Eating Gestures and The Ritualized Body

Eating Gestures and the Ritualized Body in Medieval Jewish Mysticism Author(s): Joel Hecker Source: History of Religions,
Vol. 40, No. 2 (Nov., 2000), pp. 125-152 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3176618 Accessed: 04/01/2010 14:35
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JoelHecker
EATING GESTURES AND THE RITUALIZED BODY IN MEDIEVAL JEWISH MYSTICISM
INTRODUCTION
In the fictional narrativesof the Zohar, the central and canonical text of medieval Jewish mysticism, Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai and his companions are frequently portrayed exchanging mystical discourses as they walk through the Galilee, but another frequent scenario for these discourses is at the table, over a meal. In this study I will examine some of the dining practices that the characters in the zoharic narratives employed as part of their mystical praxis, or that they attributedto the mystical praxis of the biblical figures whom they emulate. I will consider activities and symbolic valences that are incorporated into the kabbalistic dining rituals: "the approach to the table," "sitting down to eat," "food and masculinity," and "affective performance,"referring to assumed facial gestures. These activities and their symbolic meanings help constitute the bodily habitus of these characters;the last suggests that in addition to the internal affective component that we are used to thinking about, there is an external affective component to be considered as well. The theoretical issues that I investigate, in terms of their applicability to the kabbalah,include the ways in which the body is constructedthrough ritual and, at the end, how masks are used to reveal internal truths. Approaching the question of the nature of the body, as understood, experienced, and utilized by the kabbalists, this study assumes a constructivist understandingof the body, meaning that there is a history of the body that is constructed differently by different cultures in different places and times. Like all physical acts that human beings share in common with the animal world, eating too has been "cultured";that is, while
? 2000 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0018-2710/2001/4002-0002$02.00
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all animals feed, only human beings dine.1 Akin to sexual intercoursein that it partakesof both the "orderof need" and the "orderof desire,"to use Roland Barthes'sdistinction,2eating is similarly bounded by the cultural constraints, goals, and ideal images that have variously tried to elevate, order, sanctify, or aestheticize this simple biological need. In the Jewish tradition,eating (and restrictionson eating) is given considerable attention. From the biblical laws of kashrut serving to define the body politic,3 to the vast regulatory system established by the rabbis in talmudic and legal literature,4and, finally, to the tired stereotype of culinary excess in the modern Jewish experience, food and eating have served as rich templates for the elaboration of cultural norms and cultural selfrepresentationin Jewish history.5 As we shall see, the physical processes of consumption, digestion, and satiation, as well as the various social, aesthetic, and ritual practices that animate the act of eating for the kabbalists, can be examined to see what they reveal about their particularexperiences of eating.6 In this study I examine eating gestures that serve as mystical praxis for the kabbalists as treated in the Zohar and, simultaneously, look at the constructedembodiment that the text of the Zohar, in both exegetical and narrative-frame sections, lays out descriptively and normatively in homilies and narratives treating food and dining. In the kabbalistic lifestyle, the body is treated alternately as instrument,sacrament, and sinful burden. Thus, in
1 Peter Farb, Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), p. 3. 2 Roland Barthes, "Reading Brillat-Savarin,"in The Rustle of Language, ed. Francois Wahl, trans. Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 251. 3 See Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1969; reprint, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978); Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religion and Ancient Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 122-40. 4 See Shulhan Arukh, YorahDe'ah 1-138. 5 For an overview, see John Cooper, Eat and Be Satisfied: A Social History of Jewish Food (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1993). 6 In speaking of "the kabbalists,"I refer to both the kabbalistsof the text and to the mystical fraternity in the circle of Rabbi Moshe de Leon, the group centrally involved in the authorship of the Zohar. I assume that the mystical fraternity portrayed in the Zohar serves as a veil for the esoteric activities and imaginative lives of the kabbalists in the circle. See Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Visionary Experience and Imagination in Jewish Medieval Mysticism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 374 nn. 164-65; Yehudah Liebes, "How the Zohar Was Written"(in Hebrew), Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8 (1989): 5, "How the Zohar Was Written"(in English), in Studies in the Zohar, trans. Stephanie Nakache (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), p. 89, "Zohar and Eros,"Alpayim-A Multidisciplinary Publicationfor ContemporaryThoughtand Literature9 (1994): 89, and Melilah Hellner-Eshed, "'A River Goes Out from Eden': The Language of Mystical Invocation in the Zohar," Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 2 (1997): 287-310. See also Moshe Idel's general remarksin his Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 27-29.
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this analysis I consider the bodily practices associated with meals that serve wittingly as techniques and unwittingly providing a physical environment for dining rituals performed with mystical intent. To these ends, I draw on insights regarding the body proposed by Marcel Mauss who suggests that many of our daily physical actions, actions that are "second-nature"for us, are in fact learned "techniques." In "Body Techniques,"Mauss speaks of all actions as "assemblages of actions" constituted by psychological, biological, and social elements.7 The body, he writes is humanity's"firstand most naturalinstrument"and thus, when tradition exerts its influence, daily actions that call upon the body become techniques.8 For the medieval kabbalist, the act of eating entails a combination of daily, nonritualistic, physiologically requiredbehavior, the biblically and rabbinically enjoined requirements to recite blessings before and after eating, and specific dietary restrictions. In his discussion of the ethics of constructions of the body, Michel Feher notes the need to examine "which regions of the body are mobilized and which types of discipline are imposed on it in order to produce the soul of a hero, a saint or a perfect courtier."9 For our purposes, we must consider how the oral cavity and stomach are mobilized to produce the body and soul of the mystical saint in the Zohar. My aim in this study is to investigate the particular methods used by the kabbalists in the course of eating to gain mystical experiences and esoteric knowledge, and to delineate the kabbalistic topography of the body that is entailed by use of the mouth, stomach, and eating activities in these ways. To look at the kabbalistic construction of the body, I will be employing the lenses of the embodied symbol and the assumption of pneumatic hermeneutics.'0 In using the term embodied symbol, I mean that being embodied is a foundationalelement of the kabbalist'shorizon as he 1 envisions the world; the body is his inevitable ground of understanding, imagining, seeing, and feeling a range of mystical experiences. Embodied
7 Marcel Mauss, "Body Techniques,"in Sociology and Psychology, trans. Ben Brewster (1935; reprint,London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 120. 8 The best recent study of the role of the body in ritual theory is CatherineBell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York:Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 94-117. 9 Michel Feher, introductionto Fragmentsfor a History of the HumanBody, ed. Michel Feher with Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi, 3 vols. (New York:Zone, 1989), 1:14. 10On the embodied symbol, see Wolfson, Througha Speculum That Shines, pp. 61-63, 383-92. On pneumatic hermeneutics, see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 234-49; Gerald L. Bruns, Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 133-34; Wolfson, Througha Speculum ThatShines, pp. 326-32. See also Gershom Scholem's remarks in his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1946), p. 205. 11The history of kabbalistic thought and practice has been almost exclusively the domain of men. See Scholem, pp. 37-38. See also n. 104 below.
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symbols are not wholly ephemeral matters; rather, they are transparent signs such that mundane realities have an immediate effect upon and relationship to the divine realms. Ultimately, the mundane serves as an entryway or portal to these supernal reaches. The kabbalist, then, is irreduciblyembodied and his mystical reading of Scriptureand rabbinic literature,with all of their concrete symbols, is viscerally informed.12 This embodied approach is intimately intertwined with the reading technique of pneumatic or experiential hermeneutics. Simply put, pneumatic hermeneuticsrefers to the imaginative capacity to place oneself in the very scene of the text being read. In other words, contemplatingtexts regardingfood, or contemplating food in response to reading texts, leads these kabbalists to mystical experiences that are framed by their experiences of their bodies, which are in turn shaped by their readings of the texts themselves. This kind of praxis emerging from reading yields a heightened multisensory experience in which the meaning of the practice is neither told nor shown but rather experienced. Indeed, this approach to reading texts and practice enables the kabbalists to manifest the constructionof reality born of the hybridmix of kabbalah,halakhah, and the embodied symbol. As we will see, exemplified in the practices surrounding the consumption of food, but applicable to other aspects of embodiment as well, is a spatio-temporalcontinuity of the body, allowing for unions between the kabbalistic devotee and his food and table, as well as with his fellow.
APPROACHING THE TABLE
The Zohar often uses meals in its narrativesas occasion for the delivery of mystical sermons and as the site of mystical experience. If walking in pairs or groups serves as the most frequent opportunityfor members of the mystical fraternityto impart their homilies, sitting down for a meal certainly ranks second.13We will examine not only how the social context of the meals naturally allows for conversation but also how the
12To be sure, there is a supernal realm with which the kabbalists engage that is of primary concern; however, it should be stressed that access to that realm lies only through active engagement with the physical realm. See the remarks of Bracha Sack, "Eretz and Eretz Israel in the Zohar,"Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8 (1989): 245, where she emphasizes the importanceof the physical land of Israel as opposed to a conceptual imagining of it. 13See Isaiah Tishby, Wisdomof the Zohar, trans. David Goldstein (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1949; reprint,Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 9-12. It has been noted that there is a tendency to use banquetmaterial in literatureas a way of rooting the text in material reality and thus serving as a bridge to the reader.See Michel Jeanneret, A Feast of Words:Banquets and Table Talkin the Renaissance, trans. Jeremy Whiteley and EmmaHughes Whiteley (1987; reprint,Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 260. It would be fruitful to consider the ways in which eating might correspond to, and differ from, walking as a prompt for these addresses.
