Derech Hashem (The Way of God)

About Derech Hashem (The Way of God)

Derech Hashem, literally The Way of God, is the systematic theological treatise of Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (1707-1746), the Italian Kabbalist, poet, ethicist, and dramatist known to the tradition by the acronym Ramchal. Composed during the 1730s when Luzzatto was in his late twenties and early thirties, the book was designed as a compact philosophical introduction to Jewish theology suitable for educated laymen who lacked the technical training required to read the major Lurianic works directly. It belongs to the same period of Luzzatto's life that produced Mesillat Yesharim, his ethical-mystical ladder of virtues, and Klach Pitchei Chokhmah, his advanced Lurianic systematization in 138 propositional gates, and the three works can profitably be read together as the educational, ethical, and theoretical wings of a single literary project.

Luzzatto was born in Padua in 1707 to a wealthy and learned Italian Jewish family. He received the standard Italian rabbinic education combined with extensive secular studies in classical literature, Latin, Italian poetry, and mathematics. His formal Talmudic teacher was Yeshayah Bassan, a respected Paduan rabbi who introduced his prodigy to Lurianic Kabbalah and recognized in him the marks of an extraordinary mystical gift. By the time Luzzatto was twenty he had begun receiving what he believed were communications from a maggid, a heavenly mentor who dictated mystical teachings to him during periods of contemplative withdrawal. Luzzatto recorded these communications in the manuscripts that became the basis for Klach Pitchei Chokhmah and several related Lurianic works, and he gathered around himself a small circle of disciples who studied the new revelations with him in Padua.

The maggid revelations and the messianic-redemptive language of some of Luzzatto's writings provoked alarm among the rabbinic authorities of central Europe, who had only recently weathered the Sabbatean and Frankist messianic movements that had nearly torn the Jewish world apart. Letters of denunciation circulated, bans of excommunication were threatened, and Luzzatto was forced to sign a series of agreements limiting his Kabbalistic teaching and restricting the circulation of his most controversial writings. These conflicts forced him to leave Padua for Amsterdam in 1735, where he lived under the protection of the Amsterdam Sephardic community for several years. It was during this Amsterdam period that he composed or completed several of his more accessible works including Derech Hashem and Mesillat Yesharim, both of which were carefully designed to teach the substance of his Lurianic theology without the more controversial maggidic and messianic elements that had aroused the suspicion of the rabbinic establishment.

Derech Hashem was conceived as a philosophical introduction to Jewish theology in the tradition of the great medieval works of Maimonides, Saadia Gaon, and Bahya ibn Pakuda, but updated for the post-Lurianic age. Where the medieval philosophers had organized their theology around the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic frameworks available in their own time, Luzzatto organized his around the Lurianic system that had become the dominant theological framework of post-Safed Jewish thought. The book is divided into four parts. Part one addresses the doctrine of God, the purpose of creation, and the nature of finite beings. Part two addresses divine providence, reward and punishment, the influence of the higher worlds on the lower, and the role of mazalot (constellational influences) in the order of the world. Part three addresses the human soul, prophecy, and the special status of the Jewish people in the divine plan. Part four addresses the structure of avodah — divine service — including the meaning of Torah study, prayer, and the commandments as means of spiritual perfection and as channels for the descent of divine influence into the world.

Derech Hashem was not published during Luzzatto's lifetime. He died in 1746 in Acre during a plague, having moved with his family to Eretz Yisrael in 1743 in fulfillment of his messianic-redemptive aspirations. The manuscript circulated among his disciples and their successors during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the first printed edition appeared in Amsterdam in 1896 — a century and a half after Luzzatto's death — followed by many subsequent printings in Warsaw, Jerusalem, and other centers of Jewish publishing. The standard contemporary edition is the Aryeh Kaplan bilingual translation published by Feldheim in 1977, which has made the work accessible to English-speaking readers and has become the most widely used introduction to Luzzatto's thought in the English-speaking world.

Content

Derech Hashem is divided into four parts of unequal length, each addressing a major theme of the systematic theology that Luzzatto is constructing.

