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Theme Section / Sezione monografica

Dangerous Books
The Hekhalot Texts as Physical Objects
Gideon Bohak, Tel Aviv University

The Hekhalot, or Merkabah, literature is often seen as the earliest stage of

the Jewish mystical tradition.1 It consists of a disparate body of texts that deal
with the Heavenly Palaces (=Hekhalot), with God’s Throne, with His Chariot
(=Merkabah), and with the experiences of those who ascend to the Heavenly
Palaces or “descend” into the Chariot.2 The origins of these texts are a matter
of much scholarly speculation, but there is no doubt that some of them exist-
ed, in one form or another, prior to the Muslim conquest of the Middle East.3
They probably circulated orally at first, but – as we shall see below – there
is no doubt that by the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. some Jews, in several
different Jewish communities, had access to written manuscripts in which
such texts were transmitted. However, as far as we can judge from several
independent reports stemming from Jewish communities that were very dis-
tant from each other, the manuscripts in which this literature was transmitted
were not seen as standard manuscripts of Hebrew literature, but as special
manuscripts, which may only be approached in a state of purity. Failing to
observe this rule could lead to great danger, and it is on this dangerous aspect
of the Hekhalot manuscripts that we shall focus here.
The following study is divided in four parts. In the first, we shall examine
one of the colorful stories found in the Scroll of Ahimaaz, written in southern
Italy in the year 1054 but telling stories of events that purportedly took place
in the ninth and tenth centuries, including a fascinating story about the sad
fate of one Hekhalot manuscript. In the second, we shall turn to a famous
responsum of Hai Gaon (939-1038), writing in Babylonia at the very begin-

1
The research for the present study was funded by the Israel Science Foundation (Grants
no. 635/08 and 986/14).
2
For the most important studies on the Hekhalot literature, see G. Scholem, Major Trends
in Jewish Mysticism (3rd ed.; New York: Schocken, 1954), pp. 40-79; Id., Jewish Gnosticism,
Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1960;
2nd ed. 1965); I. Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (AGAJU 14; Leiden: Brill,
1980; 2nd rev. ed., 2014); D.J. Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses
to Ezekiel’s Vision (TSAJ 16; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988); P. Schäfer, Hekhalot-Studien
(TSAJ 19; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988); Id., The Hidden and Manifest God: Some Major
Themes in Early Jewish Mysticism (transl. A. Pomerance; Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, 1992); for a recent survey, see R.S. Boustan, “The Study of Heikhalot Literature:
Between Mystical Experience and Textual Artifact,” Currents in Biblical Research 6 (2007),
pp. 130-160. Many more studies will be noted below.
3
See below, n. 36.

Hen 39(2/2017) ISSN 0393-6805

Bohak - Dangerous Books 307

ning of the second millennium, and describing, among many other things, the
Hekhalot texts known to him. As both these passages share a similar notion
about the Hekhalot manuscripts as dangerous, we shall then try, in the third
and fourth parts of this study, to see whether the contents of the Hekhalot
texts indeed justify such an attitude, and whether the format of the earliest
Hekhalot manuscripts currently available to us reveals any awareness of their
special nature. Throughout, we shall pay special attention to the physical
features of the manuscripts in question.

I. The Book in the Sea: Hekhalot Texts in the Scroll of Ahimaaz

Megillat Ahimaaz, or the Scroll of Ahimaaz, is the name given by modern

scholars to a family chronicle written in Oria, in southern Italy, in the year
1054, by one Ahimaaz son of Paltiel.4 It tells many stories about Ahimaaz’s
ancestors, and covers the period from the mid-ninth century to the author’s
own times. It is written in Hebrew, in rhymed prose, and its stories often
stretch the modern reader’s credulity far beyond the breaking point.5 One
such story is of special interest for our present enquiry, as it has to do with
the Hekhalot literature. This literature is first mentioned at a very early stage
of the narrative, when Ahimaaz describes Rabbi Amittai – apparently the
earliest of his ancestors of whom he has any knowledge – and his three sons,
Rabbi Shefatiah, Rabbi Hananel and Eleazar, all of whom are described as
“fair and honest, wise and intelligent, learned persons and poets, educators
and teachers to decent pupils.”6 The text goes on, calling them

Princes and lords, who understand secrets (‫)סודים‬, composers of rhymed

verses, adept in the mysteries (‫)רזים‬, watchers (‫ )צופים‬into wisdom,
observers (‫ )מצפים‬of sagacity, speakers of understanding, well-versed

4
For the text, see B. Klar, Megillat Ahimaaz: The Chronicle of Ahimaaz (Jerusalem:
Tarshish, 1944; 2nd ed., Jerusalem: Tarshish, 1973) (Heb.); for a new edition, with an English
translation and a commentary, see R. Bonfil, History and Folklore in a Medieval Jewish
Chronicle: The Family Chronicle of Ahima’az ben Paltiel (Studies in Jewish History and
Culture 22; Leiden: Brill, 2009).
5
For differing scholarly approaches to these stories, see E. Yassif, “Studies in the Narrative
Art of Megilat-Ahimaaz,” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 4 (1984), pp. 18-42 (Heb.);
Id., “Legend and History: Historians Reading Hebrew Legends of the Middle Ages,” Zion 64
(1999), pp. 187-220 (Heb.); R. Bonfil, “Between Eretz Israel and Babylonia,” Shalem 5 (1987),
pp. 1-30 (Heb.); Id., “Myth, Rhetoric, History?: A Study in the Chronicle of Ahima‘az,” in M.
Ben-Sasson - R. Bonfil - J.R. Hacker (eds.), Culture and Society in Medieval Jewry: Studies
Dedicated to the Memory of Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson (Jerusalem: Shazar, 1989), pp. 99-135
(Heb.); for Ahimaaz’s familiarity with some of the specific magical practices of his times see Y.
Harari, “The Scroll of Ahimaaz and the Jewish Magical Culture: A Note on the Sotah Ordeal,”
Tarbiz 75 (2006), pp. 185-202 (Heb.).
6
Klar, Megillat Ahimaaz, p. 12; Bonfil, History and Folklore, pp. 234-237 (whose transla-
tion I use).
308 Theme Section / Sezione monografica