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meals function as part of a mystical praxis, as "media of living contact with the divine powers."14 The scenario of discourse at the table suggests that the meal has served as more than a merely social occasion.15 In one instance, the itinerant rabbis are treated to a meal in an inn: "The companions rejoiced on the road.... When they arrivedthere [at a certain town] they went to an inn and [the innkeepers] set a table before them with various kinds of foods to eat. R. Hiyya said, 'Certainlythis table is like the world-to-come and we should raise this table and crown it with words of Torah"' (Zohar 2:157a). The table and its delicacies serve explicitly as a symbol for the world-to-come, signifying the Shekhinah in this instance.16How did the table come to bear this significance? Ronald Grimes, in his pioneering work, Beginnings in Ritual Studies, considers the ways in which objects are consecrated or ritualized with power.17Here no magical act is performed, meditative mantrarepeated, nor kabbalistic intention explicitly adduced. The table and its meal evoke the thought of the commandments to be performedthere; they are automaticallyassimilated to the rabbinickabbalistic mindset that reads the world in terms of its legalistic and theosophic import. The act of sitting down to a meal is a hermeneutical act: the kabbalists read the scene of table and food as exemplars of the textual paradigm. Two aims reside in the desire to "raise the table": one is the theurgic concern to join the Shekhinahto her lover, Tif'eret;the other is the desire to "elevate" the food, that is, to turn the gathering into a spiritual communing, resisting the downward tug of the potentially coarse, material food. The mystical activity in this instance is theurgic as the desire is to adorn and unite the Shekhinah to Tiferet. The table is the locus and inspiration for this particularmystical event. At this juncture it is not apparentprecisely which aspect of the table induces the experience of it as an entity related anagogically to the world-to-come, the food's appearanceor its taste.18In the courtly dining
14 Tishby, p. 1236. Part of the motive for using the meal and its setting at the table as an opportunityfor the delivery of mystical sermons comes undoubtedly from rabbinic teachings. See m. Avot 3:3; b. Megillah 12b; b. Berakhot 55a. 15 See, e.g., Zohar 2:153a, 157a, 169a; 3:21b, 60b, 62a-b, 186a, 189b, 201b. For the normative prescription of reciting mystical sermons at the table, see Zohar 2:153b, 168b; 3:245b; Zohar Hadash Ruth 47a. 16Usually the world-to-come is a cognomen for the sefirah of Binah. See Zohar 1:31a, 34a, 141b, 200a; 2:31b, 36b, 98a, 132a; 3:26a, 40a, 41a, 290b. Being "members of the king's table" (mi-benei de-pethora de-malka) or "masters of the king's feast" (marei dese'udeta de-malka) (Zohar 3:271b) are frequently used formulae to refer to the righteous delighting in the Divine. 17 Ronald L. Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies (1985; reprint,Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), pp. 28-29. 18 One section of the Zohar that lists ten ritualsof the Sabbathmeals suggests thatthese ten correspond to the sefirot (Zohar 3:271b-272b; Zohar Hadash Ruth 46a-b). In this passage
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rooms of medieval European Christians, a great deal of attention was paid to the appearance and presentation of a meal and perhaps less so to its actual taste.19 Since the delicacies are often compared to adornments for the Divine Bride, and given the preponderanceof visionary mysticism in the Zohar,20it would seem most likely to be the former. In yet another passage it becomes clear that the meal itself is the vehicle for the mystical experience. In their wanderings, the Zohar's wandering rabbis encounter a variety of wondrous figures such as kabbalists disguised as donkey-drivers and a child miraculously endowed with the knowledge of mystical lore. A large portion of the interchange with the sagely child (yanuqa) involves the discussion of the mystical meaning of various kinds of food. Following one such delivery the child says, "Friends! Breadandwine arethe essentialsof the table,andall otherfoodsfolThe Torah low in theirpath.21 deals with thembroadly for us andthey areHer The Torah concerns.22 thatyou ask for mercyandsays, 'Come,eat my requires food anddrinkthe wine thatI have mixed;'(Prov.9:5). Since the Torah invites this matter I invite you andrequires [eating]of you, you shoulddo Herbidding. you [to join me in eating]since She invitesyou to do Herbidding." They sat, at the table. andate andrejoicedwith him. Oncethey hadeaten,they remained He began his discourse and said, .. .23(Zohar 3:189b) Mystical words of Torahlead into the meal which in turn leads to more mystical homilies. The narrative traces an organic flow in which the body is preparedfor the proper kind of eating through the exchange of mystical understanding,and the eating in turn provides the nourishment
it is the performative value of the meal that is significant for the Zohar's goals, rather than the appearance or taste of the food, as only one of the ten acts is directly related to the physical act of eating; such diverse rituals as inviting poor people to the table, reciting the Grace after meals, and the exchange of words of Torahare the primaryfoci of the list, suggesting that it is the ritualization of the meal with which the Zohar is concerned. 19See Caroline WalkerBynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 60-61; Jeanneret,p. 55. 20 See Wolfson, Througha Speculum That Shines (n. 6 above), pp. 326-92, "Forms of in Gershom Scholem's Visionary Ascent as Ecstatic Experience in the Zoharic Literature," Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Fifty YearsAfter, ed. Peter Schafer and Joseph Dan (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1993), pp. 209-35. 21 Employing bread and wine as paradigmaticfoods, the Zohar appears less interested, in this instance, in a variety of delicacies or in the sensual experience than in the ritual value of food. That is, the sefirotic correlates of food ratherthan their sensual nature provide an index of their significance. 22 The yanuqa is referringto Num. 15:19 and Gen. 40:10, the two verses upon which he had just expounded. 23 See also Zohar 3:60b, 62a-b.
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to continue with the task of furthermystical exegesis.24 Praxis leading to experience leading to furtherpraxis is a common phenomenon within the zoharic circle. Another passage makes the point quite explicit. At the end of a long homily by Rabbi Isaac, R. Hiyya came and kissed him on the head. He said to him, "Youarejust a wisdomrestsin yourheart." Thenthey saw that youngpersonandyet supernal R. Hizkiahhad come. R. Hiyya said, "Certainly the Holy One, blessedbe He, will join (yithaber)with us becauseTorahnovellaewill be introduced here." They sat down to eat. They said, "Let each one say wordsof Torahat this meal."25 R. Yeissa said, "Thisis not a full meal [as definednormatively] but nevertheless it is calleda meal.26 this is calleda mealfromwhichthe Moreover, 'Thisis the tablethat Holy One,blessedbe He, benefits.Aboutthis it is written, standsbefore the Lord'(Ezek. 42:22), becausewordsof Torahsurround that place."(Zohar2:153a) In this passage we find the narrative'skabbalists joining together and offering words of Torah.These words serve to unite the kabbalists with each other as well as with the Shekhinah, the feminine potency within the Divine, which then leads to the Holy One, blessed be He, Tif'eret, the masculine potency, joining them as well.27 The table itself acts as one of the many zoharic symbols for the Shekhinah, feminine potency of the Godhead; sitting at the table invariably implies an engagement with the Shekhinah, which in turn has a sexual valence.28Thus, as the kabbalists encounter the Shekhinahin sexual interaction, so do they engage Her by
24 This is consistent with theurgical activity in which blessings are recited following a meal, thus promptingthe Shekhinahto ask for Her own nourishmentfrom above. Upon receipt of Her "food," She is able to transferfood down to those below. The process is also similar to a dynamic in Sefir ha-Rimmonthat contends that one is better able to recite the Grace after Meals after having eaten (Sefer ha-Rimmon,pp. 104-5). 25 This phrase might be translatedas "about this meal." 26 The homily that follows this passage (Zohar 2:153a-b) indicates that satiety is a technical term and that the Grace after meals can be recited, as per the halakhah, according to the standardimposed by the Torah,even if only an olive's-worth (ke-zayit) has been eaten. There is a continuing tension between a pleasure-affirming embodied experience that leads to communion with the divine and a more modest physical experience that must be accompanied by certain mystical intentions to attain that same degree of experience. See Joel Hecker, "Each Man Ate an Angel's Meal: Eating and Embodiment in the Zohar" (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1996), pp. 75-85. 27 For an examination of the social bonding of the kabbalists in terms of its theurgic effects, see Wolfson, Througha Speculum That Shines, pp. 368-77. Each of the kisses that the kabbalistsbestow upon each other following the delivery of mystical homilies, as at the beginning of the passage cited above, while continuing a behavior attributedto the rabbis of the Talmud, entails a mystical union as well. See Hecker, p. 167, n. 30. Regarding the recitation of homilies as a means to mystical communion, see Wolfson, Througha Speculum That Shines, pp. 333, 372-73, 383-84. 28 See Isaiah Tishby (n. 13 above), pp. 874, 1233, 1235; Elliot K. Ginsburg, The Sabbath in the Classical Kabbalah (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 83, 117. See, e.g., Zohar 2:88a-88b; TiqquneiZohar 24 (69b-70a), 47 (84a). For a discussion
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eating. These two appetitive acts are thus assimilated to each other in a larger frameworkof the erotic. In the world of the zoharic narrative,arriving at someone's home inevitably presages the serving of food. When the elder rabbis first arrive at the home of the yanuqa, he stuns them with his occult knowledge that they had not recited the daily Shema (the liturgical declaration of God's unity),29a fact he deduced by the "fragranceof their garments."30 They proceed to sit, ritually lave their hands, and break bread; the child, in turn, proceeds with his mystical homilies.31 There is an assumed relationship between eating and the mystical discourse among the members of the fraternity:there is no formal break between the first homily, the ritual acts, and the next homily that takes the ritual washing as its point of departure.The breadthat they were eating might as well have been the mystical Torahto which they were listening. The lines between these two acts-consuming food and consuming Torah-are thus effectively and explicitly homologized. Elsewhere, it is the great spread of food served by the yanuqa that elicits recollective comments.32While it is evident that the intent is to refer metaphorically to the abundance and wonder of the mystical homilies that the child delivered, the first source is not In both instances, the use intended to be taken merely metaphorically.33 of the food metaphor points us inescapably to an understandingof the discourse as a gustatory event.34
of unifications at the Sabbath table in the literature of Ra'aya Mehemna and Tiqqunei ha-Zohar, see Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine: Symbolization and Theurgy in the Late Strata of the Zohar (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 111-14. 29 Both morning and evening rites call for the recitation of Deut. 6:4-9, Deut. 11:13-21, and Num. 15:37-41. 30Zohar 3:186a. The ability of the yanuqa to apprehenda quality of the soul, through the olfactory sense, bears an echo of the biblical story of Isaac smelling Jacob's clothing. According to Rashi'scommentary,Isaac smelled the fragrantaromaof the Gardenof Eden, not the smell of the hunt. See Rashi, Commentaryon Gen. 27:27; Bereshit Rabba 65:22; b. Ta'anit29b. A passage in Zohar 3:233b compares the first five words of the Shema (Deut. 6:4) to the leaves of the lily with its beautiful fragrance. See the comments of Avraham Azulai, Nizozei 'Orot on Zohar 3:186a, n. 3 (notes in Sefer ha-Zohar, ed. Reuven Margaliot [Jerusalem:Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1983]). Caroline Bynum refers to the myroblites, the women with sweet-smelling bodies, as one of the ways in which there was somatic expression of personal sanctity. See Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (n. 19 above), p. 201. Regarding the notion of scent in the kabbalah,see Charles Mopsik's comments in Les Grands Textesde la cabale: Les rites quifont Dieu (Lagrasse:Verdier, 1993), pp. 198-99. 31Zohar 3:186a. 32 Ibid., 3:272b (Ra'aya Mehemna). 33 In fact, it seems that the second source from the Ra'aya Mehemna is a homiletic reinterpretationof the original zoharic text. Regarding the dating of the different strataof the Zohar, see Scholem (n. 10 above), pp. 186-90; Tishby, pp. 91-96; Liebes, "How the Zohar Was Written"(n. 6 above); Daniel Abrams, "When Was the Introductionto the Zohar Written? Variationsin the Different Copies of the Introductionin the Mantua Edition,"Asufot 8 (1994): 211-26. 34 Undoubtedly the "eating"of mystical homilies refers to an intellectual process, but it is a process that can be best understoodwith the consumption metaphor.
