The Maggid of R.
Yosef Karo
Source Sheet by Akiva Weisinger
Shavuot Night, Salonika, 1533
”Chag HaShavuot HaNe’elam”, Rachel Elior
“On that occasion, as they were engaged in a merry ceremony or the mystical wedding
known as tiqqun leil shavu`ot in the Zoharic tradition, that will be explained below, they
received the bitter news that their colleague, the messianic kabbalist Solomon Malkho
(1500-1532), had been burned alive at the stake. Malkho was born a converso in 1500, after
the enforced baptism on all the Jews of Portugal in 1497, and lived as a Catholic Christian
unaware of his Jewish origins until his early twenties, attaining a prominent position in
the Portuguese court. When he was 24 he met a Jew from Ethiopia, David HaReuveni, who
told him on an unknown Jewish community on the shores of the red Sea. The young
converso publicly returned to Judaism, choosing the name Malkho (“his king”) on the
basis of 2 Sam. 22:51—“[God is a] tower of victory to His king [malko] [and] deals
graciously with His anointed [meshiho; His messiah]”—and sought to advance a political
messianic movement on account of the help of the Ethiopian Jews, who lived in Christian
Ethiopia, to the Habsburg Catholic ruler, Carl the fifth, against the Othman empire. In
return he had asked that the Jews will be permitted to settle in the Land of Israel when the
Habsburgs will conquer it from the Othman ruler. His religious conversion to Judaism was
condemned as a deadly sin by the Catholic Inquisition and he was burned as a heretic at
the stake in Mantua in November 1532. Malkho’s attempt to work for redemption through
international political means engendered hope and inspired confidence in the generation
that had been expelled from Spain and Portugal and generated messianic hopes in the
hearts of the thousands of Jews that were left in Portugal as Maranos (enforced converts to
Catholicism)—he had been, after all, an officer in the Portuguese court—and the news of
his death, which did not reach Adrianopolis until Shavu'ot night, 1533, embodied the loss
of that messianic hope. The tragic news produced an extreme disparity between the
intense joy of the festival of renewing the covenant and receiving the Torah—a joy felt by
those participating in the tiqqun leil shavu`ot—and the no less intense mourning over the
terrible death of the last messianic kabbalist, the only man who embodied a realistic hope
for redemption during the first third of the sixteenth century.”
Rabbi Shlomo HaLevi Alkabetz (16th century Safed, Israel), as quoted by
Rabbi Isaiah Halevi Horowitz
The pious one (Rabbi Yosef Caro) and I agreed to make a mighty effort on Shavuot night to keep
sleep from our eyes, and not to stop learning for even one second. Thank G-d we were successful.
Indeed, when you hear what transpired, it will enliven your souls.
For the night of Shavuot, this is the order of study I prepared. Verses from Scripture:….* All this we
chanted aloud in a spirit of great fear and awe, with melody and trepidation. But what will be told
next won't be believed.
After all the verses, we recited aloud all the mishnayot of Zeraim (the first of the Six Orders) and
then we started again, learning it in the way of true learning, and we completed two tractates. At
that moment, the Creator graced us and we heard a great voice coming from Rabbi Caro. Many of
the words were unintelligible, the syllables chopped short. The people nearby in the Beit Midrash
heard but could not understand. The voice was very pleasing but at the same time was growing
continually stronger and we fell on our faces from the great awe; no one dared to lift his eyes and
face to see.
The voice spoke, "Listen my beloved, those who most glorify the Creator, my loved ones, peace to
you. Happy are you and happy those that bore you. Happy are you in this world and happy you
will be in the World to Come, because you took it upon yourselves to crown Me on this night. It
has been many years since my crown has fallen, and there has been no one to comfort Me. I
had been cast to the dust embracing the filth, but now you have restored the crown.
"Strengthen yourselves my dear ones; forge ahead my beloved; be happy and joyous, and know
that you are among the exalted. You merited to be in the King's palace. The voice of your Torah
and breath of your mouths arose before G-d and pierced through the surroundings and many
firmaments, until the messenger-angels on high were quieted, and the fire-angels hushed and all
G-d's lofty army listened to your voices.
"I am the Mishna that admonishes mankind. I have come to speak to you. If only there were ten
of you, you would have ascended higher. Even so, you have elevated yourselves, and those who
bore you. You are fortunate, my dear ones, for because of you, sleep passed from the eyes of those
who bore you . I have been summoned this night through those gathered in this great and
prestigious city. You are not like those lying on their beds, sleeping a sleep that is 1/60th of death,
besmirching their beds. You cleaved to the One and have pleased Him. Therefore, my children,
strengthen yourselves and strive forth in my love, my Torah, and my fear.