(‫ )משכילים‬in Sefer ha-Yashar, gazers (‫ )מסתכלים‬onto the secret (‫)בסוד‬

of the Merkabah.”7

Thus, the three brothers are described not only as learned poets and teach-
ers, but also as experts in the esoteric lore of their time, including Sefer ha-
Yashar, a book of angelology and magic that we shall encounter once more
when we read Hai Gaon’s responsum, and which we know from many other
sources, and the secret of God’s Chariot, one of the main themes of Hekhalot
literature.8 That this is the literature which Ahimaaz had in mind is made
clear by the vocabulary he uses, including words like sod and raz, which
are both very common in Hekhalot literature, and verbs like SKL and ẒPH,
which also are very typical of this literature. Moreover, that Ahimaaz’s an-
cestors were well versed in Hekhalot lore is made clear by the poetry they
wrote, which displays a close familiarity with many of the motifs, and some
of the specific vocabulary, of the Hekhalot literature.9
Reading this passage, we might have concluded that Amittai’s sons had
at their disposal one book of Jewish magic, Sefer ha-Yashar, and a set of eso-
teric traditions about the Merkabah that may have reached them either in oral
or in written form. But in a later passage in the Scroll, we hear of the death of
Rabbi Shefatiah, “who had served God without deceit, and dealt with (‫)עסק‬
the mysteries (‫ )ברזי‬of Heaven and with its secret (‫ – ”)ובסודו‬yet another
oblique reference to the Hekhalot literature.10 We then hear of his son, Amit-
tai, who was pious and learned like his father, and dealt extensively with the
study of the Torah, though no hint is given of his interest in the Hekhalot
literature. This Amittai had a son, Abdiel, about whom Ahimaaz has nothing
to say, and Abdiel had a son, Baruch, who was not a Torah-sage like his fore-
fathers. This Baruch, we are now told, had at home a Sefer ha-Merkabah, or a
Book of the Chariot, the one which the late R. Shefatiah had used all his life.
In other words, this book was transmitted from father to son for at least four
generations, regardless of the fact that in the first generation it was closely
studied by its owner, but by the second and third generation there is no hint
of such an interest, and by the fourth generation its owner was quite an igno-
ramus. This book, we may conclude, was an important family heirloom, but
no longer a textual object of scholarly study. But it was an ill-fated book, for

7
Klar, Megillat Ahimaaz, p. 12; Bonfil, History and Folklore, pp. 234-237 (whose transla-
tion I use, with some modifications).
8
For Sefer ha-Yashar, see I. Wandrey, “Das Buch des Gewandes” und “Das Buch des
Aufrechten”: Dokumente eines magischen spätantiken Rituals, ediert, kommentiert und
übersetzt (TSAJ 96; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), pp. 183-314.
9
See, for example, the poems adduced by Klar, Megillat Ahimaaz, pp. 79-83 (Heb.), and
the detailed analysis by O. Münz-Manor, “A Prolegomenon to the Study of Hekhalot Traditions
in European Piyyut,” in R. Boustan - M. Himmelfarb - P. Schäfer (eds.), Hekhalot Literature in
Context: From Byzantium to Babylonia (TSAJ 153; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), pp. 231-
242, on pp. 236-237. See also M. Idel, “From Italy to Ashkenaz and Back: On the Circulation
of Jewish Mystical Traditions,” Kabbalah 14 (2006), pp. 47-94.
10
Klar, Megillat Ahimaaz, p. 29; Bonfil, History and Folklore, p. 307.
Bohak - Dangerous Books 309

it happened one day on the eve of the Sabbath... when the day grew dark,
and the daylight darkened, and the one who had to light the candle was not
there, to light it before the Book of the Chariot. And a certain woman stood
there, and she was menstruant, this cursed woman ‒ may she be erased
from the book of life, and may she be wiped out from the world to come ‒
and she lit the candle before the Torah, and the wrath of God was upon the
family, and many died in that plague, only a few survived out of the many
they were. And there was there an understanding Jew, who realized and
understood the event that had happened. He took the book and placed it
in a vessel of lead, to sink it in the depths of the sea; and the sea retreated,
for about a mile it receded; and the Jew cast the vessel into the sea, and the
sea returned to its place; at once the terrible ordainment was voided and
the plague came to an end. And the memory of Baruch ceased to exist, his
candle faded and was extinguished, for he left behind him none to engage
in the One who reanimates, as he had no son, only one daughter.11

Leaving aside the literary merits of this passage – with its playful use of
words such as “book” and “candle” – we may note that this vignette offers
a very curious description, of an event that involved a book, a menstruant
woman, and a plague that resulted from the woman’s physical proximity to
the book and that subsided only once the book was sealed in a lead box and
thrown into the sea.12 Let us look more closely at this story, and especially
at the Book of the Chariot, which must have been a century old, and perhaps
even much older, when it was ceremoniously dumped into the sea.
We first learn that before this book a candle was burning, at least on the
Sabbath days, but why it was placed there, and who was supposed to light it,
is not really clear. But whereas every other Sabbath the candle was lit by a
man who was supposed to light it, this time no such person was around, and
a certain woman – Baruch’s wife? his daughter? a maidservant?13 – lit the
candle herself. From her perspective, this act may have seen like lighting any
other Sabbath candle, one of the few commandments that are obligatory for

11
Klar, Megillat Ahimaaz, p. 30, Bonfil, History and Folklore, pp. 310-312 (whose transla-
tion I use, with some modifications). For this scene, see also J. Dan, History of Jewish Mysti-
cism and Esotericism (multiple volumes; Jerusalem: Shazar, 2008-), vol. 4, 2009, pp. 238-240
(Heb.), and esp. S.F. Koren, Forsaken: The Menstruant in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (HBI
Series on Jewish Women; Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2011), pp. 44-47.
12
As noted already by Klar, Megillat Ahimaaz, p. 147, a similar story is told by Rabbi
Shlomo Luria (the MAHARSHAL, 1510-1573) about R. Judah the Pious (1150-1217), who,
the story goes, was exiled from Speyer to Regensburg as a divine punishment for the fact that
“his wife touched his book-chest; and he had warned her “Do not approach the chest when you
are impure,” but she had forgotten this, and touched it, and inside it were quires (‫)קונטריסים‬
with holy secrets.” For the text, see Sefer She’elot u-Teshuvot Maharshal (Lemberg, 1859), No.
29, p. 23b. Clearly, the notion that books of esoteric secrets should only be approached in purity
resurfaced in later periods, which lie outside the scope of the present study.
13
Since Ahimaaz introduces the culprit as “a certain (‫ )אחת‬woman,” and later says that
Baruch had “only one (‫ )אחת‬daughter,” he might be hinting that it is the very same woman he
is talking about in both sentences, but I know of no additional support for such a speculation.
310 Theme Section / Sezione monografica

Jewish women, and for them alone. And her action could indeed have ended
well, were it not for the fact that she was menstruant, and the proximity of her
impurity to the sacred book brought about a horrible plague, that decimated
Baruch’s family. Luckily, there was a certain Jew there – certainly not Ba-
ruch himself, since he was an ignoramus – who realized what had happened,
placed the book in a lead box, and tried to throw it into the sea. The text
does not say this, but Oria, where Baruch lived, is about halfway between
the Adriatic Sea and the Gulf of Taranto, and taking the book to the nearest
beach involved a journey of some 25-40 kilometers, depending on which sea
was deemed more suitable for such ritual activities. Moreover, throwing the
book into the sea proved more difficult than one might imagine, since the
sea withdrew in panic, receding for a whole mile before the wise Jew could
throw the box into it. But once the box, and the book, drowned, the plague
immediately stopped. However, the damage had already been done, and Ba-
ruch ended up with no male offspring, only a single daughter.
Several features of this story merit special attention. The first is that in
Ahimaaz’s world, and probably in Baruch’s as well, a Book of the Chariot
is seen as a book of the Torah. This is made clear by the way in which he
explains that “the one who had to light the candle was not there, to light it
before the Book of the Chariot” and that, as a result, the menstruant woman
“lit the candle before the Torah.” Both sentences clearly refer to the very
same book. Moreover, the very practice of lighting a candle before a Book
of the Chariot may have been borrowed from similar practices with regards
to Torah-scrolls, both in the synagogue and at home.14 Above, we noted that
for Ahimaaz Torah-study and the study of Hekhalot literature were one and
the same, but in this passage we see that the physical manuscript in which the
Hekhalot texts were written could be seen by its owners as a book of Torah.
Below, we shall see that this equation may explain the unique form of some
of the earliest Hekhalot manuscripts at our disposal.
A second feature of this story is the danger that ensues when impure ob-
ject or persons, and especially a menstruant woman, approach a holy object.
This is an issue that is well known from the Hekhalot literature itself (as we
shall see below), from the Baraita de-Nidda, and from numerous medieval
Ashkenazi sources, and as it has received much attention in recent years, we
need not delve into it at greater length here.15 A third feature, which has not

