El Prezente: Journal For Sephardic Studies Jurnal de Estudios Sefaradis

El Prezente
Journal for Sephardic Studies

Jurnal de estudios sefaradis
El Prezente, Vol. 12-13

2018-2019
Ben-Gurion University Moshe David Gaon Center

of the Negev for Ladino Culture
El Prezente - Journal for Sephardic Studies
A peer-reviewed scientific journal, published annually by the
Moshe David Gaon Center for Ladino Culture, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
Direct all editorial correspondence to: gaon@bgu.ac.il
Editors
Eliezer Papo • Tamar Alexander • Jonatan Meir
Editorial Council: David M. Bunis, Center for Jewish Languages and Literatures, The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Paloma Díaz-Mas, CSIC, Madrid; Jelena Erdeljan, Center
for the Study of Jewish Art and Culture, University of Belgrade; Mladenka Ivanković,
Institute for Recent History of Serbia, Belgrade; Nenad Makuljević, Department of History
of Art, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade; Alisa Meyuhas Ginio, Department
of History, Tel Aviv University; Devin Naar, Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, University
of Washington, Seattle; Aldina Quintana Rodriguez, Department of Spanish and Latin
American Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Shmuel Rafael, Department
of Literature of the Jewish People, Bar-Ilan University; Aron Rodrigue, Department of
History, Stanford University; Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald, Department of Hebrew and
Semitic Languages, Bar-Ilan University; Edwin Seroussi, Musicology Department, The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Cengiz Sisman, Department of History, University of
Houston-Clear Lake; Katja Šmid, CSIC, Madrid; Michael Studemund-Halévy, Institute
for History of the German Jews, University of Hamburg; Jagoda Večerina Tomaić,
Department of Judaic Studies, University of Zagreb.
Editorial Coordinator: Avishag Ben-Shalom

Language Editors: Dina Hurvitz (Hebrew), Shaul Vardi (English)
Graphic Design: Studio Sefi Designs
Print: BGU Print Unit
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Hebrew side: “A picture of the awaited new Jewish king SABETHA SEBI…”
English side: “… with his accompanying Prophet”.
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Published with the support of

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Dr. Tali Latowicki

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Table of Contents
Preface 9
Jacob Barnai
The Image of Nathan of Gaza in Jewish Consciousness and
Historiography 17
David M. Bunis
The Language and Personal Names of Judezmo Speakers
in Eres¸ Israel during the Time of Nathan of Gaza: Clues from
Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Rabbis 31
Noam Lev El
The Epistle of Nathan of Gaza to Raphael Joseph and the Issue
of the Lurianic Prayer Intentions 73
Elliot R. Wolfson
Hypernomian Piety and the Mystical Rationale of the
Commandments in Nathan of Gaza’s Sefer Haberiya 90
Noam Lefler
A Prophet of an Absent Messiah 154
Dor Saar-Man
The Attitudes of Samuel Primo and Abraham Cardoso towards
Nathan of Gaza 177
Avinoam J. Stillman
Nathan of Gaza, Yacaqov Koppel Lifshitz, and the Varieties
of Lurianic Kabbalah 198
Jonatan Meir
Sabbatian Hagiography and Jewish Polemical Literature 228
Gordana Todorić
Political Discourse as a Field of Deconstruction of the Figure 242
of a Prophet
Contributors 258
A Brief Guide to Preparing your Manuscript for Submission 259
Hebrew Section ‫א‬

90 | Hypernomian Piety and the Mystical Rationale of the Commandments
Hypernomian Piety and the Mystical Rationale of the

Commandments in Nathan of Gaza’s Sefer Haberiya
Elliot R. Wolfson
Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies,
University of California, Santa Barbara
“Precisely by attaining an ideal, we surpass it”.

(Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil)
In line with the pioneering work of Gershom Scholem, scholars have

commonly identified antinomianism as the salient, if not the primary,
feature of Sabbatianism in the seventeenth century and its aftermath in the
Frankist movement of the eighteenth century. Purportedly, this defiance
was expressed in the introduction of new ceremonial rites, the retraction
of older Halakhic norms, and the transgressive sanctification of the unholy
1 Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Schocken, New York 1956, pp. 211,
291, 307, 315, 318; idem, Sabbatai S˝evi: The Mystical Messiah 1626-1676, trans. by R. J.
Zwi Werblowsky, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1973, pp. 162-163. On Frank’s
antinomian proclivity, see the brief comment in Harris Lenowitz, The Jewish Messiahs:
From the Galilee to Crown Heights, Oxford University Press, New York 1998, p. 17,
and the detailed historical account in Pavel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank
and the Frankist Movement, 1755-1816, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia
2011, pp. 21-62. See also the more recent study by Jay Michaelson, “Conceptualizing
Jewish Antinomianism in the Teachings of Jacob Frank”, Modern Judaism 37 (2017), pp.
338-362. On the utilization of the Sabbatian concept of strange acts, see the comment
in The Collection of the Words of the Lord [Jacob Frank] from the Polish Manuscripts, ed.,
trans., and annotated, with an introduction by Harris Lenowitz, 2004, § 157, p. lxii:
“All strange acts will be at [the place of ] Esau, but all will be seen openly, and that
namely is, Zar Zer. That is, the one who now wears a crown will become Zar, that is a
90 |
Elliot R. Wolfson | 91
as the supreme veneration of the holy.1 That the followers of Shabbetai S˝evi
(1626-1676) attached mystical and messianic significance to his “strange
actions” (macasim zarim)—such as publicly pronouncing the ineffable name
and ingesting proscribed foods—is not subject to dispute.2 Furthermore,
stranger, and he who now is a stranger, will receive the crown Zer”. Compare ibid., §
159, p. lxii: “Maisim zarim—Strange deeds—stands only at [the place of ] Jacob, only
they are not covered, but all are exposed to view”. Ibid., § 413, p. cxxxiv: “These words,
Maisim zorim—strange/foreign deeds. This means go to foreign places, because these
words at [the place of ] Jacob mean, Maisim jofim—Beautiful deeds”. Ibid., § 742, pp.
ccxiv-ccxv: “How could you want to do strange deeds? For that one who has knowledge
of attaining a thing may do it through his deeds. Zar Zer; that is: that the Zar is made a
Zer, and the Zer, Zar. But he who is not capable of it may go mad …. He who knows
how to do strange deeds can do them, for the moment he has done them and caught
sight of his thing, he regains it and says to him in whose hand it was, You take this staff
... as was said; but he who knows not [what it is], how can he go seek something?” Ibid.,
§ 1275, p. cccxlii: “There are strange deeds at [the place of ] Jacob. If you had been in
wholeness, you would have put on an attire such that the whole world would not know
the foundation of the material from which it was formed; they would not even be able to
understand the work. All would have inquired and been amazed at those signs. Each of
you would have worn a different attire; as it stands with you, that one is different from
another. Every day you would have worn different attire, and in that attire you would
already have known what is above and what beneath, what before and what behind, and
what that is which is called altered deeds. If I were to reveal to you the foundation of
that word: alteration, then you would not want to come as far even as my room”. The
translation of Lenowitz is available at https:/web.archive.org/web/20110620033822/;
http://www.languages.utah.edu/kabbalah/protected/download.html.
2 Cengiz Sisman, The Burden of Silence: Sabbatai Sevi and the Evolution of the Ottoman-
Turkish Dönmes, New York, Oxford University Press 2015, pp. 25, 41, 58, 94. For
the intriguing suggestion that the eventual ascendancy of the antinomian elements—
related especially to sexuality and the erotic sense of touch—was due to the influence
of Shabbetai’s third wife, see Alexander van der Haven, From Lowly Metaphor to
Divine Flesh: Sarah the Ashkenazi, Sabbatai Tsevi’s Messianic Queen and the Sabbatian
Movement, Menasseh ben Israel Instituut, Amsterdam, 2012, pp. 40-60. An attempt
to link the purported antinomian behavior to a personal, direct, and intimate
experience of God was proffered by Yehuda Liebes in Studies in Jewish Myth and
Jewish Messianism, trans. by Batya Stein, State University of New York Press, New
York 1992, pp. 110-111: “The God known to Sabbetai Zevi was personal, more
easily found in his soul than in his mind. I believe that Sabbetai Zevi expressed the
these wayward deeds inspired sacrilegious devotion, especially amongst

those who were positioned on the boundary, including conversos for whom
faith took precedence over ritual,3 as well as for some of the Dönme groups,
who in emulation of their messiah converted to Islam and approved the
explicit denunciation of the commandments.4 According to Scholem,
even if the believers did not imitate the antinomian tendencies of their
saviour, the spirit of religious nihilism and the consecration of sin were
at the core of the movement and did not constitute a fringe element.5 In
his precise and characteristically categorical language, he declares that the
“religious fervour” of the more fanatical Sabbatians was “radically opposed
to everything which for centuries had formed the essence of moral teaching
and speculation in Judaism. It is as if an anarchist rebellion had taken place
within the world of Law”.6 Scholem’s dialectical understanding of this
movement—consistent with his more general approach to understanding
historical phenomena—presumes that the revolt against tradition was the
personal nature of his God in the name true God and stressed his personal attachment
in names like the God of Sabbetai Zevi or the God of Sabbetai Zevi’s faith … This
personal approach could not be communicated—it is not words that are vital but the
direct relation between the bearer and the receiver of the message … The personal
knowledge of God entails the possibility of antinomianism. Whoever knows God
through his own soul can receive knowledge of positive and negative commandments
directly from Him, dispense with the mediation of halakhic authorities who lack this
direct attachment and be above any halakhic establishment” (emphasis in original).
See also Yehuda Liebes, On Sabbatianism and Its Kabbalah: Collected Essays [in
Hebrew], Bialik Institute, Jerusalem 1995, pp. 20-34. To be precise, Scholem also
noted that the spur that catapulted Shabbetai’s mission was his personal and intimate
relationship to the God of his faith. See Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, pp. 224, 228, 235.
3 Matt Goldish, The Sabbatean Prophets, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
2004, p. 49. By contrast, see Sisman, The Burden of Silence, p. 73.
4 David J. Halperin, Sabbatai Zevi: Testimonies to a Fallen Messiah, Littman Library of
Jewish Civilization, Oxford 2007, pp. 18-19; Sisman, The Burden of Silence, pp. 142,
150, 154-155, 182-187.
5 Scholem, Major Trends, p. 315. See the summary of Scholem’s view in Sabbatian
Heresy: Writings on Mysticism, Messianism, and the Origins of Jewish Modernity, ed.
Pawel Maciejko, Brandeis University Press, Waltham 2017, p. xviii.
6 Scholem, Major Trends, p. 318.
tragic outcome of an internal process informed by tradition, a kind of reverse

Marranism according to which the external world was that of “rabbinical
Jewry” and the internal was the “Messianic Judaism of Antinomianism,
the secret annihilation of the Torah as its true fulfillment”.7 Consider the
following assessment:
Sabbatianism must be regarded not only as a single continuous
development which retained its identity in the eyes of its adherents
regardless of whether they themselves remained Jews or not, but also,
paradoxical though it may seem, as a specifically Jewish phenomenon
to the end. I shall endeavor to show that the nihilism of the Sabbatian
and Frankist movements, with its doctrine so profoundly shocking to
the Jewish conception of things that the violation of the Torah could
become its true fulfillment (bittulah shel torah zehu kiyyumah), was
a dialectical outgrowth of the belief in the Messiahship of Sabbatai
S˝evi, and that this nihilism, in turn, helped pave the way for Haskalah
and the reform movement of the nineteenth century, once its original
religious impulse was exhausted.8
Setting aside the concluding part of this passage, which has been
criticized by historians, I wish to focus on Scholem’s characterization of
Sabbatian heresy as an outgrowth of inner forces that shaped the spiritual
contours of Judaism.9 Significantly, the dialectic of a radical but internal
7 Ibid., p. 319.
8 Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality,
Schocken, New York 1971, p. 84.
9 Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, p. 794: “In theory, of course, it was possible to restrict the
paradox that was at the heart of the Sabbatian faith to the person of the messiah,
and that is what some of the theologians of the movement (for example, Abraham
Miguel Cardoso) attempted to do. But religious movements have an inner logic and
a dynamism of their own, and the paradox of the messiah’s mission almost inevitably
led to a revaluation of rabbinic tradition. The believers possesses a new standard by
which to measure the traditional realities of the ghetto where, for the time being,
the infidels who interpreted the Torah ‘according to the flesh’ still held sway. In due
transvaluation of traditional rabbinic values is expressed by reference

to the dictum transmitted in the name of Reš Laqiš that on occasion
the nullification of the Torah is its foundation (bit¸t¸ulah šel tora zehu
course the believers, that is, the truly ‘spiritual’ Jews, would become critics—some
moderate and others radical—of rabbinic Judaism as such. Unlike the criticism of
the Enlightenment … which was inspired by ideas and circumstances impinging
from the outside, the Sabbatian criticism of rabbinic Judaism was an internal
phenomenon: it was the criticism of ‘spirituals’ whose paradoxical values no longer
fitted into the traditional mold and who sought new modes of expression for their
utopian Judaism. Although they were engaged in open conflict with traditional Jewish
society they never thought of denying their historical identity as Jews”. The attentive
ear will discern the implicit comparison of Sabbatianism with early Christianity,
particularly as interpreted by Paul, an analogy that Scholem subsequently makes
explicit (Sabbatai S˝evi, pp. 795-799). In fairness to Scholem, it must be noted that
he points out both similarities and differences between the two phenomena. On
the possible Christian influences informing the antinomian character of the strange
actions of Shabbetai S˝evi and the prospect of a new law proclaimed by Nathan, see
Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, p. 166. For a criticism of Scholem’s Orientalist attempt to
decipher Sabbatian ideology in light of Christian—and especially Protestant—values,
see Avraham Elqayam, “The Horizon of Reason: The Divine Madness of Sabbatai
S˝evi”, Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 9 (2003), pp. 43-45.
However, as Elqayam reminds the reader (p. 46), Scholem also compared Shabbetai’s
antinomian illuminations to the following teaching attributed to the S˝ūfī al-Junayd,
“God brings upon those that love him a kind of sudden and supernatural madness,
in which a man may speak and act against the directions of religion, without his
being responsible for his actions and without God caring to make them accord with
the religion which He has revealed from heaven” (Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, p. 164,
translated from Louis Massignon, La Passion d’al-Hosayn-ibn-Mansour al-Hallaj:
Martyr Mystique de l’Islam, vol. 1, Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, Paris 1922, p.
36). The precise language of Massignon’s French rendering is even more germane to
the question of antinomianism and mystical ecstasy, Dieu communique à qui lui plait
une sorte de folie soudaine, surnaturelle,--où l’homme peut parler et agir contrairement
à la loi, sans qu’il soit responsable, et sans que Dieu daigne faire concorder cette action
avec sa loi révélée. The implication of this statement is contradicted by the tradition
that al-Junayd maintained that the sovereign unity of God “is only realizable if we
distinguish between what the Law commands and what the Law forbids”. See Louis
Massignon, The Passion of al-Hallāj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam, trans. by Herbert
Mason, 4 vols., Princeton University Press, Princeton 1982, 1:77.
yesodah).10 Notwithstanding the veracity of this insight, I would argue

that the emphasis on antinomianism as an extreme nihilism and depraved
mysticism, which led to the subversion of the Torah,11 has obscured the
more complex engagement with the function of ritual law in Sabbatian
ideology. It behoves me to note that Scholem on occasion seems to offer a
10 Babylonian Talmud, Menah˝ot 99b. Regarding this passage and other rabbinic
statements espousing a form of hypernomianism, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Venturing
Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism, Oxford University Press, Oxford
2006, pp. 237-238. The formulation of the received text is pecamim šebit¸t¸ulah šel tora
zehu yesodah. However, the version cited by Scholem, bit¸t¸ulah šel tora zehu qiyyumah
(see also Major Trends, pp. 317 and 421 n. 65) is attested in several extant sources. For
example, see Sefer H˛asidim, ed. Judah Wistinetzki, second edition, M. A. Wahrmann,
Frankfurt am Main 1924, sec. 1313, p. 324; Eliezer Papo, Pele Yoces¸, Jerusalem 1986,
pp. 69 (s.v. halixa), 112 (s.v. h˝esed), 113 (s.v. h˝asidut), 115 (s.v. h˝ešbon); S˝evi Elimelex
Shapira, Bene Yissasxar Hašalem Wehamevu’ar, 6 vols., cOz Wehadar, Jerusalem 2012-
2014, 5:281; the commentary Ramatayim S˝ofim by Samuel of Sieniawa on Tanna
Deve Eliyahu, Meqor Hasefarim, Jerusalem 2012, ch. 4, p. 62 n. 22. The sensitivity
associated with the dictum of Reš Laqiš can be gleaned from the corruptions found in
the manuscript variants of the Talmudic text. For instance, in MS Vatican 120-121,
the text reads pecamim šebit¸t¸ulah zo hi yesodah, and in MS Munich 95, pecamim šel tora
zo hi yesodah. It is plausible to hypothesize that scribes purposefully altered the text in
an effort to diminish its potentially heterodox repercussions.
11 Scholem, Major Trends, p. 317: “The Torah, as the radical Sabbatians were fond of
putting it, is the seed-corn of Salvation, and just as the seed-corn must rot in the earth
in order to sprout and bear fruit, the Torah must be subverted in order to appear in its
true Messianic glory”. For a recent analysis that continues in this direction, see Rona
Tausinger, “The Secret of Fulfilling a Commandment via Sin in the Case of Judah and
Tamar as Portrayed in Sabbatianism” [in Hebrew], Dacat 83 (2017), pp. 235-264. See,
however, Maoz Kahana, “Shabbetai Zevi—the Halakhic Man” [in Hebrew], Zion 81
(2016): 391-433. Kahana argues that, contrary to the dominant view of Shabbetai
S˝evi’s antinomian violation of Jewish rituals stemming from a psychological disorder
such as manic depression, his behavior, before and after the conversion, demonstrated
a very close relationship to normative halaxa. In particular, Kahana emphasizes the
importance of halakhic stringency on the formation of Shabbetai S˝evi’s messianic
posture. See also Maoz Kahana, “Cosmos and Nomos: Sacred Space and Legal Action,
from Rabbi Yosef Qaro to Shabbetai S˝evi”, El Prezente 10 (2016): 143-153. My study
lends support to Kahana’s approach.
somewhat more attenuated view. Thus, in one passage, he insists that the
purpose of the contravening acts was “not to deny the authority of the
Torah, but to oppose a ‘Torah of the higher world,’ Torah de-Atsiluth …
to the Torah in its present sensual appearance, Torah de Beriah”.12 This
particular formulation conforms to the hypernomian stance that I have
affirmed, although Scholem does not use this precise terminology.13 On
balance, however, Scholem privileges the antinomian aspect, maintaining
that the Sabbatian perspective is based on earlier Kabbalists, who argued
that the material performance of the commandments automatically passes
away when the Torah is restored to its primeval spirituality.14 It should come
as no surprise, therefore, that Scholem insists that even though the majority
of Sabbatians continued to profess allegiance to rabbinical Judaism, they
secretly believed they had outgrown it.15 Viewing the phenomenon in this
manner not only gives undue weight to the alleged antinomianism, but
also fails to address the far more thorny and at times abstruse negotiation
with traditional rituals on the part of the Sabbatian theologians as well
as their audacious embellishment of the Lurianic motif of the righteous
descending to the depths of the demonic16—an approach that can be
judiciously referred to as the soteriology of theurgical transgression.17
12 Scholem, Major Trends, p. 319.

