The Sabbath as the Soul’s Delight

A lengthy encyclopedic work of mysticism and ethics, Re’shit ḥokhmah (Beginning of Wisdom), was a popular text, translated from Hebrew into many languages and reprinted some forty times. It is divided into five gates (sections): fear of God; love of God; repentance; holiness; and humility. In this passage, excerpted from the sixth chapter of the Gate of Love, the common mystical motif of a sublime, ineffable, and concealed divine light is invoked. Building on older midrashic statements, the text describes how a person’s face shines differently on the Sabbath than during ordinary time, reflecting the overwhelming celestial brightness of the light of the world to come. This luminosity is simultaneously the first light of creation that was hidden away by God due to its overwhelming power and precious nature and the future light that “will be revealed to the souls in the lower Garden of Eden,” linking the paradigmatic past of primordial oldentime with the redemptive light of future-time.