Grave Visitation by Rabbi Isaac Luria and Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson

Rabbi Isaac Luria, the leading figure of the Safed kabbalistic revival in sixteenth-century Safed, and Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, had two characteristics in common. They both visited the grave of their spiritual mentor regularly, and their disciples and followers saw them as messianic figures. In this study, I will consider one of the significant reasons for these grave visitations and its significance. It will be argued that the motivation and the results of these visitations were similar in both cases. The charisma and religious authority of the deceased figure was transferred in each case to the living figure through the association and communication that was claimed to have taken place during these grave visitations. The practical implications of this transfer of charisma and religious authority will also be considered.

I

Safed became a place of pilgrimage because of its proximity to the graves of many of the early rabbinic figures, like Hillel and Shammai, and a number of their disciples. These graves of important rabbinic figures attracted pilgrims long before the kabbalists came to Safed.¹ However, the primary attraction for the kabbalists were not the graves of Hillel and Shammai but the graves of Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, the purported author of the Zohar, his son, and a number of Rabbi Simeon’s disciples who were mentioned in the Zohar.² The kabbalists also believed that many of the events mentioned in the Zohar took place in the vicinity of Meron and Safed.³

The arrival of Rabbi Isaac Luria in Safed raised the centrality of Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai to a new level. Luria had a vision at the grave of Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, reaffirming belief in the authenticity of the grave. One of Luria’s disciples, Rabbi Abraham Galante, financed the construction of the building complex over bar Yohai’s grave, giving it a greater centrality as a place of pilgrimage.⁴ In addition, Luria declared that he was a gilgul, a reincarnation, of Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, which gave him a special relationship and mystical connection to the author of the Zohar. Luria also used his mystical powers to discern the previous transmigrations of the disciples he attracted. For example, he claimed that Rabbi Hayyim Vital, his most important disciple, was a transmigration of Rabbi Abba, Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai’s most important disciple in the Zohar.⁵ Having reassembled the Havraya, the collegium that was responsible for the teachings of the Zohar, Luria and his disciples continued the process of reimagining Judaism through the lens of the Zohar and other kabbalistic traditions that had begun a generation before with the founding of the Safed kabbalistic community in the first half of the sixteenth century.⁶ For example, the first Tikkun Leyl Shavuot, the mystical celebration on the eve of the festival of Shavuot, was celebrated in Adrianople, in 1534, by Joseph Karo and Solomon Alkabetz, shortly before they left for Israel and settlement in Safed.⁷ However, I would suggest that it was the activities of Luria and his circle that gave this and the other mystical practices that became normative in Judaism in the wake of the Safed revival their final stamp of approval and religious authority. Everything that emerged from Safed, that has influenced Jewish belief and practice, was associated in the popular imagination with Luria, even in those cases where the innovation had been instituted before Luria’s arrival in Safed.

One of the implicit and sometimes explicit problems was the question of religious authority. With what authority were Luria and his disciples instituting new practices and customs? Traditional rabbinic authority was based on the concept that the authority to decide questions of Jewish law was transmitted from teacher to disciple. This is the theological basis of rabbinic ordination (semikhah), which was a living tradition in that it was an unbroken chain. The kabbalistic tradition was different. It was generally accepted that the last kabbalist who had truly understood kabbalah was Nahmanides (d. 1270), and no kabbalistic innovation was possible after him.⁸ Future kabbalists could only interpret...