Haim Vital, Founders of Other Faiths, and the Censors of Nicholas I

This chapter mainly deals with how, in the late 1820s, in Tsarist/Czarist Russia, Jewish books were examined by a censor, himself a Jewish adept at Enlightenment who had little patience with mysticism, and who tried to ban books of a mystical leaning. Then, the chapter zooms in on a particular book by the mystic Haim Vital (1543–1620), and how his Book of Visions represented founders of other religions. The last section of the chapter is written by Ephraim Nissan, and it looks for late antique antecedents, and also signals a motif in how Dante was represented, soon after his death, by poets who had befriended him, but one of whom had a stern opinion of both Dante’s salvational prospects and of that of another acquaintance who had recently died, Manoello Giudeo, i.e. Immanuel of Rome. That “friend” of theirs immersed both Dante and Manoello, side by side, in a sea of excrement, and an antecedent for that is found in Dante’s own Inferno. This chapter begins with the interception of Hasidic books in Grodno in 1822, and then the focus shifts to Wolf Tugendhold, Jewish books’ censor, and to his role in the banning of Kabbalah and Hasidic books. The next section is concerned with Haim Vital (1543–1620), Isaac Luria’s foremost disciple, and Haim Vital’s Book of Visions: a unique mystical diary. The discussion then turns to Haim Vital’s self-image in that book, and next to how he represented Christianity and Islam through their respective founders. The discussion then returns to Wolf Tugendhold, and to Nicholas I’s regime trying to promote Enlightenment among the Jews, and to discourage Kabbalah. Then the chapter discusses the fate of Haim Vital’s Book of Visions after the 1820s. The Hebrew text of the passages relevant to other denominations is reproduced. Then Nissan’s section traces related narratives in the Babylonian Talmud, and signals typological affinity in Dante’s Inferno and in how Bosone, who knew Dante personally, applied the same motif to Dante’s soul.