The Unique Features of Prohibition in Kabbalah: The Dynamics of Theurgy for the Negative Commandments

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

Abstract

Many Kabbalistic works from the thirteenth century onwards were dedicated to explaining the meaning of ritual, alongside transgressions and the violation of the negative commandments. Understanding the literary phenomena of ‘rationale of negative commandments’ as a distinctive genre, and ‘prohibition’ as a separate category in religion will be the purpose of this presentation. Through it, I will scrutinize the special linguistic features of the genre as well as reveal the underlying principles of its dynamics. This investigation is especially required since in Kabbalah scholarship, the concept of taboo as a system of prohibitions was overshadowed by a preference of scholars for the study of ritual and positive theurgy. Thus, it is proposed that ‘taboo’, defined here as a system of negative commandments, is no less crucial in portraying the lore contained in the works of Castilian Kabbalah. I use ‘taboo’ here as to advance the framing of the large corpus of negative commandments as a system of prohibitions practitioners are reluctant to obey, albeit their inclination and temptation to violate. Thus ‘taboo’ helps us to construct the nature and character of a system of prohibitions, borrowing terms from research on culture and religion. Moreover, by differentiating it from ritual, new qualities of the phenomena are revealed.
More specifically, this paper will discuss this literary phenomenon in the context of the development of the Zoharic literature, and will consider works such as Moses De León’s BOOK OF THE POMEGRANATE (Sefer ha-Rimon), the work of ‘PIQUDA’, Joseph Hamadan’s RATIONALE OF THE NEGATIVE COMMANDMENTS, RAYA MEHEIMNA, R. MENAHEM RECANATI'S RATIONALE OF THE COMMANDMENTS, and book of the QANAH. This analysis will present the creative hermeneutics which these texts introduced to establish the unique features of prohibitions in the dynamics of theurgy in Kabbalah.

Author

• Leore Sachs Shmueli, Bar Ilan University, Columbia University