Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto was born in Padua, Italy in 5467 (1707) to his father Rabbi Yaakov and his mother Diamanta. He was known as a prodigy from a young age, and by the age of 14 he already knew the entire Talmud and the writings of the Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria, by heart. At age 20 he merited a revelation from a heavenly maggid (a muse) who dictated to him supernal secrets, an event that ignited fierce controversy in the Jewish world. Many rabbis accused him of Sabbateanism and he was forced to take an oath not to engage in practical Kabbalah. In 5491 (1731) he married Tzipporah Finzi and settled in Padua. He later moved to Amsterdam, where he composed his famous works Mesilat Yesharim (Path of the Upright) and Derech Hashem (The Way of God). In 5503 (1743), he made aliyah to the Land of Israel and settled in Acre, where he wrote a Torah scroll and prepared to continue his journey into the interior of the Land. He departed from this world in a plague at age 40 on the 26th of Iyar, the day that corresponds to the Yesod SheBaYesod (foundation in foundation), 5506 (1746) and was buried in Tiberias (though some say his final resting place is in Kfar Yasif).
When he was about twenty years old, after having already studied extensively in both the revealed and hidden teachings and even composed a book similar to the Book of Psalms, the Ramchal merited a wondrous revelation from Heaven: a maggid (similar to an inner muse) who revealed to him hidden mysteries in the language of the Zohar. Initially, he kept this secret, but after the matter became known and caused controversy regarding the valid nature of these revelations, the Ramchal himself began to relate it firsthand.
In a letter to Rabbi Binyamin HaKohen, the Ramchal described:
On Rosh Chodesh Sivan, 5487 (1727), while I was meditating on a certain unification, I fell asleep. Upon awakening, I heard a voice saying, “To reveal we have brought down, hidden secrets of the Holy King.” For a moment I trembled with fear, but then I strengthened myself. The voice did not cease, and spoke the secret of what it had said. On the second day at that same hour, I made an effort to be alone in my room, and the voice returned and spoke another secret. Until one day, it revealed to me that it was a maggid sent from Heaven, and it gave me specific meditations to focus on each day, and then it would come. I do not see it, but only hear its voice speaking from within my mouth. Afterwards, it also gave me permission to ask questions.
About three months later, it gave me specific tikkunim (acts of penitence) to perform each day, so that I might merit the revelation of Elijah, of blessed memory. Then it commanded me to compose a book on Ecclesiastes, as it would explain to me the secret of each verse. Afterwards, Elijah came and spoke the secrets he spoke. He said that now (the angel) Metatron, the great prince, would come. When he arrived, I knew it was him because of what Elijah had told me, and from then on I recognized each one individually.
There are also revealed souls, whose names I do not know… and all these things I do while fallen on my face. And I see these holy souls, as if in a dream in human form.
Rabbi Raphael Israel Kimchi writes:
With my own eyes I saw the wondrous mystical unifications that he performed while falling on his face, leaning on his hands on the table for about half an hour. Afterwards he stood up, and the quill in his hand swiftly wrote in a short time—in less than half an hour—a folio [equivalent to two Letter sheets of paper] or a folio and a half of Torah secrets, supremely lofty matters, all in the language of the Zohar, beyond what any human intellect or hand and quill could produce. He did this several times, and this is possible, because the Holy Blessed One bestowed upon him an influx from on high. And he concealed in concealment what his heart desired, ”God will make it prosper in his hand….”
But these revelations, so short a time after the devastation caused by Sabbatai Zevi, aroused fear of another false Messiah, a fear that intensified due to the Ramchal's extensive preoccupation with the Mashiach and messianic matters. The Ramchal’s teacher, Rabbi Isaiah Bassano, advised him to cease engaging in such matters to avoid inflaming the controversy further.
Ultimately, the chest with his writings was sent from Padua to Rabbi Yaakov Katz, who sentenced most of the writings to burial and a minority to burning. Individual copies of about half of the Ramchal’s books survived in manuscript, and from these they spread and were copied in secret until their printing many years later after the controversy subsided and he and his teachings were accepted by all of Israel.
According to the Ramchal, the Creator conducts His world through two forms of governance: the governance of unity, which is entirely good and kindness in manifest and revealed good, and the governance of judgment: open rebuke motivated by concealed love.
