When Do Popular Mystical Motifs in Private Prayers for Jewish Women in Italy Reveal the Prayers of Mystics and their Wives?

• In Event: Rituals and Practices: New Approaches to their Meanings:

Abstract

There is general agreement among scholars that there were no female Jewish mystics in the past. Gershom Scholem attributes this to the perceived demonic nature of women. Judith Baskin claims that the intellectual pursuit involved in mysticism was beyond the scope of women’s educational opportunities. Sharon Koren and Peter Schäfer relate to the impact of menstrual impurity on women’s possibility to study mystical texts which required a very stringent adherence to the laws of ritual purity. Chavah Weissler claims that the Yiddish TKHINES do not qualify as mystical texts because they do not generate a true mystical experience, despite their occasional use of kabbalistic imagery. Some of the TKHINES’ mystical motifs, such as TKHINE IMREI SHIFRE, liken the kindling of the Sabbath lamp to the menorah lit by the high priest in the Temple. Weissler holds that the source of this TKHINE is from the sections of the Zohar translated into Yiddish in NAHALAS TSEVI by Tsevi Hirsh Khotsh. Khotsh, however, claims that he did not translate the actual “mysteries” of the Zohar. In the private petitionary prayers written in Hebrew (as opposed to Yiddish) for Italian Jewish women (TEHINOT) we find a variety of references to mystical motifs similar in manner to Weissler’s determinations. These include some of the following features: KAVANOT before the performance of a mitzvah like separating the dough, ritual immersion after menstruation, and candle lighting (Mitzvot Hannah). References to the SHEKHINAH, hopes of being rewarded with pious and learned sons and pious, modest daughters as a result of performing mitzvot, mention of the SEFIROT, rivers of fire, and unification of the SHEKHINAH and God are other motifs that appear. This paper will analyse the mystical motifs in the TEHINOT to see if there is any linkage among them with greater mystical ideas. We shall examine the possibility some of the prayers may actually have been recited by women married to practising mystics who required their cooperation and perhaps also their participation in mystical preparatory rights, especially those of a sexual nature.

Author

• Tirzah Meacham, University of Toronto