Man and Theogony in the Lurianic Cabala by Daphne Freedman (Gorgias Press) After the establishment of the Zoharic corpus amongst leading rabbis, no major changes took place in Jewish esoterism until the middle of the 16th century, when in Safed (in Upper Galilee, Palestine; present-day Zefat, Israel) a religious centre of extreme importance for Judaism was established, which was mainly inspired by teachers coming from families expelled from Spain. Until the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492) and during the two generations that followed it, the Kabbalistic literary output had certainly been abundant, in Spain till the expulsion as well as in Italy and the Middle East; but it was primarily a matter of systematizing or even popularizing the Zohar or of extending the speculation already developed in the 13th century; there were also some attempts at reconciling philosophy and Kabbala. It should be noted that even the traditionalist theologians adopted a careful and rather reserved attitude toward Kabbala.

The tragedy for Judaism of the expulsion from Spain and of the forced conversions to Christianity that preceded it by a century, and which would become even more extensive in Portugal shortly afterward, deeply marked the victims. These events, accentuating the already existing pessimism in response to the situation of the Jewish people dispersed among the nations, intensified the messianic expectation.

This expectation does not seem to have been unrelated to the beginnings of the printed transmission of Kabbala—the first two printed editions of the Zohar date from 1558. All these factors, joined with certain internal developments of speculative Kabbala in the 15th century, prepared the ground for the new theosophy inaugurated by the teaching of Isaac ben Solomon Luria, who was born in Jerusalem in 1534, educated in Egypt, and died in Safed in 1572; although his teaching is traditionally associated with Safed, he spent only the last three years of his life there. Luria -- also known as the "Ari Zaal," or "Divine Rabbi Isaac," -- was, and remains to this day, unarguably the greatest Kabbalist in world history. Luria wrote very little; his doctrine has been transmitted, amplified, and probably somewhat distorted through the works of his disciples, of which the main one was Hayyim Vital (1543–1620), who wrote 'Etz Hayyim (“Tree of Life”), the standard presentation of Lurianic Kabbala.

The theosophy of Luria, whose novelty was proclaimed by its creator and perfectly realized by the esoterists who held to the Zoharistic Kabbala (organized and codified precisely in Safed, during the lifetime of Luria, by Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, 1522–70), is of extreme complexity in its details, although basically it is but one more attempt to reconcile divine transcendence with immanence and to bring a solution to the problem of evil, which the believer in the divine unity can recognize neither as a power existing independently of God nor as an integral part of him.

The theosophic vision of Luria is expressed in a vast mythical construct, which is typologically akin to certain Gnostic and Manichaean (3rd-century dualistic) systems but which strives at all costs to avoid dualism. The details of Luria's Kabbala are quite complicated that his doctrine of SheviretHaKelim, or "Shattering of the Vessels," was at their core and profoundly influenced all subsequent Kabbalistic theosophy. The idea of Sheviret HaKelim states that the Universe (i.e., the Unity of  God) was shattered at the moment of  creation.  The essential elements of this myth are: the withdrawal (tzimtzum) executed by the divine light, which originally filled all things, in order to make room for the extradivine; the sinking, as a result of a catastrophic event that occurred during this process, of luminous particles into matter (qelippot, “shells,” a term already used in Kabbala to designate the evil powers); whence the necessity of saving these particles and returning them to their origin, by means of “repair” or “restoration” (tiqqun). From this cataclysm, "Holy Sparks" flew off in all directions, some returning to their Source, others falling into the world of "things" and "beings."  Thus, as the Baal Shem Tov states, "In all that is in the world dwell Holy Sparks, no things is empty of them; in the actions of men also, indeed even in the sins he does, dwell Holy Sparks of God."

Thus, the Kabbalistic notion of Tikkun Olam, or "Repair of the World," is based on the principle that all things and actions in the world, no matter how seemingly trivial, are saturated with Holy Sparks,  yearning to return to the state of premundane unity from which they fell at the creation of the world. This must be the work of the Jew who not only lives in complete conformity to the religious duties imposed on him by tradition but who also dedicates himself, in the framework of a strict asceticism, to a contemplative life founded on mystical prayer and the directed meditation (kawwana) of the liturgy, which is supposed to further the harmony (yihud, “unification”) of the innumerable attributes within the divine life. The successive reincarnations of the soul, a constant theme of Kabbala that Lurianism developed and made more complex, are also invested with an important function in the work of “repair.” In short, Lurianism proclaims the absolute requirement of an intense mystical life with, as its negative side, an unceasing struggle against the powers of evil. Thus it presents a myth that symbolizes the origin of the world, its fall, and its redemption; it gives meaning to the existence and to the hopes of the Jew, not merely exhorting him to a patient surrender to God but moving him to a redeeming activism, which is the measure of his sanctity. Obviously, such requirements make the ideal of Lurianism possible only for a small elite; ultimately, it is realizable only through the exceptional personage of the “just”—the ideal holy Jew.