13 Patrick Koch, Human Self-Perfection: A Re-Assessment of Kabbalistic Musar – Literature
of Sixteenth-Century Safed, Cherub Press, Los Angeles 2015, p. 203, suggests that
Scholem distinguished two ideal types in the Weberian sense, the s¸addiq and the
h˝asid, the former identified as “strictly nomian” and the latter with a “hypernomian
mode of conduct”. Leaving aside the conceptual validity of this distinction, it must be
noted that Scholem never employed the terms “hypernomian” or “hypernomianism”.
14 Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, pp. 319-320.
15 Scholem, Major Trends, p. 320. See also the surmise of Elisheva Carlebach, The Pursuit
of Heresy: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies, Columbia University
Press, New York 1990, pp. 8, 92.
16 Isaiah Tishby, The Doctrine of Evil and the ‘Kelippah’ in Lurianic Kabbalism [in
Hebrew], Magnes Press, Jerusalem 1984, p. 129 n. 1; Charles Mopsik, Les Grands
Textes de la Cabale: Les Rites qui font Dieu, Verdier, Paris 1993, p. 549.
17 The expression is a translation of Mopsik’s la théurgie transgressive; see Les Grands
Textes, pp. 524-546.
It is apposite to recall the observation of Pawel Maciejko. Developing

the view of Yehuda Liebes that Shabbetai S˝evi’s messianic aspirations—
including his seditious behaviour and even his conversion—were based not
on abstract Kabbalistic concepts but on his deeply personal relationship
with God,18 Maciejko concludes that Sabbatians were prepared to emulate
the strange behaviour of their messiah as part of an effort to inculcate his
quest for understanding and fulfilling the true will of God, even if this led to
violations of the Mosaic Law. The abrogation of rabbinic traditions, however,
did not have inherent value apart from serving as a means to achieve this end.
Sabbatianism did not produce a “systematic ideology of antinomianism—
such an ideology is an artefact of academic research. … While the principal
enemies of the Sabbatians (e.g. Jacob Sasportas, Moses H˛agiz, Jacob Emden)
did fulminate against the Sabbatians ‘licentiousness’, they were much more
concerned about their flirting (and sometimes open romance) with ‘the other’
than with any libertine excesses. Mixing religious identities and values, not
antinomianism, was the prime target of polemics”.19 I concur with Maciejko’s
conclusion, but I would argue nonetheless that the taxonomic classification
of hypernomianism better conveys the assumption on the part of some
devotees of Shabbetai S˝evi regarding the excess of law that is its foundation.
To enhance the argument, let me add that the same terminological
shift—and the conceptual modification implied thereby—can be applied
to the older Kabbalistic texts that have been proposed as the major sources
that influenced the Sabbatian attitude toward the law, especially the Racaya
Mehemena and Tiqqune Zohar. These strata of Zoharic literature, presumed
to have been written by a Spanish Kabbalist in the fourteenth century,
undoubtedly present a sustained critique of rabbinic ritual, but this is far too
complex to be labelled simply as antinomian. The appropriate taxonomy,
I suggest, is hypernomian, insofar as the very rituals that are disparaged
serve as the path to attain the mystical ideal of unity that transcends the
18 Sabbatian Heresy, p. xxvi. See reference to studies of Liebes cited above, n. 2. On the
secret of faith in Sefer Haberiya, see the extensive discussion in Avraham Elqayam, “The
Mystery of Faith in the Writings of Nathan of Gaza” [in Hebrew], Ph.D. dissertation,
Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1993, pp. 119-194.
19 Sabbatian Heresy, pp. xxviii-xxix.
law of polarities. Expressed in the symbolic language employed in these

texts, the way to access the Torah of the Tree of Life is through the Torah
of the Tree of Knowledge. Conformity to law is the means to overcome the
law. Alternatively, the paradox of the hypernomian logic to be elicited from
these sources, which is crucial in evaluating the Sabbatian phenomenon,
can be stated as follows: the Torah is the antidote to the demonic force
of the serpent, as the rabbis already taught, but for the Torah to assume
that role, it must partake of the poison of the other side; the cure is of the
same nature as the malady. We are here reminded of the adage regarding
the need to fight fire with fire, but from the vantage point of Kabbalistic
gnosis, the plausibility of such a posture is dependent on discerning that its
deeper meaning implies that fire can combat fire because fire comprises its
own opposite as part of itself. To translate the ontological epistemologically,
untruth is not antithetical to truth but is rather an integral aspect of its
truthfulness. The untruth, one might say, is true since in its truth it is
untrue. In accordance with this logic, boundaries of law emerge in response
to transgression, but transgression is not possible without boundaries of
law; the limits of law, therefore, can be trespassed only by the aberrant acts
of limitlessness that sustain the very limits that are trespassed.20
Ascesis and the Lawful Gesturing beyond the Law

In the remainder of this study, I will elucidate this point by focusing on
t¸acame hamis˝wot, the rationales for the commandments, as delineated in
Sefer Haberiya, the major theological treatise by Nathan of Gaza (1643-
1680), the prophet who spearheaded the Sabbatian movement through his
propagandist literary activities, including offering mystical justifications
for the messiah’s heterodoxy.21 To the best of my knowledge, the emphasis
20 Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, pp. 266-270.

21 Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, pp. 804-814. For discussion of Nathan’s Sabbatian
Kabbalah, see Chaim Wirszubski, Between the Lines: Kabbalah, Christian Kabbalah
and Sabbatianism [in Hebrew], ed. Moshe Idel, Magnes Press, Jerusalem 1990, pp.
152-246; Elqayam, “The Mystery”.
on antinomianism has precluded scholars from paying attention to the

affirmative role accorded the commandments in Nathan’s eschatology
and his indebtedness to this prominent genre of Kabbalistic literature.
This treatise was composed several years after the conversion of Shabbetai
S˝evi and Nathan’s concerted effort to explain the heretical theology in
Zoharic and Lurianic terms, which led to his departure from Palestine
and his persecution at the hands of rabbinic authorities, most intensively
in 1667-1668.22 The examination will lend support to my suggestion
that hypernomianism is the more suitable term to describe the Sabbatian
claim that the law is realized through its suspension. In the rabbinic
parlance mentioned above, the nullification of Torah is its foundation, the
axiological rationale for the strange actions of the redeemer; expressed in
the language of Tiqqune Zohar,23 he is good on the inside but his garment
is evil.24 With notable homiletical skill, Nathan validated the hypernomian
axiom that informed the Kabbalistic mindset from the late Middle Ages:
the law most fully expresses its potentiality as law at the point when it
exceeds the limits of its prescriptions; the law is confirmed in the negation
of its propensity to negate.25 By shifting attention to the hypernomian in
place of the antinomian,26 we can better understand why Nathan chose
not to convert or to engage in actions that contradicted rabbinic authority,
22 Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, pp. 718-719. On the date of composition of Sefer Haberiya
and a brief description of its contents, see ibid., pp. 780-781.
23 Tiqqune Zohar, ed. Reuven Margaliot, Mosad Harav Kook, Jerusalem 1978, sec. 60, 93b.
24 Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, pp. 177-178, and sources cited on p. 177 n. 181.
25 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Asceticism, Mysticism, and Messianism: A Reappraisal of
Schechter’s Portrait of Sixteenth-Century Safed”, Jewish Quarterly Review 109
(2016), p. 169.
26 The more customary view is stated succinctly by Carlebach, The Pursuit, p. 98:
“Some of the most radical elements in Sabbatian antinomianism, nihilism and mass
apostasy, were rooted in the doctrines of evil and cosmic redemption first formulated
by Nathan”. See the claims of H˛agiz and Ergas discussed by Carlebach, ibid., pp. 152-
153. A similar stance, albeit with an innovative attempt to contextualize Shabbetai
S˝evi’s antinomian behavior astrologically, is taken by Moshe Idel, Saturn’s Jews: On the
Witches’ Sabbat and Sabbateanism, Continuum, London 2011, pp. 69-72, 105-106.
but, at the same time, did not condemn the insubordination of the
messiah and some of the believers.27 Moreover, as the analysis below will
illustrate, Nathan upheld the much older Kabbalistic idea that the purpose
of the bodily rituals is to purify and transform the body; in that regard,
there is an indissoluble nexus between the excess of lack displayed in the
ascetic overcoming of the corporeal and the lack of excess underlying the
hypernomian surpassing of the nomian. The link between the antinomies,
however, should not be construed dialectically à la Hegel as two sides of
the same coin.28 Rather, the paradoxical relationship is such that opposites
are identical by virtue of their opposition and hence, at the perimeter
of our experience—what we may call, using Blanchot’s nomenclature,
the limit experience of the experience of the limit, the experience of
nonexperience29—deficiency elides into being superfluous and superfluity
into being deficient, not because there is a sublation of the difference
between them, but because within the limit of the limitless extremes
are realized in their irreducible indifference. Ascetic denial, accordingly,
may be demarcated as the hypernomian intemperance—the surfeit of
the law—that transforms jouissance into suffering, the painful plethora
of pleasure into the pleasurable plethora of pain,30 even to the point of
exhibiting behaviour that appears from the outside to be a symptom of
extreme melancholy, lunacy or folly.31
27 Sisman, The Burden of Silence, pp. 41-42; van der Haven, From Lowly Metaphor,
pp. 39-40. On the epithet “believers” (ma’aminim) to refer to the Sabbatians, see
Scholem, Major Trends, p. 318; idem, The Messianic Idea, p. 79; idem, Sabbatai S˝evi,
pp. 125, 176, 238, 331, 354, 366, 371, 389, 391-393, 417, 458, 488, 490, 503,
508, 582, 583, 613, 626, 630, 691-694, 704-705, 715, 717, 718.
28 For a recent analysis along these lines, see Slavoj Žižek, Incontinence of the Void:
Economico-Philosophical Spandrels, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 2017, pp. 158-161.
29 Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, trans. by Susan Hanson, University of
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1993, p. 159, and see discussion in Elliot R. Wolfson,
Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and the Poetic Imagination, Fordham
University Press, New York 1995, p. 289.
30 Žižek, Incontinence, p. 208.
31 Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, pp. 125-138, famously diagnosed Shabbetai’s melancholy
as a manic-depressive psychosis. On Nathan’s attribution to Shabbetai S˝evi of the
From Nathan’s perspective, the foremost and overriding rationale for

compliance to the law is the kenotic ideal of self-sacrifice (mesirat nefeš).
This point is made with particular poignancy in a passage where Nathan
expounds on the mythic notion of a pipe (s¸inor) that extends from the
Garden of Eden to the land of Israel: “When Israel is on their land by the
power of the Torah and the commandments they fulfill, they strengthen
this pipe, and they would also bind the supernal wisdom with the lower
wisdom in order to consign the mystery of thought in the place of the
land of Israel so that the edifice will be established. When thought is
withdrawn, the pipe from the Garden of Eden to the land of Israel is also
damaged, and there remains alone the luster [t¸ehiru] in which thought
did not exist, and thus the land of Israel was destroyed”.32 The impartial
reader surely would not deny that Nathan is here voicing the theurgical
perspective predominant in theosophical Kabbalah, especially as it pertains
to the geocentrism of the land of Israel—which stands symbolically for the
title bar nifle, also vocalized as bar nafle (“the fallen one”) (Babylonian Talmud,
Sanhedrin 96b), due to his depression and social alienation, see the epistle discussed
by Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, p. 134 (and see also pp. 612 and 808), and compare
the passage cited and analyzed in Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, p. 277. Compare the
astrological explanation of Shabbetai S˝evi’s melancholia, predicated on the correlation
of the messiah and Saturn, proffered by Idel, Saturn’s Jews, pp. 64-69, 73, 129 n. 66,
145-146 n. 11, 158 n. 118. For a different approach, see Elqayam, “The Horizon”,
pp. 7-61. Based on comparison to S˝ūfī sources, Elqayam views Shabbetai S˝evi’s
madness chiefly as a torment induced by his obdurate love for the divine beloved.
The madness is thus the overt means necessary to achieve the ecstatic state of mystical
union. Compare the teaching of Hallāj, cited by Ah˝mad ibn Fāris, in Massignon, The
Passion of al-Hallāj, 1:285, “When God attaches Himself to a man, He kills in him
all else but Himself! When He loves one of His faithful, He incites the others to hate
him, in order that His servant may draw near Him so as to assent to Him!” See also
the statement of Ibn Dāwūd cited by Massignon, The Passion of al-Hallāj, 1:342-343.
On the theme of the holy fool and mystical madness, see Michael W. Dols, Majnūn:
The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, ed. Diana E. Immisch, Oxford University
Press, Oxford 1992, pp. 388-410.
32 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, MS Jewish Theological Seminary of America 1581,
fol. 81b.
attribute of Malxut—in the spiritual economy of the Jewish people. The

nomian foundation is accentuated even more acutely in the continuation
of the passage: “Therefore, the essence of the bond of the souls in the
account of the chariot is naught but the land of Israel. Therefore, the
essence of the fulfillment of the commandments is in the land of Israel, for
when they exist there they are bound in the mystery of thought and they
are conjoined to the matter of the account of the chariot to the point that
out of the abundance of their bond with the account of the chariot the
supernal will, the seed of the primordial thought, descends into the light
that has no thought, and the tree emerges in the place of the straight line
[qaw hašawe]”.33 I cannot unpack all of the technical allusions in Nathan’s
comment, but to understand the sentiment expressed in this statement we
must bear in mind that Nathan utilized the rabbinic taxonomies of the
account of creation (macase berešit) and the account of the chariot (macase
merkava) to name two temporal periods within the infinite, the former
allocated to the time prior to the expansion of the straight line and the
latter to the time after the expansion of the light to fill the vessels.34
The unification of these two holds the key to unlock Nathan’s
understanding of the nature of the esoteric, as we see from his explanation
of why Simeon ben Yoh˝ai begins the Idra Rabba section of Zoharic literature
33 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fols. 82a-b. On the expression qaw hašawe, see Elliot
R. Wolfson, Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism,
State University of New York Press, Albany 1995, pp. 180-181 n. 124. According
to Elqayam, “The Mystery”, p. 128, the passage from Nathan’s Sefer Haberiya conveys
the idea that even though the nature of the soul is from the light in which there is no
thought, it is incumbent on a person to rectify the root of his soul by being bound
to the aspect of light in which there is thought, which is within Malxut. Alternatively
expressed, one must strengthen the aspect of the light in which there is no thought,
which is in the root of one’s soul, by means of being bound to the aspect of the light
in which there is thought, that is, the soul of Shabbetai S˝evi. Elqayam notes the
theurgical role as it pertains to the union of these two forms of light, but he does
not emphasize the nomian character of Nathan’s emphasis on the observance of the
commandments.
34 Wirszubski, Between the Lines, pp. 160-161; Elqayam, “The Mystery”, pp. 119-124.
with an explication of the scriptural admonition “Cursed be the man who

makes a sculptured or molten image, abhorred by the Lord, a craftsman’s
handiwork, and sets it up in secret” (Deuteronomy 27:15): “Therefore,
the Rašbi, peace be upon him, before he began the Idra uttered this verse
because when he disclosed his wondrous secrets, the concern of the Rašbi,
peace be upon him, was to conjoin the secret of the holy chariot to the
account of creation [leharkiv sod hamerkava haqedoša cal macase berešit],
and his saying his sermons related to this wisdom produced an action
above as if he united unifications [meyah˝ed yih˝udim], and particularly at
the time the holy Idra was spoken, for all the matters that were spoken
therein were in the secret of the vision of the eye [h˝azuta de-cena], the
seeing of the eye of the intellect [reciyat cen hasexel], and through them he
reached the uppermost [mat¸e lecela lecela]”.35 The daily renewal (h˝idduš) of
creation—a central component in Nathan’s acceptance of the Kabbalistic
understanding of time as the perpetual rejuvenation of a past that is
always yet to come—arises from the revelatory uncovering of theosophical
mysteries, which is correlated with the experience of being incorporated
in the essence of divinity (nixlal bixlal ces¸em ha’elohut). Nathan insists that
“this regeneration can only come about by means of Tiferet specifically and
not by means of any soul, angel, or any other creature”, for to consider
these other possibilities is tantamount to worshipping an idol.36 Insofar as
Nathan accepts the Kabbalistic identification of Tiferet and the Torah, it
is reasonable to deduce the nomian implications of his words: the ecstatic
experience of melding into the essence of divinity, which transcends the
limitations of the law, can transpire only by allegiance to the law. Most
telling, for our purpose, is the fact that Nathan connects the theme of
being bound to the account of the chariot37 with the idea of martyrdom
35 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 114b.

