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- Title
Kabbalah and Minhag: Geonic Responsa and the Kabbalist Polemic on Minhagim in the Zohar and Related Texts.
- Authors
Bar-Asher, Avishai
- Abstract
Interpretations of the commandments and commentaries on the reasons for rituals and customs (minhagim) played a significant role in late thirteenth-century Kabbalah. Included in this genre was a series of halakhic Responsa attributed spuriously to the Geonim, which was associated by researchers with the name of Moses de León, frequently referred to as the redactor (or perhaps author) of the Zohar. Although this hypothesis was based primarily on scant and flimsy evidence, it has become widely accepted amongst scholars, and no effort to provide further solid proof of it has been made to date. Through a close study of unassigned texts in manuscript as well as in printed form, the author aims to reconstruct de León's relation to these alleged Geonic Responsa. As discussed in the article, this corpus of writing represents a broader interest in theosophical reasoning for rites and commandments in medieval Kabbalah. The analysis of these unstudied texts reveals a textual stage which, the author proposes, constructs polemical and formative writing on halakha and minhag along kabbalistic lines. A more general contribution of this study points to de León's affinity with certain textual units in the Zoharic corpus which offer theosophical reasons for minhagim. Substantial parallels in style, language, and discourse disclose a triangular relationship between a group of Zoharic texts, de León's later writings, and the composing of allegedly Geonic Responsa, and they illuminate an early and formative stage in the history of the kabbalistic discussion on rites and customs. Finally, bringing to light the common origin of all these texts may contribute to a better understanding of the way some modes of anonymity functioned more generally in the forming of kabbalistic literature.
- Publication
Tarbiz, 2015, Vol 84, Issue 1/2, pviii
- ISSN
0334-3650
- Publication type
Article