14
For this suggestion, see Koren, Forsaken, p. 45.
15
For this issue, see Y. Dinary, “The Profanation of the Holy by the Menstruant Woman
and ‘Takanat Ezra’,” in M.A. Friedman - A. Tal - G. Brin (eds.), Studies in Talmudic Literature,
in Post-Biblical Hebrew and in Biblical Exegesis (Te‘uda 3; Tel-Aviv University, 1983), pp.
17-37 (Heb.); S.J.D. Cohen, “Menstruants and the Sacred in Judaism and Christianity,” in
S.B. Pomeroy (ed.), Women’s History and Ancient History (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 273-299; E. Marienberg, Niddah: Lorsque les juifs conceptualisent
la menstruation (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2003), pp. 215-243; Id., “Menstruation in Sacred
Places: Medieval and Early-Modern Jewish Women in the Synagogue,” Nordisk Judaistik:
Scandinavian Jewish Studies 25 (2004), pp. 7-16; Koren, Forsaken, pp. 28-60; E. Baumgarten,
Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz: Men, Women, and Everyday Religious Observance
Bohak - Dangerous Books 311

received much attention, is the solution to the problem; as the story makes
clear, the plague would have continued until Baruch’s entire household
would have been decimated, were it not for a wise Jew who realized how the
plague began, and that it would not stop until the object because of which it
erupted was safely removed. Like radioactive waste, it had to be placed in
a lead box and thrown into the depth of the sea; this must have been quite a
common practice in Ahimaaz’s world, since elsewhere in the Scroll we learn
that when Rabbi Shefatiah had exorcized a demon from the king’s daughter,
he placed it in a lead vessel, covered the vessel from all sides, sealed it with
the Name of God, and drowned it in the sea.16 The origins of this practice
may go back to a famous story in Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 64a and
Yoma 69b), of how in the days of Ezra the inclination to idolatry – which
looked like a fiery lion – was placed in a lead cauldron, in order to lock it up
for good. There, the claim is that the lead, which is also placed in the lion’s
mouth, will prevent its voice from reaching heaven, and we may only wonder
whether the wise Jew who saved some of Baruch’s household tried to “si-
lence” the polluted book and thus reduce the danger that it posed.17
A fourth aspect that we may stress is the sea’s reaction when the sacred,
but polluted, book was thrown into it. The receding sea is, of course, remi-
niscent of the story of the Exodus, where Moses raises his staff before the
sea and the sea recedes. In rabbinic literature, there are many midrashim that
build on this story, and on the relevant verses in Psalm 114, to describe how
the sea fled from before the staff of Moses, on which the Holy Name of God
had been inscribed. But in this case, the fact that the Book of the Merkabah
was full of powerful divine names probably was not enough to make the sea
recede, for it clearly did not recede before the lead box in which the demon
was sealed with God’s name. But the fact that the book was polluted made it
so dangerous that even the sea at first refused to accommodate it.

II. Useless or Dangerous? Hai Gaon’s Views on Magical and Hekhalot Texts

The Scroll of Ahimaaz is not the most sober of historical chronicles, and
its story about a Hekhalot manuscript that ended up in the Mediterranean Sea
may be taken with more than a grain of sea-salt. In fact, it would have been
easy to dismiss this story as utterly farfetched, were it not for the fact that the
main assumptions that lie behind it are reflected in a much more sober text,

(Jewish Culture and Contexts; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), pp. 21-
50. For the relevant sections of the Baraita de-Niddah, see E. Marienberg, La Baraïta de-
Niddah: Un texte juif pseudo-talmudique sur les lois religieuses relatives à la menstruation
(Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, Sciences religieuses, 157; Turnhout: Brepols,
2012), p. 155, with a French transl. and brief notes on pp. 126-127.
16
Klar, Megillat Ahimaaz, pp. 18-19, Bonfil, History and Folklore, pp. 266-269.
17
Lovers of Shakespeare will surely be reminded of Prospero’s promise to give up his magic,
in The Tempest 5.1.65-66: “And deeper than did ever plummet sound / I’ll drown my book.”
312 Theme Section / Sezione monografica

written at about the same time in a very different Jewish community. Around
the year 1000 C.E., the rabbis of Kairouan, in North Africa, wrote to Baghdad
to ask Hai Gaon (939-1038), the head of the Pumbedita yeshivah, and one of
the greatest rabbis of his generation, about the effectiveness and permissibil-
ity of using God’s Name and other powerful Names. Their original question,
as well as his response, have not been preserved, but as his answer failed to
satisfy the rabbis of Kairouan, they reformulated their questions and insisted
that he should answer them in greater detail. His second response survives,
and it offers many interesting insights into the world of Jewish magic and
mysticism at the end of the first millennium C.E. and the beginning of the
second.18 Of all that he has to say, one passage is extremely relevant for our
own discussion, but to understand its full import we must first quote the
relevant part of the question he was asked by the Rabbis of Kairouan. In
their own letter, they began by stating that they had already asked him about
the Name, and about numerous stories that they have heard about powerful
deeds performed with the help of divine Names, claims which they support
with several specific examples. They also claim that they have some books
in which such knowledge is contained:

And we have several books among us, in which are written some of the
Names, and some names of angels, and form(s) of seals, and they (i.e.,
these books) say, Whoever wants to perform so and so, or to succeed in so
and so, should write so and so like this (i.e., as shown in the book), on (ma-
terial) so and so and should do thus, and the deed will come true for him.
And the elders and the pious people, when they would see these books they
would fear them and would not approach them, and say that a certain man
performed a deed so and so like that which is written in the books, and the
deed did come true, but his own eyes were blinded, and some did not live
through the year, and some did not live through the week, since they were
not in a state of purity when they recited that Name.19

This is not the end of the Kairouan rabbis’ question, which goes on and
on, and covers several passages found in the Babylonian Talmud that deal
with the issue of keshafim, magic, as well as several additional queries con-
18
For the text, see S. Emanuel, Newly Discovered Geonic Responsa (Jerusalem and
Cleveland: Ofeq Institute, Friedberg Library, 1995), pp. 124-146 (Heb.). The translation of-
fered here is my own. For earlier discussions of Hai’s responsum, see D. Joël, Der Aberglaube
und die Stellung des Judenthums zu demselben (Jahresbericht des jüdisch-theologischen
Seminars “Fraenckel’scher Stiftung”; 2 vols., vol. 1, Breslau: Jungfer, 1881, vol. 2, Breslau:
Schottlaender, 1883), vol. 2, pp. 30-56; E.E. Hildesheimer, “Mystik und Agada im Urteile der
Gaonen R. Scherira und R. Hai,” in Festschrift für Jacob Rosenheim (Frankfurt-am-Main: J.
Kauffmann, 1931), pp. 259-286; R. Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Me-
dieval Jewish Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 144-147; J. Dan, History
of Jewish Mysticism, vol. 4, 2009, pp. 143-186 (Heb.); G. Bohak, “Jewish Magic in the Middle
Ages,” in D. Collins (ed.), The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 268-299, 711-719, esp. pp. 271-272.
19
Emanuel, Newly Discovered, p. 125.
Bohak - Dangerous Books 313