36 Ibid. Compare ibid., fol. 116b: “Everything from the account of the chariot that has
no fixed time [zeman mugbal] to unite with the essence of life cannot be from the
secret of divinity [misod elohut] and it is like the other gods [elohim ah˝erim]”.
37 See Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 91a, where he states that the Torah was given
by Moses, whose root is the foundation of the father (yesod de’abba), because the
(qidduš hašem) on the part of the righteous souls, exemplified in the demise
of Aqiva, who fulfilled the will of the root of his soul—playing on the
name cAqiva, Nathan identifies the root of his soul as the heel (caqev)
whose materiality is thick and coarse—by suffering a difficult death and,
as a consequence, becoming attached to the mystery of supernal thought
(raza demah˝šava celyona).38
Given the explanation in older rabbinic sources of Aqiva’s acceptance of
the fate of death at the hand of the Romans as his seizing the opportunity
to carry out the command to love God with all one’s soul (Deuteronomy
6:5),39 it is reasonable to suppose that, for Nathan as well, the ultimate
implementation of this commandment is the willingness to be martyred,
albeit staged symbolically through the discipline of ascesis rather than
allowing oneself to be actually murdered. Hence, following the interpretive
precedent of the Zoharic text,40 this is the figurative import that Nathan
attributes to the Talmudic dictum, transmitted in the name of Reš Laqiš,
“The words of Torah are established only by one who kills himself over
them”.41 For Nathan, however, this teaching conveys in a more technical
matter of the Torah is to establish the account of the chariot. The wisdom, which is
connected to the aspect of Moses, is revealed when the foreskin—the garment from
the light of the account of creation—is removed through the perica, the pulling back
of the inner lining of the prepuce to expose the glans or the diadem (cat¸ara), which
is the second phase of the circumcision ritual according to rabbinic jurisprudence
(ibid., fol. 91b).
39 Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 61b.
40 Zohar 2:158b (Racaya Mehemena): “The Torah is not established except in one who
kills himself over it. There is no death but poverty, for the poor person is considered
like one who is dead”. See Zohar 3:279a (Racaya Mehemena); Zohar H˛adaš, ed. by
Reuven Margaliot, Mosad Harav Kook, Jerusalem 1978, 97d (Tiqqunim). The
depiction of an impoverished person as someone who is dead is based on another
rabbinic teaching in Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 64b, that four people are
accounted as if they were deceased: a poor person, a leper, a blind person, and one
who is childless. The identification of the poor person as departed is repeated in other
passages from the Racaya Mehemena stratum. See Zohar 3:33b, 153a.
41 Babylonian Talmud, Beraxot 63b; Šabbat 83b; Git¸t¸in 57b.
way the mystery of the attributes withdrawing from the essence of the life
force in order to complete the figuration of the attributes that are below
them (mistaleqim hamiddot meces¸em hah˝ayim kede ligmor s¸iyyur middot
šelemat¸a mehem).42 Far from promoting an antinomianism that is, as the
word suggests, opposed to or against the law, Nathan has transformed
nomian devotion into a passion that is necessary to secure the incarnation
of the light of infinity in the lower forms of being in the ontological
spectrum. Corroboration for my conjecture is found in another passage in
which Nathan explicates how the cause of the lower union (sibbat ah˝adut
hatah˝ton) brings one to know the secret of the holy faith (sod ha’emuna
haqedoša) and how the power of the conjunction of the love above and
below instigates the indwelling of the divine presence (umiko’ah˝ devequt
ha’ahava šel macala umat¸a gorem hašra’at šexina):
Our holy Torah is built on the secret of the faith of the account of the
chariot [sod emunat macase merkava], for through this faith all matters
are restored in accord with their truth. And the great principle that
occasions all this is the secret of love [sod ha’ahava] whose matter is
the conjunction [devequt], and this conjunction is not possible except
through this faith. Therefore it is written “And you who cleave to the
Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 4:4). … The matter of this faith Israel
apprehended through the vision of the eye [beh˝azuta decena] when they
were in one unison [beyih˝ud eh˝ad] at Mount Sinai and they discerned
the true reality of their creator, how he was unified in the wondrous
light [mityah˝ed be’or hanifla].43
We learn more specifically that the passion borne by the martyr is
commensurate to being occupied with the commandments and the Torah.
It would be mistaken to assume that this language is a rhetorical tactic
lacking substance. On the contrary, Nathan appears to be quite serious
and exacting when he pinpoints adherence to the commandments as an
undertaking whose purpose is to unite the two aspects of the infinite, the
42 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 116a.

43 Ibid., fol. 128b.
light in which there is thought (or šeyeš bo mah˝ašava) and the light in which
there is no thought (or še’en bo mah˝ašava).44 If the former is retracted and all
that remains is the latter, identified as the luster45—the image of the place
(s¸iyyur maqom) within the space of the contraction (h˝alal has¸ims¸um),46 the
archetypal vacuum or abysmal clearing, which corresponds to the potential
of the feminine in the world that is entirely masculine, the dimension of
the left in a domain that is completely right47—then the land, which is
the Šexina, is destroyed. The thoughtless light of the empty space can be
branded, moreover, as divine madness—the unreason coiled within the
heart of reason, the dark folly radiating from the luminal wisdom of the
infinite—lived vicariously through the suffering souls of the righteous.48
Israel was chosen to receive the Torah to enact the unification of these two
lights, and “had that unity persisted the world would have been rectified
to the point of attaining spirituality [nitqan hacolam lavo lide ruh˝aniyyut],
for this is the essence of the intention of the creator, and the reality of this
44 For Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 75b, the desire of the light that has no
thought is to be bound with the light that is infinite, since no limit can be ascribed to
that which is without thought, whereas the light that has thought has a limit. From
that vantagepoint, the thoughtless light is more proximate to the incomposite nature
of infinitude that extends limitlessly and thereby resists the setting of boundary. I
assume this is the intent of Nathan’s comment about “the matter that is called infinite
within the constriction [en sof betox has¸ims¸um]”, an idea that he links textually
to Zoharic passages where Keter is called En Sof. We should not lose sight of the
paradox at play in the formulation en sof betox has¸ims¸um, the infinite that is within
the constriction. How can the limitless be delimited unless we presume the supreme
conundrum of the infinitization of the finite in the finitization of the infinite?
45 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 117b. On Nathan’s interpretation of the Lurianic
symbol of the t¸ehiru, see Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, pp. 299-312, 808-809 (a portion of
the text is cited below at n. 96). On the origin of the soul of the messiah in the circles
of the abyss of the t¸ehiru, in contrast to the straight line of the En Sof that infused the
t¸ehiru after the s¸ims¸um, see ibid., pp. 819-820.
47 Ibid., fols. 1b-2a, 102b-103a. Concerning this theme in Nathan, and the citation of other
textual evidence, see Wolfson, Language, p. 511 n. 267.
48 Elqayam, “The Horizon”, pp. 38-39.
conjunction is the true nature [hat¸evac ha’amitti] established by the Lord of

all, and this was apprehended by them with a vision of the eye at the event
of Sinai. The entire Torah is built on this since there is no reason for the
proliferation of commandments except for this principle. In accord with
the reality of the First Cause, there is no reason for the obligation of the
commandments [šelefi mes¸i’ut sibba rišona en t¸acam leh˝iyyuv hamis¸wot]”.49
From the vantage point of the nondifferentiation of the First Cause,
there is no rationale for the commandments because the need for the
commandments has been transcended, but from the vantage point of
the differentiated nature, which is external to that cause, there must be
an array of commandments so that the Jewish people may actualize the
essence of creation, which is to transform the material into the spiritual
(ciqqar haberiya lavo lide ruh˝aniyyut). The root of Israel’s faith and the reason
they were chosen to receive the Torah is to effectuate this transmogrification
by uniting the light in which there is thought with the light in which there is
no thought.50 Spirituality is equated with the state of mindfulness depleted of
mindfulness, the mindfulness, that is, attained by the mind that is mindless.
The one who ascends in an ascent that is without limit (beli gevul)
reaches the place to which no light of thought reaches (šemagica cad maqom
šelo higica šam or hamah˝ašava) and thereby touches the secret of the light
of the primordial incomposite thought (or hamah˝ašava pešut¸a qeduma), a
light that has no assigned place (maqom meyuh˝ad) but rather extends to
anywhere and thus through it the world is constructed by the Torah of
mercy (betorat h˝esed). Regarding the soul that achieves this union, Nathan
writes, “it is considered as if he fulfilled the Torah in its entirety, for the
secret of the Torah, which is Tiferet, has no standing but for this unity.
When it has a slight standing on account of the souls of Israel, it is greatly
strengthened and it becomes a distinctive essence of life, and it is bound with
a steadfast bond to the account of the chariot. And then the consciousness
[hamoh˝in] comes to it and this is the secret of the phylacteries”.51 I cannot

50 Ibid.
do justice here to Nathan’s elaborate discussion of the details surrounding

the phylacteries,52 but it is noteworthy that his treatment of this topic
is another illustration of his affirming the more traditional Kabbalistic
outlook that views rituals as a locus whence to elicit both theosophical
secrets about the divine and the mystical participation of the human
therein.53 Following a venerable Kabbalistic explanation, Nathan considers
the phylacteries as the physical embodiment of the true faith (emuna
amittit) affirmed by the Jewish people, which he further explains as the
manifestation of the incomposite light of the Cause of Causes in the
secret of the ten sefirot. Even though there is a designated place for Israel
in the supernal chariot (maqom meyuh˝ad bamerkava hacelyona leyisra’el)—
the root of the Jewish souls is identified, more technically, as the four
conduits (s¸inorot) that emerge from the point of the constriction whence
the light of the primordial and incomposite light of thought is compressed
homogeneously (minequdat has¸ims¸um šenis¸ams¸em mišam or hamah˝ašava
hapešut¸a wehaqeduma bešawe)—in which there is their intention to realize
the secret of unity (sod hayih˝ud), the depth and substance of the infinite
light cannot be known except through the disclosure of its kingdom on
earth. The mystical meaning of the phylacteries is that they allude to the
fact that the “chain of unity [šalšelet hayih˝ud] is dependent on the souls of
Israel, for when they intend with all their will to unify the supernal unity,
they shake the chain that is bound to them”.54 The theurgical role assigned
to the Jewish people is perfectly consistent with the nomian orientation
of the traditional Kabbalah. The same can be said of the aforementioned
text wherein the phylacteries symbolically represent the consciousness
that infuses Tiferet—the secret of the Torah—when it is attached to the
52 See ibid., fols. 52a, 115a-119a; Nathan of Gaza, Zemir cAris¸im Yacane, MS Oxford,
Bodleian Library 1796, fols. 95a-b. For analysis of Nathan’s discussion of the unity of
the recitation of the Šemac and the phylacteries, expounding themes in the Lurianic
material, see Elqayam, “The Mystery”, pp. 140-142.
53 It is also important to recall reports of Nathan’s ecstatic visions occurring when he
was attired in the traditional garb of the tallet and tefillin. See Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi,
pp. 205-206.
account of the chariot and the light without thought is conjoined to the
light with thought. Nathan’s remark that the enactment of this ritual is
equal to fulfilling the Torah in its entirety is hardly a formulation that one
would expect from an austere and adamant allegiance to an antinomian
posture.
For Nathan, the misery of bearing the unconscious light is enacted
primarily through ritual worship; the law provides the optimal conditions
to nurture an ascetic lifestyle that results in the abnegation of the corporeal
and the conjunction to the incorporeal:
Hence, when a person afflicts his soul in matters of the Torah and
the commandment, it is the reason why afterward it is bound with
the supernal lights, and if the affliction is not in matters of the Torah
and the commandments, it will not be profitable at all. … The holy
souls are created to build and not to destroy, and thus in the time of
destruction, it is appropriate for them to stand in pain, and in the time
of building, they will stand in great joy, for then they are fulfilling the
will of the infinite, and their desire should always be to be bound to
the mystery of the account of the chariot by means of affliction and
suffering that they endure from the power of engagement with the
Torah and the commandments. And then the will of their root will
be complete and the essence of their intention is to transmit the unity
of the holiness of the Lord upon them and their souls, that they will
die for the holiness of his name and not for the other side. … This
is the essence of the intention in the matter of sacrifice of the soul
[becinyan mesirat nefeš], which is to fulfil the will of the root that has no
thought that wants to be incomposite [pašut¸], and its incompositeness
[pešit¸uto] comes about by killing oneself [šememit cas¸mo] for the sake of
sanctifying the Lord. Consequently, one obliterates that matter and the
soul is conjoined to the supernal lights.55
To attain the state of incomposite oneness, the incandescence that has no
thought and therefore no discrimination, the person must kill himself,
55 Ibid., fol. 83a.

which, metaphorically speaking, means one must eradicate the coarse

materiality of one’s being so that the soul can cleave to the immaterial
light.
Sabbath, Restoration to the Infinite, and Overcoming

Gender Dimorphism
Due to the limitations of space, the textual evidence that I will marshal
in support of my hypothesis is necessarily partial. I will focus on Nathan’s
treatment of the Sabbath, but let me preface that inquiry with a statement
that puts into sharp relief the tethering to the law that is indispensable
for release from the law. The context in which the passage appears is a
discussion about the original sin of Adam:
You already know from the writings of the Ari, may his memory be
for the life of the world to come, that the beginning of the souls is in
the secret of the back in the back [sod ah˝or be’ah˝or]; that is, the souls
are the root of the back and they camp in the place of the back. Since
the souls have this root, which is a crooked way [derex ciqeš], you can
understand the aspect of the souls that they do not turn to the way of
life except through great difficulty. The yoke of the commandments is
imposed on it [the soul] so that it goes in the way of life, for by means
of fulfilment of the commandments and engagement with the Torah,
enlightenment comes upon it to find its true place as when it was
comprised in En Sof. 56
By nature, the soul is not inclined to veer toward the way of life, since its
ontological root is in the aspect of the back of the back, and hence to move
the soul in that direction a catalyst is necessary, and that provocation is
the encumbrance of the commandments. In this extraordinary statement,
which to the best of my knowledge has been ignored by scholars, the
performance of ritualistic law is explained as the means to restore the soul
56 Ibid., fol. 9a.

to the infinite. Reflecting the crooked way that is the root of the soul in
the hinder part of infinity, the place of thought to which thought cannot
reach, the laws can be classified as a devious path, but one that is necessary
to bring the soul back to the source where the circuitous is made straight
in its circuity and the straight is made circuitous in its straightness.
In a second passage that offers a theosophical rationalization of the
rabbinic apothegm that study is greater than practice because the former
leads to the latter,57 Nathan writes regarding the formation of the straight
line—referred to both as qaw hayošer and as qaw hayašar—that the “essence
of the goal in those worlds was such that their intention, which was always
from the light of the thought that has no substance [me’or še’en bo mamaš],
was to bring the matter to action, and this is in the pattern of what the
sages, blessed be their memory, said, ‘Great is study for study brings one
to action’; that is to say, it is appropriate to amplify study, to learn much
kabbalah from one’s master, which is the matter of wisdom, the mystery of
thought in which there is the secret of the Torah, whose matter is the form
of all things in thought. It is necessary to study it in order to learn from
it the way to come to action, for this is the purpose, to bring all thought
to action”.58 According to Nathan’s interpretation of the Talmudic adage,
the superior valence accorded study because it leads to action relates to the
assumption that the infinite of thought (en sof šel hamah˝ašava) must be
stimulated by the light that has no thought, the light that is infinite (or še’en
lo sof). Action is privileged, therefore, since it corresponds to the illogical
that is the superlative dimension of the logical, the unreason that is the
formlessness whence the forms of reason are continually being configured.
To comprehend Nathan’s point, we must ponder his assumption that
the will of the infinite acts without any cause or purpose. Rhetorically,
it can be said that the goodness of the will proceeds of its own accord
to create the various worlds—that which is unequivocally good can do
nothing that is not good—but, in truth, this is a statement about the
ateleological nature of that wilfulness, which does not act for the sake of
57 Babylonian Talmud, Qiddušin 40b.

anything outside itself. Surprisingly, Nathan applies the dictum of the

rabbis, “A transgression for its own sake is greater than a commandment
that is not for its own sake”,59 to the thoughts that express the will of the
infinite. Given the complexity of Nathan’s argument, I will cite the passage
in full:
The thoughts, which were mentioned, are like a transgression [dugma
lacavera], for through them is the passage of the will of the infinite
[hacavarat res¸on en sof]. Surely, the will of the infinite is not the telos
of those thoughts. In any event, that transgression is for the sake of
that transgression, that is, in all of their volition and in all of their
heart, they actualize that thing for their sake and not for the sake of
the will of another. In their minds, the wondrous volition that they
accomplish is this will. And very great is this thought, for initially this
was the true intention of the infinite …. An example of this is verily
the matter of the execution of the commandments and transgressions,
for a commandment is not commendable unless it is for its own sake,
that is, for the sake of that very commandment whose purpose is to
fulfil that very commandment so that its vitality and its matter will be
fulfilled, for this is the will of the master of everything that the purpose
59 Babylonian Talmud, Nazir 23b. Concerning this Talmudic dictum, see Moses H˛ayyim
Luzzatto, Qinat Hašem S˝eva’ot, in Ginze Ramh˝al, ed. H˛ayyim Friedlander, Sifrayyati,
Bene Beraq 1984, p. 95. As Luzzatto astutely notes, it would appear that this teaching
is an assault on the law of noncontradiction insofar as transgression becomes an act of
piety and the blemish (pegam) is itself the rectification (tiqqun). For a fuller analysis of
this topic, see Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel, “‘Gedolah Aveirah Lishmah’: Mothers of the
Davidic Dynasty, Feminine Seduction and the Development of Messianic Thought,
From Rabbinic Literature to R. Moshe Haim Luzzatto”, Nashim: A Journal of Jewish
Women’s Studies & Gender Issues 24 (2013), pp. 27-52, esp. 38-41. On Luzzatto’s
relation to Sabbatianism, see the list of scholarly references cited in Elliot R. Wolfson,
“Tiqqun ha-Shekhinah: Redemption and the Overcoming of Gender Dimorphism in
the Messianic Kabbalah of Moses H˛ayyim Luzzatto”, History of Religions 36 (1997),
pp. 292-293 n. 9, to which we can now add Jonathan Garb, Kabbalist in the Heart of
the Storm: R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto [in Hebrew], Tel Aviv University Press, Tel Aviv
2014, pp. 57-59, 78-80, 93-95, 125, 129, 153-171.
that is fulfilled is for the sake of the purpose of that very matter ….
And this is the will of the infinite that their goal is to seek for them life
but not to understand in thought what is the will of the infinite or to
think at all so that the truth would come to them openly like Keter, for
this is called “commandment”. But this is not for its own sake since
it is not for the sake of that commandment but rather for the sake of
another volition. However, when there is a transgression for its own
sake, there the intent is that their intention will be for the purpose of
that matter, to bring it to fruition, and hence that thought is expedient
for that agent.60
Nathan rejects the idea that ritual is for the sake of fulfilling the will of the
infinite because the incompositeness of that will renders it incomprehensible,
and that would include explaining divine agency teleologically.61 In
ritualistic terms, we cannot say of the infinite thought that it is on a par
with a commandment performed for its own sake. Intrinsicality of this
sort can be applied to transgression, a point substantiated by the wordplay
between cavera and hacavara, which yields the ideational assumption that
transgression is a passageway. But in what sense is this so?
Sin is a channel insofar as it facilitates encroaching the boundlessness
of the boundary to be unbound in the binding of the boundary within
the boundless. This is the mystical import of the rabbinic teaching
that transgression for its own sake is greater than the commandment
that is performed for an ulterior motive. Magnifying the intent of the
sages, Nathan attributes to sinfulness in general a higher status than the
commandment, since it has the capacity to transfer us from a heteronomous
to a deontological ethics where the act itself, irrespective of consequences,
is the only thing of consequence. The advantage accorded disobedience,
therefore, is not related to an antinomian shattering of the law, as it is
commonly misunderstood, but rather to the hypernomian trespassing of
the law whence impiety becomes the loftiest form of piety. In line with
60 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fols. 47b-48a.

61 Ibid., fol. 48a.
much older sources, Nathan links law-abiding dissidence to repentance

(tešuva), which he describes as the root upon which the Torah in its entirety
depends.62
Turning to the ritual of the Sabbath, Nathan states that the repose
alludes to the rest associated with the light of thought:
The sages, blessed be their memory, said that restfulness was created
on the day of Sabbath, for this was lacking.63 And if we scrutinize the
verse as it written “On the seventh day God finished the work that
he had been doing” (Genesis 2:2), it may be inferred that even on
the seventh day there was labour. We must understand what kind of
labour is appropriate to resting. The matter relates to what you have
already learned concerning the existence of the lights of [the worlds of ]
creation, formation, and doing, which are different from all the lights,
and they have no vital way to return to their place. The entire luster of
these lights has no respite at all and it constantly meanders from here
to there64 since it has no thoughtful light that sets everything precisely
62 Ibid., fol.. 133b.

