Class 3: Encountering God in the World Through Sabbath Practice

Sabbath Practices in Lurianic Kabbalah and the Early Modern Period

Over the centuries, Jewish mystics developed prescriptions for how to cultivate ecstatic mystical experiences. Some of these practices stemmed from sixteenth-century Lurianic kabbalah (i.e., the kabbalistic tradition of Isaac Luria), while others appeared as late as the nineteenth century. 

The texts discussed here reflect the mystical yearning for a direct sensory experience or revelation of God. The longing to “taste” the living God with one’s spiritualized senses often went hand-in-hand with the ideal of devekut, a deep bondedness to or mystical union with God (what the Christian mystics referred to as unio mystica) as the pinnacle of mystical striving.

The Experience of the Sabbath

Kabbalistic texts provide vivid descriptions of divine spiritual energy flowing into the human devotee and of mystical experience as this influx from the divine, as in the early-fourteenth-century passage by Isaac of Acre.

The Sabbath Meals

Other mystical practices include invoking the divine presence and aligning the human observance of the sacred Sabbath meal with the inner structure of the supernal divine Self. We read about the Sabbath meals in the writing of late-fifteenth-century kabbalist Meir Ibn Gabbai.

Kabbalat Shabbat

Kabbalat Shabbat is the name of the liturgical service on Friday evening that welcomes the Sabbath. It was not always a part of the Jewish liturgy. In fact, it appears to have been created in the sixteenth-century, by the kabbalists of Safed. We will read one of the original sources for what would become a widespread prayer service, now usually performed in the synagogue. In a further interweaving of sacred time and sacred space, this text, by a disciple of Isaac Luria, describing this ritual, recalls the master’s emphasis on both the outdoors, where mystical devotion is situated within the natural landscape, and the interior space, where home-centered Sabbath rituals are practiced.

Sabbath Candle Lighting

In the home, for example, just before the Sabbath begins, traditionally a woman lights two candles and recites a blessing over the Sabbath lights. A mystically informed Yiddish prayer (tekhine) by an early modern Jewish woman casts light on the contemplative experience and meaning of Friday evening candle-lighting. 

Sabbath candle-lighting also features in a striking homily by a renowned Hasidic kabbalistic master from late-nineteenth-century Poland, Yehudah (Judah) Leib of Ger. In his discourse, the lighting of the candles is interpreted as a contemplative gaze into the inner divine light at the soul of all. For Yehudah Leib, the light of the candles opens a meditative pathway of consciousness to the primordial first light of creation, underscoring how the Sabbath explicitly recalls the olden time of creation. In addition, it allows the merging of the paradigmatic past and the sacred ritual present, in a contemplative unification of the grand arc of time, a theme that will also be developed in the next class session.

Sabbath Hallah Preparation

At the Sabbath meal, it is customary to begin with two loaves of hallah. Mixing, kneading, and baking the loaves of hallah for the Sabbath meals is, again, traditionally a part of women’s domestic preparation for the Sabbath. Here, contemporary scholar Chava Weissler translates and comments on another Yiddish tekhine, this one devoted to the sacred practice of hallah preparation. It offers another opportunity to examine the specific phenomenon of women’s religion and one example of a mystical Sabbath practice.