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Liber XX · Kabbalah

Liber XX · Kabbalah · Chapter V: Lurianic Kabbalah

Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto: Padua Kabbalist and The Path of the Just

Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto (Ramchal, 1707–1746): the Padua kabbalist's maggid, the rabbinic ban, The Path of the Just, his Kabbalah and his death in Acre.

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Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto (1707–1746), known by the acronym Ramchal, was an Italian Jewish kabbalist, ethical writer and poet from Padua. As a young man he claimed to receive revelations from a heavenly teacher, a maggid, and gathered a circle of disciples devoted to hastening redemption; rabbinic authorities, fearful of a new Sabbatean movement, forced him to stop teaching Kabbalah and drove him into exile. In Amsterdam he wrote Mesillat Yesharim (The Path of the Just), one of the most widely studied books of Jewish ethics, and he died in Acre in the Land of Israel, probably in 1746.

Early Life and Learning in Padua§

Luzzatto was born in 1707 into a prosperous merchant family of Padua, a city whose university attracted Jewish medical students from across Europe and whose Jewish community combined rabbinic learning with Italian culture. His principal teacher was Rabbi Isaiah Bassan, who introduced him to Kabbalah and remained his loyal supporter. The young Luzzatto also learned Latin and Italian literature, rhetoric and classical poetics.

His early writings show this breadth. He composed Hebrew poetry and plays, among them a drama on Samson, and a treatise on rhetoric, Leshon Limmudim, printed in Mantua in 1727. Later historians of Hebrew literature regarded his allegorical dramas, with their polished biblical Hebrew and their Italian models, as forerunners of modern Hebrew writing, and Simon Ginzburg's English biography (1931) called him the founder of modern Hebrew literature.

The Maggid and the Padua Circle§

In 1727, when he was about twenty, Luzzatto began to report that a maggid, a heavenly voice or angelic mentor, was speaking through him and revealing the secrets of the Torah. Such revelations had a respected precedent: the sixteenth-century jurist Joseph Karo had recorded the words of his own maggid in Safed. Under this inspiration Luzzatto wrote a large body of texts in the Aramaic style of the Zohar, including seventy new tikkunim modelled on the Tikkunei Zohar and a work sometimes called the "Second Zohar".

Around him gathered a small circle (hevrah) of students and friends, among them Moses David Valle and Jekuthiel Gordon, a medical student from Vilna. In 1731 members signed a written covenant committing them to continuous study of the Zohar in rotation, undertaken not for personal reward but for the repair of the divine world and the redemption of Israel and the Shekhinah. Documents from the circle, studied by Isaiah Tishby and later scholars, suggest that its members understood themselves in messianic and reincarnational terms, with Luzzatto seen as a new Moses, and that they attached cosmic meaning to his marriage in 1731 to Zipporah Finzi. These ideas were rooted in Lurianic Kabbalah, with its doctrine of the repair (tikkun) of the shattered vessels.

Rabbinic Opposition and the Ban of 1735§

The circle's activity became known beyond Padua when Gordon described the maggid's revelations in enthusiastic letters to rabbis abroad. One of them reached Moses Hagiz, a rabbi in Altona near Hamburg who had spent decades exposing hidden followers of Sabbatai Zevi. For Hagiz and many others, the combination of new revelations, a young charismatic teacher and talk of redemption recalled the catastrophe of 1666, when the messiah of Smyrna had converted to Islam; see Sabbateanism.

Under pressure, Luzzatto agreed in 1730 to stop writing in the name of the maggid and to deposit his writings with his teacher Bassan. The controversy revived in the following years. In 1735 he left Italy for Amsterdam. Passing through Frankfurt, he was compelled to sign a declaration renouncing the study and writing of Kabbalah outside narrow limits, and in the same year the rabbis of Venice issued a ban against him and ordered his Kabbalistic writings to be handed over; some were destroyed. Modern scholars generally reject the charge that Luzzatto was a Sabbatean, though they debate how far his messianic ideas resembled those of the earlier movement.

