הרב יצחק לוריא

Rav Yitzchak ben Shlomo Luria Ashkenazi (5294/1534–5 Av 5332/1572), the Ari HaKadosh — the Arizal, known in English sources as Isaac Luria — was the greatest of the mekubalim of Tzfat and the father of the derech in kabbalah that carries his name. He was born in Yerushalayim to Rav Shlomo Luria, of an Ashkenazi rabbinic family whose lineage reaches back to Rashi, and to a Sephardic mother of the Frances family. His father was niftar when he was a boy of about eight, and his mother took him down to Mitzrayim, to the home of her wealthy brother Mordechai Frances in Cairo. There he learned under Rav Betzalel Ashkenazi, author of the Shitah Mekubetzet, and together with him before the Radvaz, Rav David ibn Abi Zimra, and married the daughter of his uncle. Genizah documents show that he supported himself in those years by trading in spices and grain.

About two years after his marriage a sefer of kabbalah came into his hands — the Zohar had then just been printed for the first time — and he gave himself over to torat hasod, secluding himself, by one account seven years in a cottage on the banks of the Nile, coming home only for Shabbat. Rav Chaim Vital wrote that he merited ruach hakodesh and gilui Eliyahu as few before or after him, and that he was told from Heaven to settle in Tzfat and teach Rav Chaim Vital. In 5330/1570 he arrived in Tzfat with his wife and two daughters. The Ramak, Rav Moshe Cordovero — whom he too counted as a teacher for a short time — was niftar that Tammuz, and the chachamim of Tzfat, bereft of their master, gathered around the Ari.

In the two years left to him he raised the circle known as the Gurei HaAri: an outer ring who heard elementary kabbalah, and initiates who received the secrets and the kavanot of tefillah — above all Rav Chaim Vital, whom he set as the first of his talmidim, beside Rav Yisrael Sarug, Rav Shmuel Uceda, and Rav Yosef ibn Tabul. On Shabbat he dressed in white, in a fourfold garment for the four letters of Hashem’s Name. He himself wrote almost nothing — perushim on passages of the Zohar, printed later in Shaar Maamarei Rashbi, and the Aramaic zemirot still sung at Shabbat tables, Azamer Bishvachin, Asader LiSeudata, and Bnei Heichala, his name woven in acrostic. His torah was set down by his talmidim: from Rav Chaim Vital’s writings came the Etz Chaim and the Shemonah She’arim arranged by his son Rav Shmuel Vital, with the tzimtzum and the shevirat hakeilim at their center. The talmidim pledged to keep the manuscripts from leaving the land, yet by about 5410/1650 his teachings were known to Jews throughout Europe, and the Etz Chaim itself was printed in Zolkiev in 5532/1772.

Kabbalah itself came to be divided into before the Ari and after him; the Gra, as Rav Chaim of Volozhin brought in his name, said that where the kabbalah of the Ramak ends, the kabbalah of the Arizal begins. From the kavanot he gave over, his talmidim and their talmidim arranged the siddurim of Nusach HaAri, among them the siddur of Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi. The Ari was niftar on 5 Av 5332/1572, at thirty-eight, in the great plague that struck the Galil, and rests in the old beit hachaim of Tzfat near the Ramak and Rav Shlomo Alkabetz; the Ari Ashkenazi shul in Tzfat was built in his memory before the century was out.