63 Berešit Rabba, ed. by Julius Theodor and Chanoch Albeck, Wahrmann, Jerusalem
1965, 10:9, p. 86, and see parallel sources cited in n. 2 ad locum. Based on this, Louis
Ginzberg (The Legends of the Jews, 7 vols., Jewish Publication Society of America,
Philadelphia 1968, 5:111) remarked, “The Sabbath must not be understood as a
cessation from the work of creation, but as a creation in itself; everything was created
in six days except rest, which was created on the Sabbath”.
64 The wandering quality of the luster, which is related to the fact that it issues from the
light that has no thought, the light that is crooked and therefore likened to a serpent,
leads Nathan to compare it to a prostitute that has no fixed place. See Nathan of
Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 117b. On Shabbetai’s use of the figure of a crooked serpent
as part of the signature of his name, doubtlessly based on the numerical equivalence
of the words nah˝aš and mašiyah˝, forging the identity of the serpent and the messiah,
which endows the holy serpent with the power to combat the primordial serpent, see
Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, pp. 235-236; Liebes, On Sabbatianism, pp. 172-182; Wolfson,
Venturing Beyond, pp. 142 n. 53, 176, 178-179. On the consubstantiality of the holy
serpent and the evil serpent according to Nathan, see the reservation expressed by
Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, pp. 307-308. In my judgment, the struggle between the two
in one place as was mentioned. It was already explained above that they
have the reality of rest from the power of the lights above that overflow
from there, and the reality of their effluence is only from the cause of
everything. A spirit is aroused from the point of emanation and the
mystery of the vessel of Tiferet in [the worlds of ] creation, formation,
and doing, is produced, and it exerts providence over all the creatures.
… The mystery of this vessel is constructed on the day of Sabbath,
and by the power of this vessel, repose comes to all the souls of Israel.
Concerning this wondrous secret, they said in the Zohar, “What is the
Sabbath? The name of the blessed holy One”.65 That is, the name of
everything is its vessel, and this was created on the day of Sabbath, and
hence the name of the blessed holy One, which is Tiferet, is Sabbath.66
Expanding on the Midrashic tradition that rest itself was created on the
Sabbath—an idea derived exegetically from the peculiar scriptural language
of God finishing the work on and not before the seventh day—Nathan
maintains that the gift of restfulness is dependent on the vessel that is
created on that day, the vessel of Tiferet,67 the attribute through which the
divine light is transmitted to and manifest in the lower worlds and through
which the Jewish souls acquire their respite. The full import of this remark
can be extracted from Nathan’s reference to the Zoharic claim that the
Sabbath is the name of God. As we may adduce from Nathan and other
Sabbatians, the Sabbath was interpreted as a symbolic cryptograph for
Shabbetai S˝evi and the ushering in of the messianic era that is characterized
serpents, and the ultimate victory of the holy over the demonic, confirms rather than
contradicts their consubstantiality. See Nathan of Gaza, Deruš Hamenora, in Gershom
Scholem, Beciqvot Mašiyah˝, Sifre Taršiš, Jerusalem 1944, p. 124. As Scholem, Sabbatai
S˝evi, p. 810 n. 321, informed the reader, this text is part of Nathan’s treatise Zemir
c
Aris¸im Yacane. See MS Oxford, Bodleian Library 1796, fol. 42b.
65 Zohar 2:88b. On the identification of the Sabbath and the divine name, see Isaiah
Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts, trans. by David Goldstein,
Oxford University Press, Oxford 1989, pp. 1223-1226.
67 On the vessel in Nathan’s thought, see Elqayam, “The Mystery”, pp. 328-239 n. 106.
both by the elevation to a higher plateau in the pleroma and the augmented
manifestation of the light of the divine configurations on earth.68
With this in mind, we can better appreciate that Nathan is alluding
here to his signature distinction between the transcendent First Cause and
the immanent God of Israel, the apotheosis of which was the messiah.
Typically, the attribute of Tiferet is identified in Kabbalistic lore as the son
in the divine family, an idea adopted by Sabbatians,69 at times expressed
in the bold Zoharic image of the three knots of faith or, in the language of
Israel H˛azzan, the trinity of the holy One, his son Israel, and the Šexina,70 a
trace of an archaic mythologoumenon concerning the triadic nature of the
divine as the father, son, and daughter.71 However, insofar as this particular
68 See Elliot R. Wolfson, “The Engenderment of Messianic Politics: Symbolic

Significance of Sabbatai S˝evi’s Coronation”, in Peter Schäfer and Mark Cohen (eds.),
Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations From the Bible to Waco, Brill, Leiden
1998, pp. 233-234, and the primary and secondary sources cited on p. 234 n. 105;
Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, p. 180.
69 Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, pp. 862, 907-914. Also pertinent here is Nathan’s view that
the utterly hidden light of cAttiqa Qadiša, the supreme configuration, will shine
through Zecir Anpin as it is manifest in Shabbetai S˝evi whose name has the numerical
sum of 814 (šin bet taw yod s¸addi bet yod = 300 + 2 + 400 + 10 + 90 + 2 + 10), which
is the same sum of Šadday when the letters are written out in full (šin yod nun dalet
lamed taw yod waw dalet = 300 +10 + 50 + 4 + 30 + 400 + 10 + 6 + 4). See Scholem,
op. cit., pp. 275-276. The numerical equivalence of Šadday and the name Shabbetai
S˝evi likely suggests that the Sabbatians viewed the messiah as the earthly incarnation
of Metatron, the angel long associated with that divine name. See Scholem, op. cit.,
pp. 234-235, 239-240, 512; Wolfson, “The Engenderment”, p. 218 and reference to
other sources cited in n. 45.
70 Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, p. 870; Noam Lefler, Israel H˛azan: Commentary on Psalms
[in Hebrew], Cherub Press, Los Angeles 2016, p. 68.
71 Elliot R. Wolfson, Along the Path: Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and
Hermeneutics, State University of New York Press, Albany 1995, pp. 63-88, esp.
73-77; idem, Language, pp. 155-157, 258-259, 498-499 n. 102; idem, Alef, Mem,
Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death, University of California Press,
Berkeley 2006, pp. 118-119, 233-234 n. 7. For a previous attempt to connect H˛azzan’s
presentation of the triadic structure of the divine to this older mythologoumenon,
see Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, pp. 178-179.
context underscores that the messianic status of the Sabbath is related

to the image of the vessel of rest, and in light of the widespread gender
assumption that has informed Kabbalists through the centuries, we can
further assume that the vessel is emblematic of the female potency within
the divine, since the feminine was correlated principally with the attribute
of judgment (din) and was thus delineated as that which receives and
contains the seminal discharge of the masculine attribute of lovingkindness
(h˝esed). To preclude the possibility of misunderstanding, let me emphasize
that the quality of receptivity does not portend impotent passivity. As I have
argued elsewhere, to be a vessel signifies the demiurgic power to delimit, the
impassivity that actively engenders the spatial opening necessary for there
to be extension. Nevertheless, this does not alter the fact that generativity
is valorised phallocentrically as masculine and penetrability as feminine.72
The time of repose on Sabbath is linked, therefore, to the female in contrast
to the male, which is the time of action.73 Needless to say, this motif draws
upon the rabbinic depiction of the Sabbath as bride, which is developed
in later mystical materials in light of the assumption that the Sabbath is
androgynous, the night corresponding to the feminine and the day to the
masculine, the former linked to the word šamor in Deuteronomy 5:12
and the latter to the word zaxor in Exodus 20:8.74 Nathan focuses on the
quality of the Sabbath that relates to the quintessential capacity of the
female to receive and thereby to give limit to the limitless fecundity of the
male. This is the import of the Zoharic identification of the Sabbath as the
72 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Phallic Jewissance and the Pleasure of No Pleasure”, in Charlotte

Elisheva Fonrobert, Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Aharon Shemesh, et al. (eds.), Talmudic
Transgressions: Engaging the Work of Daniel Boyarin, Brill, Leiden 2017, p. 322.
73 Wolfson, “Tiqqun ha-Shekhinah”, p. 331 n. 172; idem, “Constructions of the
Shekhinah in the Messianic Theosophy of Abraham Cardoso with an Annotated
Edition of Derush ha-Shekhinah”, Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical
Texts 3 (1998), pp. 71-72 n. 180. On the nexus of the feminine, rest, and Sabbath,
see the text cited in Wolfson, Circle, p. 97.
74 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Coronation of the Sabbath Bride: Kabbalistic Myth and the
Ritual of Androgynisation”, Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 6 (1997), pp.
306-307, and other references cited there in n. 17.
name, which Nathan associates with the capability of sustaining the light
in the lower worlds and destroying the power of the other side75—qualities
that define the messianic task of Shabbetai S˝evi.
Nathan combines two older themes in his representation of the secret of
rest on Sabbath: the cessation of the power of the demonic and the ascension
to the thoughtful light comprised within the infinite.76 In emulation of the
messiah, who foreshadows the apocatastasis of the world to come—the
great Sabbath, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, Yom Kippur, the divine womb of
Bina, in Zoharic terms, the world of masculinity, to which all things are
restored in their nondifferentiated unity77—the activity most pertinent to
Sabbath observance is inactivity. This is a deep-seated docility that requires
the divestiture of the earthly body and the investiture of the heavenly
body—the exchange of the garments of skin for the garments of light,78
which is related by some Kabbalists to the Talmudic injunction that one

77 On the Sabbath of Sabbaths as Bina, the jubilee, to which all things return and
thereby find their absolute rest and quietude, see Elliot G. Ginsburg, The Sabbath in
the Classical Kabbalah, State University of New York Press, Albany 1989, pp. 98-100;
Wolfson, Language, pp. 367-371; idem, “Tiqqun ha-Shekhinah”, p. 319 n. 131; Moshe
Idel, “Sabbath: On Concepts of Time in Jewish Mysticism”, in Gerald J. Blidstein
(ed.), Sabbath: Idea, History, Reality, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press,
Beersheva 2004, pp. 76-78. For an astrological interpretation of this motif in David
ben Yehudah he-H˛asid, see Idel, op. cit., pp. 66-67. On the nexus between Saturn,
Bina, and the messiah, see Idel, Saturn’s Jews, pp. 54-64. See also Haviva Pedaya,
“Sabbath, Shabbetai, and the Diminution of the Moon: The Holy Conjunction, Sign
and Image” [in Hebrew], in Eshel Beer Sheva 4 (1996), pp. 143-191. The Sabbatian
idea bears some affinity to the depiction of noetic rest in the Father through the Son
as expressed in the Gospel of Truth. See Elliot R. Wolfson, “Inscribed in the Book of
Living: Gospel of Truth and Jewish Christology”, Journal for the Study of Judaism 38
(2007), pp. 261-262, and reference to other studies cited on p. 261 n. 83. On the
attempt to reconstruct an archaic Jewish-Christian mythologoumenon wherein Jesus
is identified as the demiurgic Sabbath, see Wolfson, Along the Path, pp. 80-82.
78 For discussion of the messianic implications of the application of this aggadic motif
to the Sabbath, see Reuven Kimelman, The Mystical Meaning of Lekhah Dodi and
Kabbalat Shabbat [in Hebrew], Magnes Press, Jerusalem 2003, pp. 134-184.
should replace the weekday wardrobe (malbuš šel h˝ol) with the Sabbath
wardrobe (malbuš šel šabbat)79—by inculcating the willing of non-willing,
that is, the will that wills nothing but the nothingness of the will. The
quietistic ideal betokens the ascetic renunciation that marks the texture of
the messianic moment that transcends the gender dimorphism correlated
with the distinction between the nocturnal and the diurnal aspects of
the Sabbath.80 However, in line with older Kabbalistic sources, the rest
(menuh˝a) on Sabbath, which Nathan explicitly distinguishes from the
deprivation (cinnuy) of Yom Kippur,81 is predicated on the disavowal of
the physical—even to the point of being alienated from the alienation of
the world of impermanence82 —that comes about through partaking in
the physical elevated by the augmentation of the spiritual.83 The exaltation
of the somatic is occasioned by the holiness intrinsic to the temporal
comportment of the seventh day, the messianic disjointedness of time
within time.84 Nathan thus notes that Shabbetai S˝evi apprehended from
his own mind (hissig amira midacato) the God of Israel (elohe yisra’el), and
79 Babylonian Talmud, Šabbat 113a. See Kimelman, The Mystical Meaning, pp. 142-
145, 149-167.
80 Wolfson, “Coronation”, pp. 312-316. For the earlier Kabbalistic emphasis on the
non-action imposed by the prohibitions of Sabbath as an anticipation of the angelic-
spiritual state of the world to come, see Ginsburg, The Sabbath, p. 97.
81 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 112b. See text referred to below at n. 108.
82 The world-negating implications of this idea are well expressed by Eliyau de Vidas,
Rešit H˛oxma Hašalem, ed. by H˛ayyim Y. Waldman, 3 vols., Or Hamusar, Jerusalem
1984, Šacare Haqeduša, ch. 2, 2:29: “Since we know that the Sabbath is like the
holiness of the world to come, the divine intention was to give us the holiness of
Sabbath to instruct us that the root dwelling of a person is not in this world, for in
this world he is a stranger … and his root is in the world of souls, which is the world
to come. Therefore, he abstains from labor, which is indicative of matters of the
world, and he sanctifies the day of Sabbath to demonstrate that he is sanctified, and
that he has no business with matters of this world, for the entire reality of holiness is
separation [perišut]”.
83 Wolfson, “Coronation”, pp. 309-310.
84 My formulation is indebted to the characterization of the Sabbath as the “innermost
disjointedness within time through which one may … grasp time and accomplish
in the future he was destined “to publicize and to disclose his divinity to all
of the world”. We are told, moreover, that this root of faith (šoreš emuna) is
revealed in everyone bound thereto through eating on the Sabbath (axilat
yom hašabbat), a mundane act that is considered holy (qodeš) because the
carnal delight (coneg)85 below is consonant to the delight of the “secret
of the body above” (sod haguf šel macala).86 The erotic connotation of
feasting—a time-honoured euphemism for sexual intercourse87—is made
explicit by Nathan’s appropriation of the image of enthronement88 to
elucidate further the spiritual import of partaking of food on the Sabbath:
it” in Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the
Romans, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2005, p. 72. See Elliot R. Wolfson, The
Duplicity of Philosophy’s Shadow: Heidegger, Nazism, and the Jewish Other, Columbia
University Press, New York 2018, p. 236 n. 58.
85 See Elliott Horowitz, “Sabbath Delights: Toward a Social History”, in Sabbath: Idea,
History, Reality, pp. 131-158. For discussion of this theme in Zoharic Kabbalah, see
Tishby, The Wisdom, pp. 1222, 1233-1236.
86 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 114a. On the command to experience delight
on the Sabbath through eating and drinking, see Nathan of Gaza, Zemir cAris¸im
Yacane, fol. 53b. The Kabbalistic intent is well expressed by Nah˝man of Bratslav,
Liqqut¸e MoHaRaN, Yeshivat Bratslav, Benei Beraq 1972, I. 57:5, 68a: “This delight
of Sabbath [coneg šabbat] is the aspect of eating in holiness [axila biqduša], for the
other side also derives pleasure from eating on the days of the week, but the other
side has no portion at all in the eating on Sabbath. And thus we were commanded
about eating on Sabbath , as it says, ‘Eat it today, for today is the Sabbath of the Lord’
(Exodus 16:25). For [through] the eating of Sabbath there is produced holiness and
complete divinity [elohut gamur] without any mixture of the refuse, and by eating on
Sabbath he can accomplish what he accomplishes by fasting, that is, to bring down
his enemies before him”.
87 Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in
Medieval Jewish Mysticism, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1994, pp. 43, 286,
294 n. 90, 362; Joel Hecker, Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eating and Embodiment
in Medieval Kabbalah, Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2005, pp. 3-4, 78-81,
111-115, 248 n. 21.
88 The motif of the enthronement of the divine glory on Sabbath is epitomized in the
liturgical formulation in the Sabbath morning prayer la’el ašer šavat mikol hamacasim
This is the secret of that glorious vessel that was made on the day of
Sabbath … for he is cloaked and he sits on the throne of his glory,
which he made for himself in the world of creation to overflow to
the worlds of creation, formation, and doing. If not for that glorious
vessel, the efflux would not descend below … and the delight of this
vessel is particularly on the day of Sabbath for the worlds ascend, and
consequently, the eating is drawn to him from above, for that eating is
pleasure for the vessel. He eats three meals on the day of Sabbath, for the
three of them are pleasure for the vessel apart from the consciousness
and the vitality that comes to him in the time of worship, for they are
the essence of life.89
The three festive meals of Sabbath, which had a significant impact on
the Kabbalistic imagination, largely based on the Zoharic and Lurianic
interpretations of the rabbinic custom,90 provide pleasure to the vessel—
the hypostasis of the Sabbath incarnate in Shabbetai S˝evi91—insofar as the
physical eating has been purified of its gross physicality and participates
bayom haševici / hitcalla weyašav cal kisse xevodo (“To the God who rested from all
activities on the seventh day / who ascended and sat on his throne of glory”). I have
cited the traditional Ashkenazi version from Seder cavodat Yisra’el, ed. by Seligman
Baer, Schocken, Berlin 1937, p. 212. The Sephardic version is identical with the
exception of nitcalla instead of hitcalla. Regarding the theme of God’s enthronement
on Sabbath, see Wolfson, “Coronation”, p. 304 and the references in nn. 11-12. See
also Wolfson, Through a Speculum, p. 250; idem, Along the Path, pp. 181 n. 352 and
183 n. 358. Related to this image is the utilization of enthronement as a symbol for
the union of male and female; see Wolfson, Language, pp. 143, 145, 356, and 378.
90 Babylonian Talmud, Šabbat 117b; Zohar 2:88a-b, 204b; Tishby, The Wisdom, pp.
1234-1235.
91 Nathan of Gaza, Deruš Hamenora, p. 123. The disclosure of the redemption is
described as a time when the attribute of Gevura will be strengthened, since there
is no fear of the external forces, which have been neutralized, and everything is
contained in the right. “For this Sabbath in the beginning is to receive the attribute
of H˛esed to complete in his structure everything that was in the will of the Cause of
all Causes, and he will obliterate the thought of the evil side”.
in the eating that is the sacred union of the male and female above.92
Consequent to its ascent, the vessel is empowered to demolish the other
side and to provide a dwelling for the holy in the worlds beneath the realm
of divine potencies.93
In Scholem’s view, which has had a profound impact on other scholars,
the new Torah advocated blatantly antinomian behaviour,94 insofar as it is
the Torah of the Tree of Life that “existed in a spiritual unity without the
opposites of permission and prohibition, pure and impure”.95 As he put it
in a second passage:
The doctrine of the two types of Torah deriving from the “Tree of
Life” and the “Tree of Knowledge” respectively … was taken up by
Nathan and systematically combined with his cosmological theory of
the t¸ehiru. The Tree of Life symbolizes the paradisiacal unity of the
Torah before its separation into the duality of the Tree of Knowledge.
In the eschatological future the dominion of the Tree of Life would
encompass the whole cosmos, and the laws and rules deriving from the
Tree of Knowledge, which is the Tree of Death, would pass away. The
soul of the messiah was struggling to free itself from its original abode
in the abyss of the t¸ehiru. … In spite of its origin in the t¸ehiru, his
soul had succeeded in raising itself to the highest level of communion
with the Tree of Life, where it was beyond good and evil. … If the
92 The point is expressed concisely by H˛ayyim Vital as transmitted by his son, Samuel
Vital, H˛emdat Yisra’el Hašalem, pt. 2, Ahavat Šalom, Jerusalem 2018, p. 72: “Know
that the matter of these meals and feastings is a great secret … for every aspect of
cohabitation [ziwwug] is mentioned in the secret of eating”.
93 It is possible, indeed likely, that Nathan’s depiction of the Sabbath in conjunction
with Shabbetai S˝evi reflects the negative view of the author of the Tiqqunim and
the Racaya Mehemena, which highlights the struggle against the dark forces more
glaringly than the celebration of unadulterated joy. See Amos Goldreich, “‘And the
Dove Did not Find a Place to Rest’: The Pessimistic Pole of the Sabbath in the View
of the Author of Tiqqunei Zohar” [in Hebrew], in Blidstein (ed.), Sabbath: Idea,
History, Reality, pp. 41-68.
94 Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, pp. 162-163, 319-324.
95 Ibid., p. 321.
messiah’s soul is beyond the duality and distinctions of good and evil
which derive from the Tree of Knowledge, then it does not identify
dialectically with evil but, on the contrary, having realized the absolute
good, can descend without defiling itself into the abyss of the qelippah
in order to liberate whatever holiness is imprisoned there. The categories
of forbidden and permitted do not apply to the messiah …. There is,
strictly speaking, no such thing as an apostate messiah who sins against
the Law, since his actions cannot be measured by the ordinary yardstick
of right and wrong. Nathan’s doctrine is one more instance of the well-
known tenet that the perfect man cannot sin, all appearances to the
contrary notwithstanding. Spiritualist views of this kind often tended
toward an explicit antinomianism, and Sabbatianism is no exception
to this rule.96
What is obfuscated in this presentation is that Nathan continued to endow
ritual laws and customs with theurgical efficacy to transpose the prohibited
into the permissible and the impure into the pure, a transposition that
brooks the very distinction it abolishes. The hypernomian, as opposed to
the antinomian, proffers that exceeding the law requires one to uphold the
law that is exceeded.
This prowess is precisely what is accredited to Shabbetai S˝evi—
paradigmatically and not uniquely—in the following comment of Nathan:
“Hence, the soul of the messianic king, which is conjoined to the Tree of
Life, has dominion over all of the treasures of his father, and he executes
rectifications in all aspects and realities. Prohibited and permissible,
impure and pure, do not apply to him, and he can restore the evil to
the good after the purification”.97 In the continuation, Nathan alludes to
Shabbetai’s conversion by noting that his power was broken and he was
drawn to the external forces, falling into their net and snare, adopting their
customs and their faith, but even this is not considered a blemish (pegam),
since the apparent profanation was comprised in the will of the Cause of
96 Ibid., pp. 809-810 (emphasis in original).

