Moses de León

Jewish rabbi, scholar, and philosopher

• Born: 1250
• Birthplace: Probably León (now in Spain)
• Died: 1305
• Place of death: Arévalo (now in Spain)

Through his lifework, the Zohar, Moses de León exercised the greatest influence on Judaic religious thought after the Talmud and the Bible.

Early Life

Moses de León (moh-says day lay-ohn) was an itinerant scholar who spent the greater part of his life wandering from town to town in his native province of Castile. Although few concrete personal details are known of these years, his writings reflect the social and religious unrest of his times. In the thirteenth century, Spain was still divided, Muslim and Christian, with Christian Spain slowly but steadily gaining the upper hand. Large numbers of Jews were Christian subjects either as a consequence of the Reconquest or because they were forced to flee Muslim Spain during the increasingly violent persecutions of the Almoravids and the Almohads, who had entered Spain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and tolerated no religious dissension even among their own people. During the era of the taifas, the previous Arab rulers, before the arrival of the fanatical newcomers, the Jewish communities had been prominent and respected, and Jewish intellectuals had blossomed in the civilized cosmopolitan atmosphere of al-Andalus (Andalusia). In fact, the Iberian peninsula, both Christian and Muslim, produced some of the greatest philosophers of Jewish history.

The most famous and most controversial of the religious thinkers was Moses Maimonides (d. 1204) of Córdoba, who interpreted basic Judaic religious beliefs and traditions in the light of Aristotelian rationalism. His Dalālat al-ḥa՚irīn (1190; The Guide of the Perplexed, 1881) became one of the cornerstones of medieval Jewish philosophy and, through its Latin translations, influenced the writings of men of many divergent beliefs, not least among them Thomas Aquinas. As conditions in the Jewish communities began to worsen, however, for many there was cold comfort in pristine rational arguments. Earlier, in the name of faith and revealed truth, many Jewish traditionalists, scandalized, had attacked Maimonides’ teachings as a form of heresy. Now their protests were united with the yearnings of a beleaguered people who needed something in which to believe.

Both groups found a source of strength in the uniquely Jewish mystical expression of the Kabbalah. The tradition of the Kabbalah, which literally means “received,” traces its roots back to Abraham, but the term came to mean the mystical beliefs and practices that entered Europe through Italy from Palestine and Babylonia in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There were originally two great schools of Kabbalistic thought in Germany and the Provençal region of France, but the movement reached its zenith in Spain in the Jewish communities of Barcelona, Burgos, Gerona, and Toledo. Here the new theosophy merged with an intellectual Judaic tradition well into its golden age and refined its characteristic admixture of Gnostic and Neoplatonic elements.

The basic tenet of the Kabbalah is that the visible world is merely a reflection of a greater unseen world; the two worlds are interdependent, their influences flowing back and forth. An action in one will cause an equal repercussion in the other. Glimpses of this hidden reality could be read, for example, in every word, name, number, and syllable of the Torah, if one knew the code. This reading was the task and obligation of the Kabbalistic masters who could interpret these mysteries of spiritual revelation. Moses de León was one of the teachers of the Kabbalah who spread its doctrines during his travels through Castile and through his writings. In Shoshan Edoth (The Rose of Testimony ) and Sepher ha-Rimmon (The Book of the Pomegranate ), he attempted a mystical Kabbalistic treatment of the Ten Commandments. He seems to have used Guadalajara as his home base until around 1292, when he finally settled in Ávila. The rabbi then dedicated the rest of his life to the reworking and circulation of the manuscripts of the work that was to become the bible of Kabbalistic thought, the Sepher ha-Zohar (the book of splendor; usually called simply the Zohar ).

Life’s Work

The Zohar was the overriding preoccupation and great accomplishment of de León. It is not one work, but rather a miscellanea, written partly in Aramaic and partly in Hebrew, of biblical interpretation, mystic theology, prophecy, and moral and ethical teaching generally expounded by well-known rabbinical philosophers. The most famous and most quoted passages constitute a commentary on the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible . A summary of the prevalent Kabbalistic concepts of its time, the Zohar, with a vocabulary and set of correspondences all its own, sets out to reveal not only the mystical significance underlying all Judaic theology and edicts but also the hidden relevance of all material creation. The human is acclaimed as the unifier, the conjunction of the visual and spiritual worlds. By the end of the Middle Ages, the Zohar, with its appeal to faith and the heart, passionate at times in its lyrical beauty, had captured thousands in its mystical web. Paradoxically, however, the man whose crowning achievement it was, disclaimed the honor.

