91 A Journey encompassing Jerusalem: Some Remarks on Guillaume Postel and Abraham Ben Eli’ezer Ha’Levi JUDITH WEISS In 1549, Guillaume Postel departed from Venice and headed East on a journey whose main destination was Palestine and Jerusalem 1 . This Journey, which was motivated by both the mystical and didactic allure of Jerusalem, took place in the course of a six-year period during which Postel delved intensely into the study, translation and interpretation of the Book of Zohar 2 . A few years prior to Postel’s journey, a Jewish kabbalist named Abraham Ha’Levi lived in Jerusalem. Ha’Levi was aware of the existence of Christian scholars interested in kabbalistic literature, and expressed his attitude toward this phenomenon in his epistles and monographs (Idel 2003; idem 2004) 3 .These two writers – Postel and Ha’Levi – can serve as good examples of the dialectics and the intellectual dynamics from which the image of the real and of the symbolic Jerusalem in the first half of the 16 th century can be envisaged. At the core of this paper stands Jerusalem in its symbolic and real dimensions. In the following pages we shall endeavour to examine the way in which the Zohar might have engendered the journey to Jerusalem for a Christian kabbalist. Alongside this examination, we shall offer a parallel enquiry into the reaction of a Jewish Jerusalemite Kabbalist to the increasing interest exhibited by Christian Scholars in Jewish esoteric lore. In the context of this study, Jerusalem is considered both as the geographical abode of an important kabbalistic group which expressly chose to live in this city, as well as the yearned for destination of a Christian kabbalist on a journey of a mystical character. As is well known, Postel translated and commented on a number of Hebrew and Aramaic Rabbinic and Kabbalistic texts, in addition to the treatises he himself composed (Kuntz 1981 a). However, it is his preoccupation specifically with the Zohar, precisely at the time of his journey to Jerusalem, which is significant to our investigations. As we shall see, the Land of Israel, both in its real and symbolic essence, is a major pivot in Kabbalistic and especially Zoharic literature, to the extent that many Renaissance Jewish Kabbalists eventually immigrated to Palestine out of their devotion to these texts. Bracha Zack noted that: 1 On his Journeys to the east : E.Vogel, “Über Wilhelm Postels Reisen in den Orient” in Serapeum, 1853 p. 14; Marion Leathers Kuntz, “Journey as Restitutio in the Thought of Guillaume Postel (1510-1581)”, in History of European Ideas, 1981, p. 315-329; Marion Leathers Kuntz, “Voyages to the East and their Meaning in the Thought of Guillaume Postel”, in J. Céard et J. L Margolin (éds.), Voyages à la Renaissance, Tours, 1985, p. 51-63; Jean-Pierre Brach, “L’Orient mesianique chez Guillaume Postel”, in M.A Amir-Moezzi et J. Scheid (éds.), L’Orient dans l’Histoire religieuse de l’Europe: L’invention des origines, Tournai, 2000, p. 121-128. 2 Postel probably started working on it in 1547 (although Kuntz has speculated that he began his translation in 1548; see Marion Leathers Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, Prophet of the Restitution of all Things: His Life and Thought , Hague 1981, p. 84) as, to the best of my knowledge, the earliest date mentioned in the autograph is September 1547 (BL Ms. Sloane 1410 fol.301r, in his commentary to Zohar I 128a-b). The latest date in the manuscript is probably October 23rd 1553, mentioned at the ending of his preface to the Zohar translation. 3 My analysis of Ha’Levi text, in the second part of this paper, follows some Idel’s assertions.