The Mystical Power of Kiddush and the Friday-Night Meal

Sod ha-shabbat (Secret of the Sabbath) is a Hebrew treatise on the Sabbath, composed as part of a larger work, Tola‘at Ya‘akov ([Crimson] Worm of Jacob). This was a kabbalistic commentary on various prayers and ritual acts, generally according to the zoharic tradition. Sod ha-shabbat treats the various rituals associated with the Sabbath, organized into twenty-two sections and ordered chronologically. Here, Meir Ibn Gabbai discusses the recitation of kiddush on the eve of the Sabbath, and then various kabbalistic aspects of the Friday night meal. The abundance and joy prescribed for the Sabbath evening meal is understood to “point to the bride, the glory of the night, who is filled with all good and who is encompassed by supernal Eden.” Furthermore, the practitioner “partakes of [the divine] mystery”—indeed one participates in the metaphysical drama of shekhinah (“the bride”) being encompassed and united with all of the rest of the sefirot, by engaging with the bounty of the Sabbath meal grounded in a spiritual-mystical intentionality. The symbolic meaning and cosmic power of sacred eating is a prominent feature of many kabbalistic sources.