Mesillat Yesharim: The Path of the Just§

In Amsterdam, where the Portuguese Jewish community received him, Luzzatto lived quietly, by tradition supporting himself by grinding lenses or polishing diamonds, and turned to ethics, logic and literature. Mesillat Yesharim, printed in Amsterdam in 1740, is his best-known book. It is built on a rabbinic saying attributed to Rabbi Pinhas ben Yair, which describes a ladder of spiritual qualities: Torah leads to watchfulness, watchfulness to zeal, zeal to cleanliness, and so on through separation, purity, piety, humility and the fear of sin, to holiness.

Luzzatto devotes chapters to each rung, explaining what the quality is, what hinders it and how it may be acquired. His introduction states the premise plainly: a person is placed in this world to perfect himself and to attach himself to God, and the commandments are the means. The tone is calm, analytical and psychologically acute, and the book makes no overt use of Kabbalistic terminology, which allowed it to circulate among readers who were wary of mysticism.

Its influence was immense. Hasidic masters valued it, the Lithuanian Mussar movement founded by Rabbi Israel Salanter in the nineteenth century made it a central text for daily study, and it remains among the most widely read works of Jewish ethics. An English translation by Mordecai M. Kaplan, The Path of the Upright, appeared in 1936.

Luzzatto's Kabbalah: Derekh Hashem and the 138 Openings§

Luzzatto's Kabbalistic thought is marked by an unusual drive for clarity and system. In Kelah Pithei Hokhmah ("138 Openings of Wisdom"), written in Padua, he presented Lurianic doctrine as a sequence of numbered principles, explaining the sefirot, the divine "faces" (partzufim) and the process of emanation in terms of God's will and governance of the world. His recurring theme is the revelation of divine unity: creation exists so that God's sole rule may be shown, and history moves toward the moment when evil, permitted for a time, will be overcome and that unity made manifest.

Derekh Hashem ("The Way of God") sets out a whole theology in this spirit, treating creation, providence, the soul, prophecy and the commandments in plain Hebrew with Kabbalistic principles beneath the surface. It was printed only long after his death and is now widely studied, in English through Aryeh Kaplan's translation of 1977. Jonathan Garb has discussed the trance-like states of Luzzatto's circle in a comparative study, and Moshe Idel has examined his messianic ideas within the wider history of Jewish messianic mysticism. For the system Luzzatto was interpreting, see What Is Kabbalah? and The Ten Sefirot and the Tree of Life.

Acre, Death and Legacy§

In 1743 Luzzatto left Amsterdam for the Land of Israel, perhaps hoping that there he would again be free to teach Kabbalah. He settled in Acre, and there, according to the usual account, he died of plague with his wife and son in 1746; some sources give 1747. Tradition holds that he was buried in Tiberias, near the grave attributed to Rabbi Akiva, though this cannot be confirmed.

Luzzatto's reputation grew after his death. His ethical work entered the curriculum of Lithuanian yeshivot, his Kabbalistic writings were copied and printed, and figures in both the Hasidic and the rabbinic camps claimed him as an authority; on the Hasidic movement that arose in his lifetime, see Hasidism and the Baal Shem Tov. Writers of the Hebrew Enlightenment honoured his dramas, and modern scholarship has recovered the history of his circle. Few figures connect so many strands of eighteenth-century Judaism: Italian humanism, Lurianic Kabbalah, the trauma of Sabbateanism and the ethical piety that would shape Jewish education for two centuries.

Frequently asked questions§

Who was the Ramchal?§

Ramchal is the acronym of Rabbi Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto (1707–1746), an Italian kabbalist, ethicist and Hebrew poet from Padua. He is best known as the author of Mesillat Yesharim and Derekh Hashem.

Why was Luzzatto opposed by other rabbis?§

His claims of revelations from a maggid, his new Zohar-style writings and the messianic hopes of his circle alarmed rabbis who remembered the Sabbatean movement. They forced him to stop writing in the maggid's name, restricted his study of Kabbalah and issued a ban in 1735.

What is Mesillat Yesharim about?§

It is a guide to spiritual self-improvement, structured as a ladder of virtues from watchfulness and zeal to piety, humility and holiness. It became a central text of the Mussar movement and is still widely studied.

Where did Luzzatto die?§

He died in Acre, in the Land of Israel, probably in 1746, during an epidemic of plague; some sources give 1747. Tradition places his grave in Tiberias.

Sources and further reading§