Mystical Contemplation and the Limits of the Mind: The Case of Sheqel ha-Qodesh

As was the case with medieval Jewish philosophy, the kabbalah of 13th-century Spain was profoundly concerned with the status of the human mind in its quest to comprehend and experience divine reality. Building on the legacy of Maimonides, the kabbalists were caught between the desire to achieve full theosophical gnosis and the conflicting assumption that God is utterly unknowable. This article studies the problem of epistemology in the thought of Rabbi Moses de Leon, one of the greatest Jewish mystics of the Middle Ages. My central conclusion is that de Leon advocated a paradoxical approach to theological knowledge-one which sought to dialectically balance the contemplative ideal with a radically negative mode of apophasis. In agreement with the general scholarly consensus that experiential elements underlie the metaphysical discourse of kabbalah, this study seeks to further demonstrate the manner in which epistemological concerns shape ontological discussions in medieval kabbalistic literature.