cerned with the proper use of God’s Name in various rituals, from prayers to
dream requests. But for our own purpose, what is of great importance is that
these rabbis clearly speak of books, in which are found the powerful Names
of God and his angels, as well as the shapes of special seals and instructions
on how to use these Names and seals for different aims. Moreover, they also
know of stories about the dangers inherent in these books, since some of the
people who tried to use them succeeded in achieving what they set out to do,
but paid a great personal price – some were blinded, others perished before
their allotted time, and all this since they did not recite the Name in a state
of purity. This is why there is such a fear of these books, and of approaching
them, among the elders and the pious people of Kairouan, a fear that is backed
up by dreadful stories of people who misused these books and ended up badly.
Reading this question, we may conclude that the rabbis of Kairouan were
well aware of the danger inherent in books, but two aspects of their ques-
tion differentiate their discourse from that of the Scroll of Ahimaaz: first, it
is not the books themselves that are so dangerous, but their contents, and the
attempts to carry out the instructions written in them, especially those con-
cerned with pronouncing God’s Name(s).20 And second, that the Hekhalot
texts are never mentioned, or even alluded to, in the entire question, and that
throughout the question it is very clear that the rabbis of Kairouan were wor-
ried about magical books and magical practices, intended to achieve concrete
results by means of specific ritual techniques that included the use of Names.
These techniques were deemed very effective, but also extremely dangerous,
but they have nothing to do with ascending to the Seven Heavens or “descend-
ing” into God’s Chariot. Rather, they have to do with becoming invisible to
robbers or transfixing them to their place, with “path jumping” (instantaneous
teleportation), with killing people, with dream requests, and with the inser-
tion of God’s Name into one’s prayers in order for one’s requests to be more
effectively heard.21 Moreover, when the rabbis of Kairouan quote Talmudic
passages that they found puzzling, or that they deemed to be relevant for the
questions they were asking, they refer to the story of how King Solomon sub-
dued Ashmedai, the King of the demons (bt Gittin 68a-b), to the story of how
Rabbi Eliezer taught Rabbi Akiba keshaphim, including a hands-on demon-
stration (bt Sanhedrin 68a), and to the story of Rabbi Akiba explaining to
Turnus Rufus about the smoke coming out of his father’s grave (bt Sanhedrin
65b).22 Of the famous stories of the Hekhalot-Merkabah traditions, as found in
bt Hagigah 13a-16a, there is not even a trace in their entire question.
It is in light of this question that Hai’s answer becomes so interesting. In
his extremely long response he carefully distinguished between two types of

20
The need to recite the Name(s) only in a state of purity is reflected in many other sources,
including the earliest versions of Toledoth Yeshu, for which see G. Bohak, “Jesus the Magician
in the “Pilate” Recension of Toledoth Yeshu,” in D. Barbu - Y. Deutsch (eds.), The Jewish Life
of Jesus (Toledoth Yeshu) in Context (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
21
For all these aims and a few more, see Emanuel, Newly Discovered, pp. 124-126.
22
Emanuel, Newly Discovered, pp. 125-127.
314 Theme Section / Sezione monografica

literature, and two types of practices, which involve God’s Name and other
secret knowledge. On the one hand, he insists that some of the feats sup-
posedly achieved by means of such Names are utterly impossible, and oth-
ers might occur only to a true prophet, but not to any regular person.23 He
also insists that the books which troubled the rabbis of Kairouan are in wide
circulation in Baghdad as well, and that he knows such books as Sefer ha-
Yashar, and the Sword of Moses, and a book called Raza Rabba, that is, The
Great Secret, “as well as fragments and individual passages, which are end-
less and without number” and adds that “many have spent much effort and
wasted many years and found no truth in the matter.”24 He also insists that
they should simply ignore whoever might tell them something different from
what he had just told them, “since there are many claims about this thing, and
very little that is true, and especially in our generations, when hearts are not
perfect.”25 But having thus dispatched with the books they had mentioned, he
now goes on to discuss a different type of books, even though it was never
mentioned in their original question:

And certainly we know, as you said, that there are books and Names and
seals and Hekhalot Rabbata and Hekhalot Zeirata, and Sar Torah and other
mishnayot, that whoever sees them becomes frightened, and so were our
forefathers, and so are we, that we only approach them in purity and fear
and trembling. And we also heard persistent claims that some who have
dealt with them perished quickly, and all this because of the sanctity of the
Name and the sanctity of the Shekhinot26 and of the angels who are around
them, and the sanctity of the Merakabah, and that whoever deals with this
deed (‫)מעשה‬, the angels swarm all around him, as our sages taught ... (Here
comes a long citation from the Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 14b) ... And
it is an axiom and a tradition that whoever is not worthy but deals with the
Shem ha-Mephorash would die soon, even if he is a complete zaddik and is
pure and blameless, for we learn that “Whoever uses the Crown perishes”
(m Avot 1.13) and our sages deduced this a forteriori from Belshazzar, who
used the Temple utensils – which are man-made and have a price and may
be replaced – and yet his life was taken from this world.27

The most striking feature in Hai Gaon’s responsum is that in his mental
universe, there is a clear distinction between the books which tell you how
23
Ibi, pp. 127-131.
24
Ibi, pp. 131-132.
25
Ibi, p. 132.
26
I assume that this is a scribal error for Hekhalot, since Hekhalot literature do not speak
of the Shekhinah in the plural (and cf. G. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah [transl. A. Arkush;
Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1987; repr. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1990], pp. 163-164), but this makes little difference for the present discussion.
27
Emanuel, Newly Discovered, pp. 132-133. The last sentence alludes to bt Ned 62a, where
R. Yohanan adduces Dan 5:30 to prove that King Belshazzar paid with his life for using the
vessels of the Jerusalem Temple; these vessels have already lost their sacrality, and if one loses
his life for using vessels which are no longer holy, all the more so for one who uses holy things.
Bohak - Dangerous Books 315

to achieve mundane aims by using secret Names and those that deal with
the Hekhalot and Merkabah. The former are mostly useless, but the latter
are books that even his forefathers, and even he himself, approach only “in
purity and fear and trembling.” It is in the context of this discussion that he
explains that “using the Crown,” i.e., God’s Shem ha-Mephorash, written on
the crown of the High Priest in the days when the Temple was still standing,
is so dangerous, and may easily lead to one’s premature demise. This claim,
and this understanding of the rabbinic warning against “using the Crown,”
are well attested in the Hekhalot literature itself.28
Hai Gaon’s distinction between those texts that we would call “magical”
and those which we would call “mystical” is also clear from the titles of the
texts he is quoting. If in a previous passage he was talking of books like
Sefer ha-Yashar or the Sword of Moses, now he is talking about the Greater
Hekhalot, the Lesser Hekhalot, and the Sar Torah, three central texts of Hek-
halot literature. Moreover, he refers to these texts as mishnayot, i.e., orally
transmitted textual units, whereas the magical texts of which he had spoken
before are merely books and manuscripts and individual passages (i.e., reci-
pes?), and definitely not mishnayot. That this is not a mere coincidence is
made clear by another responsum of his, in which he responds to a question
about the famous story in the Babylonian Talmud (Hagigah 14b) about the
four sages who entered the Pardes, and only one of them, Rabbi Akiba, was
unharmed by the experience.29 Hai explains that there are many mishnayot
which are not halakhah (i.e., religiously binding law), and describes how
whoever wishes to use the Hekhalot texts, and meets certain requirements,
sits with his head between his knees, and whispers towards the earth specific
hymns and praises. He then glimpses (‫ )מציץ‬and sees (‫ )רואה‬and watches
(‫ )צופה‬as if he is entering from one Hekhal to the next, and sees what is in it.
Hai also explains that

there are two mishnayot which the tannaim (i.e., the yeshiva’s oral
transmitters) recite about this, and they are called Hekhalot Rabbati and
Hekhalot Zutarti, and this thing is widely known.30