97 Nathan of Gaza, Deruš Hamenora, p. 102. The passage is cited partially in Scholem,
Sabbatai S˝evi, p. 810.
Causes (uvixlal ze res¸on cillat hacillot), and thus is veritably a rectification

(tiqqun). Nathan goes so far as to say, “In relation to him everything is
considered a rectification from the force of his being bound to the Tree
of Life”.98 In that state, there is no obligation of the commandments
(h˝ovat hamis¸wot) because there is no distinction between lawful and
unlawful. Obligatoriness is relevant only in the lower and unredeemed
world, where the darkness of the other side is in conflict with the light of
holiness. Even though the souls of the Jewish people have not attained the
messiah’s level of possessing dominion over all the treasures of the father,
they are nonetheless comparable to him to the extent that they do not
create a blemish by transgressing the commandments. Indeed, when they
are disobedient, a form takes shape in them to do whatever they wish,
presumably because, like the messiah, they are beyond the polarity of right
and wrong, holy and unholy. The matter is justified with the paraphrase of
a Talmudic statement that impure flesh does not descend from heaven.99
This is interpreted by Nathan, “Even though there is a form of an impure
thing that stands there, if a Jewish soul derives pleasure from it, the force
of the other side is not strengthened”.100 Nathan detects a reference to
Shabbetai’s conversion in the subsequent query that R. Zera put to R.
Abbahu in an effort to test the limit of the maxim that nothing unclean
descends from heaven, “What if something in the shape of an ass were to
descend?”101 The ass, an obvious reference to Ishmael (based on Genesis
16:12), emerged as the strategic scriptural cipher for Islam in rabbinic texts;
in turn, this evolved into a symbol for the demonic in early Kabbalistic
sources, including passages in the Zoharic corpus, which had a significant
impact on the Sabbatian validation of the apostasy.102 Obviously, this is
98 Nathan of Gaza, Deruš Hamenora, p. 102.

99 Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 59b.
100 Nathan of Gaza, Deruš Hamenora, p. 102.
101 Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 59b.
102 Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, pp. 131 n. 6, 133, 141 n. 46, 160-161, 177-178,
182, 281, 295-300. The donkey was also used as a polemical trope against Gentile
nations in general (based on Ezekiel 23:20) or against Christians in particular. See
the meaning Nathan elicits from the Talmudic gloss. Most importantly,
he assigns a similar aptitude to the Jews at large: transgression on their
part does not empower the demonic, and hence they can derive pleasure
from even the ass, the primary force of the shells (roš liqlipin). However,
it is logical to apply to every Jew what is attributed to the messiah: the
restoration of the evil to the good after its purification, a formulation that
is more amenable to a hypernomian than an antinomian predilection.103
Piety of Transgression and the Bodily Overcoming of Body

Diverging strikingly from the promiscuity and licentiousness attributed
to the Sabbatians by their opponents, a theme repeated by many scholars,
Nathan maintained that the purpose of the commandments is to rectify
the limbs, to purify the physical so that it can be a fitting habitation for the
spiritual.104 As such, his writings indicate that he endorsed the minutiae
of the Halaxa, explaining them in light of his intricate theosophical
cogitations. He even goes so far as to say that the essence for those who
are from the light of the straight line, and thus are not bound to the back,
the various rabbinic and Kabbalistic sources referenced in Wolfson, ibid., pp. 33 n.
64, 54, 55 n. 163, 56 n. 167, 140-141 n. 46, 147 n. 74.
103 The Sabbatian idea would be consistent with the widely attested tradition that in
the future the unholy pig (h˝azir) would revert (lah˝azor) to holiness. See Wolfson,
ibid., pp. 239-240, 265. That this view was hardly considered irreverent or even
unconventional is attested by the following comment in what is widely considered
a classic work of rabbinic-Kabbalistic piety in the early modern period, Isaiah
Horowitz, Šene Luh˝ot Haberit, 5 volumes, cOz Wehadar, Jerusalem 1993, 4:108
(Tora Šebixtav, Meqor Haberaxot, Toledot, 3): “In the future the pig will be purified,
Samael the prosecutor will be transformed into an advocate, as on Yom Kippur. And
this is the allusion in the blessings that Jacob took from Esau to bring the secret of
the Lord, and understand these matters”.
104 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fols. 121b and 129b. Compare Nathan’s explanation
of the prohibition in the Torah against eating fat in ibid., 86b. In contrast to sources
that ascribe this infraction to Shabbetai S˝evi, Nathan upholds the scriptural ban
without qualification and elicits from it a theosophical secret.
that is, the side of the demonic, is that they be engaged with the Torah.105
The example of the Sabbath illustrates the broader conceptual point that
the corporal is conquered by the embrace of the corporal. This is not to
deny that Nathan apportioned a more extensive and uncompromising
subjugation of the body to the world to come, the day that is entirely
Sabbath.106 Nathan interprets the Talmudic teaching that in the world to
come there is no eating or drinking107 as indicative of the state in which
the one who repented ascends from Bina and is united in the light of
H˛oxma.108 This level of realization—which is attainable proleptically on
Yom Kippur, the day described analogously as one in which there is no
eating or drinking109—is the surfeit of the law that is its foundation.
Interestingly, Nathan utilizes this explanation to justify the interdiction110
against eating before one has offered the morning prayers: “Since the body
of Israel is constructed [from] and bound to the secret of divinity, it must
walk in the way of its God in the secret of his faith. In that time, there is
no secret of eating, and one stands in the true unity. Whoever believes this
must conduct himself in such a manner that he does not eat until he prays,
and if not it is considered as if he worshipped idolatry, for all that is done
below through the body of Israel causes a similar thing above”.111
The thematic connection between the Sabbath and the world to come
notwithstanding,112 the former entails the transformation and not the
annihilation of the physical. When viewed through the Sabbatian lens,
105 Nathan of Gaza, Zemir cAris¸im Yacane, fol. 60b.

106 See the primary and secondary sources cited in Wolfson, “Coronation”, p. 307 n. 19.
107 Babylonian Talmud, Beraxot 17a.
108 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fols. 116a-b.
109 Babylonian Talmud, Šabbat 119a.
110 Joseph Karo, Šulh˝an cArux, Orah˝ H˛ayyim 89:3. The exception to the rule is a sick
person who is permitted to eat or drink before the prayers. According to Moses
Maimonides, Mišne Tora, Hilxot Tefilla 5:2, if someone is thirsty or hungry, such
a person is considered in the category of one who is ill, and thus if he cannot
concentrate properly, it is permissible for him to eat and drink before praying.
112 Ginsburg, The Sabbath, pp. 65, 72, 84, 95, 100, 133, 145-146 n. 46.
spiritual perfection—typified by the consumption of food and drink during

the Sabbath meals—comes by way of material gratification: it is by actual eating
that the light is restored to holiness.113 The messianic initiative is congruent
with the longstanding rabbinic interpretation of experiencing delight on the
Sabbath as the means to sanctify the sensuous.114 The sanctification, therefore,
does not bespeak a shift from literal to figurative eating such that the Sabbath
is transformed into an allegory for a peak mystical experience115 disentangled
from the spatial-temporal coordinates proper to the ritual as it was observed
in a specific liturgical community to the exclusion of all others.116 The
internalization of the law does not entail an elimination or even a diminution
of the sociocultural context in which the law emerged in the past and in which
it is sustained in the present and the future.
Shabbetai S˝evi personified the ascetic refinement of the carnal by
elevating the carnal. The point is well attested in the following passage from
113 Nathan of Gaza, Zemir cAris¸im Yacane, fol. 63a. On the three Sabbath meals, see
ibid., fols. 68a-b.
114 My language is indebted to the expression “the sanctification of the sensuous” coined
by Israel Zangwill to describe Israel’s duty on Sabbath. See Horowitz, “Sabbath
Delights”, p. 131.
115 As Idel, “Sabbath”, p. 68, has argued, for example, with respect to the meaning of
Sabbath in the ecstatic Kabbalah of Baruch Togarmi.
116 The position I am articulating here resonates with what I have suggested with respect
to the suspected universalism or ecumenism of Abraham Abulafia; that is, in spite
of his recognition that all three of the Abrahamic faiths contribute to the cultivation
of the truth, the Jews are still privileged as the ethnos that uniquely possess the
knowledge of the name that can bring about the redemption. No matter how
spiritualized or intellectualized this messianic goal, it is still rooted in and expressive
of an ethnocentrism and supersessionism accorded to the people of Israel. See Elliot
R. Wolfson, “Textual Flesh, Incarnation, and the Imaginal Body: Abraham Abulafia’s
Polemic with Christianity”, in David Engel, Lawrence H. Schiffman, Elliot R.
Wolfson (eds.), Studies in Medieval Jewish Intellectual and Social History: Festschrift
in Honor of Robert Chazan, Brill, Leiden 2012, pp. 189-226, esp. 194-208. For a
similar argument against interpreting a medieval thinker through the perennilaist
lens of religious universalism, see Gregory A. Lipton, Rethinking Ibn cArabi, Oxford
University Press, New York 2018.
Nathan’s Deruš Hatanninim, composed in 1666 prior to the presumed act

of desecration, where he explains that just as on Friday the worlds begin to
ascend from the fifth hour of the day, so from the year 1657 an additional
element of the holiness of Sabbath (tosefet qedušat šabbat) began to be
revealed in history and the Šexina rose from exile, and hence it is no longer
necessary to weep over her misery as a mode of rectification:
Based on the things we have said what is written in the Zohar will be
clarified, “What is Sabbath? The name of the blessed holy One”.117 It is
already known that the respite is in the Cause of Causes, and this is the
name of the blessed holy One, to indicate that this power was given to
this one, and he will ascend in the secret of Sabbath, which is always in
the supernal beard after the sixth millennium. This is what the rabbis,
blessed be their memory, said, “The world exists for six millennia
and for one it is desolate”,118 the world is Zecir, and in all of these six
millennia the world was governed by him, and afterward, when he
ascended in the secret of Sabbath, the world was governed by Abba and
Ima. … Just as the blessed holy One ascended to this gradation, so the
messianic king ascended to a great level in body and soul, for his body
was purified like the pavement of sapphire, and this is the secret “and
under his feet was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire” [wetah˝at
raglaw kemacase livnat hasappir] (Exodus 24:10). Wetah˝at numerically
equals his name and his epithet,119 and this is raglaw, for he is in the
heels. Raglaw is regel ya, which is the secret of the corona of the phallus
of the father [cat¸eret yesod abba], for the phallus [yesod] is also called
foot [regel]. Kemacase livnat hasappir, for this is the diadem [cat¸ara]
in the secret of the diadem of her husband [cat¸eret bacalah] (Proverbs
12:4) that ascends to the supernal world above which there is nothing,
“no eye has seen it, O God, but you” (Isaiah 64:3).120
117 See above, n. 65.

118 Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 97a.
119 That is, the word wetah˝at equals 814, which is the numerical sum of the name
Shabbetai S˝evi and his epithet Šadday. See above, n. 69.
120 Nathan of Gaza, Deruš Hatanninim, in Scholem, Beciqvot Mašiyah˝, pp. 15-16.
Analyzing this passage in a study published many years ago, I discussed

the gender implications of the portrayal of Shabbetai S˝evi as the phallic
crown that ascends to and is integrated in the uppermost aspect of the
Godhead.121 I will refrain here from reiterating the intricacies of my
argument, concentrating only on Nathan’s reference to the messiah’s
purifying his body like the pavement of sapphire. The purification of the
corporeal into this more subtle bodiliness—the materiality of the throne—
parallels the ascent of the Šexina as the cat¸eret baclah, the image that signifies
the reincorporation of the feminine into the masculine and the restitution
of the left to the right.122 Most noteworthy is that the purification coincides
with the amplification of holiness on the Sabbath. But, as we have seen, this
spiritualization is attained through and not by discarding the material. In the
hands of Nathan, this is rendered even more paradoxically: the rectification
instituted by Shabbetai S˝evi is a harbinger of the cosmic Sabbath when
there will be a complete rest from the restfulness that is the Sabbath.
The same logic is to be applied to the Talmudic teaching that transgression
for its own sake is superior to the commandment that is not for its own sake.
The supposedly subversive precept is not a license to commit wanton acts of
irreverence and debauchery; it is rather the demarcation of the breach that
serves as the bridge through which one crosses over to the limitless horizon
of the limit and thereby gains access to the supererogatory potential of the
law. Unlike Wittgenstein’s comparison of his own propositions to a ladder
that must be cast aside once one has climbed upon it,123 the hypernomian
121 Wolfson, “The Engenderment”, pp. 233-236.

