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5 Halakhah and Kabbalah TiqqUnei ha-Zohar and RaJaya Meheimna portray the maskil's relationship with agents of the exoteric Torah, the rabbis who apply legal authority, in complex and ambivalent terms. This relationship is generally interpreted as comprising a critique of halakhah, the legal dimension of rabbinical Judaism. The substance of this critique was utilized in the theoretical literature of the Sabbatean and I:Iasidic movements. The conflict between the halakhic and kabbalistic traditions originates in the distinctions between the Torah's mystical nature and its exoteric character. In most cases, the practitioner was forced to choose between a mystical consciousness and a legalistic consciousness.! The Tiqqunim and RaJaya Meheimna conduct a polemic, advocating the former over the latter. The Two Torahs The Tiqqunim and RaJaya Meheimna portray two aspects of the Torah: the Torah of A?ilut (emanation) and the Torah of Beriah (creation). The doctrine of the two Torahs is a mythic expression of the distinction between the Torah's exoteric and the esoteric levels. The author of these works derived this idea from certain dualistic images in the Bible. 59 60 The Enlightened Will Shine In mythic terms, these two kinds of Torah were conceived separately, in the aftermath of the fall. They originate in the two World Trees in the garden of Eden. The E{ljayyim, or Tree of Life, is synonymous with the Torah of A{ilut, whereas the E{ haDa 'at Tov ve-Ra', or Tree of Knowledge, is identified with the Torah of Beriah. The model practitioner is the {Qddik (saint) of the Tree of Knowledge, rather than the mere "man" of the Tree of Life.2 Moses' breaking the first tablets of the Torah, in the incident of the golden calf, was another catastrophe that exacerbated the division between these two aspects of the Torah.3 The first tablets represented the spiritual essence of the Torah, the Torah of A?ilut, which is now available only to mystics. The second tablets constitute the Torah of Beriah, which is characterized by historicity. Its commandments are the product of this Torah's shell or qelippah. Hence, preoccupation with the mere commandments is an embrace of the most extraneous, irrelevant aspect of the Torah. The two Torahs' functions are also understood in sefirotic terms, as stages in the path of the emanation of Divine effluence . The Torah of A?ilut comprises the energies of the sefirah Ifokhmah that are gathered under the sefirah Tif'eret. This is the undifferentiated Torah whose origins precede the creation of the world.4 In one example from the Tiqqunim, the maskil's relationship with the Tree of Life, and its accompanying Torah ofA?ilut, is depicted in terms of a halakhic metaphor: The Masters of the Mishnah taught:5 One doesn't climb a tree or straddle it or use it. I ask you, 0 Holy Spark, not in the simple, physical manner of the Masters of the Mishnah, but in the secret way, the spiritual way, as it says: The maskilim will shine. He said to him: "0 venerable sage,6 I will tell you, for you are from the realm of the Tree of Life, which is planted in the Sabbath Queen, which needs no person to tend it, as has been learned:7 He who uses the crown will depart.8 The speaker asks Shimon Bar Yol)ai to explain the law in which trees may be part of a Sabbath boundary. The law is a metaphor for the way that the Tree of Life is defiled by the Halakhah and Kabbalah 61 prosaic legalism of the Torah of Beriah. Using the Tree is like violating the ernv, the Sabbath boundary portrayed metaphorically as the boundary between the sacred and the profane. The Torah of Beriah relates to the realm of the Shekhinah, the realm of the differentiated world.9 This Torah is the outer garment of the Shekhinah, its debased aspect.lO There are dangers in mistaking the essence of the Torah for its garment. The perverse behavior of the rebelious son, as portrayed in the Passover liturgy is one example of this mistaken world-view: There is a Torah of Beriah and a Ijokhmah of Beriah and a Binah of Beriah and so it is with all the qualities (senrot). In this Torah the son may be without mifvah and mifvah separated from the Torah. Hence: the rebellious son. But from the realm of Afilut there is no separation. One is in no...

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