Visualization of Colors, 2: Implications of David ben Yehudah he-Ḥasid’s Diagram for the History of Kabbalah

1 See the texts and the analysis in Moshe Idel, “Rabbi Ne. hemyah ben Shlomoh ha-navi al Magen David ve-ha-shem Taftafya: mi-magyah yehudit le-kabbalah ma‘asit u-le-kabbalah iyyunit” (On Magen David and the Name Taftafiah: from Jewish Magic to Practical and Theoretical Kabbalah), in Ta-Shema: me. hkarim be-mada‘ei ha-yahadut le-zikhro shel Yisrael M. Ta-Shema (Ta-Shma: Studies in Judaica in Memory of Israel M. Ta-Shma), eds. Avraham Reiner et al., 2 vols. (Alon Shvut, 2011), 35–44 (Hebrew). 2 Shime‘on Lavi, Ketem Paz (Djerba, 1940), fol. 278b. For other influences of R. David and R. Joseph on this Kabbalist, see Moshe Idel “H. omer kabbali mi-beit midrasho shel Rabbi David ben Yehudah he-H. asid” (Kabbalistic Materials from the School of R. David ben Yehuda haHasid), Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 2, no. 2 (1983): 179 n. 43, 187 n. 84, 197 (Hebrew), as well as Moshe Hallamish’s comment in the introduction to his edition of Perush kabbali li-Vreshit Rabah le-Rabbi Yosef ben Shalom Ashkenazi (Commentary on Genesis Rabbah: Kabbalistic Commentary of R. Yoseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi on Genesis Rabbah (Jerusalem, 1984), 14–15 n. 24 (Hebrew). 3 See, e.g., the text in New York, JTSL, Ms. 1804, fol. 1a, where the Some Sixteenth-Century Reverberations of Color-Visualizing Techniques The possibility that R. David ben Yehudah he-Ḥasid’s diagram, or one similar to it, influenced R. Isaac Luria or R. Ḥayyim Vital finds support in the fact that his theory of prayer by visualizing names in colors was known and most probably practiced in Safed before Luria’s arrival there as well as after his death. This technique was known to some of the Kabbalists exiled from the Iberian Peninsula1 and it reached Kabbalists at large, as exemplified in the case of R. Shime‘on Lavi in North Africa.2 We learn from a handbook for visualization known there and several discussions about the visualization of colors that this theory also influenced Kabbalists in Jerusalem, including R. Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi3 and R. Joseph ibn Ẓayyaḥ,4 as well as in Safed. The importance of manuscript Ms. Sassoon 290, now in the Bibliothèque de Genève, Montana, the Segre Amar collection 145, lies in the fact that it includes several discussions from the school of R. Joseph Ashkenazi and R. David ben Yehudah he-Ḥasid that though probably known in Safed have not been found in other manuscripts, an issue that needs a more thorough analysis, especially insofar as the question of the technique of visualization is concerned.5 In any case, traces of the significant impact of this school are already evident in earlier Byzantine Kabbalah, although I found no references to the technique of the visualization of colors in that region.6