Part one, on the fundamentals of belief, addresses the doctrine of God and the basic metaphysical framework of the system. Luzzatto opens with a concise statement of the divine attributes — that God is one, eternal, infinite, perfect, and the cause of all that exists. He then develops the doctrine of creation, arguing that creation has a purpose and that this purpose is the bestowal of divine goodness upon finite beings. The doctrine of the purpose of creation as the bestowal of divine goodness is a distinctive teaching of Luzzatto and provides the theological foundation for everything else in the book. The first part also develops the structure of the created order, distinguishing between the higher spiritual worlds and the lower physical world and tracing the chain of causation through which divine influence descends from the highest source through the intermediate worlds to the world of physical experience.

Part two, on providence, develops the doctrine that divine influence governs the world through complex systems of cause and effect that include the constellational influences (mazalot), the higher angelic ranks, and the special providence that God exercises over the Jewish people through the channels of Torah and mitzvot. Luzzatto distinguishes between the general providence that governs the natural order through the regular causes and the special providence that governs the Jewish people through their relationship with God. The second part also addresses reward and punishment, distinguishing the immediate this-worldly consequences of human action from the ultimate other-worldly consequences in the world to come and the messianic future. The doctrine of providence is among the carefully developed sections of the book and provides the framework within which the practical theology of part four becomes intelligible.

Part three addresses the human soul, prophecy, and the special status of the Jewish people. Luzzatto develops the doctrine that the human soul has multiple levels — nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, yechidah — corresponding to the different spiritual faculties and the different relationships of the soul to the higher worlds. He develops the doctrine of free will and explains how the soul can be the cause of its own actions despite the divine knowledge of the future. He develops the doctrine of prophecy, distinguishing the prophetic experience from ordinary religious experience and explaining the special channels through which prophecy reaches the prophet's consciousness. He develops the doctrine that the Jewish people occupy a special role in the divine plan as the recipients of the Torah and the active agents through whom the divine influence reaches the rest of creation. The third part is the anthropological foundation of the practical theology that follows.

Part four addresses avodah, divine service, in its various dimensions. Luzzatto develops the doctrine that Torah study is the activity in which the human soul most directly meets the divine wisdom and that the proper performance of Torah study draws divine influence into the world. He develops the theology of prayer, explaining how the established liturgy of Jewish prayer provides the channels through which the human soul addresses the divine and through which divine influence flows back to the soul. He develops the doctrine of the commandments, explaining each major category of mitzvot in terms of its function in drawing divine influence into specific dimensions of life and in repairing the cosmic damage of human transgression. The fourth part is the longest section of the book and represents the practical climax of the theological argument that the earlier parts have prepared.

Throughout the four parts the book maintains the philosophical-systematic style that distinguishes it from more directly Kabbalistic works. Luzzatto avoids the technical Kabbalistic vocabulary where it can be replaced by clearer philosophical language, but he uses the Kabbalistic vocabulary freely where it is necessary for the precision of his argument.

Key Teachings

The doctrine that the purpose of creation is the bestowal of divine goodness upon finite beings is the central teaching of Derech Hashem and the foundation of the entire system. Luzzatto teaches that God created the world in order to have beings to whom He could give the gift of divine goodness, and that this gift is most fully received when the recipients have earned it through their own efforts. Creation is therefore organized so that finite beings can earn the divine goodness through the spiritual work of life, and the structure of reward and punishment is the means by which the divine plan is carried out. This teaching provides the theological foundation for the moral seriousness of Luzzatto's ethical thought and for the optimistic confidence that underlies his messianic vision.

The doctrine of the chain of causation through which divine influence descends from the highest source through the intermediate worlds to the world of physical experience provides the metaphysical framework of the book. Luzzatto distinguishes the world of Atzilut (emanation), the world of Beriah (creation), the world of Yetzirah (formation), and the world of Asiyah (action), and traces the descent of divine influence through each of these worlds before it reaches the human consciousness in which it can be received and acted upon. The doctrine of the four worlds is the standard Lurianic doctrine, but Luzzatto presents it with unusual clarity and integrates it carefully with the philosophical questions about causation and providence that the educated reader will bring to the text.