122 Nathan of Gaza, Zemir cAris¸im Yacane, fol. 91b: “The matter of this return of Malxut
is surely not complete until the future to come, for then it will be the diadem of her
husband [cat¸eret bacalah], which is a great secret, and its substance is like Keter, which
as we have explained, at first it was right, then it was left, and afterward it was right”.
Compare parallel in Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 17a. On the ascent of the Šexina
on the eve of Sabbath and the extracting of the forces of judgment contained in her
during the weekdays—rendered metaphorically in the images of squeezing the grapes
and removing the foreskin—see Nathan of Gaza, Zemir cAris¸im Yacane, fols. 48a-b.
123 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. by Charles K. Ogden,
with introduction by Bertrand Russell, Routledge, London 1995, 6.54, pp.
crossing of the bridge of the nomos is continual, walking the path to get
beyond the path, overcoming by undergoing. In this respect, the Sabbatian
ideology that Nathan disseminated was consistent with the orientation
affirmed by Kabbalists in the late Middle Ages. For the Torah to be an
antidote to the serpent, it must partake of its poison; the cure has to be of
the same nature as the malady.124 As the serpent veils the untruth in the
mask of a truth that is truly deceitful, so the messiah unveils the truth in
188-189. In the succeeding and final declarative statement of the treatise (7, pp.
188-189), Wittgenstein insists that only when one surmounts his propositions
does one see the world rightly (Er muss diese Sätze überwinden, dann sieht er die
Welt richtig), which leads him to conclude with the celebrated statement, “Whereof
we cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” (Wovon man nicht sprechen kann,
darüber muss man schweigen). From Wittgenstein’s characterizing the insight of
his potential reader as elucidating his own propositions and recognizing them as
senseless (unsinnig), I assume that the metaphor of disposing the ladder is meant
in a more permanent way. For a different interpretation, see Rebecca Comay and
Frank Ruda, The Dash—The Other Side of Absolute Knowing, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Cambridge, MA 2018, p. 84. Provocatively, the authors suggest that
perhaps, even for Wittgenstein, the throwing away of the ladder needs “continual
restaging, which would require keeping the ladder on hand if only to be able to
keep on demonstrating its superfluity”. After tentatively proposing this explanation,
the authors offer an alternative that resonates with the perspective I have adopted:
“or is the whole point of the exercise to demonstrate precisely that there is no there,
there—an insight that would make any ladder at once superfluous and insufficient?”
124 The Sabbatian perspective can be appreciated if we consider the following remark of
Menah˝em Nah˝um of Chernobyl, Me’or cEnayim, Macayenot Habešt¸, Bene-Beraq
2015, p. 259: “It is true that the Torah was in the days of Abraham our patriarch,
peace be upon him, but it was garbed in the garments of the skin of the serpent
[melubešet bexotnot cor hanah˝aš], as it says ‘And [the Lord God] made garments of
skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them’ (Genesis 3:21). Adam and Eve are the
Written Torah and the Oral Torah. For prior to his transgression Adam was not a
material entity, and so it is with every human being. And the essence of receiving
the Torah was that the pollution [of the serpent] ceased and [the cor with an cayin]
became or with an alef [that is, the garments of skin became garments of light], and
they saw the light and the interiority of the Torah, ‘and the Torah is light’ (Proverbs
6:23). This is what must be received every Pentecost, to comprehend the vitality and
interiority of the Torah, as it says ‘Open my eyes that I may perceive the wonders [of
your Torah]’ (Psalms 119:18), for one must comprehend every day the new vitality
from our holy Torah”. Bracketing the underlying conception of time as the constant
renewal of that which never was at play here and the reworking of an older aggadic
motif regarding the original state of human corporeality connected to the expression
kotnot or, read either with an cayin or with an alef (see Berešit Rabba 20:12), I want
to focus on the far-reaching description of the Torah in the time of Abraham being
garbed in the garments of skin of the serpent. Based on the rabbinic tradition that at
Sinai the serpentine pollution with which Eve was inseminated will cease (Babylonian
Talmud, Šabbat 146a), Menah˝em Nah˝um presents the transformation of the Torah
itself from being garbed in garments of skin to garments of light, a transformation
that reflects the change in the status of the human body from the base materiality to
the refined corporeality. From the Sabbatian perspective, the nomian quality of the
Torah can be explained similarly as the Torah being garbed in garments of skin and
the messianic Torah, which was revealed proleptically at Sinai, would consist of the
Torah being garbed in garments of light. The radical implications of the passage
from Me’or cEnayim are made more explicit in S˝adoq Hakohen Rabinowitz of
Lublin, Taqanat Hašavin, Yeshivat Beit-El, Beit-El 1988, 6:54, p. 66. “It appears to
me that the root of the souls of converts in the Torah is in this section of Yitro, for
he caused the covering of the eyes of Israel [kissuy cenayim deyisra’el]. … Thus, the
giving of the Torah was written in the section that is called by his name, and the
name Yitro refers to the surplus [yittur] of the section that is external to the Torah
[h˝us¸ latora]. The giving of the Torah is the essence of the Torah, but the matter of the
Torah scroll written with ink on parchment is also from the perspective of this
world, which conceals and hides the true light [hamacalim umastir or ha’amitti].
With respect to the future to come it says ‘I will inscribe them on the tablet of their
hearts’ (Jeremiah 31:33), and hence there will be no need for a teacher. In this world,
wherein [the word] cor [with an cayin] was exchanged for [the word] or [with an alef],
as in the garments of skin [kotnot cor] of the primal Adam, which replaced the
garments of light that he possessed before the transgression, so the Torah of this
world is from the side of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, impure and pure,
admissible and invalid, it is garbed in the garments of skin and parchment. And so
all the commandments are garbed in the matters of the actions of this corporeal
world, and this is the essence of the Torah and the eternal life he implanted within
us. Even though this is only a garment for the interior, nevertheless in this world the
garment becomes for a person a garment from the side of the Torah, and this is from
the side of the shell that surrounds the fruit in this world”. It is beyond the confines
of this note to explicate this extraordinary passage properly, but at the very least let
me emphasize the incredibly daring claim that the very section of the Torah in which
the narrative of the revelation of the Torah is recorded is characterized as something
that is extrinsic to or the surplus of the Torah. To appreciate the boldness of speaking
of a section of the Torah, indeed the section in which the Torah is revealed, as being
outside the Torah, consider the more expected use of this locution in the statement
of Joseph ibn Šušan cited by Samuel ben Isaac di Uceda, Midraš Šemu’el, Me’ore Or,
Bene-Beraq 1989, p. 49 (ad Avot 1:12): “There is nothing outside the Torah but
deceit [še’en h˝us¸ latora ella šeqer]”. According to R. S˝adoq, the paradoxical demarcation
of a portion of the Torah as being outside the Torah is explained by appeal to the
older Kabbalistic idea, which was also instrumental for Sabbatian ideology, that the
Torah that prevails in this world—the material Torah scroll written with ink on
parchment—is from the Tree of Knowledge and thus it embodies the binaries of
good and evil, pure and impure, permissible and forbidden. The interiority of the
Torah, the Torah to be etched on the heart in the messianic future, is beyond those
polarities and thus no longer dons the garment of the shell. Lest the insurgent
repercussion of this h˝asidic master’s words be overlooked, let me reiterate the claim
that the nomian character of the Torah— represented in both positive and negative
commandments—is explained by the fact that the Torah in this world is clothed in
the serpentine shell, an image that resonates with the gnostic myth of the exile of
spirit in matter. Compare S˝adoq Hakohen Rabinowitz of Lublin, Peri S˝addiq, 5
vols., Mesamh˝e Lev, Jerusalem 1999, 4:47(leh˝ag haševucot, sec. 6). In describing the
Sinaitic revelation, R. S˝adoq explains that when the Israelites heard the command “I
the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of
bondage” (Exodus 20:2), the obligation to study Torah was fixed in their hearts, and
when they heard “You shall have no other gods beside me” (Exodus 20:2), the evil
inclination was removed from their hearts. As a consequence, the words of Torah
were engraved on their hearts in anticipation of what would be in the future, an idea
supported exegetically by “I will put my teaching into their inmost being and
inscribe it upon their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33) and “write them on the tablet of your
heart” (Proverbs 3:3). Perhaps recoiling from the hypernomian implications of his
own exegesis, R. S˝adoq emphasizes in the continuation of the passage that at the
time of the giving of the Torah the two tablets were placed in the hearts of everyone
from the Israelite nation, one tablet in the right heart corresponding to the positive
commandments, whose root is “I the Lord am your God”, and the other tablet in
the left heart corresponding to the negative commandments, whose root is “You
shall have no other gods”. We can discern an attempt to retain the nomian nature of
the Torah inscribed in the heart, thereby circumventing a dichotomy between the
exteriority of the law and the interiority of the spirit, a strategy that would be
consistent with the time-honored rabbinic response to the polemic condemnation
of Christian thinkers. Nevertheless, one could make a strong case that a dichotomy
along these lines is indeed implied in R. S˝adoq’s words, a suggestion enhanced by the
passage from Taqanat Hašavin that we discussed above, which explicitly refers to the
Torah comprised of prohibitions and prescriptions from the Tree of Knowledge and
the mask of an untruth that is deceitfully true. Boundaries of law arise

in response to transgression, but transgression is not possible without
boundaries of law.125 Venturing beyond the law, therefore, entails bending
rather than breaking the law, which is to say, the path that transcends
the path provides the very conditions for there to be a path that is
transcended.126
I concur with Scholem’s description of Nathan’s thought as dualistic
and gnostic, but I do not agree that it should be viewed as an “heretical
Jewish myth”; nor do I accept Scholem’s surmise that since the rectification
requires a redeemer “endowed with a special character and charged with
a special mission” to emancipate the sparks trapped in the demonic, the
abyss is “resistant and impervious to Israel’s religious labors”.127 What
this does suggest is that the messianic figure typologically embodies the
hypernomian paradox of descent for the sake of ascent, but every Jew—as
the aforementioned passage from Nathan clearly attests—is still capable of
acting impiously for the purpose of achieving a superior level of piety. A
careful analysis of Nathan’s treatment of the commandments—a modest
sampling of which has been offered here—demonstrates unmistakably that
he did not think theurgical transgression was limited to Shabbetai S˝evi. As
a matter of fact, the task for individual Jews, too, is to fulfil the law by its
nullification and to nullify the law by its fulfilment.
garbed in the shell of the demonic. The future Torah will shed this cloak and will
consist of the true light that is no longer subject to the binary of permissible and
forbidden. I note, finally, the use of a related expression, albeit with an entirely
different meaning, in S˝adoq Hakohen Rabinowitz of Lublin, Liqqut¸e Ma’amarim,
Makhon Har Berakha, Jerusalem 2008, p. 22, to describe Joshua as being the first
“to compose a book that is outside the Torah and even so within the Torah” (leh˝abber
sefer h˝us¸ latora wecim kol ze mitox hatora).
125 Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, p. 268.
126 Ibid., pp. 241-242. In that context, I elicited the aesthetic impulse and the lawful
venturing beyond the law as a bending rather than a breaking of the law from
statements of Rilke and Wittgenstein.
127 Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, p. 311.
Neither Male nor Female: Transvaluation of the Law

In the final section, I will address briefly the ramifications of Nathan’s
hypernomian transvaluation of the law on the construction of gender
identity in his Sabbatian theology. Nathan presumes, in line with an
insight expressed in much older Kabbalistic sources, that the eschatological
moment is marked by the overcoming of polarity such that we retrieve a
primal state in which we can no longer posit left and right because the left
has been reabsorbed into the right. Consider, for instance, the description
of adam yašar in Zemir cAris¸im Yacane: “There he is not named as either
right or left, for everything is incomposite mercy [rah˝amim pešut¸im] and
limitless worlds are constructed in that human”.128 Insofar as mercy is
characterized routinely as masculine, to say that there is only incomposite
mercy means the gender dyad is overcome and there is maleness without
the corresponding femaleness. In a state of imperfection, the right stands
opposite the left and the left opposite the right, but the ultimate goal
is for the left to be contained in and restored to the right.129 That the
anthropomorphic figure of adam yašar cannot be named as either right or
left does not mean that there is neither right nor left, but rather that the left
is subsumed in the right. This dynamic underlies Nathan’s identification
of Shabbetai S˝evi as the secret of the Torah and the one through whom
the essence of the Torah is revealed, “when he rectifies the blemish of the
moon each and every month in the secret of ‘the light of the moon will
be like the light of the sun’ (Isaiah 30:26)”.130 The overcoming of polarity
128 Nathan of Gaza, Zemir cAris¸im Yacane, fol. 88a.

129 Ibid., fols. 80b-81a, 93b. The reintegration of the feminine into the masculine is the
import of Nathan’s treatment of many of the commandments; see, for instance, his
explanation of the “secret of prostration” in prayer in Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya,
fols. 2a-b, 16b; idem, Zemir cAris¸im Yacane, fol. 89b.
130 Nathan of Gaza, Deruš Hatanninim, p. 44. In many of my studies, I have offered
numerous texts to support my interpretation, but the resistance, which is based, in
my judgment, on wishful thinking and identity politics, persists. A typical example
is found in Kaniel, “‘Gedolah Aveirah Lishmah’”, p. 51 n. 55. Responding to my
claim (Venturing Beyond, p. 276) that redemption signifies the restoration of the
is depicted figuratively as the moon shining with the light of the sun.
Ostensibly, the messianic role assumed by Shabbetai S˝evi is related to the
rectification of the original blemish and punitive reduction of the moon
from being a great light (ma’or gadol) like the sun to being a lesser light
(ma’or qat¸on).131 Translated into gender terms, it would seem that what
is insinuated here is that the feminine becomes equal to the masculine.
When the prophetic image of the light of the moon shining like the light
the sun is probed carefully, however, it is evident that it does not signify a
true egalitarianism, but rather the reestablishment of the single gender that
feminine to the masculine, Kaniel uses the example of Luzzatto’s description of

the rape of women to show that my contention applies, at best, to a state “before
the phase of salvation of the Tiqqun. It is an inevitable and tragic component of
h˝evlei mashiah˝ (the ‘birth-pangs’ of the Messiah), before his arrival” (emphasis in
original). Kaniel suggests, moreover, that “Luzzatto, like many other kabbalists, sees
in the ascension of the Shekhinah and her independence from and equality with
the masculine a manifestation of the achievement of the ultimate redemption”. I
cannot here adequately discuss the topic of rape in Luzzatto’s thought, but I can
confidently state that there is no textual corroboration of Kaniel’s assertion that the
ascent of the Šexina marks her independence from and equality with the masculine.
The eschatological elevation of the Šexina, as I have argued in many studies, does
entail a transposition—the female vessel rises to sit as a diadem atop the head of the
male—but this only fortifies the phallomorphic hierarchy and thus falls short of
a transvaluation such that the feminine attains equality with, let alone supremacy
to, the masculine. See the copious evidence from Luzzatto that I marshaled in
Wolfson, “Tiqqun ha-Shekhinah”, pp. 324-329. See as well the more sober analysis
in Garb, Kabbalist, pp. 208-209. Let me note, finally, that Kaniel’s reconstruction is
oblivious to the fact that the evaluation of the eschatological status of the feminine
is connected to the attitude toward the physical body, and even more specifically, the
privileging of an ascetic renunciation. Regarding this topic in Luzzatto, see Garb,
Kabbalist, pp. 132 n. 9, 302-303.
131 Babylonian Talmud, Ševucot 9a; H˝ullin 60. The aggadic legend about the diminution
of the moon vis-à-vis the sun was occasioned exegetically by the change in Genesis
1:16 of first referring to the sun and the moon as the two great lights (šene hame’orot
hagedolim) and then referring to the sun as the greater light (hama’or hagadol)
that dominates in the day and the moon as the lesser light (hama’or haqat¸on) that
dominates in the night.
encompasses two sexuated identities. This, too, is the implication of the

Kabbalistic claim that the language of the moon’s complaint will become
the status quo of the future, that is, two kings will be wearing one crown.
Pointedly, this does not signify that the sun will become like the moon,
only that the moon will become like the sun. The ear attuned without
prejudice will discern that the meaning of the messianic promise from
Isaiah, when decoded Kabbalistically, is that the sun will become the great
light that contains within itself both the great light and the lesser light;
the moon will resume the status of being a great light to the extent that it
is comprised within the sun in the same manner that we cannot speak of
right and left because the left is incorporated into the right.
Even if one were to insist that the infinitivity of En Sof must be distillated
as transfinite or as an increasable actual-infinite—an unbounded succession
of ordinal numbers whose unity is formed by an indefinite division beyond
mathematical determination—it is still germane to say that it is the
absolute minimum that is the absolute maximum, the infinitesimal whose
magnitude comprehends everything incomprehensibly and therefore is
incapable of increase or decrease.132 Expressed from a gender perspective,
as the unadulterated luminosity, En Sof is the pure benevolence that is
aligned exclusively with the masculine.133 It comes as no surprise, despite
the repeated failure of the majority of scholars to note this fact, that
some of the most renowned Kabbalists have depicted the infinite in the
decidedly androcentric imagery of a male without an independent female
complement. To be sure, insofar as the catalyst for creation, the boundless
impulse of divine love to bestow, must be activated by the stringency
of judgment, the capacity to give boundary—a mystery referred to as
the “secret of caressing” (sod hah˝ibbuq) induced by the “arousal of the
left” (hitcorerut hasemol), linked exegetically to the verse “His left hand
was under my head, his right arm embraced me” (Song of Songs 2:6),
132 My analysis is inspired by the discussion of Cantor’s absolute infinity and the
transfinite in Graham Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought, Oxford University Press,
Oxford 2002, pp. 113-127, esp. 115-117.
133 See, for example, H˛ayyim Vital, Mavo Shecarim, Šacare Yis¸h˝aq, Jerusalem 2016, p. 9.
a theme expressed as well by the anatomical image of the female waters

(mayyin nuqvin) stimulating the male waters (mayyin duxrin)—the very
same Kabbalists locate the potential of the feminine withholding, which
prompts the elongation of the masculine, in the world where femininity
is not yet discernible as independent from masculinity.134 In its most
elemental state, the female signifies the potential for difference embedded
in the indifference of the infinite and hence it cannot refuse absorption
into the whole in the manner of the Levinasian infinity that is set in
diametric opposition to totality.135 Rather, it seems more apposite to apply
Hegel’s observation that at the beginning we have before us the one and
not the other136 to the theogonic myth of the Kabbalists according to
which the other is identified similarly as the determinate representation of
the indeterminate essence that ensues from the infinite turning back unto
itself so that its reflection may appear in and for itself.
The implication of the theosophical symbolism is drawn explicitly by
Nathan in the following account of the Lurianic myth:
Know that when there was the contraction in the will of the infinite [ki
kešehaya has¸ims¸um haya beras¸on en sof], there remained a trace [rešimu]
134 Wolfson, Language, pp. 76, 95, 181-183, 186-187, 270-271, 311. I will not repeat
all the sources I mentioned in that previous study, but I will note one reference
where the question concerning gender dimorphism in the uppermost aspect of the
divine (cAttiq or Arix Anpin) is dealt with in great technical detail. See H˛ayyim
Vital, Es¸ H˛ayyim, Sitre H˛ayyim, Jerusalem 2013, 12:2, 57a-c, and parallel in
H˛ayyim Vital, Os¸erot H˛ayyim, Šacare Yis¸h˝aq, Jerusalem 2018, pp. 132-137. The
eschatological application of this gender symbolism is made explicit by Naftali
Baxarac, cEmeq Hamelex, Yerid Hasefarim, Jerusalem 2003, 6:72, p. 324: “The light
of this resurrection of the dead is the offspring of Keter in the secret of yeh˝ida, and it
has no female [we’en lo neqeva], which is secondary to the male, and this, too, is the
secret of the mysteries of the mysteries of Torah, and the final telos of the secrets and
mysteries of Torah”.
135 Wolfson, “Phallic Jewissance”, pp. 306-311.
136 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vol. 1,
ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. by R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart,
University of California Press, Berkeley 1984-1987, p. 371.
in that empty space [h˝alal] as is known. When the light ascended

