The Lion and the Master

In 1570 a young man of about thirty-six arrived in Tzfat from Egypt with his family. He tried to hide his greatness, but within months the whole town was speaking of Rabbi Yitzchak Luria — the Ari, “the Lion.” Rabbi Yosef Karo was by then past eighty: head of the rabbinical court, author of the Beit Yosef and the Shulchan Aruch, the most honoured rabbi in the Jewish world.

A match between two houses

Tradition tells that Karo was seeking a bride for his son Shlomo, born in 1555, and heard of the newcomer’s daughter. Karo was confident that the Luria family was the right one, and the respect between the two sages ran both ways. The whole city, it is said, buzzed with the news. The engagement was celebrated in the Luria home, with the sages of Tzfat gathered to rejoice — and the words spoken by the bride’s father rose above all the rest.

Karo came home late that night, the story goes, and told his wife, who had not been able to attend, what he had heard. He could not find words for it. Such depth in the inner meaning of the Torah and the mitzvot, he said, was beyond what he had imagined a human being could reach; this man’s soul must come from the early prophets. And then his joy turned to fear: “Our generation is not worthy of such light. I am afraid we will not have him with us for long.” Two years later, in the summer of 1572, the Arizal passed away at the age of thirty-eight.

The lesson he slept through

After that night, the tradition continues, the aged Karo — humble enough to seek a teacher more than forty years his junior — asked the Arizal to teach him kabbalah. The Arizal was reluctant, but they studied together a few times. Then he told Karo gently that his soul was not meant to receive this wisdom by his path; he would do better to learn from the teachings of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, the Ramak. “And here is a sign that I am right,” he added. “As soon as I begin to reveal the secrets, you will fall asleep.” And so it was: every time the Arizal began to speak of the hidden things, Karo’s eyes would close.

The story is not told to belittle Maran. Tradition explains that each great soul has its own mission. Karo’s was the revealed Torah — to set the table of halachah for all Israel — and he had his own heavenly teacher for the hidden things. A similar story is told of his disciple, the Alsheich, whom the Arizal likewise sent back to his own task.

Revealed and concealed

The wedding, tradition relates, was celebrated in 1570 with the whole city taking part. People saw in it more than the joining of two families: the two faces of the one Torah — the revealed, codified by Maran, and the hidden, opened anew by the Arizal — united under one wedding canopy in Tzfat.