He even cites a short passage from Hekhalot Zutarti (a citation which is

used by modern scholars to identify this specific text within the Hekhalot
corpus), and explains that the danger inherent in the ascent to the hekhalot is
due to the frightening visions one may see there, which the ordinary human
mind cannot bear.31

28
For “using the Crown,” see Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, pp. 54-55; for its frequent oc-
currence in the Hekhalot texts, see G. Bohak, “Hekhalot Genuzim: Reconstructing a New Hek-
halot Text from the Cairo Genizah,” Tarbiz 82 (2014), pp. 407-446, on p. 438 and n. 248 (Heb.).
29
See B.M. Lewin, Otzar Ha-Geonim: Thesaurus of the Gaonic Responsa and Commen-
taries (vol. 4, Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press Association, 1931), pp. 14-15.
30
Ibi, p. 14.
31
Ibi, pp. 14-15.
316 Theme Section / Sezione monografica

We thus see how, on two different occasions, Hai Gaon refers to the Hek-
halot texts as mishnayot. These references, we may note, are easily paralleled
in the Hekhalot texts themselves, which often refer to an individual textual
unit as a mishnah.32 And yet, whereas in the second case Hai is thinking of
orally transmitted texts, recited by the tannaim whose job it was to memo-
rize such oral texts,33 in the first case he clearly has in mind written manu-
scripts “that whoever sees them” – and not whoever hears them – “becomes
frightened,” and that may be approached only in a state of purity. Moreover,
such manuscripts of Hekhalot literature have been known to the Babylonian
Geonim already in the mid-ninth century, as shown by a responsum of Na-
tronai bar Hilai, the Gaon of Sura in the mid-ninth century, who refers to a
written copy of Maaseh Merkabah, or The Deed of the Chariot.34 This ap-
parent contradiction probably reflects a world where the formerly oral Hek-
halot texts were gradually being committed to writing, and thus could be
accessed both in oral and in written forms, depending on where and when
one lived.35 But such a situation was only possible in a yeshiva where there
were tannaim, and in a region where the Hekhalot literature was continu-
ously transmitted from Late Antiquity to the tenth century.36 In other places,
32
For these references, see P. Schäfer, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (TSAJ 2; Tübingen:
Mohr, 1981), §419, §424 and §706, and the frequent use of the verb ŠNH in such passages as
§300, §311, and §705; in the Genizah fragments, the word mishnah appears frequently in P.
Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente zur Hekhalot-Literatur (TSAJ 6; Tübingen: Mohr, 1984), No. 22
(T-S K 21.95G), but its meaning (The Mishnah / a Hekhalot mishnah) is not entirely clear. The
verb ŠNH is found in the Genizah fragment Manchester A 158 (unpublished), whose text partly
parallels that of Schäfer, Synopse, §422-423.
33
For the possible significance of these references for assessing the social location of
Hekhalot literature see M. Vidas, “Hekhalot Literature, the Babylonian Academies and the
Tanna’im,” in Boustan - Himmelfarb - Schäfer (eds.), Hekhalot Literature in Context, pp. 141-
176, and Id., Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2014), pp. 167-202.
34
See Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, pp. 101-102, and R. Brody, Teshuvot Rav Natronai
bar Hilai Gaon (2 vols, Jerusalem, Ofeq Institute, 1994), p. 626 (Heb.). For the many texts
that could go under this title, see D. Abrams, “Ma‘aseh Merkabah as a Literary Work: The
Reception of Hekhalot Traditions by the German Pietists and Kabbalistic Reinterpretation,”
JSQ 5 (1998), pp. 329-345, and cf. below n. 58.
35
For similar situations, as relating to the transmission of the Babylonian Talmud at the
time when it was gradually committed to writing (8th-10th c.), see N. Danzig, “From Oral
Talmud to Written Talmud: On the Methods of Transmission of the Babylonian Talmud and its
Study in the Middle Ages,” Bar-Ilan 30-31 (2006), pp. 49-112 (Heb.).
36
Leaving aside the vexed question of whether the Hekhalot literature began its life in
Palestine or in Babylonia, we may note that its circulation in Babylonia of the fifth or sixth
century C.E. is vouchsafed by its echos in several Aramaic incantation bowls; for this, see S.
Shaked, ““Peace be Upon You, Exalted Angels”: On Hekhalot, Liturgy and Incantation Bowls,”
JSQ 2 (1995), pp. 197-219; S. Shaked - J.N. Ford - S. Bhayro, Aramaic Bowl Spells (Magical
and Religious Literature of Late Antiquity 1; Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 23-27; G. Bohak,
“Observations on the Transmission of Hekhalot Literature in the Cairo Genizah,” in Boustan -
Himmelfarb - Schäfer (eds.), Hekhalot Literature in Context, pp. 213-229, on pp. 220-221; C.
Müller-Kessler, “Eine ungewöhnliche Hekhalot-Zauberschale und ihr babylonisches Umfeld:
Jüdisches Gedankengut in den Magischen Texten des Ostens,” Frankfurter Judaistische
Beiträge 38 (2013), pp. 69-84.
Bohak - Dangerous Books 317

oral transmission of long texts was out of the question, and the Hekhalot
literature was available only in written manuscripts. We already noted the
use of such manuscripts by Shefatiah and his brothers, in southern Italy in
the ninth century, and we shall soon see that in medieval Cairo too Hekhalot
texts were available in manuscripts, and probably only in manuscripts, but
these could take several different physical forms.
Hai Gaon’s responsum about the use of God’s Name(s) and other divine
lore goes on and on, and covers additional issues relating to magic (‫)כשפים‬,
to idolatry, to the differences between the deeds of a magician and those of
a true prophet, and so on. But it never returns to the Hekhalot literature, nor
does it return to the issue of dangerous books that must only be approached
in a state of purity. But what we saw should suffice to convince us that his at-
titude towards the Hekhalot / Merkabah literature was not that different from
that of Ahimaaz and his ancestors. Both his forefathers and he himself clearly
read these books, in manuscript form, but knew well that one may only ap-
proach them in a state of purity, and only with fear and trembling. What
would happen if a menstruant woman approached such a book he never says,
but we can easily imagine that a great disaster would ensue. We also learn
that the sad fate of R. Akiba’s colleagues, when they tried to enter the heav-
enly palaces, was due to the frightening scenes to which they were exposed
there. With these points in mind, we may turn to the hekhalot literature itself.

