From Moses to Moses, there was some very weird stuff: Kabbalah, Embodiment, and Religious Affect

• In Event: Rethinking Kabbalah and Theory of Religion

Abstract

This paper examines the figure of Moses in three mystical works: the Shiur Qomah (7th-7th C), Sword of Moses (6th-8thC), and Moshe Cordovero’s Tefilla le Moshe (16th C). In each work, Moses either witnesses or participates in some embodied and deeply emotional experiences that dissolve boundaries between both human and divine bodies, and scramble categories of gender. For example, in the Shiur Qomah, the text cites Moses as a source of all its powerful divine names and as a witness for an intimate, homoerotic encounter between the angel Metatron and the divine: “And when [the lad] enters beneath the throne of Glory, the Holy One, Blessed Be He, grasps him in the light of his countenance.” In the Sword of Moses, sexual desire and love play a key role exercising power. In it, the operator is instructed to physically “hold the head prince of them all and say: I adjure you… to fulfill for me my desire through this sword by a name that is irreplaceable: for you are beloved and He (i.e., the Lord) is beloved and I, too, am… beloved.. Thus physical contact between male figures, coupled with love and desire are key to human access to power. Finally, in Moshe Cordovero’s Tefillah le Moshe, the male operator also grasps the head of his human partner as a key element of a ritual of sacred sexuality to unite male and female… in such a manner that “in the Shiʾur Qomah which is in him there are ten [sefirot] and in that which is in her there are ten.” In this way both partners become bigendered, and their bodies become divinized and powerful, much like the androgynous divine body of the Shi’ur Qomah. In all of these Moses-texts, both intimacy and power hinge on desire and inter-embodiment that is not constrained by limits of gender or ontological status. Together, these texts ask us to reimagine queerness as an embodied, affective mode central to kabbalah, and possibly to religion itself.

Author

• Marla Segol, University at Buffalo, SUNY