The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon (42 page)
Read The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon Online
Authors: Richard Zimler
Tags: #Romance, #Historical Fiction, #Religion, #Fiction, #General, #Historical, #Detective and Mystery Stories, #Talking Books, #Judaism, #Jews, #Jewish, #Jewish Fiction, #Lisbon (Portugal), #Jews - Portugal - Lisbon, #Cabala, #Kabbalah & Mysticism
The Seventh of Av, 5290
Adar
The sixth month of the Hebrew lunar calendar, generally coinciding with part of February and part of March.
Anusim
Hebrew word for Jews forced to convert to Christianity.
Asmodeus
The king of the Jewish demons.
Av
The eleventh month of the Hebrew lunar calendar, generally coinciding with part of July and part of August.
Ba’al
Shem
In kabbalistic texts, a title applied to mystics who possess secret knowledge of the holy names of God and who can make magical use of such knowledge.
Bahir
The Book of Light. An influential kabbalistic text discovered in Provence in the 12th century.
Challah
A Jewish egg bread.
Chametz
Food which Jews are forbidden to eat during Passover, especially leavened bread.
Chazan
The leader of prayers and chief singer of the liturgy in a synagogue.
Ein
Sof
The hidden God which cannot be perceived, described or in any way approached. The existence and nature of such a God can only be deduced from its emanations or attributes in our world.
Elohim
One of the names of God.
Genizah
A depository for sacred books.
Golem
A creature, usually in human form, created by magical means through the use of holy names, particularly the Tetragrammaton.
Haggadah
The text containing both the story of the Exodus and the ritual of the ceremonial meal which is eaten in celebration of Passover. Jewish manuscript illuminators from Iberia and other parts of Europe frequently illustrated Haggadahs with Biblical scenes.
Halizah
Biblically prescribed ceremony performed when a man refuses to marry his brother’s childless widow.
Haman
A Persian courtier who plotted to massacre the Jews (from the Book of Esther).
Hanukkah
A Jewish festival held in the winter which celebrates the victory of the Maccabees, a Jewish tribe, over the Syrians in 165 B.C.
Heshvan
The second month of the Hebrew lunar calendar, generally
coinciding
with part of October and part of November.
Haroset
A mixture of chopped fruits, nuts and spices eaten on Passover and representing the mortar used by Hebrew slaves in building for the Egyptian Pharaoh.
Ibbur
An evil spirit or wandering soul of a deceased person that enters the body of a living person and controls his or her behavior.
Kaddish
The prayer for the dead which is recited by mourners.
Kislev
The third month of the Hebrew calendar, generally coinciding with part of November and part of December.
Kosher
Fit for human consumption, according to Jewish dietary laws.
Lez
A mischievous Jewish demon or poltergeist.
Levite
A person belonging to the religious caste of priests descended from Levi, son of Jacob.
Lilith
In Jewish legends, a female demon who strangles children and seduces men. She is sometimes regarded as the queen of all that is evil.
Magen
David
A six-pointed star used as a symbol of Judaism.
Maimon
A powerful Jewish demon.
Matzah
Unleavened bread baked by the Israelites during the Exodus from Egypt and eaten during the holiday of Passover. The only ingredients are flour and water.
Menorah
A candelabrum generally having seven or nine branches which is lit during the fesitval of Hanukkah.
Metatron
The heavenly angel who records good deeds.
Mezuzah
A small case containing a piece of parchment upon which is written the particular Jewish prayer which begins “Hear O Israel.” This case is affixed to the doorpost of a Jew’s home and was sometimes regarded as offering protection against the attacks of demons.
Micvah
Ritual bath in which women immerse themselves following
menstruation
. It is also used by men for purposes of ritual purification.
Mitzvah
A divine commandment. There are 613 such commandments in the Torah. It can also mean any good deed.
Mohel
A person trained to perform ritual circumcisions. Jewish male
children
are generally circumcised on the eighth day after birth.
Mordecai
Jewish courtier who thwarted Haman’s plan to massacre the Persian Jews (from the Book of Esther).
Neshamah
The divine spark of God in man; the soul.
Nezah
Divine endurance.
Nisan
The seventh month of the Hebrew lunar calendar, generally coinciding with part of March and part of April.
Passover
The Jewish festival commemorating the escape of the Hebrew
people
from bondage in Egypt, traditionally celebrated for eight days in the spring.
Purim
A Jewish holiday which celebrates the downfall of Haman’s plan to massacre the Persian Jews.
Rahamim
Divine compassion.
Rosh
Hashanah
The Jewish New Year.
Samael
The name of Satan in Judaism.
