Medicalizing Magic and Ethics: Rereading Lurianic Practice

Abstract

Abstract:Recent years witnessed a growing scholarly awareness to the centrality of practice among early modern kabbalists, and particularly in Lurianic Kabbalah. While the importance of human action to this branch of Safedian Kabbalah has long been recognized, the significance of its "over-detailed," "bewildering," practical discourse to the formation of its meaning has received much less attention. This article reexamines how R. Hayim Vital, Luria's closest disciple, shaped the Lurianic notion of action, through an exploration of one of the most highly technical and formulaic practical loci in his writings: the tikune avonot (sin amendments or penitentials). The article proposes a reading of these practical formulae as a medical, or rather medicalized, discourse, closely related to the contents of Vital's lifelong medical activity—a factor that has been hitherto almost entirely neglected in the Lurianic scholarship. The article analyses these penitentials through the two traditions that have been presented as lying at their basis, the magical prescriptive tradition and the pietistic (especially Ashkenazi), so-called "ethical," penitential literature. It demonstrates in what ways they are altered by the discursive presence of medicine, and moreover, how medical discourse provides a key to the uniqueness of the Lurianic discourse of action, as it arises from the details of these tikune avonot. Thus, the article shows that in order to comprehend the rise in the place of action in Lurianic Kabbalah, one must acknowledge the oft-concealed contribution of epistemic shifts—such as the assimilation of medical discourse—to changing kabbalistic perceptions and attitudes.