Rabbeinu Chaim Vital
The foremost talmid of the Arizal, who recorded his master's teachings in Etz Chaim and Shemonah Shearim.
Biography
Early years
Rabbeinu Chaim Vital zt"l, the foremost talmid of the Arizal, was the son of Yosef Vital and was born in 1543. Rav Moshe Alshich taught him as a child. It is told that Rav Yosef Karo noticed his gifts early, and in 1557 asked Rav Moshe Alshich to give the boy special attention, since he was meant to take his teacher's place in Torah learning. In that same year Rav Chaim first became acquainted with the Arizal, whose influence would last his whole life.
Rav Chaim apparently wed at an early age, but the marriage brought him sorrow and he parted from his wife. It is told that Eliyahu Hanavi then came to him in a dream and brought him into a lovely garden. Inside, he watched the pious of all generations, shaped like birds, flit among the trees as they studied Mishnah. At the center sat the Divine Presence upon a throne, with the pious around it, reclining on ornate tapestries.
The vision persuaded him that his path was to become a kabbalist. For two and a half years afterward he devoted himself to alchemy. At the end of that study Eliyahu appeared once more, promising that he would succeed and would compose a commentary on the Zohar.
Torah and leadership
By the time the Arizal reached Tzfas, Rav Moshe Cordovero had for many years been the central personality of the kabbalistic community. His circle of talmidim was fairly informal. The most important were Rav Eliyahu de Vidas, Rav Avrohom Galante, Rav Moshe Galante, Rav Chaim Vital, Rav Avrohom ben Eliezer HaLevi Berukhim, Rav Elazar ben Moshe Azikri and Rav Shmuel Gallico. Rav Mordechai Dato, another significant kabbalist, studied under him briefly during the 1560s.
The Arizal himself seems to have seen Rav Moshe Cordovero as a teacher. Rav Yosef Sambari (1640–1703), the Egyptian chronicler, attested that the Arizal learned from Rav Moshe for a brief period. The Arizal most likely came in early 1570, and Rav Moshe Cordovero died that year on 23 Tammuz (June 27). With their foremost teacher gone, the kabbalists sought direction, and the Arizal filled the gap.
Rav Chaim became a talmid of the Arizal in 1570. He left a list of thirty-eight people who made up his master's circle, and he sorted them into four ranked groups. The top group numbered eleven, in this order: Rav Chaim himself, Rav Yonason Sagis, Rav Yosef Arzin, Rav Yitzchok Kohen, Rav Gedalyah HaLevi, Rav Shmuel Uceda, Rav Yehudah Mishan, Rav Avrohom Gavriel, Rav Shabsai Menashe, Rav Yosef ibn Tabul and Rav Eliyahu Falko (or Falkon).
Within a year Rav Chaim had become the foremost of the talmidim, and when the Arizal passed away in 1572 at the age of thirty-eight, he took his master's place. Because the Arizal had left almost nothing in writing, Rav Chaim started setting down all that he had received from him.
Years of travel
Rav Chaim reached Egypt in 1577 but before long went back to Ottoman Syria. First he lived in Ein Zeitim, a village near Tzfas, then in Yerushalayim, and afterward in Damascus, where he headed the Sicilian Jewish community.
In Damascus he started the first book he composed himself. Most of its contents explain how to conjure clouds, and it also discusses the seven planets, the seven heavens and the metals matching each.
After completing it, he went back to Yerushalayim, where Rav Moshe Alshich, his earlier teacher, gave him semichah on 20 Elul 1590. Some time later he left for Tzfas, fell sick and lay in bed for a whole year. In 1594 he made Damascus his permanent home and gave a Kabbalah shiur there each evening.
Teachings and seforim
He also composed Shaar HaGilgulim, a kabbalistic work on reincarnation that became one of the Shemonah Shearim (Eight Gates).
During that illness, his closest follower, Rav Yehoshua, who had been with him on nearly all his journeys, paid Rav Chaim's younger brother, Rav Moshe, 500 gold coins to lend out the writings Rav Chaim kept locked in a chest. Rav Moshe handed over a large share of the manuscripts. A hundred copyists were engaged on the spot, and within three days they had copied over 600 pages. It is reported that when Rav Chaim learned of this, he said the copied pages were not his own writing. They circulated fast all the same. What they held was the teaching of the Arizal, not Rav Chaim's own original work.