III. The Dangers of Ascent: A Quick Look at the Hekhalot Literature

Having seen that both Ahimaaz and Hai Gaon agree that Hekhalot manu-
scripts may only be approached in purity, and that they pose a great danger
to those who deal with them, we may now ask whether these notions are re-
flected in the Hekhalot texts that have come down to us. The answer is clear
and obvious – numerous passages strewn throughout these texts warn their
readers of the dangers awaiting the Hekhalot mystic, especially if he fails
to follow their instructions. Let us look at one specific example, found in a
Genizah manuscript copied in the tenth or eleventh century, and thus more
or less contemporaneous with Hai Gaon and Ahimaaz.37 At the end of a long
and complex text, the reader is told that a certain adjuration must be recited
exactly 111 times, and that if one recites it less than the prescribed number
of times, or more than it, “his blood is upon his head,” i.e., he places his own
life in danger.38 Moreover, right before this warning, we read ritual instruc-
tions which could easily remind us of what we read in the Scroll of Ahimaaz:

37
For this manuscript, see Bohak, “Hekhalot Genuzim;” for its date, see ibi, p. 412. I leave
aside another relevant scene, the “recall” of Rabbi Nehuniah in Schäfer, Synopse, §224-228,
as this passage is not yet attested among the Genizah fragments of the Hekhalot literature, and
might be a later interpolation.
38
Bohak, “Hekhalot Genuzim,” p. 439; for close parallels to this warning, see Schäfer,
Synopse, §205, §310, §681.
318 Theme Section / Sezione monografica

How does he use it (i.e., one of God’s powerful Names)? He goes and sits
in a house by himself, and keeps fasting the whole day, and does not eat
the bread of (i.e., made by) a woman, and looks neither at a man nor at a
woman, and when he walks in the market he hides his eyes from all crea-
tures, and does not look even at a day-old baby. And he immerses himself
(in water) from evening to evening, and recites this thing after the evening
Shema prayer, each and every day.39

The prohibition on eating bread baked by a woman recurs, in different

forms, in the non-Genizah manuscripts of the Hekhalot literature.40 A com-
parison with some rabbinic midrashim about how Abraham avoided giving
the bread baked by Sarah to his angelic guests since she had just become
menstruant, would definitely make us think that this is the fear lurking be-
hind this specific instruction.41 If the bread was even touched by a woman
who was menstruant, it would make it polluted, and when the mystic would
swallow this polluted bread it would become embodied within him, and
would cause him great danger when he ascends to the heavenly hekhalot and
to the fiery angels who dwell there. Similar instructions are found in other
ancient Jewish magical and mystical texts, and a few non-Jewish parallels
have been adduced in the past, but the clearest and most instructive parallel
has – as far as I know – never been noted.42 It is found in a Syriac recipe for

39
Bohak, “Hekhalot Genuzim,” pp. 438-439. The English translation is my own, but
cf. J.R. Davila, Hekhalot Literature in Translation: Major Texts of Merkavah Mysticism,
(Supplements to the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 20; Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp.
412-413. Such instructions are common in Hekhalot literature, and see the detailed analyses by
M.D. Swartz, Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 153-172; R.M. Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power:
Angels, Incantations, and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (Harvard Theological Studies
44; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 1998), pp. 117-160.
40
For the closest parallel, see Schäfer, Synopse, §489: “... he should not eat the bread of
a woman, nor drink the water of a woman, but should knead (the dough) with his own hands,
and grind (the wheat, etc.) with his own hands, and bake one loaf a day.” And cf. similar
instructions in Schäfer, Synopse, §299 and §684, and in Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente, No. 22
(T-S K 21.95G), 1b/28.
41
See the traditions in Genesis Rabba 48.14, bt BM 87a and Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 36, on
how Abaraham did not serve his angelic guests the bread baked by Sarah, since she had just be-
come menstruant, with R. Lesses, ““He Shall Not Look at a Woman”: Gender in the Hekhalot
Literature,” in T. Penner - C. Vander Stichele (eds.), Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Dis-
courses (Biblical Interpretation Series, 84; Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 351-387, on pp. 377-378.
For the story’s appearance in the Baraita de-Niddah, see Marienberg, La Baraïta de-Niddah,
pp. 154 and 171, with a French transl. and brief notes on pp. 120-121. For the prohibition on
menstruant women to bake bread, see ibi, p. 151 (Heb.) and p. 109 (French transl.).
42
The instructions not to eat bread made by a woman recur in the small fragment T-S NS
179.29, whose contents seem magical rather than mystical. In the Sword of Moses, the user is
instructed to purify himself, including “that he should eat the bread of (i.e., baked by) a pure
man, or the bread of his own hands.” See Y. Harari, Harba de-Moshe (The Sword of Moses): A
New Edition and a Study (Jerusalem: Academon, 1997), p. 24 (Heb.), and Id., “The Sword of
Moses (Harba de-Moshe): A New Translation and Introduction,” Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft
7 (2012), pp. 58-98, on p. 72. For possible parallels in non-Jewish sources, see I. Gruenwald,
Bohak - Dangerous Books 319

extracting the root of a powerful plant (yet another very dangerous activity!),
where the user is instructed that

When you wish to pull up this root, cleanse yourself from impurity, and
do not eat bread which has been made by women, and wash your head,
and wear white garments, and keep fasting until you see the stars (i.e.,
until nightfall).43

Regardless of the origins of this recipe, which may have come from Jew-
ish sources but may also reflect other Near Eastern or even Greek rituals,
and which ended up in a large Syriac compendium, copied in a manuscript
which Budge dated to the twelfth century, here the emphasis on not eat-
ing bread baked by a woman as part of one’s purification in preparation for
a dangerous ritual is entirely clear. And thus, although the Hekhalot texts
never explain what would happen if a menstruant woman approached the
manuscript in which they were copied, we may take it for granted that many
of their readers shared Ahimaaz’s notion that such an encounter could lead
to a great disaster.

IV. Books of Many Forms: The Hekhalot Texts as Physical Objects

Having seen that both Ahimaaz and Hai Gaon thought of the Hekhalot
manuscripts as books of fear and trembling, and that such fear is well ex-
plained by the contents of these texts, we may now ask whether the manu-
scripts in which these texts were transmitted towards the end of the first
millennium and the beginning of the second in any way reflect their status
as dangerous books. To do so, we must turn to the Cairo Genizah, and to the
fragments of Hekhalot literature that may be found there.44 Unfortunately,

