Ilan Ha-Gadol (Kabbalistic Scroll) Autograph copy, written by Isaac Sason ben Mordechai Shantuch (1747-1830).

Scroll (8 ¼ in. x 36 ft, 3 in.; 210 mm x 11 meters, 50 mm). Ink on Paper written on nineteen sheets. 

This is one of a handful of Ilanot by R. Sasson ben Mordechai Shantuch (1747-1830), one of the first known kabbalists of Baghdad. Shantuch was a prolific and unusually creative rabbi. In addition to works of commentary, liturgical poetry, and Kabbalah, he served as a cantor and scribal artist. The Jews of Baghdad relate stories of Shantuch’s artistic prowess, including his inscription of the biblical verse, “The land of wheat and barley…” on a single grain of wheat. He also wove a large Torah curtain densely embroidered with representations of the Third Temple according to verses in the Book of Ezekiel that exists till this day, now in a private collection in Jerusalem. Given his artistic and visual sensibilities, it is hardly surprising that Shantuch’s most significant kabbalistic composition was his Ilan, or more precisely, his series of Ilanot.  On the basis of colophons on other exemplars, we know that he began creating these diagrammatic works of Lurianic Kabbalah as a young man (the earliest colophon being 1772) and continued to produce them in various forms for nearly fifty years (the latest colophon being 1821). Each of the exemplars is unique in its ratio of text and image; the Moussaieff scroll is among the most image laden, while a codex version in another private collection preserves the most extensive textual material. In the fascinating foreword to that codex, Shantuch explained that the unwieldy form of the scroll made it difficult for students to navigate, prompting him to present essentially the same material in the conventional book format.

Shantuch’s Ilanot were clearly intended to provide a unified overview of the Lurianic theory of creation and emanation. Unlike many if not most diagrammatic presentations, they were not crafted to clarify textual materials found elsewhere, but to present an integrated verbal and visual guide that could stand alone. That said, Shantuch’s work is quintessentially synthetic, and his Ilanot represent hybridic recombinations of kabbalistic material culled from a wide variety of sources. Once again we see the fascinating interpenetration of European, North African, and Middle Eastern textual and visual traditions amalgamating in a single artefact. Incorporating material from European printed works as well as from kabbalistic scrolls from Kurdistan, Shantuch’s genius was to create a coherent work of disparate sources that spoke with one voice: his own. Shantuch’s skills as a scribal artist also lent his Ilanot a distinctive aesthetic, from the colorful title frame in this Moussaieff exemplar announcing it as the “Form of the Tree of Life of the Holy One Blessed be He” (Tofes ilana de-hayei liKBHu) to the unusually anthropomorphic whiskery image of “the Long Face” (Arikh anpin) at its heart.

 Surveying this long scroll, the colorful title is followed by Shantuch’s version of the Sarugian-Lurianic treatment of the earliest stages of creation. His willingness to represent the divine anthropomorphically notwithstanding, Shantuch’s treatment of the Primordial Adam is exclusively geometrical – almost astronomical in appearance. He also makes extensive use of tables to organize his presentation of letter-combination sequences that make up the warp and weft of the primordial garment, or Malbush. The iconic decadal arboreal diagram here too appears midway through the scroll in the representation of the fractal-like articulation of incrementally-descending dimensions of divinity.  As we scroll down, we find again the nested sphere-letters that appear atop the Kopio Ilan, and the emoticon-like faces of divinity familiar from the Poppers Ilan, the mysterious hands from the Temerles Ilan, and the Tinker-Toy-like geometrical “Chariot” from the Kurdistan Ilan. In its artful eclecticism,  Shantuch’s Ilan is a window into the diversity of Jewish cultural life in Baghdad some two centuries ago and a testament to the creativity of its first known kabbalist.