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 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
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.