The doctrine of providence as operating through both general and special channels is a major contribution of the book. General providence governs the natural order through the regular causes — the influences of the constellations on physical events, the workings of the elements, the ordinary structure of cause and effect. Special providence governs the Jewish people through their relationship with God and operates through the channels of Torah and mitzvot. The two forms of providence are not in competition but are different modes of divine governance suited to different aspects of the created order. The Jewish people are the locus of special providence because they are the recipients of the Torah and the active agents through whom divine influence reaches the rest of creation.

The doctrine of the multi-leveled soul provides the anthropological foundation of the system. Luzzatto teaches that the human soul has five levels — nefesh (the lowest, associated with vital and emotional life), ruach (associated with moral and religious sensibility), neshamah (associated with intellectual and contemplative capacities), chayah (associated with the deeper transpersonal sources of the soul), and yechidah (the highest, associated with the soul's direct connection to the divine). The five levels of the soul correspond to different spiritual capacities and to different relationships with the divine, and the spiritual life consists in the gradual actualization of each level through the appropriate forms of religious practice.

The doctrine that Torah study is the highest form of avodah anticipates the doctrine of Torah Lishmah that Chaim of Volozhin would later develop in Nefesh HaChaim. For Luzzatto, Torah study is the activity in which the human soul most directly meets the divine wisdom and through which divine influence is drawn into the world. The doctrine is developed with less systematic attention than the comparable doctrine in Nefesh HaChaim but is recognizably the same teaching, and it gives Derech Hashem a kinship with the Lithuanian Mitnagdic tradition that its Italian-Padovan author could not have anticipated.

The doctrine of the special role of Eretz Yisrael in the divine plan is a distinctive teaching of the book. Luzzatto teaches that the higher worlds influence the lower world through specific channels and that the channels reach the lower world through the Land of Israel before flowing out to the rest of creation. This doctrine gives the physical Land of Israel a unique cosmic role and provides theological warrant for the centrality of the Land in Jewish religious imagination.

Translations

Derech Hashem was not published during Luzzatto's lifetime. The manuscript circulated among his disciples and their successors during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the first printed edition appeared in Amsterdam in 1896 — a century and a half after Luzzatto's death in Acre in 1746. The Amsterdam edition was followed by additional Hebrew editions from publishers in Warsaw, Lvov, Jerusalem, and the major centers of Jewish publishing during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book gradually became known as the most accessible philosophical introduction to Luzzatto's thought and entered the curriculum of yeshivas and adult education programs that wanted to teach systematic Jewish theology without requiring direct study of the technical Kabbalistic literature.

The first complete English translation of Derech Hashem was prepared by Aryeh Kaplan and published by Feldheim Publishers in 1977 as a bilingual Hebrew-English edition under the title The Way of God. Kaplan was an American physicist turned Orthodox rabbi who had become a leading english-language interpreters of Jewish mystical thought during the 1960s and 1970s. His translation of Derech Hashem made the book accessible to English-speaking readers for the first time and provided extensive footnotes explaining the technical Kabbalistic vocabulary and the philosophical context. The Kaplan edition has remained the standard English version for nearly fifty years and has been reprinted many times. It continues to be the most widely used introduction to Luzzatto's thought in the English-speaking world.

Kaplan also produced an English translation of Mesillat Yesharim and supervised translations of several other Luzzattan works as part of his broader project of making the Italian Kabbalist's thought available to English-speaking readers. The Kaplan editions of Luzzatto have done more than any other resource to introduce contemporary English-speaking Jews to the post-Lurianic Italian theological tradition.

The major scholarly studies of Luzzatto in English include Isaiah Tishby's Messianic Mysticism: Moses Hayim Luzzatto and the Padua School, originally published in Hebrew and translated into English by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in 2008. Tishby's monumental study provides the most thorough academic treatment of Luzzatto and his circle in English and includes extensive translations and analysis of passages from Derech Hashem within the broader argument of the book. Tishby's work has revealed the depth of the messianic and redemptive themes in Luzzatto's writings even where, as in Derech Hashem, those themes are handled with caution to avoid arousing the suspicion of the rabbinic establishment.