“Manichaeism and Judaism in Light of the Cologne Mani Codex,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie
und Epigraphik 50 (1983), pp. 29-45, on pp. 35-41 (repr. in Id., From Apocalypticism to
Gnosticism: Studies in Apocalypticism, Merkavah Mysticism, and Gnosticism [Frankfurt am
Main: P. Lang, 1988], pp. 253-277).
43
See E.A.W. Budge, The Syriac Book of Medicines: Syrian Anatomy, Pathology and
Therapeutics in the Early Middle Ages, with Sections on Astrological and Native Medicine and
Recipes, by an Anonymous Physician (2 vols; London: Oxford University Press, 1913; repr.
Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1976), vol. 1, p. 595 (Syriac text) and vol. 2, p. 708 (English transl.).
For a broad survey of such rituals, see A. Delatte, Herbarius: Recherches sur le cérémonial
usité chez les anciens pour la cueillette des simples et des plantes magiques (Mémoires de
l’Académie Royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres, 54; 3rd ed., Bruxelles: Académie Royale
de Belgique, 1961), pp. 73-117, esp. p. 74. For the most famous precedent to this specific ritual,
and for the danger inherent in extracting powerful roots, see already Josephus, War 7.180-185
(where menstrual blood is used as a part of the ritual!), and G. Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic:
A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 90-92.
44
For these fragments, see Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente; Id., “Ein unbekanntes Geniza-
Fragment zur Hekhalot-Literatur,” in Id., Hekhalot-Studien, pp. 104-117; Bohak, “Hekhalot
Genuzim.”
320 Theme Section / Sezione monografica

these are only fragments of the original manuscripts, and even when several
fragments that once came from a single manuscript are joined together, we
are still far from possessing the original manuscript in its entirety. Fortunate-
ly, even fragments of manuscripts can tell us much about what the original
manuscripts would have looked like.45
Before turning to the fragments themselves, we may note that the very
fact that they were found in a genizah could have implied a degree of sanctity
accorded to them by their owners, were it not for the fact that in the Cairo
Genizah one finds all kinds of texts, from the extremely holy to the most pro-
fane.46 The fact that some Hekhalot texts also were deposited there thus tells
us relatively little about their status, but their physical features tell us more.
Looking at all the known Genizah fragments of the Hekhalot literature,
both published and unpublished, one sees four basic types of manuscripts to
which these fragments once belonged.47 First, and most unusually, one finds
two or three parchment scrolls, on which the text was written in columns of
relatively uniform width.48 This is an extremely unusual find, since by the ninth
and tenth centuries, which is when these manuscripts probably were copied,
only Torah-scrolls were written in this archaic format.49 Using such a format
for Hekhalot literature clearly implied the great sanctity of these texts in the
eyes of their copyists and users. Moreover, this format immediately reminds
us of Ahimaaz’s description of a Book of a Chariot which for him clearly was
interchangeable with a book of the Torah. If I were to guess what Shefatiah’s
book would have looked like, I would have said that T-S K 21.95S gives us
the best sense of what a majestic, Torah-like book of Hekhalot, passed down
from father to son for a century or longer, would have looked like.

45
And cf. P. Schäfer, “The Hekhalot Genizah,” in Boustan - Himmelfarb - Schäfer (eds.),
Hekhalot Literature in Context, pp. 179-211, who analyses the contents of these fragments, but
not their physical forms.
46
For the contents of the Cairo Genizah, see S.C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo:
The History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press),
2000, pp. 98-233.
47
For other features of these fragments, including the existence of “personalized” copies of
Hekhalot literature, see Bohak, “Observations,” esp. pp. 222-228.
48
Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente, No. 1 (T-S K 21.95S), and No. 10 (T-S K 21.95H); a third
fragment, T-S K 1.124, remains unpublished, and is very hard to decipher, as the parchment on
which it had been written darkened over the years.
49
For some rare exceptions, see T-S AS 74.324, as studied by M. Bregman, “An Early
Fragment of Avot de Rabbi Natan from a Scroll,” Tarbiz 52 (1983), pp. 201-222 (Heb.) (who
refers, in n. 4, to the Hekhalot scroll shown to him by Peter Schäfer); T-S Misc 26.53.17, as
studied by S. Friedman, “An Ancient Scroll Fragment (b. Hullin 101a-105a) and the Rediscov-
ery of the Babylonian Branch of Tannaitic Hebrew,” JQR 86 (1995), pp. 9-50. For a fuller anal-
ysis, see M. Beit-Arié, Hebrew Codicology: Historical and Comparative Typology of Hebrew
Medieval Codices based on the Documentation of the Extant Dated Manuscripts in Quantita-
tive Approach (Jerusalem: forthcoming) (Heb.), and J. Olszowy-Schlanger, “The Anatomy of
Non-biblical Scrolls from the Cairo Geniza,” in I. Wandrey (ed.), Jewish Manuscript Cultures:
New Perspectives (Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 13; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), pp. 49-88.
Of course, Esther was also copied in a scroll format, but these scrolls tend to be much smaller.
Bohak - Dangerous Books 321

Another peculiar format of the Hekhalot fragments from the Cairo

Genizah, is that of an orderly text, written in a standard parchment codex,
but neatly divided into numbered paragraphs, and apparently into chapters
as well. This is seen in one fragment only, T-S K 21.95B, where one finds
on the recto paragraphs 4 to 8, and on the verso paragraphs 2 to 6 of the sub-
sequent chapter.50 To anyone familiar with Genizah fragments, this format
looks exactly like that of the Genizah fragments of the Mishnah, a similarity
which immediately brings to mind Hai Gaon’s references to the Hekhalot lit-
erature as mishnayot, and the Hekhalot texts’ own references to the mishnay-
ot of which they are made.51 Moreover, when we re-examine T-S K 21.95B,
we note that its two bifolios contain two different texts, copied by the same
scribe: one is a part of Hekhalot Zutarti, and was divided by the copyist into
chapters and into much shorter, and numbered, mishnayot, but the other is
Otiyot de-Rabbi Akiba, and this text was written without any section divi-
sions and with no numbers attached to different parts of the text, no doubt
because this text was not considered to be made up of many small mishnay-
ot.52 And in two other Genizah fragments of the Hekhalot literature, the num-
bering of the individual units is nowhere to be found, but the actual division
into small textual units is evidenced by the presence of a letter samekh, for
seliq, or “here ends,” at the end of each small passage.53 This is, of course,
something that we also find in the non-Genizah manuscripts of the Hekhalot
literature, with numerous mechanisms for marking the end of smaller textual
units, and seems to be a remnant of the texts’ original division into small
mishnayot, the tiny building blocks of which this entire literature was made.54

50
See Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente, No. 7 (T-S K 21.95B). The order of recto and verso is
determined both by the order of the text in the non-Genizah manuscripts and by the shift from
Hebrew to Aramaic in the middle of the recto.
51
Note, for example, the folder T-S E1, which consists mostly of Mishnah fragments,
including dozens of folios and bifolios from parchment codices in which both the chapters and
the individual mishnayot are numbered, in a manner that closely resembles the textual layout
of T-S K 21.95B. A similar division into numbered chapters and sub-chapters is attested in
later Genizah fragments of the Hekhalot literature, such as JTSL ENA 2585.34, 2709.45, and
3042.6, for which see Schäfer, Hekhalot-Studien, pp. 186-187; all three fragments stem from
the same manuscript, more fragments of which have been identified by Yaron Zini. However,
this manuscript is not earlier than the non-Genizah manuscripts of the Hekhalot literature, and
need not reflect the earlier modes of copying Hekhalot texts.
52
Schäfer, in his edition, only edited the Hekhalot text, but an image of the entire bifolio
may be seen on the Friedberg website.
53
See Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente, Nos. 2 (T-S K 21.95K) and 3 (T-S K 21.95M), which
may have come from a single manuscript.
54
See, for example, Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente, p. 38, where one can see, in T-S K
21.95K/2b, the end of three mishnayot, two of which are marked with the samekh, and the
third with peh resh, signifying the end of a chapter (‫ )פרקא‬and the beginning of a new one,
and pp. 49-51, where one can see the same divisions in the European manuscripts, except that
they also number the individual mishnayot. However, it must be noted that the original division
into mishnayot does not necessarily overlap with Schäfer’s division of the Hekhalot texts into
“microforms,” of which their “macroforms” were subsequently built (see Schäfer, Hekhalot-
Studien, p. 200).
322 Theme Section / Sezione monografica