De León never accepted authorship of the Zohar. Instead, he circulated the manuscripts, ostensibly as a type of editor, and attributed their actual writing to Rabbi Simon bar Yohai, a famous Hebrew sage who lived in Palestine in the second century. Pursued by victorious Romans, bar Yohai hid in a cave for thirteen years, legend asserting that he spent the time mastering the secrets of the universe. When questioned as to how he obtained the document, de León revealed that the mystic Naḥmanides (1194-1270), a fellow Kabbalist of great prestige, had discovered the work in Palestine and, shortly before his death, had sent it to the Spanish rabbi. Although there was much discussion over de León’s claims, his account of events was never seriously doubted during his lifetime, with one exception. Isaac de Acre, a close friend of Naḥmanides, but who surprisingly had never heard of such a manuscript, demanded that de León swear to its authenticity. De León did so and promised to show him the original, but died on the way to Ávila. Isaac, however, did not give up. He continued the journey and enlisted the aid of prominent Jewish leaders in Ávila. One of these, Joseph of Ávila, promised de León’s widow, who was in great financial distress, a great sum of money and even a marriage between his son and her daughter if she told the truth concerning the authorship of the Zohar. She finally admitted that her husband had written the entire work himself without any outside references, recently discovered or not.

That is the position taken by most modern scholars. There are, indeed, glaring anachronisms in the work. For example, bar Yohai, who himself appears as one of the characters, mentions other rabbis who died centuries after. Also, the Aramaic dialect in which the Zohar was partially written was seldom used by the Jewish writers of the second century (the time period to which de León attributed the work), who preferred Hebrew. Although there are a few proponents for an unknown ninth or tenth century Palestinian Kabbalist as author, it is generally agreed that de León, a poverty-stricken, virtually unknown wanderer, wrote the Zohar and attributed it to the legendary bar Yohai in order to endow his work with importance and prestige.

Self-protection may also have been a principal motive. During the thirteenth century, the Jews in Spain not only faced Muslim and Christian persecution but also were divided in bitter social strife within their own communities. There was widespread hatred and resentment of the dominant Jewish courtier class. It was believed that while they had enjoyed influence and power in the Castilian court, they not only had forgotten their own people but also had manipulated them for their own and their Christian masters’ political ends. One of the aims of the Kabbalist movement from the very beginning had been the elevation of religious and moral conduct and standards together with the overthrow of the wealthy aristocracy. The Zohar, therefore, is not simply a mystical treatise, but contains a bitter attack against the rich and the religious leaders who looked the other way and failed to chastise their influential patrons. The rabbinical scholars in the Zohar were meant to exemplify the conduct and theology of the true religious man and provided de León with camouflage for his acid criticism. His arguments were reinforced by the vivid memory of the execution of several important Jewish courtiers in 1280-1281. They were not mourned by many in the Jewish communities.

The Zohar, therefore, was widely accepted as a guide to proper Jewish behavior. In addition, with its glorious visions of the coming of the Messiah and the resurrection and vindication of his true followers, it gave spiritual comfort amid suffering; as the intensity of the persecutions increased, so did the importance of the Zohar, its influence reaching its zenith after the final, terrible expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. The exiles spread the ideals of their beloved Zohar throughout the world. The chief center of Kabbalist thought became, fittingly, Safed in Palestine, close to the burial place of Simon bar Yohai. By the sixteenth century, the Zohar and its Kabbalistic teachings held sway in Judaic religious philosophy as important scholars such as Isaac ben Solomon Luria (1534-1572) interpreted and refined its tenets and practices. Its influence started to wane only with the coming of the Enlightenment and the emergence of a new generation of rationalists. Nevertheless, the Kabbalah did greatly inspire the powerful Hasidic movement of the eighteenth century, which still has thousands of adherents. The Hasidic appeal to strength of faith and purity of heart is pure Zohar.