The earliest printed edition came out in eight volumes as Shemonah Shearim, and certain Sephardi kabbalists use it to this day. The version most widely known appeared afterward under the name Etz Chaim (Tree of Life). It lays out the subjects in a more orderly fashion, and the sections on practice, called Pri Etz Chaim, are separated from those on the theology behind them. Besides honoring the Arizal, the work states that Hashem takes particular delight in seeing Kabbalah spread, since only this can guarantee that Moshiach will come.
Rav Chaim kept the teachings of his former teacher, Rav Moshe Cordovero, in high esteem, and said that Rav Moshe frequently came to him in dreams. Among his most outspoken opponents was Rav Menachem Lonzano, who attacked him publicly in his work Imrei Emes.
Later years and passing
His eyesight started to dim in 1604. In 1620 he passed away in Damascus, on 20 Nissan 5380, as he prepared to go back to Tzfas. He was seventy-seven years old.
Legacy
Once he was gone, his writings traveled widely and left a deep mark on communities across the Jewish world. He is best known as the main talmid of the Arizal and the authoritative redactor of his teachings, as recorded in Etz Chaim, Pri Etz Chaim and Shemonah Shearim. He also wrote several seforim of his own.
Stories
An Accompanying Soul
It is told that on 29 Av 5331 (1571), the day before Rosh Chodesh Elul, the Arizal told Rav Chaim Vital to go to Kfar Avnis and daven beside the kevarim of Abaye and Rova. He instructed him in the yichudim (mystical unifications) required, the material to learn and the tefillos to recite. The aim was to join his soul to those two Sages, and so understand the Torah secrets those two were taking up at that time in the Heavenly Yeshiva.
Rav Chaim set off. The sun was strong, and near the village of Biriya he stopped to rest on a pile of rocks, going over everything his master had taught him. At the kevarim he followed his instructions exactly. He davened, lay down upon the graves and concentrated on the hidden words the Arizal had prepared. All at once his heart opened, and profound secrets became clear that he could never have reached by his own effort.
Back in Tzfas he went straight to report. The Arizal was seated among the usual crowd that came to hear his lectures. Seeing Rav Chaim at the entrance, he rose, greeted him warmly and gave him a place right next to his own. Rav Chaim sensed that this meant something, because his master had never treated him with such honor. Once everyone had left, he asked what he had done to earn it.
The Arizal replied that he had risen for Benayahu ben Yehoyada, whose soul had entered together with Rav Chaim. Abaye and Rova, he said, were sparks of Benayahu's soul, the great Sage and commander in Dovid HaMelech's time, so the same program of learning and tefillah fit him as well. He then asked whether Rav Chaim had paused during the journey to review. Rav Chaim said yes. The Arizal concluded that the place of his rest must be exactly where Benayahu was buried, and that this was how the two souls had become joined.
Later the Arizal and his talmidim went around visiting many kevarim. Along the way, in the stretch from Kfar Avnis back toward Kfar Biriya, Rav Chaim spotted the same pile of rocks. The Arizal halted and told his followers that this was the kever of Benayahu ben Yehoyada. They davened there, hoping to be granted deep revelations. Only at that moment did Rav Chaim completely grasp his master's words on that eve of Rosh Chodesh Elul.
The Chance to Open the Gichon
It is told that word of Rav Chaim's greatness reached even the gentiles of Eretz Yisroel, and sometimes this put him in grave danger. He longed to stay in the Holy Land, yet on one occasion he had to run for his life to Damascus.
On a certain Friday the gates of Yerushalayim were locked and nobody could go in or out. The city's Muslims were gathered at the mosque that sadly occupies the site of the Bais HaMikdash. A senior officer named Abu Sifin, a bitter enemy of the Jews, passed by one of the gates. In the quiet, deserted streets, he caught the sound of running water below it. This was the stream of Nachal Gichon, which King Chizkiyohu had blocked when Sancheriv threatened.
