El. In accordance with the
romantic tone of his biography, it was the daughter of Gedaliah Hayyun, the
_
academy’s founder, who determined that Shar’abi was circulating the re-
sponsa, recognizing the true nature of the quiet, handsome, self-effacing
young sexton. Hayyun elevated Shar’abi’s status and gave him his daughter’s
_
hand in marriage, at which point Shar’abi entered into the historical record.5

Beit El

At the time of Shar’abi’s arrival, the Beit El yeshivah was still a young insti-
tution, part of the general flowering of Kabbalah in eighteenth century Jer-
usalem.6 The kabbalists of Beit El initially organized to study and follow the
kabbalistic system of Isaac Luria, which had been developed nearly two cen-
turies before in the Galilee hill town of Safed. The kabbalists were already
renowned among the population for their intercessions in times of drought.
Shar’abi’s leadership galvanized the Beit El community, in part because he
organized and chartered the majority of the Jerusalem kabbalists. The group at
Beit El left a number of documents, particularly four charters. The charters are
significant because they were based on the type that had been instituted by the
Safed kabbalist Hayyim Vital with the object of uniting the circles around Luria
_
under his (Vital’s) leadership.7 Hence, the instituting of the charters is evi-
dence that the Beit El kabbalists self-consciously patterned themselves after the
circles that attended Isaac Luria, which in turn were patterned on the kabba-
listic fellowships described in the Zohar. The first charter reflects concerns
shar’abi and beit el 9

about the continuation of the fellowship and the preservation of its social
structure and spiritual intensity. As in the case of the charter signed by Vital’s
companions, the signers committed themselves to attitudes of love and hu-
mility toward their fellows in the circle.8 The second charter deals with re-
sponses to catastrophes that occur to members of their community. The signers
committed themselves to take responsibility for the education of the comrades’
children and to take special measures in the event of a comrade’s illness or
death. The comrades also committed themselves to reciting all of the books of
the Psalms, which is also a common response to catastrophe. In the fourth
charter, the comrades designated themselves as the Ahavat Shalom group, an
appellation that survives to this day.9
The pietistic life of the Beit El kabbalists was distinguished by the structure
of the comradeship. In Beit El, there were three main areas of study: exoteric,
philosophical (mahshevet Yisrael), and Kabbalah. The group divided into three
‘‘watches’’ (mishmarot) that effectively kept the study room populated twenty-
four hours a day. The first watch began at the midnight vigil (tiqqun hazot) and
_
concentrated on the study of Lurianic Kabbalah, particularly Vital’s Ez Hayyim.
_ _
The second group commenced after the morning prayers and continued until
the afternoon. The third watch ran from the afternoon to the evening services
and concentrated on the study of Mishnah.10 After the evening prayers, this
group committed itself to the study of the Talmud. Hence, the social structure
of the mishmarot was such that merchants and people who worked for a living
could be preoccupied with exoteric studies during the day while the full-time
practitioners of Kabbalah were busy during the night and morning hours.
Owing, in part, to tensions in the Beit El community, a group broke away
and formed another institution, the Rehovot ha-Nahar yeshivah, in 1896.11
Rehovot ha-Nahar was founded in the Yissacharoff synagogue of the Bu-
kharian quarter of Jerusalem’s ‘‘New City.’’ The founder was Nissim Nahum,
of Tripoli, with the assistance of Hayyim Shaul Dweck, of Aleppo. Dweck had
_
left Beit El in the midst of a controversy over the proper kavvanot to be recited
for the Sabbatical year.12 Rehovot ha-Nahar was devoted to kavvanot practice, to
the apparent exclusion of Talmud study. Like Beit El, the new institution
operated around the clock. The daily schedule began with nightly immersion
in the ritual bath (mikvah), the performance of the midnight vigil (Tiqqun
Hazot), and the full recitation of prayers with Shar’abi’s version of the kavva-
_ _
not.13 Rehovot ha-Nahar served as a center for the Aleppo scholars and came to
include other newcomers to Jerusalem from Yemen and the west, as well as a
significant contingent of Ashkenazim. The leaders of the early Ashkenazic
pietistic circles of Jerusalem, Moshe Nahum Wallenstein, Aryeh Leib Beharad,
and Zevi Pesah Frank, as well as the Hasidic rabbinical court, gave their
_