above, the trace did not exist in the way that it did at the beginning,
that is, in its first place, because the movement of the ascent of the light
above removed it from its place. The depth of the infinite was great and
wondrous to move the trace from its place to another place …. Thus, it
stood from one side as it was [mis¸ad eh˝ad camad kemo šehaya], and that
side is called the right … for all of the left was comprised in the right
[dexol semala de’itkelil bimina]. There was produced the movement
of the trace that remained from the great light, and thus it was the
left. When the light of the straight line [qaw hayošer] came upon the
luster [hat¸ehiru] that stood in its place, the mercies [hah˝asadim] were
constructed to the right side, and when the movement was produced
from its place, the strengths [hagevurot] were constructed to the left.
The principle that emerges is that every light of the trace in which
no movement was made in the time of the contraction is a root for
the right [šoreš leyamin] in the aspect of each and every configuration
[kol pars¸uf ufars¸uf]. … This root was produced verily in the time of
the contraction, and hence it is called “root” because it is from the
very potency of the infinite, but the movements that are produced
afterward are not called “root”.137
Eliciting the gender implications of the symbolism espoused for centuries
by Kabbalists, Nathan insists that the right side alone should be considered
originary since it is the face (panim) that derives directly without any
137 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fols. 1b-2a. Compare ibid., fols. 102b-103a: “In the
time of the contraction everything became left, and in the time of the coming of the
light everything was restored to the right. And since there was no left there, the right
side in it was strengthened, which is the mystery of thought, so it would not break,
and the light of thought extended from within and from without”. Concerning this
theme in Nathan, and the citation of other textual evidence, see Wolfson, Language,
p. 511 n. 267. The straight line is referred to by Nathan as both qaw hayašar and
as qaw hayošer, two linguistic forms attested in the older Kabbalistic sources that
influenced him. On s¸ims¸um and the t¸ehiru in Nathan’s Sabbatian theology, see
Wirszubski, Between the Lines, pp. 153-160.
motion from the infinite as opposed to the left side that is the back (ah˝or)
that comes to be as a result of the movement of the luster, which is the
trace of light that remains after the space has been purged of the light,
a movement that is understood as the endeavour of the residual light to
ascend upward to be bound to the light that was withdrawn and weakened
as a consequence of the contraction of En Sof, the light that is described
statically as standing in its place (ha’or šecamad bimqomo).138
138 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 2b. In the continuation, fols. 2b-3a, Nathan
asserts that all of the account of creation (macase berešit) mentioned by the rabbis
applies the “mystery of the luster” (sod hat¸ehiru), for after it separates from its source,
it contemplates and gives shape to the ten forms (s¸iyyurim) of the sefirot to actualize
the will of the En Sof. Even so, he insists that we cannot ascribe to this trace the
“essence of divinity” (ces¸em elohut), for it lacks the “essential life” (h˝ayyim cas¸miyyim)
and thus it bears no similarity to the emanated light (or hane’es¸al). For this reason,
Nathan (fol. 3a) attributes to the t¸ehiru the term golem, whose numerical value is
the same as h˝oxma. On fol. 3b, the t¸ehiru is identified as the chaos (tohu) or as the
ether that is not comprehended (awir še’eno nitpas), an expression that is applied as
well to Keter, the divine nothing (ayin) that is immutable, or literally, in the state
of “standing as it was” (comed kemo šehaya). The term golem is also attributed to
Malxut; see ibid., fol. 7b. The t¸ehiru is identified as the source of the shell (qelipa)
that precedes the fruit (peri), which is the light of the straight line (fol. 9b). The
“secret of the t¸ehiru”, which is the great dragon (tannin hagadol), is identified as the
golem and as h˝oxma (the numerical value of both words is 73) in Nathan of Gaza,
Deruš Hatanninim, p. 20. On the depiction of the t¸ehiru as the “matter that cannot
be comprehended” (davar še’eno nitpas), see Nathan of Gaza, Zemir cAris¸im Yacane,
fol. 57b. Nathan’s appropriation of the Lurianic doctrine, including the symbol
of the t¸ehiru, is analyzed in detail by Scholem, Sabbatai S˝evi, pp. 299-311. The
correlation of left and right respectively with masculine and feminine is discussed
by Nathan, Sefer Haberiya, fols. 34b-35a, and compare the survey of the emergence
of the left from the right, ibid., fols. 68b-69a. Following older Kabbalistic sources,
especially the zoharic literature, the antagonism between left and right is explained
as the struggle between the darkness of Esau and the light of the souls of Israel (fols.
69b-70a). See as well the explication on fols. 51b-52a of the transformation of the
right of the feminine into the left of the masculine, exemplified in the ritual of the
phylacteries of the arm. The principle of the gender dynamic is stated succinctly
on fol. 55a: “Thus there is no complete right in the feminine apart from the left of
the masculine”. On the Kabbalistic significance of the phylacteries and the unity
Know that in the place that the will of the infinite [res¸on en sof] arose to
become the face, that is, the actual face of each and every configuration
[panim mamaš šel kol pars¸uf ufars¸uf], there was produced no movement
[tenuca] at all, as it is in the right … and in the aspect of the back, which
is to receive these faces, there was movement for the light to go out
from its place in concealment [bistiru], for that light that departs from
its place is always hidden in the light that does not move from its place.
And this was in the totality of the contraction [bixlalut has¸ims¸um] with
regard to the face and the back of each configuration that was in the
attribute of Keter, which reverted to being entirely facial [ithaddar kolla
panim].139
proclaimed in the Shema, compare ibid., fols. 115a-120b, and analysis in Elqayam,
“The Mystery”, pp. 140-142.
139 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 2b. See ibid., fols. 8a-b. The autoerotic
implications of the initial act of withdrawal are alluded to in the following comment
of Nathan, ibid., fol. 19a, regarding the formation of the letters: “The light of wisdom
was made in the likeness of lines [qawim qawim], elongated serpents [neh˝ašim
arukkim], and those serpents entered the womb of Bina, and when they emerged
afterward from the womb of Bina, they took shape except for the alef, which took
shape from itself without entering into the womb of Bina. Rather, the form was
produced in that portion of the light from itself, and this alludes to the totality of
the contraction … for the supernal yod corresponds to the upper waters, the lower
yod corresponds to the lower waters … and the line [qaw] alludes to the light of the
straight line [le’or qaw hayašar]. … The reason that this letter is called alef is from
the expression pele, for it is wondrous and hidden [mufla’at umexussat], standing in
the place of the supernal mystery [pele celyon], which is Keter”. The alef alludes to the
s¸ims¸um insofar as it can be decomposed orthographically into a yod on top, a yod on
bottom, and the waw, which alludes to the straight line connecting them. Compare
fol. 6a: “Know that the form of the alef is bound between H˛oxma and Bina without
any form [s¸iyyur šel alef qashur ben h˝oxma uvina mibeli šum s¸iyyur] for the directive
about the act of the constriction in its totality [macase has¸ims¸um bixelalut] instructs
about its form in particular with respect to the yodin”. What is most noteworthy for
our purposes is the account of the alef coming to being on its own accord without
the light of H˛oxma entering like a serpentine elongation into the uterus of Bina. On
the description of the letters as elongated serpents, see Nathan’s Deruš Hamenora,
p. 92.
Given the correlation of the face with the right, which is masculine, and
the back with the left, which is feminine, to say of Keter that it returns
to being entirely facial is another symbolic way of articulating the idea
of a single gender—a world of pure masculinity before the dimorphic
split into male and female.140 That the same dynamic informed Nathan’s
eschatological vision—the reversion to the beginning at the end—is
attested in the following passage from the same treatise: “You must know
that there is no perfection of the back of the king except in the root of the
back conjoined with the queen, who hides the mystery of her right … and
it is not possible to separate this back from her except in the future to come
when she will be in the secret of the diadem of her husband [cat¸eret bacalah]
for everything will be restored to the right”.141 The future is marked by the
140 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 43a: “It is not possible for the lights of the
infinite [me’orot en sof] to be revealed, and they are not disclosed unless there is the
configuration of a man that is male that has no female [pars¸uf adam zaxar delet le
nuqba]. From his power, however, there emanated all of the entities, and this is the
matter of the mystery of Adam Qadmon, the source of life, for above him are revealed
the lights of the infinite, and he contemplates them and draws the essential life from
there. This is the purpose and great reason for his emanation, which is concealed
from the eyes of all that is living, and there is no light that can comprehend this
limit”. On the masculine visage that has no feminine, compare ibid., fol. 71b, and
the description of the first of the ten circles of the t¸ehiru, associated with Keter, as
having no female, since it was not yet sufficiently purified (eno kol kax mevorar), in
Nathan of Gaza, Deruš Hatanninim, p. 23.
141 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fols. 16b-17a. Compare Nathan of Gaza, Zemir
c
Aris¸im Yacane, fol. 91b. The depiction of the future as a state wherein everything is
restored to the right, since there is no more back set against the face, is contrasted
with the current situation marked by a vacillation between two forms of conjunction
of the male and female, either back to back or face to face. The type of conjunction
that prevails is dependent on human agency, and specifically the liturgical prostration
and the need to face the western wall of the Jerusalem temple. See Nathan of Gaza,
Sefer Haberiya, fol. 16b: “And with this we come to explain the matter of prostration,
for everyone must turn to the western wall, and the reason is that the eyes and the
intellect of the souls [nešamot] must always be toward the face of the king, and their
souls [nafšam] enter into the foundation of Rachel and their spirits [ruh˝am] into the
foundation of Tiferet, to be in the secret of the male waters and the female waters.
extraction of the posterior from the female because at that time the left will
be eliminated as an independent force and everything will become an aspect
of the right, which is to say, there will be only the anterior, a metamorphosis
that is captured poetically by the scriptural image that describes the woman
of valour as the diadem of her husband (Proverbs 12:4). The import of the
symbol is made explicit by Nathan in another passage:
And with this you can understand what the Sages, blessed be their
memory, said that in the future she will be a diadem of her husband
… she is compared to Keter … for in the time of the contraction [becet
has¸ims¸um] it was the right and afterward immediately in the completion
of the contraction it became the left, and afterward it returned to
the right. However, Keter acquired its substance straightaway in the
account of the chariot, whereas Malxut did not acquire its substance
until the end of the account of creation142 … For this reason they said
that she will be a diadem of her husband, since after her root, which is
entirely right, is purified, she has an elevation greater than her husband
and she is verily compared to Keter.143
As I have argued in various studies,144 the image from Proverbs is one of
the decisive metaphors utilized by Kabbalists to signify the ascent of the
When the king and the queen stand side by side, they are united, or at times when she
is in the rear, her back stands conjoined to his back. Either way the face of the soul is
constantly facing the face of the king or queen when the soul ascends”. On the secret
of prostration, see ibid., fols. 2a-b, and Nathan of Gaza, Zemir cAris¸im Yacane, fol. 89b.
142 On macase berešit and macase merkava in Nathan’s thought, see above, n. 34.
143 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 12a. Compare fol. 121a: “That the aspect of
Malxut will be in the secret of the diadem [besod hacat¸ara] in the future to come
is only because her root in the time of the constriction was the right, and there is
also a line [qaw] in the existence of that light, which reaches above to the place to
which the light of thought does not ascend”. See as well fol. 96a, where the future is
described as the ascent of the forces of strength (gevurot) in the secret of the diadem.
The messianic state is realized proleptically each Sabbath with the elevation of the
mystery of the light of thought until it is crowned within En Sof (fol. 112b).
144 Wolfson, “Coronation”, p. 337 n. 96; idem, “Tiqqun ha-Shekhinah”, pp. 291, 330-
332; idem, Language, pp. 72 (the inadvertent reference there to Proverbs 12:14
feminine to the masculine and the reconstitution of the male androgyne;

in the case of Nathan, this symbol emblematizes the cosmic Sabbath, the
seventh millennium, indicative of the messianic status of Shabbetai S˝evi
and the apocatastatic harmony of all differentiated beings in the indifferent
oneness of the infinite light that is the essence of the nonessence of divinity.145
should be corrected to 12:4), 185-186, 375, 387, 459 n. 250, 591 n. 11; idem,
Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menah˝em Mendel
Schneerson, Columbia University Press, New York 2009, pp. 176, 178, 203-204,
206-208, 211, 213, 375 n. 41.
145 See the passage of Nathan’s Deruš Hatanninim, pp. 15-16, cited and explicated in
Wolfson, “The Engenderment”, pp. 235-236. See also Wolfson, “Constructions”,
pp. 21 n. 30, 71-72 n. 80, and the utilization of my argument with the presentation
of additional textual evidence in Bruce Rosenstock, “Abraham Miguel Cardoso’s
Messianism”, Association for Jewish Studies Review 23 (1998), pp. 93-96. On the
harmonious unity of all things and the ascetic ideal of spiritual love in Nathan’s
eschatological teaching (Sefer Haberiya, fols. 121b-122a), see Wirszubski, Between
the Lines, pp.182-183, 210-211. For a different interpretation of the myth of the
androgyne and the erotic in Nathan, see Avraham Elqayam, “To Know Messiah—
The Dialectics of Sexual Discourse in the Messianic Thought of Nathan of Gaza”
[in Hebrew], Tarbiz˛ 65 (1996), pp. 660-666. Ada Rapoport-Albert, Women
and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi 1666-1816, Littman Library of Jewish
Civilization, Oxford 2011, p. 221 n. 221, remarks that my interpretation of the
gender metamorphosis of the female implied in the symbol of coronation and the
elevation of the Šexina does not apply to Frank, who “repeatedly emphasizes the
Maiden’s femaleness and envisions how the redemption would materialize through
her, in fulfilment of the sexual duality existing at every level of being”. To the best of
my recollection, I have not included the historical phenomenon of Frankism in my
previous discussions. Hence, Rapoport-Albert’s comment is somewhat gratuitous,
but even if correct, it would indicate that Frank’s augmenting the spiritual power of
the female based on the assumption that a more egalitarian approach to gender is
a sign of the redemption is a perspective that is at odds with the view proffered by
the followers of Shabbetai S˝evi, who created the conceptual apparatus to spearhead
the movement. See Rapoport-Albert’s own hesitation on p. 220 n. 215 and, more
importantly, the different assessment in her discussion of Cardoso and Eybeschuetz
on p. 223. Her qualification of my perspective on Cardoso in n. 228, ad locum, makes
no sense in light of the fact that her interpretation augments my own. Scholem,
Sabbatai S˝evi, p. 403, already argued that a sign of the messianic transformation
The valorisation of h˝esed as male and gevura (or din) as female implies a
collapse of divergence into an identity of convergence, a mode of thought
in which truth is homogenized by the criteria of equality and sameness—
something is true in the fullest sense when it is equal to itself.146 To assert, as
some of my critics have done, that gender is a correlative phenomenon147—
and hence we cannot speak of male without female or of female without
male—misses the point that in a phallocentric worldview, correlativity is
expressive of a lack of alterity, since the other is symptomatic of the same,
or in the Zoharic language utilized by Nathan, the left is contained in the
could be seen in the attempts of Shabbetai S˝evi to change the status of women by
including them in ritual deeds from which they were traditionally excluded. On the
role of women in the Sabbatian movement, see also Matt Goldish, The Sabbatean
Prophets, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 2004, pp. 46-47, 100, 106-
107, 111; David J. Halperin, Sabbatai Zevi: Testimonies to a Fallen Messiah, Littman
Library of Jewish Civilization, Oxford 2007, pp. 39, 41, 76, 172; and the copious
documentation provided by Rapoport-Albert, Women and the Messianic Heresy, pp.
15-156. See also Ada Rapoport-Albert, Hasidic Studies: Essays in History and Gender,
with an introduction by Moshe Rosman, Litman Library of Jewish Civilization,
Oxford 2018, pp. 269-317, and my criticism of her position in Elliot R. Wolfson,
“Bifurcating the Androgyne and Engendering Sin: A Zoharic Reading of Gen 1-3”,
in Caroline Vander Stichele and Susanne Scholz (eds.), Hidden Truths from Eden:
Esoteric Readings of Genesis 1-3, SBL Press, Atlanta 2014, p. 111 n. 39. As I remarked
in that context, I accept that Shabbetai S˝evi sought to subvert the nomian framework
of rabbinic authority by breaking down distinctions between men and women both
in terms of ritual practice and study of esoteric texts, especially the Zohar. I would
still maintain, however, that the egalitarian agenda did not prevent the prevalence of
the traditional phallomorphic symbolism on the part of the leading theologians of
the Sabbatian movement. See Wolfson, Language, pp. 62-63.
146 I am here influenced by the argument regarding Plato in Ann Bergren, “Architecture,
Gender, Philosophy”, in Ralph Hexter and Daniel Selden (eds.), Innovations of
Antiquity: The New Ancient World, Routledge, New York 1992, p. 263.
147 Elqayam, “To Know Messiah”, p. 665 n. 107, and more recently, Leore Sachs Shmueli,
“R. Joseph of Hamadan’s Commentary to the Ten Sefirot” [in Hebrew], Kabbalah:
Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 32 (2014), p. 251 n. 107. See my various
responses in Wolfson, “Constructions of the Shekhinah”, pp. 60-61 n. 153; idem,
Venturing Beyond, pp. 220-221 n. 118; idem, “Phallic Jewissance”, p. 311 n. 69.
right.148 The Kabbalistic logic of a noncorrelative correlativity is buttressed

by several rabbinic dicta. For example, the maxim that above there is no
left, which does not mean that there is a third space that is neither left
nor right, but that the godly expanse is entirely right,149 a characterization
that Kabbalists attribute to the uppermost dimension of the divine, the
sphere of unmitigated compassion.150 One of the most vivid images to
transmit this idea is the portrayal of Keter, or the countenance Arix Anpin,
as the single eye of mercy without a corresponding eye of judgment,
that is, the masculine without an independently existing feminine.151 As
preposterous as it seems, we are obliged to visualize a male that prefigures
the bifurcation into male and female, or in the formulation of one Zoharic
passage describing the status of gender in the highest regions of the divine:
When cAttiqa Qadiša, the concealed of the concealed, desires to be
adorned [le’atqena], everything was adorned in the manner of male and
female [ke’en dexar wenuqba]. In the place where male and female are
integrated, they do not exist but in an alternate way of being male and
female [ba’atar deitkelilu dexar wenuqba lo itqeyyamu ella beqiyyuma
ah˝ara didexar wenuqba]. And when that H˛oxma, the principle of
everything [kelala dexola], comes forth and is illumined from cAttiqa
Qadiša, it does not shine but as male and female, for that H˛oxma
148 Compare Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 9a: “Hence the attribute of Malxut …
in the time of the contraction was entirely right [becet has¸ims¸um haya kolla yemina].
You must know that even though the root was completely right, there was mixed in
it a light that had the property of the back … and thus when the supernal attributes
wanted to include in it all of their aspects, they placed it in their hinder part to reveal
the matter of the back … which stood in secrecy, hidden in the light that is the root
of the right”. See ibid., fol. 11a.
149 Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, pp. 220-221. My interpretation is made explicit in the
language of Midraš Rabba: Šir Haširim, ed. Shimon Dunasky, Dvir, Jerusalem 1980,
1:45 (on Song of Songs 1:9): “Is there a left above? Is it not the case that it is entirely
right [hakol yamin], as it says ‘Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power, your right
hand, O Lord, shatters the foe’ (Exodus 15:6)?”
150 Zohar 3:129a; Vital, Es¸ H˛ayyim, 13:13, 68c; Wolfson, Language, pp. 179-180.
151 For citation of sources and analysis, see Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, pp. 218-224.
emanates and there issues from him Bina, and thus male and female
are found. H˛oxma is the father and Bina the mother. H˛oxma and Bina
are balanced on one scale as male and female [beh˝ad matqela itqalu
dexar wenuqba].152
Articulated in this passage is one of the dogmas that informed the
ontology of theosophical Kabbalah: the structure of all being—from the
sefirotic emanations to the lowest of the four worlds—assumes the form
of the dimorphic constitution of gender, masculine grace and feminine
judgment, the potency to overflow and the capacity to receive. However, in
c
Attiqa Qadiša—the paramount configuration of the divine above which is
only the aura of the infinite light—masculine and feminine are contained
within one another (itkelilu dexar wenuqba), and since they are not yet
circumscribed as autonomous, it is as if they do not exist (lo itqeyyamu).
In that place, maleness and femaleness are not stably distinguished—in
the words used by Salomon ben H˛ayyim Elyašiv, commenting on this
text from the Idra Zut¸a, the independent vessels to bring them forth from
concealment to disclosure and from potentiality to actuality, that is, the
vessel of the masculine for the light of mercy (or hah˝esed) and the vessel
of the feminine for the light of strength (or hagevura), had not yet been
152 Zohar 3:290a (Idra Zut¸a). On the image of the scale as a symbol for the hieros gamos,
see Wolfson, Language, pp. 95, 176, 222, 386, and the reference to the studies
of Liebes cited on p. 596 n. 60; Ronit Meroz, “The Archaeology of the Zohar—
Sifra Ditseni‘uta as a Sample Text”, Da‘at 82 (2016), pp. lxxii-lxxv. Many passages
from a plethora of Kabbalistic texts could be cited to support the phallomorphic
implications of the image of the scale, but here I will cite as one representative source
the following depiction of the rectification of the world at the time of the Sinaitic
theophany in Salomon ben H˛ayyim Elyašiv, Lešem Ševo We’ah˝lama: Sefer Hadeca,
Aaron Barzanai, Jerusalem 2005, pt. 2, p. 381: “Thus he gave them the Torah, for
the Torah is from the foundation of the father [yesod de’abba] that split and it went
outward… and the tablets are the two crowns of knowledge [it¸rin dedacat] that were
hidden within it. … Therefore, those who merited the first tablets aroused high
above to draw down the concealed light so that it be disclosed below. And this is the
mystery of the scale [haraza dematqela] that unified everything”.
created153—and hence the dimorphism assumes a different complexion.