Seder
The traditional ceremonial meal eaten on the first and sometimes
second
nights of Passover. (Christ’s Last Supper was a Jewish seder.)
Sefer
Hebrew for “book.”
Sefirot
The ten aspects or manifestations of God, sometimes represented as divine lights and often associated with the Cosmic Tree, the names of God and various parts of the human body.
Sitra
Ahra
The kabbalistic term for the domain of evil emanations and demonic powers (The Other Side).
Shefa
A divine influx or moment of divine presence.
Shevat
The fifth month of the Hebrew lunar calendar, generally coinciding with part of January and part of February.
Shofar
A ram’s horn blown to produce a trumpet sound during certain Jewish rituals.
Shohet
A Jewish butcher specially trained in the techniques governing the slaughter of animals.
Tallis
A rectangular prayer shawl.
Talmud
An ancient compilation of Jewish Oral Law which includes
rabbinical
commentaries.
Tefillin
Phylacteries.
Tishri
The first month of the Hebrew calendar, generally coinciding with part of September and part of October.
Torah
The Pentateuch or first five books of the Old Testament. In a broader sense, it can refer to the complete Old Testament or even all of Jewish teaching.
Tref
Food unfit for human consumption and which must be discarded
according
to Jewish dietary laws.
Tzitzit
The fringes which dangle from the four corners of a Jewish prayer shawl.
Tu
Bisvat
A Jewish holiday connected with the Tree of Life and the eating of fruit associated with the land of Israel.
Yom
Kippur
The holiest Jewish holiday, on which Jews fast to atone for their sins.
Zedek
Divine Justice.
Zohar
The Book of Splendor. The most influential book of kabbalistic
mysticism
, written in Guadalajara, Spain, between 1280 CE and 1286 CE, by the Jewish mystic Moses de Leon.
New Fiction
from
Arcadia
Books
The
Angelic
Darkness
Richard
Zimler
San Francisco, 1986 – a city where Dionysian liberation is beginning to pall beneath the first shadows of a strange new darkness. Bill Ticino’s fruitless and numbing marriage finally breaks up. Plagued by insomnia and spiritually lost, Bill finds a lodger as the solution to his problems: a handsome, charismatic Portuguese man named Peter, whose pet bird is a hoopoe named Maria. Bill finds himself drawn into a world of kabbalistic storytelling, charms and ritual. Peter ignites Bill’s repressed obsessions by telling him emotionally charged tales of hidden meaning.
One night they venture together into the Tenderloin district, a dead-end world of prostitutes and transvestites. Bill begins to see that his new tenant has plans that will force him down a perilous sexual and spiritual path, with the power to both redeem and destroy.
Advance praise for
The
Angelic
Darkness
:
‘A heady mixture of the mythical, the mysterious and the earthy. Above all, it affirms the power of fiction and makes the world seem a more complex and wondrous place’ – Michael Arditti,
Daily
Mail
‘His serene and calm prose probes with a fine scalpel into emotions and sexuality. Zimler is an exciting writer and
The
Angelic
Darkness
is an ambitious novel, full of mystery’ –
TLS
‘A moving homage to outsider cultures both ancient and modern’ –
Scotsman
‘A taut suspense story… compulsively readable’ – Alannah Hopkin,
Sunday
Tribune
E
URO
C
RIME
from
Arcadia
Books
Because
of
the
Cats
Nicolas
Freeling
Some
Day
Tomorrow
Nicolas
Freeling
One
Helluva
Mess
Jean-Claude
Izzo
Dark
Paths
Dominique
Manotti
Final
Curtain
Kjersti
Scheen
The
Name
of
the
Bullfighter
Luis
Sepulveda
The
Writing
on
the
Wall
Gunnar
Staalesen
The
Last
Kabbalist
of
Lisbon
Richard
Zimler
Richard Zimler, born in 1956 in New York, has lived since 1990 in Portugal, where he is a professor of journalism at the University of Porto. His short fiction, which has appeared in Britain in
London
Magazine
and in America in
The
James
White
Review,
won the 1994 Panurge Prize and has since been anthologized in the
Book
of
Eros
and
Men
on
Men:
6.
He has also won a fellowship in fiction from the US National Endowment for the Arts.
Unholy
Ghosts,
his second novel, was recently published. His most recent novel,
The
Angelic
Darkness,
is also published by Arcadia.
First published in 1998
by Arcadia Books Books, 15-16 Nassau Street, London, W1W 7AB
This ebook edition first published in 2011
All rights reserved
© Richard Zimler, 1998
The right of Richard Zimler to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–1–908129–24–6