But the governance of judgment operates only in this era, when there is the reality of evil in the world. In the future to come, with the coming of Mashiach, the governance of judgment will be completely nullified and only the governance of unity will remain (this is the secret of the verse, “And of Zion it shall be said, ‘This man and that man was born in her,’” indicating that even the woman, the secret of the Divine Name whose value is 52 (יוד הה וו הה) corresponding with the governance of judgment, will return to being masculine, symbolized by the Divine Name whose value is 45 (יוד הא ואו הא), and corresponding with the governance of unity that is entirely kindness and revealed love. Indeed, this concept is alluded to in that the value of the two governances (הַנְהָגַת הַיִּחוּד הַנְהָגַת הַמִּשְׁפָּט) equals the value of the phrase, “he [man] shall cling to his wife, and they will become one (וְדָבַק בְּאִשְׁתּוֹ וְהָיוּ לְבָשָׂר אֶחָד).
In the Ramchal, who strove all his life to bring about complete unity, there was indeed a spark of Mashiach. It is not for naught that his writings were accepted by virtually all of Israel, the mussar authorities cling to Messilat Yesharim, Lithuanian Kabbalists revere the Kabbalah books he wrote, and even in Chasidic writings, his teachings are brought down.
Still, in several places it would appear that the attitude of the great Chasidic leaders toward him was complex: The Tzemach Tzedek, on one hand, criticized his practice of being without a beard while he was outside the Land of Israel, as was the practice of the Italian Kabbalists from whom he learned. On the other hand, it is reported that the Tzemach Tzedek knew the Ramchal’s book Messilat Yesharim by heart. The Ba’al Shem Tov said of the Ramchal that he was a spark of Mashiach, but that he was relatively speaking a Mashiach of the World of Chaos. It is told that the Maggid of Mezritch would read a line from the Ramchal’s 138 Gateways of Wisdom before delivering his own Torah teachings, and then say, “Behold the superiority of light that emerges from darkness.”
But the simple interpretation of these words raises questions: For the Maggid of Mezritch himself defined the Ramchal’s book, on another occasion, as “clear and pure.” Moreover, in the introduction to the book 138 Gateways of Wisdom, the enthusiastic approbation written by Rebbe Yaakov Yosef of Ostroh, a premier disciple of the Maggid of Mezritch, was printed and the publisher added that he had told him in the name of his teacher “that his generation was not worthy to understand his [the Ramchal’s] righteousness and asceticism.”
Therefore, the Maggid’s words referring to his own teachings relative to the Ramchal’s as illustrating, “the superiority of light that emerges from darkness,” should be understood as referring to the supernal darkness, the sublime darkness referencing the Divine level that is incomprehensible and unrevealed, preceding in time and in rank to the light, i.e., to the revelation of the Divine, that emerged from within it. Only against the background of the supernal darkness does the excellence and essence of what is revealed as the light of the Divine properly shine forth. Thus, the Maggid meant that even Chasidic teachings emerge against the background of the Ramchal’s teachings that preceded them.
If we summarize the attitude of these tzaddikim toward the Ramchal and his Torah, we can see in them an order of Creation, Formation, and Action, the three lower worlds in which opposition and disagreement between opinions are possible. The Ba’al Shem Tov's evaluation of the Ramchal as a spark of Mashiach reflects the world of Creation. The world of Creation is connected to the supernal darkness because it is a world of potential possibilities, not yet completely actualized. Specifically, the root of the Mashiach, who is an ethereal reality prepared to be actualized at any moment, is found in that world.
The Maggid’s reference to the Ramchal’s teachings on the one hand as “darkness” and on the other hand as “clear and pure” belongs to the World of Formation. Here once again, the Ramchal’s teachings are set as belonging specifically to the World of Creation, as in the verse “He Who forms light and creates darkness,” darkness in Creation, above light, in Formation.
The Tzemach Tzedek's criticism, that growing a beard was fundamental in his teaching [both in the revealed and hidden Torah], belongs to the World of Action. As told about the Tzemach Tzedek, who demanded of his student: “Mach da Eretz Yisroel!” (meaning: make the place that you are in a part of the Land of Israel). The Tzemach Tzedek believed that even abroad one can illuminate all thirteen Rectifications of the Beard. And if even abroad, in exile, one can feel the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, it follows that it is a mitzvah to resemble God about whom it is said that, “Just as He is merciful [in actual revelation even in exile], so too should you be merciful,” when you grow your holy beard.
The Tzemach Tzedek's innovation is that even in the World of Action, referenced by the word “even” in the verse, “even I have made it,” there is a Divine revelation whose source is above the Worlds of Creation and Formation, reaching all the way to the World of Emanation. The word translated as “even” (אף) and which can also mean “anger,” comes to include Emanation in the place of Action specifically and to reveal the supernal unity in the place of separation and judgment.
