The Sabbath as the Home to which the Wandering Soul Returns

Baḥya Ibn Halawa

ca. 1291

About This Entry

This excerpt is drawn from a voluminous and popular Hebrew commentary on the Torah. The author was a kabbalist and exegete in the tradition of Moses Naḥmanides and Solomon Ibn Adret (Rashba), and is now considered a significant figure in the Castilian circle of mystics who authored the Zohar. His commentary is a classic text most notable for being the first attempt in Jewish religious writing to integrate a fourfold method of interpretation. This method eventually came to be known by the acronym PaRDdeS (“garden”), for peshat (plain meaning), remez (allusion), derash (exposition), and sod (secret/mystery). The fourth, mystical meaning, referred to as “the way of kabbalah” or “the way of the secret,” was understood to be the deepest core of the four levels of meaning, or the highest rung on the ladder of interpretation to be ascended by the interpreter.

According to the path of the Kabbalah, the seventh day is the seventh sefirah [counting from Binah] called “the world of souls,” for there lies the origin and power-source [koah] for the soul; it is the well-spring of blessing. During the week the soul may be likened to a wanderer without a home; but on Shabbat it is like a wanderer who has found one. Hence, it is written: “And He blessed” (Genesis 2:3), for He emanated [shefa‘] unto it from the source of blessing, and so “sanctified it” [Ibid.], for the soul draws [this influx] from the Sacred.

Translated by Elliot K. Ginsburg.

Credits

Bahya ben Asher, Commentary on the Torah, trans. Elliot K. Ginsburg, from Elliot K. Ginsburg, The Sabbath in the Classical Kabbalah (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), p. 125. Used with permission of the publisher.

Discussion Questions

  1. Reflect on the idea of the sefirah binah depicted here as the divine birther / womb of souls, and therefore “wellspring of blessing.”

  2. What is the religious experience evoked in the idea of the soul as a wanderer who returns home on the Sabbath?

  3. How is the biblical verse Genesis 2:3 (“Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”) interpreted in this passage?

Engage with this Source

This excerpt is drawn from a voluminous and popular Hebrew commentary on the Torah. The author was a kabbalist and exegete in the tradition of Moses Naḥmanides and Solomon Ibn Adret (Rashba), and is now considered a significant figure in the Castilian circle of mystics who authored the Zohar. His commentary is a classic text most notable for being the first attempt in Jewish religious writing to integrate a fourfold method of interpretation. This method eventually came to be known by the acronym PaRDdeS (“garden”), for peshat (plain meaning), remez (allusion), derash (exposition), and sod (secret/mystery). The fourth, mystical meaning, referred to as “the way of kabbalah” or “the way of the secret,” was understood to be the deepest core of the four levels of meaning, or the highest rung on the ladder of interpretation to be ascended by the interpreter.

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