This seems to be implied by the statement “in an alternate way of being
male and female” (beqiyyuma ah˝ara didexar wenuqba). It is possible that
these words should be interpreted as referring to the subsequent stage of
emanation when the two genders—represented respectively by H˛oxma and
Bina—are discriminated; that is, male and female exist as distinct genders
only in another state of being or on another level of existence (qiyyuma
ah˝ara) within the divine pleroma. Either way we interpret this gloss, it
does not change the fact that in cAttiqa Qadiša there is an overcoming of
gender dimorphism insofar as male and female are contained within one
another. But does this containment imply an identity of difference or a
difference of identity? Does the instability of gender imply transmutation
of substance or merely fluctuation of function? From additional passages
in this section of the Zoharic compilation, not to mention other strata, the
highest aspect of the divine is characterized as uniquely male or as the male
that encompasses the dimension of the female that has not been formed
independently. I am inclined to read the text in this manner and thus the
reference to the alternate way of being male and female implies a state
in which there is one gender, the androgynous male that comprises the
female. Support for my interpretation may be gleaned from an alternate
reading of the passage in question from the Idra Zut¸a. After the words
beqiyyuma ah˝ara, some texts preserve the variant ke’en dexar, “in the
manner of the male”, in place of didexar wenuqba, “of male and female”.
This version suggests that at some point in the redactional history it was
understood that the statement “in the place where male and female are
integrated” (ba’atar de’itkelilu dexar wenuqba) implies that “they do not
exist but in an alternate way in the manner of the male” (lo itqeyyamu
153 Elyašiv, Lešem Ševo We’ahlama: Sefer Hadeca, pt. 1, p. 16. In the state prior to the
emergence of the two distinct vessels, the lights of the male mercy and the female
strength “were contained in one vessel” (kelulim bixli ah˝at) and they had no existence
(qiyyum) or standing (hacamada) in their own place. The one vessel could not sustain
them because they were “two antinomies contradicting one another” (šene hafkiyyim
hamenuggadim ze laze).
ella beqiyyuma ah˝ara ke’en dexar); that is, there is but one gender and the
female is contained in the male as the capacity for boundary within the
boundless. The gender division into an autonomous masculinity and
femininity becomes discernible with the manifestation of the second and
third emanations, H˛oxma and Bina, characterized respectfully as the father
and the mother.154
The textual evidence marshalled in this analysis confirms that one cannot
readily discover in Kabbalistic literature—let alone recover—an untainted
sense of difference; at best the difference is a difference within indifference,
which makes all the difference in the world. Consequently, it is possible to
envision masculinity without femininity because the latter is ontologically
comprised in the former. The counterpoint, however, is not feasible and
thus we cannot visualize femininity without masculinity, a world that is
exclusively female—the isolation of the female in this way constitutes
the theological transgression of idolatry or in the rabbinic expression for
heresy, the cutting of the shoots.155 Once the single gender splits into the
154 Regarding this passage, see the textual variants and Hebrew translation in Jonathan
Benarroch, “An Edition of Early Versions of Idra Zuta and an Unknown Hebrew
Translation from Ms. Vatican 226, Copied in 1311” [in Hebrew], Kabbalah: Journal
for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 39 (2017), p. 193.
155 See Elliot R. Wolfson, “Iconicity of the Text: Reification of the Torah and the
Idolatrous Impulse of Zoharic Kabbalah”, Jewish Studies Quarterly 11 (2004), pp.
215-242; idem, Language, pp. 152, 172, 505 n. 200. The ideal, of course, is to
maintain the unity of the ten emanations and thus not to separate the tenth from
the upper nine or the upper nine from the tenth; both possibilities are deemed to
be acts of heresy. Compare Tiqqune Zohar, sec. 69, 117b: “Whoever takes Malxut
without the nine sefirot cuts the shoots [meqas¸s¸es¸ banet¸ican] and whoever takes the
nine sefirot without Malxut is someone who disavows the root [kofer baciqqar]”. As
the beginning of the passage states, Malxut is the root or essence of the four letters
of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH), or the ten letters when that name is written in full
(yod he waw he), because “it is comprised of the ten sefirot, and everything must be
contained in it”. The text confirms my claim regarding asymmetry because the sin
of cutting the shoots involves separating the feminine from the upper emanations
and the sin of disavowing the root involves not affirming the status of the feminine
as being the paradigmatic vessel to contain the upper emanations. These are two
dyad of masculine and feminine, then it is possible to speak of the male

contained in the female or the female contained in the male, but prior to
the splintering of the male androgyne into the gender dimorphism, there
is an asymmetrical containment of the female in the male in a manner
that mimics the account of the human in the second chapter in Genesis
according to which woman was comprised in the man.156 The same
ways to express the subordinate and instrumental status of the Šexina. A different
interpretation of this passage is offered by Biti Roi, Love of the Šexina: Mysticism and
Poetics in Tiqqunei ha-Zohar [in Hebrew], Bar-Ilan University Press, Ramat Gan
2017, pp. 120-122.
156 Wolfson, Language, pp. 49-55, 63-77; idem, “Bifurcating”, pp. 92-102. Confirmation
of my perspective can be elicited from the comment of Nathan of Gaza, Zemir cAris¸im
Yacane, fols. 80b-81a: “From this we learn the matter of the containment of the right
in the left and of the left in the right … for we have already learned from our words
the matter of the being of Gevura, which is made from the containment of the right
in the left; accordingly, even though the left is contained in the right, Gevura does
not come to be except subsequently. Thus, the right is contained in the left but the
left is not contained in the right”. Even in the case of Bina, according to Nathan,
“the left is not contained in the right except after the right is contained in the left.
… After the right is contained in the left in Bina there is born the comprehension
in H˛oxma to contain the left in the right” (ibid., fol. 81a). In a state of imperfection,
the right stands opposite the left and the left opposite the right, but when perfection
is achieved, the left is comprised within the right, a unification expressed in the
eschatological image of Isaiah 28:5, “In that day, the Lord of Hosts shall become
a crown of beauty and a diadem of glory for the remnant of his people” (ibid.,
fol. 93b). For a different and purportedly more egalitarian viewpoint, see Moshe
Idel, “Androgyny and Equality in the Theosophico-Theurgical Kabbalah”, Diogenes
52 (2005): 27-38; idem, Kabbalah and Eros, Yale University Press, New Haven
2005, 53-103, esp. 59-77. My perspective on the male androgyne and Kabbalistic
phallocentrism is criticized on pp. 99-100, and see pp. 128-130. I have responded to
Idel’s presentation of my work elsewhere and will not do so again in this context. But
it is worth reiterating my view that the Kabbalistic material is closer to older gnostic
sources, and maybe also to the anthropology promulgated by Paul, according to which
redemption consists of rectifying the split of the androgyne by making the female
male. It is also of interest to compare what I take to be the dominant Kabbalistic
perspective and the position of Böhme: the original prelapsarian androgyny, the true
likeness of God’s image, which will be restored in the eschatological resurrection, is
dynamic can be applied to the relationship of Israel and the other nations.
It would stand to reason that portrayal of the overcoming of binaries in En
Sof would obliterate the disparity between Jew and non-Jew, a foundational
tenet for the legal and ethical self-understanding of the Jewish people
through the generations. We might presume that in the oneness to be
achieved at the endtime there is no more distinction between Edom and
Israel, or by extension, Edom, Ishmael, and Israel, an amalgamation that
is particularly pertinent to Sabbatianism. In a study published in 2005,
I thus expressed the relationship of the three monotheistic faiths in this
historical phenomenon:
It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that Sabbatian eschatology
represented a concerted effort to challenge the boundaries separating
Judaism from both Christianity and Islam. … Not only is the marginal
status of the Jew in society challenged by the imaginary configuration of
the other, but the messiah himself is constituted by these very images. In
some measure, the apostate messiah as depicted in Sabbatian thought is
simultaneously Jew, Muslim, and Christian; indeed, the coalescence or
triangulation of the three faiths, each of which is nonetheless preserved
in its own theological integrity, bespeaks the spiritual magnanimity of
the messiah.157
After ruminating on this matter over subsequent years, I have come to the
conclusion that this perspective has to be modified. The Dönme, of course,
characterized as neither masculine nor feminine. See Corneliu C. Simuţ, F.C. Baur’s
Synthesis of Böhme and Hegel: Redefining Christian Theology as a Gnostic Philosophy of
Religion, Brill, Leiden 2015, pp. 49-51. Does this effacement of gender dimorphism
imply an egalitarian overcoming of the phallomorphic hierarchy or does it imply
the androcentric suppression of one gender? I hope to discuss the issue in a separate
study on the gender implications of Böhme’s theosophy.
157 Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, pp. 181-182. In support of my claim, I cited a passage
from Bär Perlhefter according to which the redeemer is compelled to accept the faith
of Islam, and thus he is humbled by donning the garment of Ishmael as he rides
upon the ass, but he also puts on the garment of Edom, which patently stands for
the vestment of Christianity.
are the exception, but they are the exception that proves the rule: the
ethnocentric privileging of Israel as culturally and linguistically exceptional
was never questioned by most Sabbatians, and certainly not by Nathan, as
my analysis in this study has demonstrated. There is no indication that
the majority of followers of Shabbetai S˝evi embraced an egalitarianism or
ecumenism that definitively dissolved the differences between the three
Abrahamic faiths. It may very well be that Sabbatians affirmed that Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam each contribute to the cultivation of the truth, but
the belief that Jews uniquely possess the knowledge that can bring about
redemption is never abandoned. Utilizing the symbolism discussed above,
the restoration of the left to the right at the end signifies the othering of
the other and its reincorporation into the same. That there is neither Jew
nor non-Jew, therefore, bespeaks the coincidence of opposition whereby
the identity of the other is absorbed into the identity of the same rather
than the concurrence of opposites whereby the identity of the other and
the identity of the same remain distinct.
Expressed in a different terminological register, the universal is achieved
only through the agency of the particular; indeed, the instantiation of the
particularity of the universal preserves the universality of the particular.
With respect to this matter there is a striking similarity between the
messianic ideal embraced by the Sabbatians and the soteriological teaching
of Paul: universalism is expressed through the prism of the singular. The
baptismal formula recorded in Galatians 3:28 avows that in Christ there is
an obliteration of ethnic, socio-economic, and gender difference—neither
Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female—but the
pledge that we are all one in Christ Jesus is an inclusivity that excludes its
own exclusivity; that is, the capacity for alterity excludes those who might
not desire to be incorporated into the body of Christ. But even more to the
point is the verse that immediately succeeds the liturgical pronouncement,
“And if you are of Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs
according to the promise” (3:29). The universal—to be of Christ—is the
fulfilment of the singular—the covenantal promise to Abraham’s seed. I
would contend, therefore, that Paul does not escape the dilemma that lies
at the heart of Jewish messianism: by including the excluded in the claim
to exclusivity, the inclusivity is rendered even more exclusive. The blind

spot illumined by this spotlight is especially conspicuous in the Kabbalistic
literature where we discover a nonegocentricist piety that is concurrently
ethnocentric in its theopolitics: only the Jew, as it were, has what it takes to
become nothing, to be assimilated into the infinite where all distinctions
are transcended. The shortcoming here is obvious: the emphasis on
interconnectivity should problematize the divisiveness that is implied
by the claim of uniqueness. And yet, Jewish mystics, and here I would
include the Sabbatians, repeatedly affirm that the Jew undermines the gap
separating Jew and non-Jew by steadfastly upholding the gap separating
Jew and non-Jew.
To redeem the ethnocentrism we would have to say, following Levinas,
that this very quality is the condition that secures the viability of genuine
alterity, since the “absolutely universal”—the principle that fosters the sense
of respect for and responsibility toward the irreducible other—“can be served
only through the particularity of each people”.158 Otherness is what makes
the other the same; what I share with every other is that we are different. The
unique contribution of Judaism—when interpreted through the rabbinic
corpus—is the consciousness of a “universalist singularity”, a universalism
expressed in the principle that bolstered Mendelssohn’s explanation of
Israel’s desire for emancipation, “To be with the nations is also to be for the
nations”.159 From Levinas’s perspective, not only is there no conflict between
the universal and the particular; the one can be realized only through the
guise of the other. When devoted to their religious predilection, Jews give
witness to the fact that universal significance must always be measured from
the standpoint of a singularity that refrains from collapsing the difference
between the difference of identity and the identity of difference.
In spite of Levinas’s own aversion to mysticism, his insight regarding the
irreducibility of the other may, in fact, betray an affinity to the subversive
158 Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. by Seán Hand, Johns
Hopkins University, Baltimore 1990, p. 136.
159 Emmanuel Levinas, In the Time of the Nations, trans. by Michael B. Smith, Athlone
Press, London 1994, p. 144.
tendencies of mystic visionaries, who have sought to transfigure the very

traditions that have transfigured them by simultaneously preserving and
surpassing the specificity of their upbringing. The unspeakable oneness of
which they speak is a one constituted by multivocality—in quantum terms,
the unifying electrical force that is constantly transformed in compliance
with the ever-evolving multiplicity of the symbiotic constellations that
cohere in the intra-relational field of material nature. The unifying ground
of reality—much as the hypothetical unified field theory in physics—does
not imply a disembodied and disembedded one but rather an embedded
and embodied cohesion constantly being fabricated by an ever-changing
manifold. The scientific data reinforces the mystical paradigm of a
universalist singularity predicated on the juxtaposition of the monolithic
and the polymorphic, not as dialectic antinomies, but as coefficient
variables divided and thereby conjoined by the erratic constancy of their
deviations. What is common to all traditions, consequently, must be
enunciated in the idiom distinctive to each tradition. This, I propose,
is the enduring legacy of the Sabbatian hypernomianism. Setting aside
the Dönme, most of the followers of Shabbetai S˝evi, the believers as
they called themselves, were not able to escape the quandary that has
marked the Jewish sensibility through the centuries: on the one hand, an
ethnocentrism that has deep roots in the biblical metaphor of chosenness;
on the other hand, the prophetic-messianic mission of being a light unto
the nations. Israel’s election is predicated on an exclusiveness inclusive of
its own others, but the inclusiveness of this exclusiveness is still dependent
on the exclusiveness of its inclusiveness.

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El Prezente

Journal for Sephardic Studies

El Prezente, Vol. 12-13

Ben-Gurion University Moshe David Gaon Center

Editorial Coordinator: Avishag Ben-Shalom

Published with the support of

Dr. Tali Latowicki

Dr. Yael Levi-Hazan

A Brief Guide to Preparing your Manuscript for Submission 259

Hebrew Section ‫א‬

Hypernomian Piety and the Mystical Rationale of the

“Precisely by attaining an ideal, we surpass it”.

In line with the pioneering work of Gershom Scholem, scholars have

these wayward deeds inspired sacrilegious devotion, especially amongst

tragic outcome of an internal process informed by tradition, a kind of reverse

transvaluation of traditional rabbinic values is expressed by reference

yesodah).10 Notwithstanding the veracity of this insight, I would argue

12 Scholem, Major Trends, p. 319.

It is apposite to recall the observation of Pawel Maciejko. Developing

law of polarities. Expressed in the symbolic language employed in these

Ascesis and the Lawful Gesturing beyond the Law

20 Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, pp. 266-270.

on antinomianism has precluded scholars from paying attention to the

From Nathan’s perspective, the foremost and overriding rationale for

attribute of Malxut—in the spiritual economy of the Jewish people. The

with an explication of the scriptural admonition “Cursed be the man who

35 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 114b.

42 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 116a.

conjunction is the true nature [hat¸evac ha’amitti] established by the Lord of

49 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 128b.

do justice here to Nathan’s elaborate discussion of the details surrounding

55 Ibid., fol. 83a.

which, metaphorically speaking, means one must eradicate the coarse

Sabbath, Restoration to the Infinite, and Overcoming

56 Ibid., fol. 9a.

57 Babylonian Talmud, Qiddušin 40b.

anything outside itself. Surprisingly, Nathan applies the dictum of the

60 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fols. 47b-48a.

much older sources, Nathan links law-abiding dissidence to repentance

62 Ibid., fol.. 133b.

68 See Elliot R. Wolfson, “The Engenderment of Messianic Politics: Symbolic

context underscores that the messianic status of the Sabbath is related

72 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Phallic Jewissance and the Pleasure of No Pleasure”, in Charlotte

75 Nathan of Gaza, Sefer Haberiya, fol. 111b.

96 Ibid., pp. 809-810 (emphasis in original).

Causes (uvixlal ze res¸on cillat hacillot), and thus is veritably a rectification

98 Nathan of Gaza, Deruš Hamenora, p. 102.

Piety of Transgression and the Bodily Overcoming of Body

105 Nathan of Gaza, Zemir cAris¸im Yacane, fol. 60b.

spiritual perfection—typified by the consumption of food and drink during

Nathan’s Deruš Hatanninim, composed in 1666 prior to the presumed act

117 See above, n. 65.

Analyzing this passage in a study published many years ago, I discussed

121 Wolfson, “The Engenderment”, pp. 233-236.

the mask of an untruth that is deceitfully true. Boundaries of law arise

Neither Male nor Female: Transvaluation of the Law

128 Nathan of Gaza, Zemir cAris¸im Yacane, fol. 88a.

feminine to the masculine, Kaniel uses the example of Luzzatto’s description of

encompasses two sexuated identities. This, too, is the implication of the

a theme expressed as well by the anatomical image of the female waters

in that empty space [h˝alal] as is known. When the light ascended

feminine to the masculine and the reconstitution of the male androgyne;

right.148 The Kabbalistic logic of a noncorrelative correlativity is buttressed