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There is a fluid relationshipbetween eating and the mystical discourse among the companions such that the bread that they eat might just as well be the mystical Torah to which they listen. Consuming food and consuming Torahare effectively homologized. The use of the food metaphor points us inescapably to an understanding of the discourse itself as a gustatory event upon which Michel Jeannerethas remarkedanalogously that "eating and learning are the same: two ways of absorbingthe world."35 It is precisely this permeabilityof boundaries,both of the body and the mind, that expresses the natureof the Zohar's ideal humanbeing.
SITTING DOWN TO EAT
In considering the symposiac nature of the meals in the Zohar's narrative, we find that the meals are always prefaced by the gesture of sitting.36 Here we must turn to assumptions regarding the significance of bodily gestures as described by Marcel Mauss. In light of Mauss's approach, sitting at the table must be seen in the broadercontext of the gesture of sitting as depicted in zoharic literature.37 An analysis of the act of reveals that it was an essential sitting component of the contemplative that led to process study, gnosis, visionary experience, union with the and union of the individual kabbalist with his companions. Shekhinah, Significantly, sitting is most commonly representedas an action of the rabbinic kabbalists rather than attributed to biblical characters in the exegetical portions of the Zohar. Most likely, this is because sitting is a common feature in many talmudic narratives, as one rabbi prepares to address another.The Zohar revalues the meaning of the gesture, turning it into a mystical technique.38Ubiquitous in the narrativepassages in the Zohar describing the traipsing about of Rabbi Shimon and his companions are the formulae, "they sat in a field,"39"they sat in a garden,"40 "they sat under a tree,"41"they sat next to a mountain in a field"42or "they sat in a cave."43Each of these sites refers to a self-locating in relation to one of the sefirot, either the Shekhinah (field, garden, cave) or the sefirot Yesod and Tif'eret (near a mountain, under a tree, or by a
35 Jeanneret(n. 13 above), p. 35. 36 Sitting has its own set of significances in rabbinic literatureoften related to questions of authority,i.e., who stands or sits before whom. See, e.g., b. Megillah 21a. 37 See the analyses of Liebes regardingthe significance of place or being established in a particularplace. Yehuda Liebes, "Sections of the Zohar Lexicon" (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1976), pp. 362-66. 38 This does not wholly resolve the quandaryof the Zohar's failure to exploit biblical passages that have people sitting. 39 See, e.g., Zohar 1:84a; 2:38b; 3:53b, 266b, 304a (Tosafot). 40 See, e.g., ibid., 3:161b. 41 See, e.g., ibid., 2:36b; 3:201b, 161b, 221b, 266b. 42 See ibid., 1:87a. 43 See, e.g., ibid., 1:289a; 3:20b, 21a, 268b. The images of sitting under a rock or sitting in a cave evoke the representationof Moses attaining a vision of God while in the cleft of the rock in Exod. 33:22.
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spring). In certain instances, the term "they sat," can bear the meaning "they remained in a place," rather than referring to the actual gesture of sitting. In these situations such an act is expressive of a particular spiritual and ethical affiliation.44Thus, sitting in a ruined building next to graves evokes an identification of the mystic with his surroundings and the more general state of exile and destruction of Israel as he expeSitriences it.45In some instances, one is "sitting,"or staying, to pray.46 ting suggests constancy and settledness, and it is only in a condition of constancy, the Zohar avers, that wisdom can truly rest upon a person.47 There is, then, a complex of meanings for the image of sitting that all converge on the general meaning of union, usually with the Shekhinah.48 One might object that a gesture such as sitting is a part of regular everyday movement without the automatic mystical results that one would associate with mystical techniques. I suggest that we speak of two different kinds of techniques: innovative techniques and naturalized techniques. The former would be those, such as breathingexercises, specific kavvanot, or contemplative foci, that are expected to arouse the mystical state of mind requiredfor devequt or mystical illumination. The latter would be those acts that help create a singularenvironmentin preparation for the desired experience, but do so through reliance upon the constructedembodiment of the practitioner,building upon inheritedgestures. Sitting would certainly be counted as one of these components, necessary and yet not expressly part of the contemplative process. Germaneto my concerns is the fact that the gesture of sitting is apparently the first stage in preparingoneself for a particularkind of mystical or spiritual experience. The most common of these is the act of sitting in order to study. Repeatedly the Zohar reports that the members of the mystical fraternitysit down to study. While, obviously, sitting is the most likely position in which people would engage in study or mystical exe44 See, e.g., Zohar 2:15a, 16b; Zohar Hadash Bereshit 8a (Midrash ha-Ne'elam), lOa-b (Midrash ha-Ne'elam); Va-yeshev29a, 29b (Sitre Torah);Huqat 50c-d. 45 Zohar 3:71a. 46 See, e.g., ibid., 1:233a; 2:10b; 3:53b, 64a. One consideration that requires further study with regardto the significance attached to sitting in the zoharic literatureis the relationship of sitting to standing.In normativeJewish practice, the seminal partof the worship service, performed three times a day, is the 'amidah, the silent prayer, performed while standing. How a shift of valence from the normative stance to that of sitting occurs invokes the questions of the relationship of nonnormative practice to normative, mystical to nonmystical, and the interactionof mystical praxis with ordinarylife. For a full survey of physical gestures performed during the daily prayers, see Eric Zimmer, "Poses and Postures during Prayer,"Sidra 5 (1989): 89-130. As to the privileging of standing over sitting for prayer, see, e.g., b. Berakhot 30a; and Uri Ehrlich, The Non-Verbal Language of Jewish Prayer (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1999), pp. 17-18. 47 See Zohar 1:223a. The Zohar is interpretingMoses' comment, "I remained on the mountain"(Deut. 9:9). 48 See Wolfson, Througha Speculum That Shines (n. 6 above), pp. 98-105.