Joëlle Hansel's studies of Luzzatto's philosophical writings, originally published in French and partly available in English translation, provide additional scholarly context. Jonathan Garb's Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2015, treats Luzzatto's psychological doctrines within the broader history of modern Kabbalistic thought and includes discussion of Derech Hashem alongside the other Luzzattan works. Mordechai Chriqui has produced critical editions of several of Luzzatto's works in Hebrew and French.

Controversy

The controversies surrounding Derech Hashem are inherited from the broader controversy surrounding Luzzatto and his Padua circle, though the book itself was deliberately written in a more cautious register than the writings that aroused the most intense rabbinic opposition. Understanding the controversies requires understanding the historical context of post-Sabbatean rabbinic anxiety about messianic-Kabbalistic claims.

Luzzatto's career was overshadowed from the beginning by the recent memory of Sabbatean and Frankist messianic movements that had nearly torn the Jewish world apart in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The rabbinic authorities of central Europe were extraordinarily vigilant about any signs that another such movement might be developing, and they applied this vigilance to the young Italian Kabbalist whose maggid revelations and messianic-redemptive language reminded them of the patterns they had learned to fear. Letters of denunciation against Luzzatto circulated through the rabbinic networks of central Europe in the late 1720s and early 1730s, and Luzzatto was forced to sign a series of agreements limiting his Kabbalistic teaching and restricting the circulation of his most controversial writings. He was eventually forced to leave Padua for Amsterdam in 1735 to escape the pressure.

Derech Hashem was composed during or shortly after this period of rabbinic pressure, and Luzzatto was careful to write it in a register that would not provoke further opposition. The book contains relatively little of the messianic-redemptive language that aroused the most concern in his other works, and it presents the substance of Lurianic theology in a philosophical idiom that connects it to the safe medieval rationalist tradition rather than to the controversial new revelations Luzzatto was receiving from his maggid. This caution allowed the book to circulate more freely than some of his other writings and contributed to its eventual reception as the standard accessible introduction to Luzzatto's thought.

A second controversy concerned the relationship between Derech Hashem and the more technical Lurianic literature. Some traditional readers worried that the philosophical accessibility of the book might lead readers to mistake it for a complete account of post-Lurianic theology and to dispense with the more difficult technical Kabbalistic studies that the book was designed to introduce. Defenders of the book responded that the philosophical accessibility was precisely the point — the book was meant as a doorway, not a destination, and serious students would be motivated to move beyond it to the more technical literature that it summarized.

A third controversy concerns the textual history of the book. Multiple manuscript versions circulated during the long period between Luzzatto's death and the first printed edition, and the relationship between the printed text and the various manuscripts has been a subject of scholarly investigation. Joseph Avivi and Mordechai Chriqui have done important work on the textual history of the Luzzattan corpus, and their research has clarified some questions about which passages in the printed editions of Derech Hashem represent Luzzatto's original text and which represent later editorial choices.

A fourth controversy concerns the contemporary reception of Luzzatto in religious-Zionist and other modern Jewish circles. Luzzatto's emphasis on the role of Eretz Yisrael in the divine plan and his messianic-redemptive vision have made him an attractive figure for religious-Zionist thinkers including Abraham Isaac Kook, but other contemporary readers have questioned whether the religious-Zionist appropriation of Luzzatto faithfully represents his original intention.

Influence

The influence of Derech Hashem on Jewish life over the past century and a quarter, since its first printed edition in 1896, has been significant within the world of Orthodox Jewish education and within the broader project of recovering post-Lurianic Italian Jewish thought for contemporary readers. Within the Orthodox educational world the book is widely used as the standard introduction to systematic Jewish theology and is taught in yeshivas and adult education programs that want to give students a coherent overview of post-Lurianic doctrine without requiring direct study of the more difficult technical Kabbalistic literature.