"If you could imagine even one thousandth myriad of my pain, no joy could enter your hearts, no
laughter could escape your mouths, considering that on your account I have been cast to the dust.
Therefore, strengthen and fortify yourselves my children, my dear ones who glorify Me. Do not
halt your efforts, for the thread of kindness is drawn to you, and your Torah is sweet before Him.
Therefore, stand my sons, my dear ones, on your feet and elevate me. With a loud voice, as on Yom
Kippur, declare, 'Baruch Shem Kevod Malchuto L'Olam Va'Ed.'"
We stood up and recited aloud, as bidden. The voice then resumed, "Happy are you, my children.
Return to your learning and do not stop one minute. Go up to the Land of Israel, because not all
times are equal, and there is no preventing salvation, whether by much or by a little. Do not value
your belongings, for you will partake of the best of the supernal levels. And if you desire and will
obey, the choicest of that land you will consume. Therefore, hurry and move there for I am the
cause that sustains you, and will continue to sustain you. Peace to you in your houses, and peace
in all there is to you. Eternal G-d gives strength to His people and blesses them with peace'."
All these things were spoken to us, and our ears did hear. Additional matters of wisdom were
shared, and great were the promises that brought us all to tears from so much joy. We also heard
of the Shechina's suffering, due to our sins, and the Voice was as a sick person imploring us. Then
we strengthened ourselves until daybreak, reciting verses unceasingly with joy and trembling.
When morning came, we went to immerse in the mikveh, as we did the two previous days, and
there we met the three others that had been absent the night before. We reprimanded them and
told them the favor G-d had wrought us. Their hearts melted and they turned their faces and
wept, as did we. At the same time, we maintained a harsh facade, since it was because of them
that we had not merited greater revelations. The lack of a minyan had imposed a severe
limitation, as we were told. They answered that they would afford us this opportunity on the
second night (of Shavuot): we would join and be ten. We consented even though we had slept not
a wink the first night. During the day, we also had not rested because after the mincha prayer
Rabbi Caro had delivered a sermon. Still, we girded our loins, performing the same rites as the
night before, and did do with much joy because now we were ten.
On this occasion, however, the voice did not wait until we started to recite the Mishna. Nor did it
wait until midnight (as it had the night before, when it began exactly at midnight), but it made
itself heard immediately. As we were reading the verses of Shma, the voice of our cherished one
knocked and began, "Listen my dear ones, those most glorifying G-d. Arise! And raise those
who are lying in dust, through the mystical secret "of the dust from Above."
Many matters of wisdom He taught, and afterwards said, "Happy are you, my dear ones that raise
me. How high you have been elevated now that you are ten, as is proper in all matters of holiness.
Happy are you in the future world. Fear not the reproach of man or his goading because you
elevate all of Israel. Know that you are among the exalted, that glory rinses your hands and that
the thread of kindness is drawn to you. If permission were granted, your eyes would behold the
fire surrounding this house. Therefore, strengthen yourselves and do not break the bond with
Above. Say aloud, 'Shma Yisrael...Baruch Shem Kevod...'"
After another half an hour, we returned to studying the secrets of Torah. Exactly at midnight the
Voice returned a second time, teaching for over an hour and a half. It praised the learning and
said,
"See and hear this voice speaking? Ask your elders and know that for hundreds of years you are
the only ones to merit such an experience. Therefore, from now on, be alert to help each other,
and to strengthen the weak. Hold yourselves as leaders, for you are the princes of the king's
palace, and you have merited to enter the hallway. Now strive to enter the inner chamber, but do
not forsake the entry, for he who leaves the gate-his blood is on his head.
"Wake up my sons and understand what I am explaining to you. Wake up, my dear ones, and
strive to be sons of valor... Behold the day is coming when men will abandon the Exile and their
silver and worldly pleasures, and gods of gold, and desires of wealth, and travel to the Holy Land.
It is possible, except that you are sinking in the mire of worldly vanities... Behold! You have
merited what others, for many generations, have not."
These matters continued at great length. All who were present, resolved to turn to G-d with all
their might.
Quotes From Maggid Meisharim
Translated by Louis Jacobs and HL Gordon
What is the Maggid?