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gesis, the fact that the Zohar tells us that the company in fact did this seems worthy of analysis. Consider the following: Fortunate are the righteouswho have the Holy One, blessed be He, as their in this worldand crown,andthey serveas a crownfor Him.Theyarefortunate in the world-to-come. It is written aboutthem,"And yourpeotheyarefortunate shallpossessthe landfor all time"(Isa. 60:21). And ple, all of themrighteous, everbrightening "Thepathof the righteous is like radiant it is written, sunlight, until arrived at a field untilnoon"(Prov.4:18). They continued [walking] they andthey sat. (Zohar1:84a) Interpretinga verse that speaks of a path, the kabbalistsfollow its injunction, continuing on their way, presumably until noon at which point the sun's heat would lead them to seek out a place to rest, notably in a field. Both "the land" and "the field" serve as cognomens for the Shekhinah in the Zohar's parlance, homologized here. Because the Zohar considers both the literal interpretationof the "path"part of the verse and its mystical significance, the sitting here should be understood both as signifying a literal physical gesture and as bearing mystical import. Thus, the kabbalists, identifying themselves with the righteous of the verse, view their own righteous practice of mystical expounding upon the Torahto be the means by which they will "possess the land," that is the Shekhinah, which they do by sitting in the field and engaging in yet furtherdiscussion of the Torah.Consider the following example as well: "Rabbi Bun and Rabbi Yose son of Rabbi Hanina were walking in the way to redeem hostages.49They happened upon a town and descended into an inn. At midnight they arose to study Torah.The woman of the house rose and lit a candle for us.50When they were all sitting, she sat down behind them to hear the words of Torah.They noted her"(Zohar .Hadash86c Midrash Ruth). This expressionistic narrative frame animates the Shekhinah in the form of a female innkeeperand rendersthe links of study, sitting, and devequt with the Shekhinahin an especially charming way.51 In a passage outlining the etiquette of the meal, the Zohar explains that the superior of the group should sit at the table's head, the person
49 Redeeming hostages is one of the most elevated tasks in the halakhic tradition. The rabbis' mystical encounter with the text and the female innkeeper would appear to be, at least in part, a reward to the pious. 50 This line is an interpretationof Prov. 6:23, "For the commandment is a candle/The Torah is light" (my translation follows the interpretive reading of the Zohar). For the Zohar, the commandment/candlecorrespondsto the Shekhinah,representedby the woman of the house, and the Torah, the fuller light to be spoken by the companions, symbolizes the sefirah Tif'eret. As is typical, there is a requirementfor arousal from below to gain the arousal above. For an example of this interpretation,see, Zohar 1:264a; 2:167a. Regarding female participationin kabbalistic practice, see pp. 149-50 and n. 104 below. 51 See also, e.g., Zohar l:92b-93a, 94a-b, 155b, 200a, 241b; 2:20a, 36b, 37a, 38b; 3:7a, 64a, 84b, 157b, 193a, 233a, 268a. Note also Zohar Hadash Va-yeze 28b (Midrash haNe'elam):"RabbiYose was sitting and engaged with the Torah.Rabbi Abba approachedhim.
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of second greatest honor in the secondary place and the same for the third figure. While these prescriptionsare talmudic in origin,52the Zohar describes the arrangement as one that is commonly practiced by the kabbalistic elite: of the King'sbanquet Comeandsee. The masters hadmanygood andbeautiful
practices to show that they are among the members of the King's table.... The
seniorpersonwouldbe seatedat the head,the second[mostsenior]beneath him andthe thirdbeneath the second.These[figures] arecalledthreebedsreceiving and receivingthe priests,Levites and Israelites.(Zohar the three patriarchs 3:271b-272a) That this is a unitive mystical event is apparentfrom the gendered alignment of the three kabbalists and the sefirot that are associated with the patriarchs.The rabbinic source of this practice describes the seating arrangementas an arrangementof "couches" (mitot), the furnitureused for seating at that time.53When the Zohar uses the same term mitot, it means to suggest that the kabbalists are "beds" for the sefirot; that is, they are both the points of "resting"in this world and that there is a gendered and sexual valence accompanying this union.54 While this seating arrangement demonstratesa social structuringof the kabbalistic fraternity,it also reflects a theurgic concern. The seating plan at the 'IdraRabba (GreatAssembly, referringto the literarysubsection of the Zohar in which the most esoteric mysteries would be revealed)-with three senior members presiding over a total of ten participants-reflects the duty of each of the members to assume the position and role of one of the ten sefirot.55After the first two speakers, Rabbi Shimon issues an
Rabbi Yose said, 'You are a master of teaching.'He came before him. They sat and engaged themselves with the Torah.Before they sat down, night fell. They sat and engaged [in Torah study] until the middle of the night."The repeatedmention of sitting underscoresits significance. In some of these passages it is apparent that even if the term "they sat"(yatvu)refers primarilyto "remaining,"it bears the additional meaning of sitting. 52 b. Berakhhot46b. 53 This was the practice of Roman feasts; chairs were used only for ordinary meals. See Paul Veyne, "The Roman Empire,"in A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium,ed. Paul Veyne, trans. ArthurGoldhammer(Cambridge,Mass.: Belknap, 1987), pp. 187-88. 54 It is a euphemistic usage in rabbinic literatureto refer to females as "beds" and one that is carriedover into the kabbalistic literaturewith considerable frequency. See b. Pesahim 112a-b; b. Megillah 13a; b. Ketubot 62b; b. Gittin 70a; b. Baba Qama 82a; b. Nidah 17a, 31a, 43a; j. Pesahim 28a: Bereshit Rabbah 64:5; Va-YiqraRabbah 21:8; Midrash Tehillim 73:4; in the Zohar, see, e.g., 1:37a, 225b, 226b, 248b, 250b: 2:5a, 48b; 3:60a, 210b; Zohar Hadash 25c. 55 The Idra Rabba is located in Zohar 3:127b-145a. Regarding the theosophic significance of the seating arrangement at the IdraRabbah,see YehudaLiebes, "The Messiah of the Zohar,"in The Messianic Idea in Jewish Thought(in Hebrew) (Jerusalem:Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1982), pp. 130-32; English translationin Studies in the Zohar, trans. Arnold Schwarz (Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1993), pp. 20-21.
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injunction to each figure following, saying, "Stand at your place."56One which areperformed might presumethatit is the gravity of the tiqqunim,57 at the 'IdraRabba that leads to the difference of standing ratherthan sitting. The physical arrangementof the figures in the 'Idra is clearly construed as a physical model of the supernal world above. Further, the meaning of one's gestures in one's place reflects the meaning of the event. Sitting, as we have seen, is often a posture of mystical praxis and when standing performedin a group at a table requiresa particulararrangement; would appear to be one degree superior-while the positioning remains the same, one stands as did the angels in Ezekiel's vision and as one does in the statutoryprayer.58 One is led to conclude that the act of sitting at a table or sitting to eat, like sitting in a field, in a cave, or under a tree, have similar valences. Each is an act that involves contemplation and that can induce a variety of mystical experiences.59Moreover, the fact that one must locate oneself in one of these various locations indicates the significance not only of these material or geographical entities as part of the general symbol system but also points to the natureof embodiment. One's physical backdrop helps to create the desired spiritual environment. Indeed, the body that is suggested by this trope of sitting is a "body of communication"in which one is not engaged in a self-contained or self-referential system; rather,one situates oneself in a social setting, interactingboth with one's fellows and with one's environment. The body of the mystic is open to the influence of his surroundings,both personal and inanimate,as it is all suffused with the symbolic potential of union and gnosis. In this way, the Zohar endows these acts with relations and meanings so that readerscan begin to see, and to live, their own lives inside this frame of meaning, thereby engendering mystical experiences themselves.60
56 See Zohar 2:14b; 3:60a, 180a, 203a; Liebes, "The Messiah of the Zohar," p. 129, n. 179, and Sections of the Zohar Lexicon, p. 359, n. 48, and pp. 362-66. 57 The term tiqqunim refers to the various kinds of religious acts, whether ritualistic, liturgical, or related to study, that act on and influence the Godhead to restore its primordial unity. 58 See Ezek. 1:7; b. Berakhot lOb. The role of the meaning of seating plans can be seen in Zohar 3:272a where the guest leads the introductoryzimmunto the Grace after the meal so that he can bless "the master of the house." The double meaning of master of the house includes both his humanhost and the divine master.My interest here is the humandynamic of the relationship between guest and host where the arrangementof persons at the table reflects the dynamics of the supernalparadigmabove. See Elliot R. Wolfson, "Walkingas of Social Reality in Early Hasidism,"in Along a Sacred Duty: Theological Transformation the Path: Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and Hermeneutics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 105-6, 240, n. 108. 59 See also Zohar 2:88b where Rabbi Shimon would announce the designation of each of the Sabbath meals and then "sit and rejoice." 60 See Hellner-Ashed (n. 6 above), who suggests that one of the ways in which the Zohar functions as a literary text is in the performative modality, trying to elicit mystical praxis from and evoke mystical experience in the reader of the text.
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Last, it must be noted that this sitting is not explicitly characterizedas enthronement.Visions of the divine enthronementand experiencing such enthronementoneself were importantaspects of earlier forms of Jewish mysticism upon which the Zohar draws heavily, and, to coin a term, the enthronement-sittingin these instances in the Zohar must be read in light of those traditions;the sitting here is the internalized experience of enthronement-sitting even when not explicitly described in this manner. Put plainly, when a kabbalist is sitting, he is enthroned. Catherine Bell refers to a long-standing distinction that asserts that rituals "do" one of two things: communicate and symbolize or effect and instrumentalize.61 Though there is something of both of these aspects in the kabbalistic sittings, they are ultimately doing more than either of these options; they have internalized the ritual so that its formality is attenuated and its communication muted. Still instrumental,sitting is not primarily effecting something beyond the mystical adept, but ratherit is his very mode of interaction with the Divine. The kabbalist'sbody is thus an exemplar of CatherineBell's concept of the ritualizedbody, the body invested with a sense of ritual.62
FOOD AND MASCULINITY
In a literature as strongly concerned with issues of masculinity and virility as is the Zohar, it is unsurprisingthat eating as well should be understood as a function of these issues. Elliot Wolfson has shown that in Jewish esoteric literaturethe perfected male sexual organ is frequently identified as a site for the mystical experiences of union, prophecy, vision, and hermeneuticalabilities.63Maleness is thus the determinantof a host of mystical capacities and has its impact in the realm of one's eating. For example, one's ability to consume angelic foodstuff is determinedby the presence of the mark of circumcision. Another experience resulting from the circumcision rite is that one can enjoy devequt (mystical union) with God and eat "higher bread"(Zohar 2:61b).64The manna is understood to originate at a higher place within the sefirotic structurethan does
61 Bell (n. 8 above), 70. p. 62 Ibid., pp. 94-117. 63 See, in e.g., Elliot Wolfson, "Circumcision,Vision of God, and TextualInterpretation," Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism(Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1995), pp. 29-48, Througha SpeculumThatShines, pp. 336in The Other 45, 357-68, and "Woman-the Feminine as Other in Theosophic Kabbalah," in Jewish Thoughtand History: Constructionsof Jewish Cultureand Identity,ed. Lawrence J. SilbersteinandRobertL. Cohn (New York:New YorkUniversityPress, 1994), pp. 166-204. 64 See also Zohar 2:183a-b. In this latter source the distinction is drawn between the mazah and the manna as two differentbreads that the Israelites ate, thus suggesting a different bodily ability to consume different kinds of comestibles contingent upon spiritual attainment. There is a midrashictraditionthat establishes circumcision as the prerequisitefor eating the manna; see Shemot Rabbah 19:6; Elliot Wolfson, "Left Contained in the Right: A Study in Zoharic Hermeneutics,"American Journal of Sociology 11 (Spring 1986): 51 and n. 107.
