The Sabbath as the Home to which the Wandering Soul Returns

This excerpt is drawn from a voluminous and popular Hebrew commentary on the Torah. The author, Baḥya ben Asher, 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.