Indeed I am the Mishnah speaking from your mouth, I am the mother that admonishes
her sons, I am embracing you and you should adhere to me always, so that my splendor
will be upon you and your splendor upon me etc.
Methodology and Form
“The eve of the Sabbath, 29th of Iyyar, portion Be-Midbar Sinai. I ate but little and drank the same
and I studied the Mishnah at the beginning of the night. I then slept until daybreak so that when I
awoke the sun was shining. I was very upset, saying to myself: “Why did I not arise during the
night so that the word should come to me as beforetimes?” Nevertheless, I began to rehearse the
Mishnah and I studied five chapters. As I was reading the Mishnah the voice of my beloved
knocked in my mouth and the lyre sang of itself. It began by saying: “The Lord is with you
wherever you go, and the Lord will prosper whatever you have done and will do, but you must
cleave to Me and to My Torah and to My Mishnah at all times, not as you have done this night.
For, although you did sanctify yourself in your food and drink, yet you slept like a sluggard, for the
door revolves upon its hinges but the sluggard is on his bed, and you did not follow your good
habit of rising to study the Mishnah. For this you deserve that I should leave and forsake you since
you gave strength to Samael, the serpent and the evil inclination by sleeping until daybreak. But
in the merit of the Six Orders of the Mishnah that you know by heart and in the merit of the self-
tortures and torments you engaged in in years past, and which you still practice, it was agreed in
the Heavenly Academy that I should return to converse with you as in former times and that I
should neither leave you nor forsake you. And so have I done as you can see. I speak to you as a
man speaks to his neighbor.
.....
Then slumber fell upon me and I slept for about half an hour. I awoke in distress in that He did not
converse with me at length as in former times. I began again to rehearse the Mishnah and before I
had completed two chapters, the voice of my beloved began to knock in my mouth, saying:
“Although you imagined that I had forsaken you and left you, do not think I really will leave you
before I have fulfilled My promise not to withhold good from your mouth. But you must cleave to
Me and to the fear of Me....
Ascetic Practices
First of all you must take care never to allow your thoughts to dwell on anything other than the
Mishnah, the Torah and the precepts. If any other thought enters your heart, cast it away.
2. Take care to have no other thought in mind during your prayers except the actual words of the
prayers, not even thoughts of the Torah and the precepts.
3. Take care never to speak an unnecessary word, whether by day or by night.
4. Take care never to speak anything that leads to laughter and if you hear such, never laugh. This
includes the admonition never to scoff at all.
5. Never lose your temper over merely material things.
6. Take care to eat no meat at all for forty days. On the Sabbath you can eat a little. Do not eat
horseradish.
7. Drink no wine during these days except one drink at the end of the meal. 8. Be gentle in your
replies to all men.
9.Never be proud. Be exceedingly low in spirit.
10. Sleep in your own bed. When you have to have marital relations in order to fulfill the precept
to be fruitful and multiply, rise up from her bed a half an hour after you have completed the act
and return to your own bed.
11. Take care not to enjoy your eating and drinking and your marital relations. It should be as if
demons were compelling you to eat that food or perform that act so that if it were at all possible
for you to exist without food and drink or to fulfill the duty of procreation without having
intercourse you would prefer it.
12. Have your sins always in mind and be anxious because of them.
13. Do not eat for dessert more than one measure and no more than twenty of melons, grapes and
raisins. Except on Sabbaths and festivals do not eat of more than one type of fruit. At the
beginning of the meal cut three measures of bread and during that meal eat no more. Never drink
your fill of water.
14. Train yourself to keep your eyes downcast so that you will never have cause to gaze at a
woman forbidden to you.
15. Have the Mishnah in mind during the meal and study a chapter of the Mishnah before Grace.
16. Do not allow your mind to wander away from Me even for a single moment and have as little
pleasure as possible. When you are at meals and experience a special longing for some food or
drink, desist from it. If you do this, it will be as if you offered a sacrifice at each meal and your
table will be a veritable altar upon which you slaughter the evil inclination.
17. Do not drink the wine at meals in one gulp and take care with regard to how you measure it. Be
not afraid that this may affect your eyesight. On the contrary, both your eyesight
and your strength will increase.
18. Have little further to do with the pleasures of eating and drinking. Do not make a habit of
eating a particular food that you enjoy especially. Substitute for it, rather, another type of food
from which you do not derive such enjoyment, as Al-Constantin did
Scolding
"Was it a good thing that you failed to read the Mishnah yesterday? Was it good that you have
been so careless lately about thinking on the Torah? You have seen what happened to the business
in which you were engaged. Note how the Holy One, blessed be He, punishes measure for
measure, and take greater care in the future.