Lurianic mythology represents an intensely personal view, in which earlier cabalistic symbolism is used to express new and original ideas. The lurianic system as a whole can be seen as a single metaphor for a new relation between man and the deity that is not yet fully realized. The cabalistic myths of his sources express the reality of the relations of being in the lurianic corpus. The lurianic system seeks to reformulate the relation of man and god, concentrating on the way that the being of the deity is revealed in humanity. The main protagonist of the lurianic myth is the deity itself, beginning with the initial contraction and culminating in the divine - human that evolves in the course of the restoration of the flawed creation. The revelation of the deity is expressed in terms of the human processes of life and death and the relation of humanity and the divine is largely relocated in the realm of human sexuality. The lurianic view implies a mutual dependence humanity and the divine, because humans are seen as the revealed aspect of the deity and the deity as the transcendent aspect of humanity.

Daphne Freedman study Man and Theogony in the Lurianic Cabala explorers this central dialectic between the divine and human encounter moving towards a resolution of evil in a world of good.  Always the divine is the central actor in this timeless and timely drama that speaks to the mystery of the divine-human intimate relation.  From my flesh I shall see God, is an integral part of the capitalists creed, Luria lays the emphasis on the flesh.  The contradictions and difficulties that arise from this unbridgeable gap between the divine in the human are explored in the doctrine of the female waters, in which the adsorption of the human into the transcendence of the divine is, at the same time, the destruction of the simply human.  Only in the annihilation of the individual is the experience of the transcendent accessible to the Mystic; only the annihilation of the human provides the Mystic with the possibility of influencing and nourishing the divine with the female waters required for the union.  It is at the extreme limits of the human that the divine and the human become inextricably entangled.

Friedman continues by exploring the nature of the restoration and indeed, union, of the configurations reaching high into the infant stages of the emanation as dependent on female waters provided by human life.  In this sense here God is not absolute in that God is completely transcendent and cut off from the human experience.  The way that this idea is usually formulated in a Lurianic corpus is that the human is the “exterior of the worlds.” The Lurianic view of the essential dynamism of the divine implies a reciprocal and essential relation ship between the human and the divine where the Mystic can be understood as a function of the divine and the divine is a psychological function of the human.  Human beings are revealed as aspects of the deity, and the deity is the transcendent aspect of humanity.

As the relationship between the divine and human is a reconfigured, the opposition between immanence and transcendence, like the opposition between life and death, is no longer seen as mutually exclusive but as the expression of complementary facets of the same process.  While the immanence of God is concrete and all pervasive, transcendence is the single defining characteristic of the divine.  The tension between these opposed polarities reveals them to be an inalienable unity in which each relies on the other for its significance.

Luria made a consistent attempt to reformulate the symbols of zoharic kabbala in his own terms.  His own symbols depend for their meaning on the kabbalistic doctrines that informs them and gave birth to them but, the same time, have taken them in a new direction.  Repeatedly, with every doctrine that is reinterpreted an integrated into the Lurianic corpus, the brunt of the reinterpretation is the same: the sexual symbolism that concerns the consciousness of knowledge which enables humans to procreate, and which, following the Zohar, is responsible for the renewal of the creation after the breaking of the vessels.  This consciousness was the subject of the struggle between the opposing forces at the creation of the world, a struggle which still continues.  Lori is reformulation of the earlier kabbalistic doctrines in human terms is consistent and repeated.  The human terms that he feels are most suited to express the relationship of the human to the divine are sexual in nature.  Perhaps, with Freud, he sees sexual agency as the primary human process. Luria had at his disposal a rich vein of anthropomorphic symbolism on which she could profitably draw.  He used it to represent the divine but also to describe the contiguity between the divine in the human. Luria's thought can be compared to the Freudian understanding in the sense that the multiplicity of human experience is reduced to a single cluster of sexual symbols that runs essentially unchanged throughout the system from the beginning of the emanation to the smallest historical detail.  The revelation of the deity is no longer expressed solely in terms of the Neoplatonic theory of emanation but principally and a dynamic terms of the human process of life and death and the opposed polarities which are revealed in the human spirit.

The obvious difference between Freudian psychology and the Lurianic Kabbala is that for Freud, although it is sexuality which expresses the strongest relationship between the subject and the object, sexuality is not a vehicle but an instinct, an impersonal biological phenomenon.  While the Lurianic kabbala has a similar reduction of sexual symbolism and a similar awareness of the force and centrality of the role of sexuality, Luria is not describing an impersonal instinct, in the Freudian sense. The sexual symbolism in the Lurianic corpus cannot be understood in isolation from the tradition in which it arose; it depends for its intelligibility on the understanding of sexual symbolism found in the earlier kabbala.

The Lurianic kabbala as a whole demonstrates the drive toward the creation of a unified and coherent system; notably absent from the interests of the Zohar; which embraces a rich diversity of views and approaches.  In trying to find a reason for this heroic attempt to combine such disparate doctrines, it is impossible to resist the supposition that Luria was endeavoring, consciously or not, to forge a synthesis that would express the definitive religious conception of his time.

Freedman’s study provides a conceptually vital summary of the sexual reconciliation of opposites in Lurianic kabbala as also restoring or reconciling the gulf between the human and the divine, and the nature of evil in this world. Freedman manages a graceful account of this important innovation in kabbala theory. 

