Free Kabbalah by Joseph Dan

scholars have presented a different approach: The femininity of the shekhinah is the result of the influence of the intense Christian worship of the Madonna, the Mother of Christ, that peaked in the twelfth century. This occurred, according to them, in Provence or northern Spain in the late twelfth century, and therefore it does not indicate an ancient Jewish gnostic con-48
    M A I N I D E A S O F T H E M E D I E V A L K A B B A L A H
    cept. This explanation may reflect the recent decline in the belief that there was a gnostic “third religion” that greatly influenced both Judaism and Christianity. There is no definite proof of that or any detail or phrase that indicates the impact of the Christian concept of the Virgin Mary on early kabbalistic terminology and ideas.
    The third possibility is to assume, in the absence of definite proof to the contrary, that the femininity of the shekhinah results from the individual inspiration of the Bahir’s author. This can be understood from a literary point of view as the result of his frequent, almost obsessive, use of parables of kings and queens, princes and princesses, as well as a unique mystical experience.
    From a methodological point of view, it is always better to assume the minimal conclusion attested by the texts until another one can be presented with adequate documentation.
    “The Emanations on the Left”
    Rabbinic tradition, represented by talmudic-midrashic literature, is remarkably ignorant of the existence of independent powers of evil that struggle against divine goodness and create a dualistic state of affairs in creation. Satan in his various manifestations in this literature is a power within the divine court and God’s system of justice. The esoteric and mystical treatises of the ancient period, the Hekhalot and Merkavah literature, did not present an intensified image of the powers of evil. In the apocryphal and pseudo-epigrahical literature of antiquity, as well as in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the literature of early Christianity, we do find some more pronounced tendencies toward dualism of good and evil, but most of these texts were not known to Medieval Jewish thinkers. The first indication of a satanic rebellion against God in rabbinic literature is found in the eighth-century midrash Pirkey de-Rabbi Eliezer, but this seemed to have little impact until the twelfth century. The section of this midrash in which the rebellion is described was included in the Book Bahir, serving as its concluding chapter.
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    K A B B A L A H
    The formulation of the powers of evil as an independent enemy of the divine, and the description of human life as being conducted in a dualistic universe in which evil and good are in constant struggle, is the contribution of the kabbalah to Jewish worldview. There are some indications of an intensified conception of evil in the Book Bahir and in the works of the early kabbalists in Provence, but the first kabbalistic dualistic system was presented in a brief treatise written by Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen, entitled Treatise on the Emanations on the Left .
    This treatise, written in Castile about 1265, describes a parallel system of seven divine evil powers, the first of which is called Samael and the seventh, feminine one is called Lilith. While both of these figures have a long history in Jewish writings before Rabbi Isaac, it seems that he was the first to bring them together and present them as a divine couple, parallel to God and the shekhinah , who rule over a diverse structure of evil demons, who struggle for dominion in the universe against the powers of goodness, the emanations on the right. It should be remembered that “left” ( smol ) and Samael are almost homonyms in Hebrew. Rabbi Isaac was the first to present a hierarchy of evil powers and evil phenomena, including illnesses and pesti-lence, connecting all of them into one system.
    Rabbi Isaac presented a mythological description of the relationship between the