How can you wish me to converse with you when you eat horseradish? Be careful, therefore, to eat
only a little. I have already hinted to you the mystery of the good smell and the bad smell.
Is it good that you fail to go early to the synagogue and is it so bad for you to be among the first
ten there? Consequently, from now onward be exceedingly careful in your deeds and also in your
words and do not fly into a rage as you often do.
Encouragement
“......All the saints in the Garden of Eden, the Shekhinah at their head, will come out to meet you,
welcoming you with many songs and praises. They will lead you like a groom who walks in front
and they will accompany you to your canopy. I have prepared for you seven canopies, one within
the other, and seven canopies, one higher than the other. Within the innermost and highest of the
canopies there will be seven rivers of fragrant balsam. It is all there ready for you. And there will
be a golden throne with seven steps, embedded with numerous pearls and precious stones. All the
saints will accompany you and sing before you until you arrive at the first canopy. There they will
clothe you with a precious robe and so on at each canopy so that by the time you arrive at the final
canopy you will be clothed with fourteen precious robes. Afterwards, two of the saints who
accompany you will stand, one to the right and one to the left, like groomsmen for a groom, and
they will help you to ascend the throne. As you ascend the throne they will put another robe on
you in addition to the fourteen so that as you sit on the throne you will be wearing fifteen precious
robes. They will take a crown hanging there and place it upon your head. There you will sit with
one to the right of you and one to the left. All the saints will sit around you and you will discourse
on the Torah. This will continue for one hundred and eighty days…..
The Holy One, blessed be He, and His Academy have sent me to tell you these mysteries in order
that you might see yourself occupying such a stage. Sin not, therefore, not even in thought. Let not
the evil inclination get the better of you and if he endeavors to do so rebuke him, saying: “Shall a
man like me, destined for all this glory, sin in thought?” Concealed within these mysteries there
are numerous higher ones. Open your eyes. Behold, all the sages of Israel plead for you to the Holy
One, blessed be He, namely, Rabbi Isaac Alfasi, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon and Rabbi Asher ben
Jehiel, because you are engaged in explaining their words and deciding in accordance with their
opinions and you explain these and frequently decide in accordance with their opinions, For from
the days of Moses, teacher of all the prophets, the Oral Torah was not recorded in writing until the
days of Rabbi Judah the Prince. And from his day the whole Mishnah had not been explained until
Rav Ashi came, collecting all the teachings and rendering decisions. And from his day there were
only a few collections of decisions such as the Halakhot Pesukot, etc., until Rabbi Isaac Alfasi,
Rabbi Moses ben Maimon and Rabbi Asher ben Jehiel came to render decisions in the whole of
talmudic law. Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, especially, wrought great things in expounding the
whole Torah. And from that time until the present no one bestirred himself to gather together all
the material of the teachers as you have done.*
Busy yourself constantly with rendering decisions in Jewish law and with the Talmud, the
Kabbalah, the Mishnah, the Tosafot and Rashi, as you are doing. For you combine them and fit one
to the other bringing the hooks into the loops. Because you do this, the Holy One, blessed be He,
loves you and at the time when you arise to offer your prayers and to study, the time when the
Holy One, blessed be He, delights with the saints in the Garden of Eden, namely, at midnight, He
takes delight in you, too, and extends over you a thread of mercy which kisses you with loving
kisses and embraces you. And the Shekhinah converses with you and you become attached in
such a way never achieved by even one in a generation, nay, by one in many generations. From it
you can see how great is the love the Holy One, blessed be He, bears for you. He has stretched out
His right hand to receive you as you repent. These days in which you have repented now shine for
you. Your glory is upon them and theirs upon you. You will be worthy of being burned for the
sanctification of the name. Then will your sins be completely erased, all the dross and rust being
purged by fire. You will be clothed in a robe of light when you ascend to Heaven. There you will be
among the saints of the highest degree.
Busy yourself constantly in the study of the Torah, for when you casuistically examined the
opinions of the Rambam [Rabbi Moses ben Maimon] yesterday, the two views you expressed are
correct and the Rambam is pleased that you have succeeded in uncovering his full meaning and
he is pleased that you always quote his opinions and discuss his views casuistically. Your words
are right except in the few instances I shall show you. When you die, the Rambam will come out to
meet you because you have defended his decisions and, even now, he pleads on your behalf.