A third type of Hekhalot manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah is that of

the vertical scroll (rotulus), written in horizontal lines on one side of the writ-
ing surface and then rolled from top to bottom. To date, only one Hekhalot
fragment written in this manner has been identified, but the format itself
was quite common in the Cairo Genizah and was used for the production of
cheap, and easily transportable, manuscripts.55 And as this rotulus (Oxford,
Bodleian, Heb. a.3.25) is made of paper, rather than parchment, its physical
features certainly do not point to any special status in the eyes of its own-
er. As it is later than some of the other Hekhalot fragments from the Cairo
Genizah, its format may also reflect the changing status of the Hekhalot lit-
erature in medieval Cairo, from the Torah-like scrolls of the ninth century to
the cheap rotulus of a the thirteenth.
A fourth and final type of Genizah fragments of the Hekhalot literature
is the most common, and most “natural,” format, namely that of the codex,
or, more likely, a thin notebook, with anything between a few pages and a
few dozen pages. Some of these booklets were quite irregular, with bifo-
lios whose folios could be of widely divergent sizes, while others are more
standard.56 Some have the bifolios folded one inside the other into regular
quires, others have bifolios which were folded one next to the other in an ir-
regular manner.57 All these fragments deserve a more detailed codicological
analysis, but for the purpose of the present enquiry such an analysis prob-
ably would not be very helpful, since these are typical formats for manu-
scripts found in the Cairo Genizah, and are not likely to reveal much about
the manuscripts’ status in their owners’ eyes. And when we look at the many
book-lists strewn throughout the Cairo Genizah, we find only a single refer-
ence to a Hekhalot manuscript, which is described as a notebook (‫ )דפתר‬with
Ma’aseh Merkabah, and is found in a booklist of the twelfth century.58 By
that time, all of the Genizah Hekhalot texts seem to have circulated in such
notebooks. Moreover, this notebook is mentioned among many other codices
and notebooks, and the compiler of the list clearly saw nothing special that

55
For this fragment, see Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente, No. 17 (Oxford, Bodleian, Heb.
a.3.25). For the rotuli from the Cairo Genizah, see G. Bohak, “The Magical Rotuli from the
Cairo Genizah,” in G. Bohak - Y. Harari - S. Shaked (eds.), Continuity and Innovation in the
Magical Tradition (Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture, 15; Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp.
321-340, and esp. J. Olszowy-Schlanger, “Cheap Books in Medieval Egypt: Rotuli from the
Cairo Geniza,” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 4 (2016), pp. 82-101, who stresses
the common use of this format for texts of “personal devotion.”
56
For bifolios with folios of different sizes, see Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente, Nos. 2 (T-S K
21.95K) and 8 (T-S K 21.95C).
57
For a Hekhalot codex made up of parchment bifolios of uniform size, but folded in an
irregular manner, see Bohak, “Hekhalot Genuzim,” pp. 415-416.
58
N. Allony, The Jewish Library in the Middle Ages: Book Lists from the Cairo Genizah,
(ed. by M. Frenkel - H. Ben-Shammai; Oriens Judaicus i, iii; Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi, 2006), List
4, l. 163 (Heb.). In this and many other Genizah booklists, a codex is listed as ‫מצחף‬, and a
‫ דפתר‬refers to a notebook or a booklet. For the ubiquity of the title Ma’aseh Merkabah see
also above, n. 34.
Bohak - Dangerous Books 323

distinguished the Hekhalot text from all the other texts in his list. In Cairo of
the twelfth century, such books were no longer deemed dangerous.
To conclude our survey of the Hekhalot fragments from the Cairo Genizah,
we may note that Hai Gaon’s references to this literature as transmitted in the
form of mishnayot is supported by one Genizah fragment, which preserves a
Hekhalot text in a written form, but one that parallels the manner by which
the Mishnah itself often was copied in medieval Cairo. We may also note that
the references in the Scroll of Ahimaaz to a Book of the Merkabah as a book
of Torah, are supported by two or three Genizah fragments, which preserve
the remnants of parchment scrolls on which Hekhalot texts were written, this
format being used in Genizah times almost exclusively for Torah scrolls, as
used in the synagogue. But what about the reverence showed towards such
scrolls (or other Hekhalot manuscripts), or the fear lest they become polluted?
Of this, we find no evidence in the Cairo Genizah, nor would we have expect-
ed to find it, given that the manuscripts placed there were lifted out of their
original contexts. If these scrolls or codices had special wrappings, or unique
containers, or were kept in a special drawer in a locked room, with a candle
lit before them every Sabbath, all these appurtenances never made it to the
Cairo Genizah. All we can see now are small fragments of naked manuscripts,
still displaying their original physical forms, but not their original physical
contexts. These may only be reconstructed with the help of our imagination.

V. Summary and Conclusions

In 1921, Shlomo Moussaieff, a Bukharan Jew (1852-1922) who was

an avid collector of manuscripts (and the grandfather of the homonymous
millionaire, who died in 2015), published a pastiche of Hekhalot texts from
his own manuscripts and from other sources, which he called Merkavah
Shlemah, or, “A Perfect Chariot.”59 In the introduction to this book, he dis-
cusses at great length the dangers inherent in this literature, and even cites
Hai Gaon’s statement about the Hekhalot books “that whoever sees them
becomes frightened,” which we analyzed above.60 He also notes the danger
that some of the more theologically problematic elements of this literature
might be misused by wicked people to cast a bad light on the Jewish faith,
and therefore insists that “one should sell this book only to Torah disciples
and God-fearing persons, and one should guard it and study it in purity, and
not approach the holy at all times.”61

59
S. Moussaieff, Merkavah Shlemah (Salomon: Jerusalem, 1921) (Heb.). For what follows,
see J.H. Chajes, “‘Too Holy to Print’: Taboo Anxiety and the Publishing of Practical Hebrew
Esoterica,” Jewish History 26 (2012), pp. 247-262, esp. p. 253.
60
Moussaieff, Merkavah Shlemah, p. 6.
61
Ibi, p. 11; the last phrase is based on Lev 16:2, where God explains to Moses how Aaron
can avoid the sad fate that befell his two sons, Nadab and Abihu, when they approached the
holy in the wrong manner and were burnt alive.
324 Theme Section / Sezione monografica

To us, such an introduction might seem quite strange. In an age of print,

the attempt to limit access to (all copies of) a book exclusively to (male)
Torah disciples, and to insist that they should only study it in purity, seems
quite out of sync with the technology of the book’s production. And in the
age of the Internet, when we no longer need even the physical object in or-
der to read the text, and often make do with only an image thereof, available
somewhere in cyberspace, the need to approach the physical object in a state
of purity seems utterly misguided.62 It is what happens when ancient cultural
sensitivities outlive the technologies which they took for granted, but are
now obsolete. But when we look at medieval manuscripts, their physical
features tell us much about the technologies by which they were produced,
and in the case of the Hekhalot literature, we must always wonder whether
some of the manuscripts were treated by their copyists and owners with
great reverence and with an equal amount of trepidation. For whoever ap-
proached them in a state of impurity was running great risks for himself, and
perhaps even for his progeny as well.

62
For an online copy of Moussaieff’s book, see http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.
aspx?req=7391&pgnum=1.