Tomer Devorah תומר דבורה
A little book in ten chapters where each sefirah is a pattern of conduct: the first work of musar grown out of kabbalah.
Tomer Devorah—"The Palm Tree of Deborah"—is a short book in ten chapters by Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, printed at Venice in 1588, after his death.
The first chapter treats the thirteen attributes of mercy from Micah (7:18–20)—not the verse in Exodus, as is often supposed, but the kabbalistic thirteen, assigned to Keter. Then come the remaining sefirot, each as a pattern for a man to imitate: Chochmah—not to despise any creature; Binah—not to rejoice at another's fall; Tiferet—to hold the middle.
The turn it makes is this. "Imitate God" is an old thought. But for Cordovero it is not a figure of speech: a man's deeds echo in the sefirot, so conduct is not only morality but action within the structure of the world. Out of this grows the whole kabbalistic literature of musar—Reshit Chochmah, Sefer Charedim, and later the Chasidic books.
It is still read today, often in the month of Elul before the Days of Awe: in five hundred years not a page of it has gone stale.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Micah 7:18-20 — the verse on which the first chapter is built
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Tomer Devorah, chapter 1 — the thirteen attributes of mercy from Micah 7:18–20, assigned to Keter
Basis: documents and evidence.