The book has been particularly influential within the religious-Zionist tradition, where its doctrine of the special role of Eretz Yisrael in the divine plan has provided theological warrant for the centrality of the Land in modern religious-Zionist thought. Abraham Isaac Kook drew on Luzzattan foundations for his own theology of the Land and the redemption, and Orot and Orot HaKodesh contain echoes of Luzzatto's teaching that are sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit. The religious-Zionist appropriation of Luzzatto has been a defining development in the modern reception of his thought.

The influence on the broader project of recovering Italian Jewish theology has also been substantial. The Italian rabbinic tradition that produced Luzzatto had been marginalized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the rise of the Lithuanian-style yeshiva movement and the Hasidic movement, both of which developed in eastern Europe and dominated Jewish life there throughout the period. Italian Jewish thought was largely forgotten except by specialists. The recovery of Luzzatto in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of which the printing of Derech Hashem was a key moment, helped to bring Italian Jewish theology back into the conversation and to remind contemporary Jews that the great traditions of Jewish thought are not exhausted by the eastern European synthesis.

The influence on contemporary English-speaking Jewry has been mediated largely through the translation work of Aryeh Kaplan, whose 1977 bilingual edition of Derech Hashem made the book accessible to a generation of English-speaking Orthodox and traditional Jews who would not have read it otherwise. Kaplan's broader project of translating and explaining the Italian Kabbalist's writings has had a substantial influence on contemporary American Orthodox education and on the wider Jewish meditation movement that has drawn on Kabbalistic sources for its practices.

The influence on academic scholarship has been substantial. Derech Hashem provides the most accessible philosophical statement of post-Lurianic Italian theology and is essential evidence for any study of Luzzatto, the Padua circle, the relationship between medieval rationalism and post-Lurianic Kabbalah, or the development of modern Jewish thought. Gershom Scholem drew on Luzzatto in his foundational studies of Sabbateanism and post-Sabbatean Jewish mysticism, and the subsequent generation of scholars including Isaiah Tishby, Joëlle Hansel, Jonathan Garb, Joseph Avivi, and Mordechai Chriqui have all built parts of their accounts of modern Kabbalistic thought on close readings of Luzzatto's writings including Derech Hashem.

The influence on contemporary Jewish meditation and contemplative practice has grown in recent decades as English-language teachers have drawn on the Luzzattan literature for guidance on structured contemplative work, particularly through the doctrine of the multi-leveled soul that Derech Hashem develops in part three.

Significance

Derech Hashem provided the post-Lurianic Jewish world with the systematic theological textbook it had been missing. The Lurianic system that had been developed by Isaac Luria and his school in sixteenth-century Safed was extraordinarily complex, and the major Lurianic works of Chaim Vital and his successors were technical, fragmentary, and very difficult for non-specialists to navigate. Educated Jewish laymen who wanted to understand the basic theological framework of post-Safed Judaism had no satisfactory introductory text. The medieval works of Maimonides and Saadia Gaon were still authoritative but had been written before Luria and could not address the questions that Lurianic Kabbalah had placed at the center of Jewish theological reflection. Luzzatto designed Derech Hashem to fill this gap by presenting the substance of Lurianic doctrine in compact philosophical form accessible to readers without specialized training.

The four-part structure of the book gave the educated Jewish reader a clear conceptual map of the theological territory. Part one established the basic metaphysical framework — God, creation, the purpose of finite existence. Part two developed the doctrine of providence and the systems through which divine influence reaches the world. Part three established the doctrine of the soul and the special status of the Jewish people. Part four developed the practical theology of avodah, showing how Torah study, prayer, and the commandments fit into the larger metaphysical picture. This four-fold movement from metaphysics through providence and anthropology to practical theology became a model that subsequent Jewish theological writers would imitate, and it gave Luzzatto's compact treatise a structural elegance that helped it survive the passage of time.

The book's defense of the centrality of Eretz Yisrael in the divine plan was particularly significant for the development of later Jewish thought about the Land of Israel. Luzzatto taught that the higher worlds influence the lower world through specific channels and that the channels reach the lower world through the Land of Israel before flowing out to the rest of creation. This doctrine gave the physical Land of Israel a unique cosmic role and provided theological warrant for the centrality of the Land in Jewish religious imagination and aspiration. The doctrine was developed at length in Derech Hashem and was picked up by subsequent Jewish thinkers including Abraham Isaac Kook, who built his theology of religious Zionism partly on Luzzattan foundations.

