Tomer Devorah: Imitating Hashem’s Thirteen Attributes in Daily Life

The Ramak (Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, 1522-1570), the leading Kabbalist of Safed before the Arizal, wrote many dense works on the sefirot. But the book most widely read from his pen is a short ethical work called Tomer Devorah (the “Palm Tree of Devorah”). Its idea is simple to state and difficult to practice: a person was created in the image of Hashem, and so he should imitate His ways.

The foundation

The book is built on a passage in the prophet Michah (7:18-20), which describes Hashem’s conduct in thirteen phrases. It begins: “Who is a God like You, who forgives iniquity and passes over transgression for the remnant of His inheritance.” The Ramak reads these thirteen phrases as the Shelosh Esrei Middot (Thirteen Attributes of Mercy) as they appear in the prophet, and he builds the book on them, treating the attributes as the lines of a program for how a person should behave.

His starting point is a verse from Michah: “Who is a God like You.” The Ramak says that a person who wants to imitate Hashem must first know what Hashem’s conduct is, and the book then goes through the attributes one by one, each tied to a sefirah (Divine attribute) and each applied to a concrete situation.

What Hashem does, and what we should do

The Ramak starts with a striking observation about how Hashem treats someone who sins. A person who is angry with someone, he notes, would stop helping him. Hashem does not. Even while a person is using his strength in a way that angers Heaven, the Divine continues to sustain him and give him life. The Ramak concludes that a person should not cut off a person who has wronged him, and should keep treating him with kindness as long as he can.

The same pattern runs through the book. Hashem is patient with the wicked, so a person should be patient. Hashem hides the faults of Israel, so a person should not publicize the faults of others. Hashem rewards even small acts of goodness, so a person should notice and thank another for small things.

Practice over theory

What distinguishes Tomer Devorah from other works of Kabbalah is that it is practical. The Ramak does not ask the reader to meditate on the sefirot. He asks him to behave a certain way at a certain moment. This is the Kabbalistic idea of hit’chakut (imitation) in its plainest form: the way to bring Divine attributes into the world is to act with them.

The Ramak holds that the sefirot are present in a person as well as in the upper worlds. When a person acts with mercy, the sefirah of mercy is drawn down, so his behavior is more than an example.

How to read it

The book is short and can be read in an afternoon, but it rewards slow study, one section at a time. A good approach is to choose one attribute, practice it for a week, and see what changes. The Ramak does not claim the work is easy. The attributes themselves are covered in The 13 Attributes of Mercy, and the author in The Ramak: The Systematizer of Kabbalah.