“In the discussion of a purification reservoir in which rain water is more than river water (Sab.
65b), the decision of Meir, my chosen and fearing one, is correct. He is always right, and because
he was held in prison in which he died his sins were forgiven and he became pure and clean and
rose to the higher plane to remain with the pious. And you will see that all the codifiers agree with
him except R. Tam, my chosen and fearing one, who sided with Samuel that the river Euphrates
flows out from the rocky mountains and not from rain valleys”
“You were right in your decision to allow fasting on the Sabbath only on three occasions (p. 75),
and you have done well by rejecting the opinion of Jeruham, my hidden one. Wherever you
disagree with him you are right, and I call him ‘my hidden one’ because he is hidden away in the
Garden of Eden (i.e. Paradise), as there are pious men who deserve to reside in Paradise hidden
away but not in the open”
"And he told me further that he would help me to complete my treatise without an error or flaw,
and that the eyes of Israel would become enlightened through it and that I should call it Beth
Joseph (The House of Joseph), for this is the name fit for it, as it is my dwelling in this world and in
the world to come”
Personal Revelations
“You will recognize the mercy and grace of the Holy One, blessed be He, causing you to have such
a sinless wife. For I have informed you already that she was [in a former existence} a virtuous
scholarly man. When you find out who she was in her former life you will be shocked and you will
honor her greatly. You will be ashamed to have coitus with her for the sake of passion alone. You
should know! You should know!” And he [the Maggid }repeated it for more than one hour and
after a slight interval he murmured again—‘‘You should better know’’—as though he hesitated
to enlighten me. Finally he said: ““The Holy One, blessed be He, sent me to inform you of this, in
order that you should appreciate what a great gift He has bestowed upon you; and He has shown
you beforehand that she is yours, in order to relax your mind. Up till now you did not merit her,
and therefore it was necessary to show you that another one is yours, in order that you should
tarry for some time and deserve marrying her by virtue of those self-inflicted sufferings and pains.
You must not reveal it to any man unless I give you a special dispensation. And do not write it
down, lest some people be able to read it.”
Aspirations of Martyrdom
““Blessed is the man who merits to sacrifice his life for the sanctity of the Name of the Holy One,
blessed be He, and particularly one who is consumed by fire. When one is killed or suffocated . his
flesh remains, like that of a sin offering... but the one who is cremated alive by fire... is like a
holocaust, for it is burnt entirely and rises to the Sublime One” (p. 78).
“Your ashes will be collected and placed on my beloved altar” (p. 121). “You will be consumed by
fire ...in order that you may become radiant and lustrous for the world to come” (p. 140) “T will
befriend you with the crowned pious souls and I have in readiness for you a crown beset with
precious stones and pearls and a throne of glory and very costly and excellent purple”
What's Going On Here?
Kabbalah: A Neurocognitive Approach, Shahar Arzy and Moshe Idel
Much of human mental and cognitive activity is unconscious in the sense of
being inaccessible to phenomenal awareness. Examples are automatic
processing (exercised activities performed without awareness), procedural
memory (memorizing how to perform skilled activities such as driving or
riding a bicycle), subliminal perception (processing of stimuli perceived
before being consciously approached), or hypnosis (performance of activities
or failure to remember certain experiences following appropriate suggestion).
These exemplify the fact that consciousness is not an obligatory property of
cognitive activity but an experience that might accompany it.25 It might be
suggested that during maggidic trance and possession, some mental activities
inaccessible to phenomenal awareness are expressed.
Some researchers, however, suggest regarding consciousness not as
awareness of mental states, but rather as a state in which people are able to
integrate their self with the objective world outside of that self. This
integration creates what is normally perceived as “reality.” During
dissociative states the normally integrative functions of identity, memory, or
consciousness are disturbed (or altered), whereas varying degrees of
disruption in information integration across behavioral states underlie the
larger failures of integration of the self and certain cognitive faculties in
dissociation. The disintegration is expressed as events or perceptions that
would ordinarily be connected but during dissociative states become
separated. Another explanation is that during dissociative states continuous
self-processing is not available to consciousness since two or more
information processors operate in parallel without sharing mutual influence.
This conscious/unconscious duality may rely on a combination of explicit and
implicit memories, sometimes resulting in dissociative disorders.
Source Sheet created on Sefaria by Akiva Weisinger
