Josef Gikatilla

Fig. In Portae Lucis (actually שערי אורה scha'are orah 'Gates of Light') by Gikatilla: Man holding a tree with the ten Sephiroth .

Josef ben Abraham Gikatilla (יוסף בן אברהם ג'יקטיליה, also Chiquitilla; born 1248 in Medinaceli ; died around 1325 in Peñafiel ) was a Spanish Kabbalist , philosopher and mystic who occupies an intermediate position between ecstatic and theosophical Kabbalah.

Life

Gikatilla was born in Medinaceli ( Old Castile ) in 1248 , but spent most of his life in Segovia . Around 1272 or 1274 he met Abraham Abulafia and took over the symbolism of letters and numbers from him. Here an intensive examination of the profane sciences and the writings of Abraham ibn Esra , Solomon ibn Gabirol , Baruch Togarmi and Maimonides took place, the latter being quoted overwhelmingly frequently. Presumably he met Moshe de Leon in the 1270s, under whose influence he turned away from Abulafia's prophetic Kabbalah; as can be seen from their writings, Mosche de Leon and Josef Gikatilla must have influenced each other strongly (they do not, however, call each other by name). At first, Gikatilla was “ completely alien to the theosophical conception of mysticism”, but later went completely over to theosophical Kabbalah, and “in his later writings we find next to nothing of the Abulafian Kabbalah and the ideas from the vicinity of the Ginnath 'ego ”; Instead, the Zohar ascribed to Mosche de Leon shows a strong influence in a different form of expression. Especially in some pieces of his main work Scha'are Orah ('Gates of Light'), composed in 1293, he propagates his ideas, citing the “words of the wise” as the source. All of his writings deal with the recombination of letters and numbers ( Gematria ), but at the same time it was his main concern to establish Kabbalah as the basis of rational philosophy .

According to legend, Gikatilla's knowledge of Kabbalah was so great that he could work miracles ; he is therefore also called Joseph "Ba'al ha-Nissim" (Wonder Lord). Isaac ben Samuel criticized him in his Me'irat 'Enayyim for the excessive use of the name of God.

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Scha'are Orah - "Gates of Light" (1293)

Gikatilla's main work discusses the ten Sefirot , from Keter to Malkuth, and the corresponding names of God in ten chapters . In addition to the Zohar, the sources cited also include the Sefer Jezirah and the Pirka Hekalot .

At the same time, the book is an easily comprehensible introduction to the symbolism of the Zohar , published a few years earlier . The Zohar is systematized here according to the rules of word and name recombination and is described by Gershom Scholem as the best representation of the symbolic terminology of the Zohar "with an explanation of the motifs that determine the correlation between the Sefiroth and their symbols in scripture". This interest in word and letter symbolism cannot be traced back to the Zohar alone, but goes back to the influence of his teacher Abraham Abulafia and his Sefer ha-ot (Book of Signs). This linguistic tradition line encounters the theosophical line with which he came into contact through Mosche de Leon by concentrating on non-linguistic reality (in Gikatilla's case: on light ) .

The book differs from other Jetzira commentaries in the changed order of the Sefirot and the emphasis on the meaning of God's names. Most Sefirot commentaries begin with the symbols of the highest sphere, Kether or even the En Sof, and then discuss the rest in descending order. In contrast, Gikatilla favors an ascending order. This is seen as a theoretical guilt of the linguistic-ecstatic school of Abulafia: while the theosophist wants to understand the descending emanations of creation, the ecstatic is trying to return to the beginning of creation.

Contrary to the legend about his own person, Gikatilla makes it clear that knowledge of Kabbalah is not suitable for magical or mantic purposes, and here revises his own misjudgments from the nut garden .

Historically, the book bears testimony to the decisive shift within Castilian mysticism that arose with Abulafia's departure from Spain.

Gikatilla had a huge impact, especially on the Christian Kabbalah of the Renaissance , which it served as the main reference work on the traditions of Jewish mysticism. Also Johannes Reuchlin will quote the authority Gikatillas to defend himself against his critics.

Editions of the Gates of Light

• Riva di Trento 1559
• Mantua 1561
• Krakow 1600
• Offenbach 1715
• Warsaw 1876
• Jerusalem 1970

More works by Gikatilla

• Sefer Ginnat Egoz ( 'garden of nuts', 1274) - A book on the mystical meaning of the names of the vowels and the alphabet ( gematria , Notarikon , Temura ha-Kohen), the influences of Jacob from Soria shows and enigmatic Yetzirah commentary Togarmis in corrects many areas.
• Song -Comment lost (Schemitott).
• Kelalei ha-Mitzvot - to the Halacha
• Sefer ha-Meshalim - Proverbs
• Scha'ar ha-Niqud - about the vowels
• Perush Haggadah schel Pesach - Kabbalistic commentary on Passover
• a comment on the merkabah
• Scha'are Zedek (also: Scha'ar ha-Shamayin ): a repetition of the results from the Scha'are Orah ; again the Sefirot are arranged in ascending order
• Or ha-Sekhel (light of the intellect)

Translations

• Paulus Riccius : Portae Lucis. - Latin translation, main source of the Christian Renaissance Kabbalah.
• Jakob Winter , August Wünsche : Jewish literature since the end of the canon. Vol. 3: History of the poetic, cabalistic, historical and modern literature of the Jews . Trier 1896, p. 267 (only excerpts).
• Avi Weinstein: Gates of Light. Walnut Creek, London, New Delhi 1992.

literature

• Gershom Scholem : Jewish mysticism in its main currents . Metzner, Frankfurt am Main 1957.
• Moshe Idel : Kabbalah. New Perspectives . Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1988, ISBN 0-300-03860-7 .
• Shlomo Blickstein: Between Philosophy and Mysticism. A Study of the Philosophical-Qabbalistic Writings of Joseph Giqatila . University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor 1988, (New York, Jewish Theological Seminary, Diss., 1983).
• Angel Sáenz-Badillos, Judit Targarona Borrás: Diccionario de autores judios. (Sefarad. Siglos X-XV). El Almendro, Córdoba 1988, ISBN 84-86077-69-9 , ( Estudios de Cultura Hebrea 10), p. 186.
• Federico Dal Bo, Emanation and Philosophy of Language. An Introduction to Joseph ben Abraham Giqatilla , Los Angeles, Cherub Press, 2019.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Johann Maier : The Kabbalah . Introduction - Classical Texts - Explanations. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-39659-3 , p. 15 .
2. ↑ ^{a b} Gershom Scholem : The Jewish mysticism in its main currents (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft . Volume 330 ). 1st edition. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1980, p. 213 f . (English: Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism . Translated by Gershom Scholem and Nettie Katzenstein-Sutro).
3. ↑ ^{a b} Gershom Scholem: The Jewish mysticism in its main currents (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft . Volume 330 ). 1st edition. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1980, p. 231 f . (English: Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism . Translated by Gershom Scholem and Nettie Katzenstein-Sutro).