The poetry of Kabbalah : mystical verse from the Jewish tradition

411 Pages·2012·10.12 MB·English

by  Cole

The Margellos World Republic of Letters is dedicated to making literary works from around the globe
available in English through translation. It brings to the English-speaking world the work of leading poets,
novelists, essayists, philosophers, and playwrights from Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the
Middle East to stimulate international discourse and creative exchange.
Published with assistance from the Louis Stern Memorial Fund.
Copyright © 2012 by Yale University Press Introduction, translation, and annotation copyright © 2012 by
Peter Cole Afterword copyright © 2012 by Aminadav Dykman All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that
copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the
public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use.
For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office).
Set in Electra and Nobel types by Newgen North America. Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The poetry of Kabbalah : mystical verse from the
Jewish tradition /
translated and annotated by Peter Cole ; co-edited and with an afterword by Aminadav Dykman.—1st ed.
p. cm.—(The Margellos World Republic of Letters) Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-300-16916-4 (alk. paper) 1. Piyutim. 2. Piyutim—History and criticism. 3. Jewish religious
poetry, Hebrew. 4. Mysticism—Poetry. 5. Cabala. I. Cole, Peter.
II. Dykman, Aminaday.
BM670.P5P64 2012
296.4’ 52—dc23
2011041846
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Poetry of Kabbalah
Mystical Verse from the Jewish Tradition
TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY
PETER COLE
CO-EDITED AND WITH AN AFTERWORD BY
AMINADAV DYKMAN
The Poetry of Kabbalah
CONTENTS
Cover
Copyright
Introduction
POEMS OF THE PALACES AND EARLY LITURGICAL HYMNS
Anonymous
Hymn to the Heavens
A Measure of Holiness
Awe and Adornment
Each Day
From Whose Beauty the Depths Are Lit
To Rise on High
Blessed Is the Eye
The Priest’s Appearance
Windows of Worship
Yannai
Angel of Fire
From the Sky to the Heavens’ Heavens
Eliezer Kallir
King Girded with Might
Creatures Four-Square About the Throne
Anonymous
Release, Please
THE BOOK OF CREATION
from Sefer Yetzirah
AL-ANDALUS AND ASHKENAZ
Shelomoh Ibn Gabirol
He Dwells Forever
Angels Amassing
I Love You
from Kingdom’s Crown
Yehudah HaLevi
True Life
Where Will I Find You
Lord, [All My Desire]
A Dove in the Distance
Yehudah HeHasid
Hymn of Divine Glory
THE KABBALAH IN SPAIN
Moshe ben Nahman
Before the World Ever Was
Ya’akov HaKohen
Prayers for the Protection and Opening of the Heart
The Zohar
On Awakening and Drawing Near
Incantation Against Lilith
Avraham Abulafia
from the Book of the Sign
Yosef Gikatilla
The Nut Garden
THE SAFED CIRCLE (GALILEAN KABBALAH)
Shelomoh Alkabetz
Hymn to the Sabbath
Anonymous
Peace Be upon You
Eliezer Azikri
Soul’s Beloved
Yitzhak Luria
Hymns for the Three Sabbath Meals
Why, My Desire
Avraham ben Maimon
Hidden God
Yisrael Najara
To the Shekhinah
Your Kingdom’s Glory
EXTENSIONS EAST AND WEST
Shalem Shabazi
Who Kissed Me
The Myrtle’s Scent
Shimon Lavi
Bar Yohai
Ya’akov Ifargan
In Praise of the Name and Its Mystery
JEWISH MUSLIMS/MUSLIM JEWS
Shabbatian Hymns
Meliselda
I Have Found Bliss
The Valley of Ishmael
On the Extinguishing of the Lights
Secret Pleasure
On the Destruction of the Law
The Ghazal of Goodness
ITALIAN KABBALAH
Moshe Zacut
The Light Concealed
You Readied a Light
Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto
Messiah
HASIDIC DEVOTION
Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev
Song of You
Shneur Zalman
from the Tanya
THE SEEDS OF SECULAR MYSTICISM
Hayyim Nahman Bialik
from The Pool
Bring Me in Under Your Wing
Notes
Afterword, by Aminadav Dykman
Poems in Hebrew and Other Languages
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
THE STAKES COULDN’T BE HIGHER: extraction of light from the container of sound;
ascent to the Throne of God and direct vision of His Glory; the eradication of
coarseness and the forces of darkness; a path to redemption, sometimes through
sin; the achievement of erotic union on high—which is to say, the sacred
marriage of feminine and masculine aspects within the Deity.1 “Great is the
power of the poem recited for the sake of heaven,” writes one late-seventeenth-
century North African poet. “It unites all the [spiritual] qualities like a sacrificial
offering, aligns the [heavenly] channels, and gives rise to effulgence in all
worlds—above and below.”2
In this Kabbalistic context, poems not only depict a mystical process, they
produce it.3 Seeking a return to the primordial harmony destroyed with the
catastrophe of creation and Adam’s transgression in Eden, those who compose
and utter the lines of mystical hymns take part in the continual reconfiguration of
the cosmos.4 For the letters of the alphabet, or alephbet, are, a medieval Iberian
Hebrew work tells us, nothing less than “the powers of God . . . engraved on the
throne. . . . They are called the angels of the living God.”5 And according to late-
phase Hasidic Kabbalah, the letters of the Torah are each “a palace or chamber
inhabited by the divine presence”: combined in the proper manner, they lead to
the revelation of the Infinite’s radiance.6
As with the gain, however, so with the potential for debilitating strain in the
scheme of this at once conservative and truly experimental poetics, where the
level of risk is raised to an almost impossible pitch. The Talmud warns of the
threats that await a person who would hazard the halls of the upper palaces—
apostasy, insanity, and death (spiritual or actual). Of the famous four sages who
entered that place of esoteric interpretation seeking knowledge of this potent
sort, only one returned in peace.7
Given the danger that attends to Kabbalistic inquiry, why submit oneself to
an equivalent peril on the literary plane—the gauntlet of abstractions and the
incessant mixing of mythic metaphors that dominate the textual landscape of
Kabbalah? What, apart from a historical and armchair sense of the intense
religious experience of spiritual adepts, does the poetry of Kabbalah have to tell
us as readers today?
For one, long before Frenchified notions of trace and erasure took hold, a
Kabbalistic poetics was drawing attention to aspects of language-in-action that