The book also provided the rabbinic establishment with a theological resource for understanding the soul, providence, and the moral order of the world that drew on Lurianic Kabbalah without requiring readers to work through the more difficult and controversial Lurianic literature directly. This made Derech Hashem suitable for introductory teaching in yeshivas and adult education settings where direct study of Etz Chaim or Pri Etz Chaim would not have been appropriate. The book has been used in this introductory role for over a century and continues to be the most accessible entry point to Luzzatto's thought and to post-Lurianic Jewish theology more generally.

Isaiah Tishby's Messianic Mysticism, published by the Littman Library in 2008, has shown how Derech Hashem fits into the broader project of Luzzatto and his Padua circle to create a renewed Lurianic-messianic Judaism for the eighteenth century. Tishby's work has revealed the depth of the messianic and redemptive themes in Luzzatto's writings even when, as in Derech Hashem, those themes are handled with caution to avoid arousing the suspicion of the rabbinic establishment.

Connections

Derech Hashem occupies a strategic position in the literature of Jewish thought as the bridge between medieval rationalist theology and the post-Lurianic Kabbalistic synthesis that defined modern Jewish religious imagination. Its connections reach in many directions across the canon.

The book is part of a closely related trilogy of works by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto. Derech Hashem provides the philosophical-theological introduction; Mesillat Yesharim provides the ethical-mystical ladder of virtues built on the same theological foundation; and Klach Pitchei Chokhmah provides the advanced Lurianic systematization in 138 propositional gates that the philosophical introduction summarizes. The three works form a single curriculum and should be read together by anyone serious about understanding Luzzatto's project.

The metaphysical framework of Derech Hashem is fundamentally Lurianic, drawing on the doctrines developed by Isaac Luria and his school in sixteenth-century Safed. Luzzatto presents these doctrines in compact philosophical form suitable for the educated layman, but they are recognizably the doctrines of the Lurianic system that the technical works of Chaim Vital develop at greater length. The Lurianic texts Etz Chaim, Shaar HaGilgulim, and the related Lurianic literature stand behind Derech Hashem and provide the technical foundation that the philosophical exposition presupposes.

The book's debt to the Cordoverian tradition is also substantial. Luzzatto draws on the doctrines of divine immanence and the structure of the sefirot developed in Pardes Rimonim by Moses Cordovero, integrating these Cordoverian materials with the Lurianic framework that became the dominant post-Safed synthesis. The integration of Cordoverian and Lurianic elements is one of the distinctive features of the Padua school that Luzzatto led, and it gives his theology a more philosophically systematic character than the works of Vital and his immediate successors.

The philosophical literature of medieval Judaism is the other major influence on the book. Luzzatto drew on the works of Maimonides (the Mishneh Torah and the Guide of the Perplexed), Saadia Gaon (the Book of Beliefs and Opinions), and Bahya ibn Pakuda (Duties of the Heart) for the philosophical vocabulary, the systematic ambitions, and the educational orientation that distinguish Derech Hashem from purely Kabbalistic works. The book belongs to the medieval philosophical tradition while also belonging to the post-Lurianic Kabbalistic tradition, and its synthesis of the two traditions is one of its most distinctive contributions.

The broader context of Kabbalah as a tradition is presupposed throughout the book. The doctrine of the sefirot, the structure of the four worlds, the divine names, and the technical vocabulary of mystical anthropology all appear in Derech Hashem, though they are presented in summary rather than developed in detail. The book serves as a doorway from general theological literacy into the technical Kabbalistic literature that the educated student might want to study next.

The book is a foundational text of Lurianic Kabbalah as a school of thought and a key document of the Padua circle that Luzzatto led. Its influence reaches forward to the religious-Zionist mysticism of Abraham Isaac Kook, who drew on Luzzattan foundations for his own theology of the Land and the redemption.

Further Reading