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the mazah (unleavened bread) inasmuch as it is from the heavens, a cognomen for Tif'eret. Thus, before the circumcision that took place in the desert, the Israelites were only able to eat mazah but afterwardcould eat the bread of angels.65What made that earlier period different was that it marked a union with the Shekhinah alone and was thus considered to be "flawed bread." The movement from Shekhinah to Tif'eret, from mazah to manna, is also markedby the movement from the first to the second part of the rite of circumcision, from milah to peri'ah;66similarly, the Passover offering can only be eaten by a Jew, that is, one who bears the mark of circumcision (Zohar 3:73a).67 The Zohar links these two, conflating the eating of the Passover offering with that of the manna (Zohar 2:41a Ra'aya Mehemna). The ability to eat "higher bread" in this instance is identified with the attainment of union with a particular grade of the Godhead, the masculine Tif'eret; it is nevertheless significant that the Zohar has chosen the metaphor of eating to express this experience of union. This implies an internalized and somatic experience following from the unitive event that can best be described with the metaphor of eating. Further,there is a hierarchy of bodies in which the circumcised body is not only superior by virtue of the kind of mystical union that it can attainbut also in terms of the actual food that it can consume.68This food, the manna, is of course not merely food but the vehicle for union with and gnosis of the Divine. When this unificative metaphoris concretized and read back into the Bible's historical narrative,however, there is a merging of the material and spiritual realms such that the material serves as entryway to the spiritual.69
The term bread of angels originates in Ps. 78: 25. See Zohar 2:40a. The halakhah distinguishes two stages in the ritual of circumcision, milah andperi'ah. The first is the cutting of the foreskin and the second entails pulling down the membraneto reveal the corona. The kabbalists considered these two stages to correspond to the masculine and feminine aspects of the divine, the sefirot Yesodand Shekhinah. See Zohar 1:13a, 32a-b, 47b, 69a, 71b, 72b, 117a; 2:40a, 60b, 125b; 3:14a, 91b, 115b, 163a. See Elliot Wolfson, "Circumcision and the Divine Name: A Study in the Transmission of Esoteric Doctrine,"Jewish QuarterlyReview 78 (July-October 1987): 98 and n. 61, and "WomanThe Feminine as Other,"pp. 186-87. 67 Note that there is a strong connection between the biblical restriction against nonJews eating the Passover offering and the rabbinic prohibition against teaching Torah to non-Jews. See Exod. 12:48; b. Hagigah 13a. In both instances it is the absence of circumcision that is preventative. 68 The Jewish body is thus similarly superior to the body of a Moslem for, according to the Zohar, Islamic law requiresonly the cutting away of the foreskin while Jewish law also prescribes the peeling away of the remaining flesh to reveal the corona. This secondary action results in the union with the male aspect of the Divine, while the former only allows for union with the Shekhinah.See Zohar 2:32a, 86a, 87a; Moshe de Leon, Sefer Sheqel haQodesh, ed. A. W. Greenup (London, 1912), p. 67; Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, p. 366, and "Circumcision and the Divine Name," pp. 98-99; Ronald C. Kiener, "The Image of Islam in the Zohar,"Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought8 (1989): 55-59. 69 Women are apparentlyexcluded from the eating of the mazah and the manna, whereas in the desert, according to the biblical account, one presumes women's participation. The
66 65
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One particularaspect of masculinity merits attention in this context, namely, the ways in which masculinity is representedin the interactions between pairs or groups of men. One example of this feature of gender dynamics involves Moses in the role of food producerwho is reportedly pleased with the manna that issues consequent upon his merit. When Israel rejects the manna, calling it "miserable bread,"he reevaluates his status, assuming that it is his own spiritual level that must be impaired:
Come and see. Moses united and ascended to [a place] with which no other prophet had united. At the time that the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses, "I will rain down bread for you from the sky" (Ex. 16:4), Moses was delighted and said, "It is certain now that wholeness is found in me, for it is because of me that Israel has its manna."When Moses saw that they had returnedto descend to that other level and asked for meat, saying, "Our souls have come to loathe this he said, "If this is so, my level must be flawed,71 miserable food! (Num. 21:5),"70 for it is throughme that Israel eats manna in the desert72-now I am flawed, and Aharon is flawed, and Nahshon son of Aminadav is flawed." He said, "If you would deal thus with me, kill me rather,I beg you," (Num. 11:15) for I am considered a female with respect to their food. I73will descend from the heavens, a high level descending to the level of the female. I am superior to the rest of the prophets of the world, and regarding this he said, "and let me see no more of my wretchedness . .."-certainly that is descending to the lower level. (Zohar 3:156a)
The Zohar's understandingis that the quality of the food is determined by the person who evokes it; that this capacity is understoodin terms of male virility is rendered explicitly in this example. Moses understands the spiritualbacksliding of the Israelites as a personal failure and as one that is essentially his. The merit of manna that the rabbinictexts ascribes
Zohar is a strongly androcentricand idealizing text, imagining the ideal community as one of kabbalistic scholars engaged in material and spiritual communion. At the same time, it should be noted that, unlike rabbinic culture, which has been characterizedby Boyarin as "androcentric,not gynephobic" (Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in TalmudicCulture [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993]), p. 94, the kabbalah on the whole has a much more troubledrelationshipwith females and the feminine than do the rabbis in their androcentric milieu. See Wolfson, "Woman-The Feminine as Other in Theosophic Kabbalah." 70 The Jewish Publication Society translation of the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh:The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia:Jewish Publication Society, 1985), has "We have come to loathe." I have translatedthe term nafsheinu as "our souls" because of the proclivity for essentializing in medieval Jewish mysticism. 71 The term used for flaw, pagim, is the same term used to denote the mark of the covenant on the male sexual organ involved in illicit sexual relations. See, e.g., Zohar 1:50a, 200b, 201a, 240b; 2:108b, 214b; 3:5b, 34a, 44b, 77a, 78a, 90a. 72 See b. Ta'anit9a; Zohar 2:190b; 3:102b. 73 The original printed versions of the rest of this passage (both Mantua and Cremona editions) render it without special notation, but later versions mark it off in parentheses, probably because of the similar variant that is noted.
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to Moses is automatically turned into a function of masculinity with the inference being that if one is a good disseminator of Torahone is fully masculine;74to have failed in one's leadership suggests an emasculation, understood as death. Indeed, the feminine, figured oppositionally to the masculine, is nothing short of death.75 In this treatment of the story of the manna we see how the Zohar's phallocentrically oriented authorship transmutes genders following opportunities in the biblical text: it is the movement of the biblical text itself that guides the Zohar in its exegesis.76 Death and failure are construed as feminine; life and success are associated with the masculine. When Scripturerepresentsthe manna as "seed,"the Zohar has a wonderful opportunity upon which to capitalize. As Wolfson has demonstrated in his study of gender transmutation,the ability to produce food is understood in the theosophic kabbalistic literature as a masculine trait, a notion that can be traced back to ancient and medieval notions of physiology.77 While Moses's sex has not been changed, in terms of gender he has become a woman. Thus in the same way that the idealized functions of prophet,visionary, and exegete correspondto the phallus as roles in which there is a revealing of that which is hidden, so does the foodproducer, the one who creates and sustains life, correspond to the phallus. It is, of course, no small irony that the male Moses construes as a characteristicof femininity the inability to produce proper nourishment. In a more amusing vein, we find another short-circuiting of normal assumptions about gender and food production in the narratives of the of the interpersonal relations, yanuqa.78One of the primarycharacteristics
See Wolfson, "Circumcision, Vision of God" (n. 63 above), pp. 42-48. 75 See Gershom Scholem, "Shekhinah:The Feminine Element in Divinity," in On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah, ed. JonathanChipman, trans.Joachim Neugroschel (New York:Schocken, 1991), pp. 189-90; Wolfson, "WomanThe Feminine as Other in Theosophic Kabbalah"(n. 63 above), pp. 168-69. 76 See Wolfson, "Left Contained in the Right" (n. 64 above), pp. 33-52. 77 See Elliot R. Wolfson, "Crossing Gender Boundaries in Kabbalistic Ritual and Myth," in Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1995), pp. 101-2, 217, n. 121, 218, n. 125. See Thomas Laqueur,Making Sex: Body and Genderfrom the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 35-36, 41-43, 104-6. This stands in contrast to the lactation imagery attributedto Jesus and other male figures studied by Caroline WalkerBynum in "Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: Some Themes in Twelfth-CenturyCistercian Writing"in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spiritualityof the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 110-69. Further,in the medieval pietistic and mystical literature concerning the figures Bynum has studied, producing, preparing, and serving food are paradigmaticfunctions of womanhood. See Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (n. 19 above), pp. 190-93, 220-22, 233-34. 78 On the role of humor in the Zohar, see Liebes, "Zoharand Eros"(n. 6 above), pp. 8085. On the irony in the Zohar, see Michal Oron, "Place Me As a Seal upon Your Heart: Studies in the Poetics of the Author of the Zohar in the Saba of Mishpatim Section," in Massuot: Studies in Kabbalistic Literature and Jewish Philosophy, ed. Michal Oron and Amos Goldreich (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1994).
