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Open my eyes, that I may perceive the wonders of your teaching.
PSALM 119: 18JEWISH MYSTICISM developed within a traditional religious world that placed its collected holy scriptures at the focal point. The Torah was seen as evidence of the direct bond that existed at one time between God and the people of Israel. It was understood also as the written expression of the divine word, with unshakable authority and timeless validity. The creators of mystical literature that emerged in a culture that put a sacred text at its centre illuminated the Torah with a timeless mystical-mythical light. They experienced the power of the permanent presence of God in Scripture and searched for the infinitude of the divine word in the written text. The words of Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides/ Ramban), in the preface to his thirteenth-century commentary on the Torah, cogently illustrate this mystical-mythical position, which releases the Torah from concrete reality and anchors it beyond the limits of time and space:
Moses our teacher transcribed this book together with the whole Torah from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He … and the reason to write the Torah in this language was that it preceded the creation of the world and, it goes without saying, the birth of Moses our teacher, as has been passed down to us that it was written in black fire on white fire.
His comment was based on the legend that describes the heavenly origin of the Torah and its concealed essence:
The Torah that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave Moses was given to him in the form of white fire engraved within black fire, which is fire mixed within fire, quarried from fire and given by fire, as it is written, the fire of law is on his right.
He expressed the enigmatic dimension of the text by another identification of God with the Torah: ‘We have received a true kabbalah [tradition] that the entire Torah consists of Names of the Holy One, blessed be He—for the words can be divided into various Names.’
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