The understanding of the Kabbalah, however, has suffered a progressive deterioration throughout the centuries as the underlying significance of its philosophy and terminology has been forgotten or misused. The name itself has become synonymous with superstition and magic as an aura of pseudoreligious, medieval occultism has encircled it. Sequences of its numbers and letters are evoked in magical incantations, and its symbols are worn to ward off evil spirits. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Kabbalah and its textbook, the Zohar, have been furiously attacked by contemporary Jewish scholars. Zohartic concepts, with their pagan and Gnostic elements, have come to represent, in the opinion of many, all that should be alien to progressive Jewish thought. It has not helped that Christian scholars, entranced by its mystical insights and unaware of its source, have used de León’s vindication of Judaism to strengthen such Christian articles of faith as the explanation of the Trinity and the identification of Jesus Christ with the biblical Messiah. De León wished to write a guide for the strong in faith. He realized that his concepts and terminology were complex, but even he could not have understood their ramifications.

Significance

De León compiled a controversial work whose influence has been profound and varied throughout the centuries. At times, his teachings have been used in ways that would have horrified him. Itself an attack on declining religious values and practice, the Zohar has become for some a handbook of occult lore and ritual. This view, however, in no way negates its religious and historical importance. The Zohar is not only a reflection of prevalent Judaic mystical thought; it provides valuable insights into the background and philosophy behind the mystical fervor that swept through all faiths in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In many ways, it is startlingly similar to Christian apocalyptic literature, and the wandering Judaic sages portrayed in its pages could, with a slight change of name, be taken for Franciscan mendicant friars. More important, in its portraits and indictment of the conduct of the wealthy, the powerful, and the apostate, it illustrated the social and moral climate in which a movement such as the Kabbalah could be born and gain momentum.

The Zohar also stands as a symbol. The exiled Spanish Jews cherished it as a living link in the spiritual chain of their heritage, which had been so cruelly broken in 1492. Other Jews, in empathy, seeing this self-identification of the Sephardim with the Zohar, came also to regard the book as a tribute to the tenacity of faith. The great work of an exiled people seemed expressly made for a religion that saw itself in continual exile.

An ardent Kabbalist, de León believed himself to be capable of interpreting the hidden signification underlying all material objects. In his philosophy, the Zohar not only attempted to decipher these meanings but also was in itself a further cipher in the chain of correspondences between the higher and lower worlds. He could not have foreseen how later readers would find so many different codes and meanings.

Bibliography

Anidjar, Gil. “Our Place in al-Andalus”: Kabbalah, Philosophy, Literature in Arab Jewish Letters. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002. Analyzes the history of the Kabbalah, the Zohar, and Judaism in Andalusian Spain, also during the time of de León’s compilation of the Zohar.

Baer, Yitzhak. From the Age of Reconquest to the Fourteenth Century. Vol. 1 in A History of the Jews in Christian Spain. 2 vols. Translated by Louis Schoffman. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1992. Traces century by century the deteriorating social conditions in the medieval Jewish communities that influenced the rise of the Kabbalah.

Berg, Rav Philip S. The Essential Zohar: The Source of Kabbalistic Wisdom. New York: Bell Tower, 2002. A practical, contemporary interpretation of the Zohar by a well-known Kabbalist, written for the general reader.

Cahn, Zvi. The Philosophy of Judaism: The Development of Jewish Thought Throughout the Ages, the Bible, the Talmud, the Jewish Philosophers, and the Cabala, Until the Present Time. New York: Macmillan, 1962. Contains a chapter on Moses de León and discusses the problem of authorship of the Zohar.

Caplan, Samuel, and Harold U. Ribalow, eds. The Great Jewish Books and Their Influence on History. New York: Horizon Press, 1952. Contains a discussion of the reasons behind the growth of Zohartic thought, emphasizing not only historical factors but also the beauty and power of the text itself, using selections from the original as illustrations.

Epstein, Isidore. Judaism: A Historical Presentation. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966. Concise information and clear explanations of prevailing Judaic philosophical trends during the Middle Ages, many of which have Spanish origins.

Margolies, Morris B. Twenty Twenty: Jewish Visionaries Through Two Thousand Years. Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 2000. Provides biographies of leading visionaries in the Jewish tradition, including de León and Maimonides. Includes bibliography and index.

Moses de León. The Zohar. Translated by Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon. 5 vols. London: Soncino Press, 1931-1934. A complete and faithful English translation.

O’Callaghan, Joseph F. A History of Medieval Spain. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975. Detailed description of Spain as the philosophic battleground between the proponents of Maimonides’ rationalism and the mystical, “irrational” tenets of the Zohar.