Completed in 1639, the polemical pamphlet Ari Nohem, written by the Venetian rabbi and scholar Leon Modena, had a curious fate: never published in its author's lifetime, it made its first appearance in print in the nineteenth century, sealing Modena's posthumous fame as a fierce opponent of Kabbalah and a detractor of kabbalistic literature. The composition, circulation, and reception of Ari Nohem are now reconstructed, on the basis of an examination of both printed and manuscript sources, in Yaacob Dweck's book The Scandal of Kabbalah. The book argues that Modena used “what has been characterized as a fundamentally medieval medium – the manuscript – to promote a precociously modern position – historical and philosophical scepticism about the origins and religious significance of Kabbalah” (14). Dweck seeks to prove this intriguing argument in a variety of ways, in part by resorting to methodologies developed by scholars of the material history of the book.
Dweck does an excellent job in creating an accessible and plausible narrative that brings us into the thick of the cultural milieu in which Ari Nohem was designed and composed. Nevertheless, The Scandal of Kabbalah raises a set of questions whose answers appear neither simple nor definitive. The first and fundamental question is, why did Modena compose Ari Nohem? As Dweck points out, Modena's criticism of Kabbalah and kabbalistic literature can be traced back to two main concerns, distinct but intertwined. Modena's first and most immediate concern was the enthusiasm for kabbalistic studies among members of his inner circle of students and relatives, and his consequent desire to endorse philosophy as an intellectual alternative to Kabbalah. Reinforcing this concern was the appropriation of kabbalistic elements by Christians and Jewish converts for use in Christian apologetics and missionizing. As Dweck convincingly argues, in response to these challenges Modena tried to diminish the intellectual and religious authority of mysticism by demolishing, on the basis of historical and literary evidence, the claim that Kabbalah was an ancient tradition dating back to Moses at Sinai, as claimed by Jewish authors (as well as some Christians, including Giovanni Pico della Mirandola).
The second concern of Modena behind the composition of Ari Nohem was the spread among Venetian Jews of a deep interest in what Modena regarded as “superstitious” aspects of Kabbalah, disseminated, he charged, by Palestinian emissaries to the Venetian community. Modena's barbs are particularly directed against Israel Sarug, whom Modena first met in the 1590s and who—in his words—was rumored to have “performed frightening things with the Names [of God]” and whose “entire glory [while in Venice] consisted in recognizing the soul of such-and-such a person and who [that soul] had once been” (137). Modena's bitter criticism was also aimed at the legendary narratives, popular among Italian Jews, about the supernatural abilities of recently deceased kabbalists, especially Isaac Luria. Dweck explains Modena's vitriolic remarks about the activity of Palestinian emissaries to Venice as a jealous reaction stirred by his socially marginal position in the community. Although Dweck's interpretation may in part be correct, Modena's attack on figures who, in his opinion, were exploiting the credulity of the congregants, may well have had deeper sources. The theory of metempsychosis was for him a dangerous diversion from commonly held theories concerning the post-mortem fate of human beings. He was acutely aware of the problematic nature of this theory in Christian eyes, as demonstrated when he learned of the publication in France of his Historia de' Riti and experienced great anxiety about his mention in this work of the theory of the transmigration of souls. Modena, who also authored a Hebrew refutation of the theory of transmigration titled Ben David, seems to have been particularly concerned about how Jews would appear to their Christian hosts if there were among them people who held heretical views on the soul. On the other hand, Modena's sarcastic and sceptical attitude toward the worshipful and mythologizing stories about Isaac Luria seems rather dictated by his discomfort with Jewish beliefs and practices that bore too close a resemblance to Christian ones, especially the ubiquitous hagiographic materials in the religious propaganda of the Counter-Reformation Church.
A second question Dweck raises is whether Ari Nohem really posed “a formidable challenge to the culture of Kabbalah,” and whether Modena can be rightly considered as incarnating the “new figure” of “the cultural critic” (21). Though Kabbalah was undoubtedly a significant component of the intellectual culture of Venice, its real strength was its appeal to a wider audience through its penetration of popular ritual and devotion. Although the initiative behind the organization of mystical study groups and mystically-inclined devotional confraternities often came from practitioners of theoretical Kabbalah, an examination of the literature produced within some of these circles demonstrates that adherents were not expected to be fully aware of the often abstruse kabbalistic significance of the rites they performed. As Dweck points out, Modena's own practice testified to the absorption of kabbalistic rites into the everyday life of Italian Jews. In the first of his two wills, he gave instruction for his funeral to follow “the customs of the Levantines,” which included the performance of seven hakafot around his grave. Another Kabbalistic funerary rite that is mentioned in Modena's Autobiography is the so called ḥibbut ha-kever, to which Modena refers, though in a cautiously sceptical tone, when he recounts how he sped up arrangements for his father's funeral in order to “spare him the beating of the dead by the demons (if it really exists).” Moreover, documentary evidence shows that Modena was also involved in the activities of the local Shomrim la-Boker confraternity (a group devoted to pre-dawn penitential prayer), for whose members he composed one of the few liturgical poems he authored, a hymn inspired by the newly introduced ritual of Yom Kippur Katan, a day of fasting and prayer celebrated on the eve of the New Moon. In this respect, Modena not only, as Dweck states, “witnessed the transformation of Jewish society, culture, and institutions through the spread of Kabbalah,” but also actively and naturally took part into it. In light of this, it seems that Modena's critical history of Kabbalah was not simply a reaction to “a society saturated with Kabbalah” (1), or an effort to undermine the role of mysticism in Venetian religious and cultural life. Rather it was aimed at delegitimizing the intellectual authority of some of Kabbalah's recent exponents, whose teachings appealed to young minds and distracted them from what Modena saw as the core of traditional Jewish studies, i.e. legalistic and philosophical studies.
While Dweck does not reach a clear conclusion concerning whether Ari Nohem was intended for print, a limited circulation of the work within the immediate circle of Modena's disciples, friends, and colleagues was perfectly in tune with Modena's highly self-conscious shaping of his own public image through the careful selection of his works for publication and circulation during his lifetime. In light of such circumstances, it is no surprise if, as Dweck observes with unveiled disappointment in his epilogue, Modena's attempt to reduce the stature of Kabbalah was doomed to failure. The inexorable process of welding together law and mysticism that had started with Joseph Caro was nearing its high point among Italian Jews. As a matter of fact, some thirty years later, the belief in the beating of the dead by demons in the afterlife would become the subject of a long poem by the kabbalist and legal authority Moses Zacuto, entitled Tofteh ‘Arukh, a work that nourished popular devotion and religious imagery for generations.
To sum up, The Scandal of Kabbalah is a valuable study. It situates Modena's work in a wide variety of contexts, each of which enriches and challenges our understanding of Ari Nohem. Clearly written and highly readable, Dweck's book contains only a few inaccuracies in an otherwise precise and informed account: the correct spelling of the family name of “Baruch di Benveneto” (153) is Benevento, after the homonymous town in southern Italy; there is no evidence that Pico della Mirandola ever studied Kabbalah under the guidance of Elijah Delmedigo (as Dweck seems to maintain [153])—though it is true that Delmedigo supplied the young humanist with a list of Hebrew authors of Kabbalah, and promised him a copy of Menaḥem Recanati's kabbalistic Commentary on the Pentateuch; Gorizia, today a town on the border of Italy and Slovenia, was under Habsburg rule until the end of World War I (and not until 1861, as stated by Dweck [205]).