74
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as depicted in the narrativeframes of the Zohar's homiletic discourses, is a manly competitiveness in which one's power is evaluated by the strength of one's creativity. While the sword of the non-Jewish model may have been turned into the pen, the word is translated back into a sword by the kabbalists in their jousting, as they compare the name of God to a battle sword and esoteric homilies to a variety of weapons (Zohar 3:272a Ra'aya Mehemna).79Interestingly, the power to deliver homilies is related explicitly to virility as the Zohar cites the rabbinic teaching that "all seed that does not shoot like a bow will fail to procreate." The irony here is enhanced by the fact that the word yanuqa means literally "one who suckles" when in fact it is the child who provides nourishmentfor the rabbis in this narrative.80 The yanuqa who delivers these homilies declares, "'Now it has been made clear to you that I know how to bring down great men81 with swords, the spear, the bow, and the sling.' We [the rabbis] were astonished and we could not speak before him. He said to them, 'Rabbis, now we see who is the one that will profit with bread, that is, the bread of the blessing recited over bread."'Like Moses who was superiorto all of his competitors and was thus able to produce food for Israel, so does the yanuqa win the right to produce food for the table. There is a transvaluation of the concepts of masculinity and virility as the child overtakes the men with his superiorweapons, that is, male potency as expressed in the ability to deliver superiorhomilies. The breadthat the yanuqa gains is, at once, the bread of the meal, the bread of Torah,and the bread that is the fruit of the sefirah Yesod,the sefirah that corresponds to the male member of the divine anthropos.The meal's conviviality is thus seasoned with elements of competition and humor as well as the sharing of mystical
gnosis.
79 On weapon imagery in the Zohar, see Liebes, "The Messiah of the Zohar" (n. 55 above), pp. 132-33 (Hebrew), 21-22 (English). 80 See b. Niddah 43a. Regarding the link of delivery of homilies or writing to male potency, see Elliot R. Wolfson, "The Anthropomorphicand Symbolic Image of the Letters in the Zohar,"Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8 (1989): 154-58, 168-74, "Circumcision, Vision of God," pp. 45-47, and "Erasing the Erasure/Genderand the Writing of God's Body in Kabbalistic Symbolism," Circle in the Square, pp. 62-78; Moshe Idel, The Mystical Experience in AbrahamAbulafia, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 190-95. The experience of competition at feasts seems rooted in the Islamic-Spanish Jewish culture preceding that of the kabbalists. See, e.g., the description by the thirteenth-centurypoet Judah ha-Harizi cited in Raymond P. Scheindlin, Wine, Women,and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986), p. 22. For the use of metaphors of combat in intellectual engagement in Roman culture, see Maud W. Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 123. 81 The word for "bringing down" (gahan) is close to the word for "to make sport of" (g'hikh), and in context this pun could be on the mind of the author.
AFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE
143
As argued by Erving Goffman in his work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, every group dynamic displays some theatricality inasmuch as there is awareness of how one's own actions are being perceived by others or how one's self-representation is being assimilated.82The most obvious form of this in the Zohar lies in the possibility of being recognized as "the faithful"or as "the sons of the king" as representedin the main discussion of the Sabbath feasts. The Zohar says that it is by virtue of their observance of the Sabbathmeals that Israel is recognized as "the faithful," "the members of the palace," "the sons of the King" (Zohar 2:88b).83 In context, it is not immediately clear how they merit this distinction other than the simple observance of the meals and the testimony they give to the arrangementof the sefirot. Further,the ontic natureof the status of "membersof the palace" or "sons of the King" is also not made clear. What is clear, however, is that one who neglects these meals causes a flaw to appearin the sefirot and shows himself to be a non-"member of the palace."84At the same time that an ontological flaw is caused with the Divine, one demonstrates to one's fellows that one is not a worthy member of the community. There is an ethic of watchfulness suggested here in which one's performance serves as the criterion for evaluation by others. There is another aspect to this phenomenon of theatricality and self-representation. One of the most interesting of the praxes employed in the course of eating to gain the desired mystical experiences is something that may be called "affective performance."By affective performance I mean the adoption not only of a mood but also the demonstrative expression of that mood-in a word, a mask. Adoption of such a visible affect is intended to express the internal state of the subject, to create a feeling of unity and love among the group, and to promote rectifications (tiqqunim) in the supernal realm.85This will be seen as an
sociology of "interactionism," Erving Goffmannwrites about the dramaturgical performance in which one is inevitably involved through interaction in community. See Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York:Anchor, 1959), pp. 1-16. 83 These terms, "the faithful" (benei mehemnuta),"sons of the king" (benei malka), and "members of the palace" (benei heikhalei) are ubiquitous in the Zohar and refer alternatively to the kabbalists or to Israel as a whole. See Reuven Margaliot, ed., Sefer Ha-Bahir (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1994), par. 113, 129; Daniel Abrams, ed., The Book Bahir: An Edition Based on the Earliest Manuscripts (Los Angeles: Cherub, 1994), par. 82, 89. 84 Elsewhere, one shows oneself to be from the side of impurity (or purity) and being known to be from that side. See, e.g., Zohar 3:73a. 85 There is a rabbinic motif that the Shekhinah only rests upon one who is joyous. See j. Sukkah 5:1; b. Shabbat 30b; Midrash Tehillim 24:3, ed. S. Buber (Jerusalem: H. Wagshal, 1977), p. 204. The Zohar also recognizes the problem of prescribing a heteronomous emotional norm. See Zohar 2:165a.
82 In his
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exemplification of the constructivist approachto emotions.86For example, frequently Rabbi Shimon exhorts his band to be loving in their fraternalcongregation, asserting that it is that mood itself, as evidenced in their facial expressions, that creates the proper environment for the mystical communion.87The need for the emotion of love is strongly evidenced in the following zoharic passage:
When the companions came before R. Shimon, he saw a sign in their faces [that there was love among them], and he said: Come my holy children, come beloved of the King, come my cherished ones who love one another.For as R. Abba once said: All those companions who do not love one anotherpass from the world before their time. All the companions in the days of R. Shimon loved one another in soul and spirit. That is why [the secrets of the Torah]were disclosed in R. Shimon's generation. As R. Shimon was wont to say: all the Companions who do not love one anotherdivert from the straightpath, and cause blemish to the Torah, for the Torah is love, brotherhoodand truth. The Companions must follow this example and not blemish [the Torah]. (Zohar 2:190b)88
86 Speaking of love, Michel Feher emphasizes "the singularity of the emotions immanent in the ceremonies that produce them. Not that the transportsof love are artificial;but they do not exist outside a certain setting, that is, a stylization of movements and poses, each of which includes its own particular intensifications and deviations" (n. 9 above), p. 14. On the constructivist approachto emotion, see Rom Harre, ed., The Social Construction of Emotions (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), and Physical Being: A Theoryfor a Corporeal Psychology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991). 87 On the importance of fraternallove among the kabbalists and its homoerotic import, see Liebes, "The Messiah of the Zohar,"pp. 37-43 (English), pp. 157-65 (Hebrew), and "Zohar and Eros," Alpayim-A Multidisciplinary Publication for ContemporaryThought and Literature9 (1994): 104-17; Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines (n. 6 above), pp. 368-77, and "Crossing Gender Boundaries,"pp. 107-10. For a broader discussion of the homoerotic impulse among the kabbalistic fraternityof the Zohar's narrative,see Elliot R. Wolfson, "Eunuchs Who Keep the Sabbath: Becoming Male and the Ascetic Ideal in Jewish Mysticism," in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Bonnie Thirteenth-Century Wheeler and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (New York: Garland, 1997), pp. 165-74. In one episode, R. Yose expresses delight upon greeting R. Hiyya: "'I am so glad to see the face of the Shekhinah."' (Zohar 2:94b). This vision has the homoerotic valences suggested by both Liebes and Wolfson. 88 Translated in Liebes, "Messiah of the Zohar" (n. 55 above), pp. 37-38. See also Zohar 3:59b, 62b, 128a (Idra Rabba); Moshe de Leon, Sefer ha-Rimmon,p. 118. In other passages the individual is instructed to show joy and delight in worship (e.g., Zohar 1:229b, 248a; 2:165b). In these examples the display of joy has a theurgic effect. See also, e.g., Zohar 1:180b; 3:89b; Sefer ha-Rimmon,pp. 37-38, 186. In this latter source there is emphasis on the special capacity of the high priest to display joy. In an example of a different and yet related phenomenon, in Sefer ha-Rimmonone is instructedto run with an erect posture to the synagogue to show people that one is blessed by God and once there, one sits with humility in order to demonstratethe singularity of the synagogue. See Sefer haRimmon,pp. 58-59. There is a didactic aspect to this commandmentas the pious behavior is expected to visually express to others the natureof the building in which they sit. These instances of physical gestures that are adopted to communicate various notions reinforce my contention that there is a modeling behavior that has an important social effect. The emphasis on gesture here fully accords with the demand for certain norms of affective expression. In general, one's actions must be demonstrativeof the world above. See, e.g., Zohar 3:86b.