The officer recalled the channel and the man who had closed it, and asked his soldiers whether any Jew could reopen it. One replied that a great Rav lived nearby who was capable of anything. Within the hour Abu Sifin stood at Rav Chaim's door. He demanded that Rav Chaim open the channel for the city's water supply, and threatened death if he refused.
Rav Chaim had no wish to invoke Hashem's holy Name for public, open miracles. He ran, and through kefitzas haderech (a miraculous shortening of the road) he was in Damascus that same day. Exhausted, he slept, and the Arizal came to him in a dream.
The Arizal asked him why the Gichon had not been opened. That moment, he said, would have been the time to mend what Chizkiyohu did against the will of the Sages, and it would have launched the Geulah. Rav Chaim wished to go back to Yerushalayim at once, but the Arizal told him it was too late, because the moment was gone and the opportunity lost.
How Rav Chaim Vital Came to the Arizal
Rav Chaim Vital lived in Damascus. For some months the Arizal came to him in his dreams each night, speaking with him and urging him to come to Tzfas to learn from him. "Come, and I will reveal to you secrets that have never been revealed since the Creation of the world," he said. Rav Chaim paid no attention to these visions. He assumed that his own learning was superior to the Arizal's, since he had already written his own sefer of commentary on the Zohar. One day, after thinking it over, he agreed to go and see for himself whether the visions were true and what the Arizal could teach him.
He traveled to Tzfas and tested the Arizal with a certain ma'amar in the Zohar, a very difficult passage that Rav Chaim believed he understood very well. The Arizal explained the passage and revealed profound hidden secrets within it, so powerful that Rav Chaim felt his soul almost leaving his body. He asked about another passage, and the Arizal opened many more gates of great spiritual light. Rav Chaim became humbled before him like a servant before his master. When he asked for yet another explanation, the Arizal raised his hand and said, "The boundary is here. You are unworthy of knowing more."
Rav Chaim was deeply distressed. He went home, put on sackcloth and wept in ashes, pouring the ashes over himself and begging to be found worthy of learning Toras HaKabbalah from the Arizal. He fasted and prayed through the night. The next day he threw himself at the Arizal's feet, kissed his hands, his feet and the hem of his robe, and cried, "Please, for Hashem's sake, do not send me away empty-handed."
The Arizal answered, "I should really turn you away, because you stayed away for some three months. But your fasting and your sackcloth and ashes have succeeded, and now I will hold back no more secrets of Torah from you."
Rav Chaim sat among the talmidim, but he learned and forgot, learned and forgot, again and again, until they traveled to Teveria. There they took a small boat out on the Kinneret, sailing until they reached two large pillars, the ruins of an ancient shul. The Arizal filled a small flask with water from between the sunken pillars and gave it to Rav Chaim to drink. "Now you will be able to hold on to this wisdom and stop forgetting," he said, "for these waters are from the wellsprings of Miriam's Well." From then on Rav Chaim no longer forgot, and he could remember and understand the depths of the secrets of Torah.
Teachings
The Joy of Spreading Kabbalah
In Etz Chaim, Rav Chaim asserts that one of Hashem's greatest pleasures is to see the teaching of Kabbalah promoted, because this alone can ensure the coming of Moshiach.
Etz Chaim
Seforim
- Etz Chaim: His systematic arrangement of the Arizal's teachings, the best known version of his writings.
- Pri Etz Chaim: The parts of the teachings dealing with practice, kept separate from the theology of Etz Chaim.
- Shemonah Shearim: The first printed edition of the Arizal's teachings, in eight volumes, still used by some Sephardi kabbalists.
- Shaar HaGilgulim: A kabbalistic work on reincarnation, which became one of the Shemonah Shearim.
Family & talmidim
T:
@{name=Rav Moshe Alshich}: Rav Moshe Cordovero
Also on 20 Nissan
All hilulos on 20 Nissan ›Historical sources
- The Arizal: The Life and Times of Rav Yitzchok Luria (Mesorah)
- Stories My Grandfather Told Me (Mesorah), by Rav Zev Greenwald
- Shivchei HaArizal