Kabbalah

Solomon Alkabetz and the Circle of Mystics

The author of the hymn now sung in nearly every synagogue every Friday night led a devoted study circle in Safed whose signature practice, staying awake all night studying Torah before dawn, is still performed by observant Jews on Shavuot.

Shlomo Alkabetz, best known for composing Lekha Dodi, led a circle of mystics in sixteenth-century Safed that included his brother-in-law and eventual chief disciple, Moses Cordovero. The circle's most famous collective practice, Tikkun Leil Shavuot, an all-night session of Torah study on the eve of Shavuot, is described in Joseph Karo's own mystical diary as originating from a night when Alkabetz, Karo, and others stayed up studying together and experienced what Karo understood as a heavenly voice speaking through him as a reward for their devotion. The practice reflects a broader Safed conviction that sustained, disciplined study itself could function as a devotional and theurgic act, capable of drawing down real spiritual presence. Alkabetz's circle is significant less for a single doctrine than for demonstrating how thoroughly the Safed mystics blended communal ritual, personal mystical experience, and textual scholarship.