145
My own focus in this discussion will be the performativenatureof the effect assumed by the kabbalists in their social grouping with special regard to the emotive display that is consequent upon dining. A remarkable example of this phenomenon can be seen in a passage in Moses de Leon's Sefer ha-Rimmon.He writes, A personwho recitesthe Graceaftereatinggives powerto the attribute of tov whichis the attribute thatreceivesfromHesed.The appearance of (Goodness) this knownattribute thatreceivesfood is satiated,totallyfilled with goodness. is good andsatiatThe lightingandsparking of the brilliant light ('orha-bahir) ing, withoutcausingharm..... In any event, when a personis satedor appears sated with regardto his food He shouldbless His master.(Seferha-Rimmon,
104-5)89
It is not necessarily a physical experience or even the adoption of a spiritual stance that is required: in order to have the requisite status for reciting the blessing, the individual diner and his supernal correlate are either sated or bear the appearance of satiety. If a person has had an olive's worth of food before him and has eaten it, that gives the appearance of satiety because the halakhah defines an olive's volume as the point at which one recites the grace, ostensibly the minimal point at which one might be sated.90 Both in this passage from Sefer ha-Rimmon and in the zoharic parallel, the reference to the filling of the individual diner and the correlate sefirah are symbolic of the erectile filling of the Divine sexual organ and its earthly representative, the kabbalist, as he is about to bless the Divine. The performative dimension on the part of the mystic serves as a markof his own fullness and, as such, constitutes an act of imitatio dei. The kabbalistmirrorsthe appearanceof the sated sefirah Yesod,the phallic member of the Godhead. The text says that if one appearsto be sated, one has fulfilled a halakhic requirementand is considered by the kabbalah to be imbued with a privileged status according to which one must then act in accordance-that is, recite the blessing. Satiation is associated with fullness and the reference here, in the divine realm, is to a fullness of a spiritual kind.91Here, the phallic fullness is expressed bodily by the kabbalist. The fullness that comes from above and that follows upon a resemblance to a supernal paradigm enables one to direct one's
89 See Zohar 1:207b. 90 See b. Berakhot 45a; Maimonides, Hilkhot Berakhot 3:12; Shulhan Arukh Orah .Hayyim210. 91 It is apparentthat one is not only emulating the appearanceof the Divine in terms of the performanceof the various ritualsbut also in terms of the affect of the Divine. Thus one is emulating God's joy and satiety as well. See, e.g., Zohar 3:38b.
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blessing upwards; thus the kabbalist's act of imitatio dei endows him with theurgic capacity. This passage clarifies that it is desirable to enact and model a certain appearancein order to gain an esteemed spiritual status. This modeling or stylized eating is another kind of body technique advocated by zoharic kabbalah as a means for turning oneself into an instrumentfor divine blessing. From this passage we see that it is clearly desirable to be able to express a certain mood, even if it is not naturally felt. It seems reasonable to assume that this appearanceis not a spiritual appearanceto be noted only by God or charismatics but ratherthe more commonplace notion of appearancethat can be observed by individuals. Furthermore, the adopted similitude to the sefirah Yesod is characteristic of zoharic theurgy, as it is through emulating the Divine that one attains likeness and communion with it. In this instance, imitatio dei takes on a particularly morphological meaning.92 In this passage and others we see that it is the affective dimension of emulation that is also required.93 In one instance the Zohar proffers that because food and satiety emerge from the places to which Grace after meals is directed, that is, the sefirot of Tif'eret and Malkhut, one should display satiety and joy before that place (Zohar 2:153b).94In contrast to the prayerfulrelationship that one adopts when directing oneself toward the sefirah of Binah where there is no eating and drinking, when one is directing one's intention toward the sefirot of Tif'eret and Malkhut, who are responsible for disseminating food to the lower realms, one should not only eat and drinkbut model the paradigmaticappearancesuggestive of those sefirot. At this juncture we see how the Zohar creates different models of the body as it lays out the different regions of the Divine and its modes of physicality. There is the consuming body, a body for which
See also Mopsik's description of the body's role in replicating the divine through the wearing of phylacteries and ritual fringes as per the Zohar: "Le fait de revetir ces parures rituelles remodele le corps physique en rectifiantsa forme de telle facon qu'elle rappelle la structuredu monde divin. Ces paruressont des sortes d'id6ogrammes,signes d'6critureen meme temps que dessins. C1eebrantet ranimant l'union nuptiale des poles masculin et feminin du plerome, le corps du fidele est le supportvivant des hi6roglyphes de laine et de cuir qu'il porte comme une toile un tableau"(n. 30 above), p. 210. 93 See Zohar 1:208a where one is requiredto adopt either a stance of satiety or hunger depending on whether it is the Lord or the Sitra Ahra that is dominant at the time. Elsewhere, the Zohar says that giving the appearanceof satiety at a time of famine suggests or causes a weakness in the supernal realm and is thus forbidden (two homilies offer the two different approaches, one cognitive, the other theurgic; Zohar 3:92b). It is not satisfying eating that is condemned but merely the outward display of that contentment; here the Zohar makes explicit that it is the performative dimension that is being fashioned. Elsewhere the Zohar cautions against strolling around the marketplace during a famine. See Zohar 1:204b; 2:253b. 94 On this combined display of satiety and joy, see Sefer ha-Rimmon,pp. 118, 120-21. In this latter source, the increasedjoy from satiety expresses itself in the sexual act as well. In contrast, the lack of joy or sadness is referredto as a lack and flaw (Zohar 1:216b).
92
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proper sensuality is permitted, and the prayerful body, which requires neither physical sustenance nor the sensual stimulation of eating and drinking.95 A passage in Zohar Hadash, however, makes this mood adoption a normative behavior: "On the Sabbath one has to give the appearanceof satiation to overturnthe maidservantLilith. And in the place of sadness of Shabbatai [one must] give the appearanceof delight; in a place of darkness, a candle; in a place of suffering, delight. [All of this is done] in order to effect a transformationin everything" (33d). Affected satiation is not the dominant motif in these instances, but ratherthey are partof a broaderemotional idiom.96Referring to the hazardsof the day on which there is a particularconstellation configuration, another passage continues this theme: "We have to comport ourselves with joy and food and drink and white clothes or beautiful colors, cleaning the house and setting the table on this day" (Zohar Hadash 37a). Here the performative natureis quite evident as one is instructedto change one's facial appearance with the same perfunctory tone as one is told to set the table.97
95 This is the Zohar's explanation of the halakhic distinction between the Grace after the meal and prayer,that is, that one may recite the blessing for the food when drunkbut is not permitted to pray when inebriated. See b. Berakhot 31a and Tosafot ad. loc. s.v. mi-kan. The Zohar explains, stating that prayer goes to a higher place. See Zohar 2:116a; Sefer haRimmon,p. 375. The latter text explains that Scriptureindicates an alignment of the words "and you shall eat" with eating, "and be satiated"with drinking, "and bless the Lord your God" (u-verakhta'etadonai elohekha) with the particle 'et referring to the Shekhinah, the beneficiary of the blessing; thus one can be drunk and still recite the blessing. In fact, de Leon says, it is the drinking that brings on the joy required for the blessing. The Zohar maintains a distinction between eating and drinkingas differentlevels within the Godhead, a common cross-cultural distinction. In the Zohar, see, e.g., 1:87a. See Raymond Firth, Symbols: Public and Private (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973), pp. 247-48. Though food might be thought of as more material than drink, the Zohar places the former on the superior level because of its greater role in sustenance. The tension between the dualistic impulse, degrading the material, and the symbolic impulse, valuing the life-sustaining abilities of food, is here resolved in favor of the former. 96 This is to be contrastedwith the ataraxythat is often an integral partof the preparation for mystical experience in the Jewish mystical and pietistic tradition. See Isaac of Acre, "Sefer Me'irat 'Einayim,"ed. Amos Goldreich (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1981), p. 218; Hayyim Vital, Sha'arei Qedushah (Jerusalem: Eshkol Publishing, 1985), 3:4. For discussions of ataraxy in the scholarly literature, see Scholem, Major Trendsin Jewish Mysticism (n. 10 above), pp. 96-97, 372, n. 59; R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1977), pp. 161-62; Moshe Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 107-64. 97 In some instances this technique of display is adopted reflexively so that one is exhorted to see oneself as sitting underthe shade of faith (Zohar 3:103a); to regardoneself after the statutoryprayer as if one had left this life (Zohar 3:120b); or to show oneself as a free person during the Passover holiday (Zohar 3:95b). On this last example, see Maimonides's version of m. Pesahim 10:5. Thus in these instances these displays are not intended to make an impression upon others but rather may be adopting a behaviorist approachto their own psychology, hoping that one's outer expression will affect one's inner feeling.
