In his autobiography, the philosopher Salomon Maimon (d. 1800) recalled that the concept of beards “especially gave me trouble.” In reading the Zohar and other kabbalistic works, Maimon explored the image of “God’s Beard, in which the hairs are divided into numerous classes with something peculiar to each, and every hair is a separate channel of divine grace.” Maimon later wrote that with all of his efforts, “I could find no rational meaning in these representations.”
