The Flow of Holiness and the Activation of Divine Blessing: Naḥmanides on Creation and the Sabbath

In his highly influential Hebrew commentary on the Torah, Naḥmanides hints that kabbalistic meaning is at the core of scriptural truth. Though most of his interpretations do not involve esoteric lore and were explicitly aimed at “ordinary readers,” Naḥmanides peppers his commentary with kabbalistic secrets, coded and symbolic allusions to the mystical theology of the sefirot that he introduces with the overt hermeneutical signifier, Al derekh ha-emet (“According to the path of truth”). The first draft was completed in Spain, but when he arrived in the land of Israel, he revised hundreds of his interpretations, in some cases based on what he learned there. Interpreting scripture, he argues that the Sabbath itself is the fount of all blessing and holiness in the world, not merely a command. He aligns each of the six days of creation with a thousand years of world history—an idea found in rabbinic tradion—as well as with six sefirot of the Divine Self, bookended by the two Sabbaths of binah and shekhinah, the two feminine divine dimensions. He also expounds the kabbalistic notion that binah is the “world to come,” the upper palace, and the womb of subsequent being, from which holiness flows. In a statement about blessing that is activated and overflows onto the Sabbath, he encodes a well-established kabbalistic notion of supernal eros and sexual union within the realm of Divinity. When yesod (foundation) and Sabbath / kenesset Yisrael unite sexually together, they ultimately give birth to the souls of Israel, and specifically the luminous “additional souls” (neshamot yeteirot / neshamah yeterah) that are bestowed upon Jews for the duration of Shabbat.