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Similarly, we find that tasting the Sabbathfood with gusto increases the strength of desire above (Zohar Hadash 48d Sitre Torah); thus, one's emotional mood performs the theurgic work.98Proper emotional comportmentis so importantthat even artificialmeans may be used to induce the desired reaction: "[It is good to drink] wine below in order to display joy to that other supernal wine [Gevurah]"(Zohar 1:248a). The test case to evaluate the way in which these moods are affected and the extent to which this is a norm would be best seen in instances of failure, in which the initiates are unable to internally evoke or sustain the required emotional modality: To what extent is failure allowed? How are the norms enforced? What transpiresat the margins? The best example treating these questions is the zoharic passages of the Idrot in which a number of the kabbalists died not having loved one another sufficiently.99Death in this instance is catastrophic rather than ecstatic, as the moment of tiqqun of self, cosmos, and divine is elsewhere-all because the normative emotion was absent. While it is unstated whether R. Shimon evaluated their less than exemplary mood by observing their actions or their faces, it is their ideal features that reflect their good mood, and thus it seems reasonable to conclude that it was their faces, as a transparenttemplate of their feelings, that enabled his assessment of their lack of love. I would also like to draw attention to the dynamics of gender and sexuality that are related to the affective dimension. There are instances in which the joy that is being expressed is related to the Shekhinah in such a way that it marksthe sexual-spiritualcompletion of the individual mystic. For example, the Zohar comments upon the verse, "You shall rejoice before the Lord your God" (Deut. 12:18), saying, "This [the rejoicing] is the cup of blessing. When a person says the blessing [after a meal] with a cup of blessing he must rejoice and display his joy with no sadness at all. When a person lifts up the cup of blessing the Holy One, blessed be He, is upon him100and he must enwrap his head with joy" (Zohar 2:168b). The coronationmotif here, in which the kabbalistcovers his head with joy, signals the erotic moment between the kabbalist and the Shekhinahas symbolized by his qiddush cup, the cup of blessing,101
98 See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (n. 6 above), 198-99. Idel talks about the movement from the emphasis on the anthropomorphicstructure and theosophy of medieval kabbalahtoward the anthropopathicfocus in Hasidism, citing passages from Hayyim Vital's Zohar ha-Raqia as a significant turning point. My argument demonstratesthat the roots for the emotional focus in Hasidism can be traced back yet further. 99 The record of the kabbalists' death is at Zohar 2:142b. 100 Literally, "stands upon him." 101Wolfson comments on this phenomenon in Lurianic kabbalah in "Weeping, Death and Spiritual Ascent in Sixteenth CenturyJewish Mysticism," in Death, Ecstasy and Other
149
and merges the sensuality of eating with that of eros. The Zohar states explicitly that one must display this joy, reinforcing the sense that it is an outward demonstrationand not solely an inward emotional response that is required. The "joy" of the verse is identified by the authorof the Zohar with the qiddush cup, but it is also the crown upon his head, and is thus related to the Shekhinah itself. As Wolfson has shown, coronation is generally an erotic motif in which there is a restorationof the feminine gender within the masculine body.102Coronation is thus not merely an adornmentbut ratherthe ultimate and most essential restorationof the androgyne. Another aspect of the erotic nature of the performance involves the Sabbath guest. In the context of a discussion of the crowning that takes place upon the holidays and Sabbathsin the midst of the feasts prepared, the Zohar says that "a person who invites someone [as a guest] has to show him joy and an illuminated face in order to crown the path of this guest" (Zohar 3:94a). We have already seen the link of Sabbathjoy and crowning as an erotic nexus that the individual has with the Shekhinah on his own. In this instance the host prepares the coronation of his guest, suggesting an implicit homosocial dynamic.103In this instance, the adept's emotional mood serves as the crown for his guest. Whereas in other situations, the recipient, such as an indigent, receives his good materially, here the guest is enfolded in the divine economy simply by receiving the mood of his host. While it is generally assumed that the behaviors prescribed in the Zohar apply to the male kabbalistic initiates, it is possible that the women were involved in some small measure as well. One passage in Zohar Hadash portraysa Sabbathtable in which both husbandand wife appear joyous alongside the set table, lit candles, and other miscellany of the Sabbath table (Zohar .Hadash 48d). If the picture is enacted successfully the Shekhinah announces that this table belongs to Her; if not, the table and family are left to the devices of the evil inclination and the food itself is rendered impure. As we have seen, situations that entail
WorldlyJourneys, ed. John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 225. He notes some rabbinic sources in which the link between the cup of wine and the erotic is already suggested. See b. Nedarim 20b; Leviticus Rabbah 12:1. See also Zohar Hadash 87c Midrash Ruth. 102 Wolfson, Througha Speculum That Shines (n. 6 above), pp. 357-68, 396-97. 103 I use the term homosocial dynamic to refer to the patterns of what would be called "male bonding"in our culture that are framedby heterosexual rhetoricas a way of masking the homoerotic dynamic beneath. For a man to be crowning anothermeans to be completing the other as a man by restoring the feminine to him. For a helpful discussion of the phrase "male homosocial desire," see Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York:Columbia University Press, 1985), pp. 1-5.
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observation can be assumed to include some measure of affective performance. In this instance, notably, one's wife is called upon to perform as well.104 There are other instances in which the adopted affect is not prescribed but its description as an effective theurgic catalyst would inevitably prompt the kabbalists to adopt this pose. In a homily extolling the holiness of the Land of Israel and its impenetrabilitywith regard to the Sitra Ahra, the text says, This is why,even thoughIsraelis now outsideof the Holy Land,nonetheless it is fromthe powerandmeritof the landthatthereis food andsustenance for the whole world.105 Therefore it is written,"[Whenyou have eatenyour fill,] you shallbless the LordyourGodfor the good landwhichHe has givenyou"(Deut. Forit is due to it [theland]thatthere 8:10). "Forthe good land"-in actuality! is food andsustenance in the world.Onewho has delightat his tableandenjoys his food shouldremember and worryaboutthe holinessof the Holy Landand aboutthe King'stabernacle thatwas destroyed. As a consequence of thatsadness thathe experiences at his table at which therehad beenjoy and feasting,the it as if he hadbuiltHis houseandbuilt Holy One,blessedbe He, will consider all of the destroyed for the Templewill increasehis portion.(Zohar structures,
2:157b)
This table, which has served as a site of joyous celebration and dining, is now to be mourned:the ceremonious decoration of the table as bride is tempered with the sense of her lost status. Moods are adopted and cast off, each acting as the appropriateresponse to a particularcontext. Drama is truly the natureof the events transpiringin these various instances. The kabbalists are performersmanipulating not only the material world and the sefirotic world but their own moods as well. In a study of the performative aspects of ritual, Stanley Tambiahwrites about the inevitable distancing between internal feeling and ritualized feeling that For the kabbalists, however, affecaccompanies ritualized expression.106 tive performance is intended as a masking that reveals truest feeling. Ronald Grimes, in writing of masks, says that there is a monistic moment of embodiment in which interior and exterior, affect and feeling are so harmonized as to be virtually indistinguishable:
104Consider also the following passage: "A woman must light the Sabbathcandles with joy in her heart and with longing for it is a great honor to her" (Zohar 1:48b). The passage cited above, regardingthe female innkeeper and the narrativeframe of the yanuqa, whose mother hovers in the background, are also suggestive of interactions with female figures aroundkabbalistic topics. 105 The land of Israel and the Temple are both symbols of the Shekhinah. 106 Stanley Tambiah, Culture, Thought and Social Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 132.
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One's exterior mask, or persona, . . begins to resound with presence... spirit
in exteriority-in the skin, demeanor, can becomefully resonant and style of action.... In this momentmasking-or for thatmatter form of facial stylany A totally ization-is deniedanda claimis madefor naturalness andspontaneity. embodiedmask would, of course, lose its dialecticalrelationto a hitherto or transcendent other.... In the embodied momentof masktrapped internality betweenwearer andthing-worn is no longermade.107 ing, the distinction Reflecting Grimes's insights upon the kabbalistic material, I suggest that the pneumatic reading of a text both creates the mask and reveals it to be transparentsuch that the space between normative affect and spontaneous affect is collapsed.108 To conclude this discussion of affective performance, let us note that the outcome of this emphasis on the performative or dramaturgicalaspect in the fraternity'slived theater is that imitatio hominis becomes as importantas imitatio dei. That is, assuming the theatrical quality of the affective performance, the kabbalists model for each other and learn from each other about the ways to express the appropriateemotions in any given context. It can only be presumedthat in the course of admonitions given by R. Shimon with regard to the need for love among the group, it is the illumined face that both receives blessing and, more importantly, is a sign of blessing. The logical outcome is that the adepts assumed certain modes of facial expression and bodily gestures to communicate a mood of repose, equanimity, and joy. This affective performance or modeling thus takes on a pedagogic quality that is close to the heart of this kabbalistic homiletical work.109
CONCLUSION
In sum, we have seen some aspects of the lived habitus followed by the kabbalists of the zoharic narrativein their mystical praxis. Their dining practices, bounded by the prescriptions of rabbinic law and pneumatic readings of biblical narratives, had a structureand appearancethat was uniquely theirs. The table, symbolizing the Shekhinah, attracted their
107Ronald Grimes, "Defining Nascent Ritual,"in his Beginnings in Ritual Studies (n. 17 above), p. 64. 108 See Goffman (n. 83 above), pp. 17, 72-76. It is unclear how much effort is being expended in gaining the desired affect (see Goffman, p. 33). Regarding the flowering of concern for gesture and appropriateexpression of mood in the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies, see Jean-ClaudeSchmitt, "The Ethics of Gesture,"trans.Ian Patterson,in Feher et al., eds. (n. 9 above), 2:136-43. 109See Zohar 2:34a where the text explains Job's cyclical fortunes saying that God has to show (ahazei-the same term used for the demonstrativeperformancesof the kabbalists) that a good-bad cycle will always entail a returnto the good. God, like the kabbalists, is in the teaching profession.
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attention, drew them to sit, and evoked expressions of sadness, satiety, and joy. Throughout,the topographyof the body is found to be ideally a body of fullness, whose boundaries are sufficiently permeable to allow for the intake of divine energy, and for the outwardoverflow of fruitfulness. The diner in the Zohar consumes food of the material world as an avenue to uncovering mystical heights that lie behind it so that the body is assimilated to the Divine even as it partakesof the world in the most material manner. His face reveals through masking the inexorable ecstatic joy that flows from eating divine food. In these various ways the abyss between spirit and matteris vitiated as space is created for spirit in the midst of the belly. Reconstructionist Rabbinical College

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Eating Gestures and the Ritualized Body in Medieval Jewish Mysticism Author(s): Joel Hecker Source: History of Religions,

EATING GESTURES AND THE RITUALIZED BODY IN MEDIEVAL JEWISH MYSTICISM

One's exterior mask, or persona, . . begins to resound with presence... spirit

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