Sod ha-Shabbat: The Mystery of the Sabbath

Introduction

Introduction Sod ha-Shabbat, Meir ibn Gabbai's treatise on the mystical Sabbath , lies at the heart of his Tola'at Ya'aqov (TY), completed by the author in the spring of 1507. Sod ha-Shabbat is perhaps the most comprehensive and systematic treatment of Sabbath celebration in the classical Kabbalah. From a literary point of view, it has the advantage of being more focused than the sprawling, albeit richer, Zoharic treatment and more complete than the earlier systematic discussions found in Moshe de Leon's Sefer ha-Rimmon and David ben Judah he-I:Jasid's 'Or Zaru'a, to cite two leading examples. Moreover , as a largely synthetic text, Meir ibn Gabbai's work brings together many disparate strands from the classical tradition; standing at the end of a Kabbalistic era, on the very eve of the Safed Renaissance, it is essentially a work of summation. For these reasons Sod ha-Shabbat is an ideal point of entry for exploration of the classical Sabbath-mythos and the course of its development. Before turning to the actual translation and interpretation of this text, it is useful to set it in a broader context. The purpose of this chapter is to orient the reader to: (1) Meir ibn Gabbai: his life and work (2) The TY as a whole: its structure and purpose; the influences it absorbed and the influence that it, in turn, exerted; and (3) the structure of Sod ha-Shabbat, per se, and the methodological concerns informing its translation and interpretation . BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES R.J. Zwi Werblowsky has commented that for centuries Jews chose to remember their greatest sons by the titles of their books, if possible every one by the title of his magnum opus. Even when authors were referred to by their actual names, these did not so much represent individual personalities as literary figures. Every 1 2 Introduction name, it might almost be said, functioned like a pen-name. Who, after all, was the RaMBaN if not the author of the talmudic novellae ~iddushey ha-RaMBaN or of the commentary on the Pentateuch perush ha-RaMBaN? No doubt the book often hid a distinct and unique personality, but the author was never allowed to protrude, as it were, from his work.1 Such is the case of the author of the TY, Rabbi Meir ben Ye~ezqel ibn Gabbai. To the historian, he has essentially become his books; the bare bones of his biography are all that can be uncovered. Meir ibn Gabbai was born in Spain in 1480/81,2 underwent the trauma of the Expulsion as a youth, and ultimately resettled in the Ottoman Empire. The precise order of his perigrinations has been the subject of scholarly debate. Based on circumstantial evidence, he was commonly thought to have spent much of his adult life in Turkey, proper,3 though certain scholars averred that he may have lived in Egypt, as well; G. Scholem and R. Goetschal maintain that he may have died in 'Ere~ Israel, though neither provides documentation for this.4 These historians have apparently overlooked the persuasive evidence presented by Meir Benayahu some forty years ago,5 locating Meir ibn Gabbai in the Turkish town of Tire (Thyrea)6 from at least 1516. According to the She'elot u-Teshuvot of the esteemed R. Elijah Mizra~ of Istanbul,7 responsum 24, one R. Meir ibn Gabbai served as a member of the rabbinical court of Tire at this time.s Given the likely Turkish provenance of our Kabbalist's writings and the halakhic (legal) expertise evident in them,9 there is little doubt that judge and mystic are one and the same. Meir Benayahu suggested that ibn Gabbai served in Tire for an extended period; there is no independent evidence, unfortunately, to confirm this view. Benayahu did show that ibn Gabbai, in his later years, lived in Manissa (Magnesia), a city north-east of Izmir that was home to Jewish refugees from Lorca and Toledo.10 Here, too, the responsa literature is revealing. A query addressed to the eminent R. Levi ibn Habib of Jerusalem in the summer of 1540 indicates that Meir ibn G;bbai served as head of the Manissa rabbinical court.11 Ibn Gabbai is again mentioned in the Responsa of Moshe ben Joseph Trani (the MaBiT) of Safed, having corresponded with the latter in the fall of 1543.12 Ibn Gabbai died sometime thereafter, at any event later than the 1540 date suggested by most scholars...