Music in Sixteenth-Century Kabbalah in Northern Africa

More than any other Jewish group, the Northern African community has adopted the book of the Zohar as a canonical text. The nature of this canonization differs from those prevalent in other parts of the Jewish world; its most characteristic feature is the ritualistic study of the book, which is quite rare outside North Africa. It is in this geographical area that commentaries on the book of the Zohar were compiled, the first and most important being that of Rabbi Shimeon ibn Lavi. Expelled from Spain, he lived for several years in Fez and then in Tripoli (Libya) where he composed his book in 1570. This commentary was destined to be one of the most important interpretations of the Zohar. Written by an isolated Kabbalist - who unlike the Kabbalists of Safed such as the disciples of Cordovero and Luria did not belong to any group - this book embraces a looser ideological approach. Lavi did not attempt to ensure the conceptual harmony between the two strata of the Zohar - namely the body of the Zohar on one hand, and the tiqqunei zohar on the other - as did Cordovero (Sack 1995: 244-286). Neither did he endeavor to introduce a full-fledged theosophical system, as did R. Isaac Luria (Scholem 1967). This does not imply that Lavi was a Kabbalist without an agenda of his own, but only that his strategy was less evident and weaker in comparison to those of his illustrious contemporaries in Safed.