Fellowship, Leadership, and Discipleship
In 1569, Luria moved back to the Ottoman Palestine Eretz Israel; and after a short sojourn in Jerusalem, where his new kabbalistic system seems to have met with little success, he settled in Safed.
Safed, over the previous several decades, had become something of a lightning-rod for kabbalistic studies. "pawning an astounding array of impressive religious personalities ... Rabbi Moses Cordovero, Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, Rabbi Jacob Berab, Rabbi Moses di Trani, Rabbi Joseph Caro, Rabbi Hayyim Vital, Joseph ibn Tabul, Rabbi Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi Berukhim, Rabbi Israel Najara, Rabbi Eleazar Azikri, Rabbi Eliyahu de Vidas, and Rabbi Moses Alshech;" including some lesser known figures such as Rabbi Joseph Hagiz, Rabbi Elisha Galadoa, and Rabbi Moses Bassola.
In this community, Luria joined a circle of kabbalists led by Rabbi Moses Cordovero. "Cordovero was the teacher of what appears to have been a relatively loose knit circle of disciples. Of which the most important were Elijah de Vidas, Abraham Galante, Moses Galante, Hayyim Vital, Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi Berukhim, Eleazar Azikri, Samuel Gallico, and an important kabbalist who studied with Cordovero for a short while in the 1560s, Mordechai Dato."
There's evidence to suggest that Isaac Luria also regarded Moses Cordovero as his teacher. "Joseph Sambari (1640–1703), an important Egyptian chronicler, testified that Cordovero was 'the Ari's teacher for a very short time.' ... Luria probably arrived in early 1570, and Cordovero died on June 27 that year (the 23d day of Tammuz). Bereft of their most prominent authority and teacher, the community looked for new guidance, and Isaac Luria helped fill the vacuum left by Cordovero's passing.
Soon Luria had two classes of disciples: (1) novices, to whom he expounded the elementary Kabbalah, and (2) initiates, who became the depositories of his secret teachings and his formulas of invocation and conjuration.
However, the most renowned of the initiates was Rabbi Hayyim Vital, who, according to his master, possessed a soul which had not been soiled by Adam's sin. With him Luria visited the grave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and those of other eminent teachers; it is said that these graves were unmarked (the identity of each grave was unknown), but through the guidance Elijah each grave was recognized. Luria's kabbalistic circle gradually widened and became a separate congregation, in which his mystic doctrines were supreme, influencing all the religious ceremonies. On Shabbat, Luria dressed himself in white and wore a fourfold garment to signify the four letters of the Ineffable Name.
Many Jews who had been exiled from Spain following the Edict of Expulsion believed they were in the time of trial that would precede the appearance of the Messiah in Galilee. Those who moved to Palestine in anticipation of this event found a great deal of comfort in Luria’s teachings, due to his theme of exile. Although he did not write down his teachings, they were published by his followers and by 1650 his ideas were known by Jews throughout Europe.
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