Luminal Darkness: Imaginal Gleanings from Zoharic Literature by Elliot Wolfson (One World)  Since 1945, scholarship and interest in the ancient tradition of Kabbalah have reached unprecedented heights. What originated as an esoteric ritual, secretly studied by a select elite, is yielding increasingly widespread interest.

Renowned as one of the world's most astute interpreters of Kabbalistic texts, Elliot Wolfson offers an illuminating and original presentation of Kabbalah. Combining its wisdom with Western philosophical heritage from Plato to Heidegger and beyond, synergy guides his elucidation of the fundamentals of Jewish mysticism and shapes his taxonomy of Kabbalistic thought. More

A deeply dialectical thinker, Wolfson holds seemingly paradoxical tenets in tandem: Medieval Judaism and American modernity; the 'tradition' of Kabbalah and postmodern philosophy; sexual body and human spirit; ontological truth and religious imagination; revelation and occultation; good and evil; left and right—none of these, he writes, are diametrically opposite. Rather, they are dialectical poles with which to think and through which to intuit, tools to gaining a deeper understanding of the Jewish mystical tradition and its meaning for the twenty-first century.

An insightful collection of seminal essays, Luminal Darkness reveals the unmistakably poetic nature of this important scholar's creative process, and delineates the evolution of his thinking on the role and importance of the Zohar in Kabbalistic tradition. 

Excerpt: As these essays amply reveal, there are many ways into the elaborate thought and writing of Elliot R. Wolfson. Those readers familiar with Wolfson's corpus will recognize in this collection of essays many of the themes that have structured Wolfson's thought from the late 1980s, when he first began to publish. Here we can catch, as if in the peripheral corners of the mind's many eyes, shimmering glimpses of those philosophically coded sefirot that have given such a compli­cated, if still quite definite, shape to the imaginal body in which, and out of which, Wolfson thinks, feels, intuits, creates, teaches, and writes. They are all here: the logical and rhetorical structures of eso­tericism that irresistibly force a revelation out of every occultation and another subsequent concealing out of every revealing; the deep structural unity of eroticism and asceticism and the ethically ambiguous psychosexual patterns of repression, symbolic transfor­mation, and sublimation that charge them with sacred meaning; the essentially hermeneutical nature of kabbalistic mysticism whereby the divine is revealed and experienced in and as the act of interpret­ation; the complicated gender dynamics of kabbalistic symbolism with its ocular phallocentrism, male androgynes, ontological era­sures of the feminine, gender transformations, and homoerotic communities and theologies; the rich, not to mention terribly honest, appropriation of "the evil inclination" within both the mys­tical paths of the medieval kabbalists and the hermeneut's ethical struggle with these same traditions; and the unmistakable poetic nature of the scholar's creative process and scholarly writing.

What binds all of these intellectual structures together? Is there some deeper unity to the many sefirot that give shape and form to Elliot R. Wolfson's thought? I will not foolishly venture any definite answer here, but I would like to suggest, as a means of introducing his work as represented in this volume, that Wolfson's writing can fruitfully be approached, if never quite fully grasped, as both radically embodied and profoundly dialectical, the latter which some may want to translate as "paradoxical:' A word about each of these patterns may be in order here.

The twentieth-century study of mysticism was a varied and rich affair, but more often than not, it was also a more or less disem­bodied one. Many scholars and innumerable popular writers wrote a great deal about oneness, common cores, and perennial philosophies (remarkably variously conceived), about historical contexts and epistemological issues, about the structuring roles of language and doctrine, about the ambiguous legacies of mystical ethics, and about the roles of violence, psychopathology, and trauma in inducing mys­tical states of consciousness.

These are all very important issues, and I do not want to dis­miss them here, but I do want to suggest that something was lost, or never quite found, in that century-long discussion, something that has always and everywhere (my own sexual perennialism begins to show itself) grounded and given shape to mystical literature – the human body. Readers can read such important and ideologically diverse writers as Evelyn Underhill, William Stace, Huston Smith, Fritjhof Schuon, Steven Katz, and Robert K.C. Forman and never quite realize that writers whom we now call "mystics" had and still have physiologies, genders, sexualities, sexual organs, sexual orienta­tions, erotic fantasies, and sexual desires and fears. Some of the early and later psychologists of religion (Sigmund Freud, James Leuba, and Sudhir Kakar come immediately to mind) are real exceptions to this general neglect, but they stand out by virtue of their insistence on that which most others sought to deny, or at least benignly ignore, namely, the indubitable fact of embodiment.

What makes the written corpus of Elliot R. Wolfson so remarkable is that even as it rivals, if not surpasses, the philosophical sophistication of any other writer on mysticism in the past century, it also dramatically affirms both the presence and structuring power of such basic things as penises and vaginas. Indeed, much of his thought is structured, like the kabbalistic literature itself, around these very sexual organs and their elaborate transformations in the male mystical imagination of the kabbalistic world. As much as one may want to do so, one cannot escape the phallus in the writing of Elliot R. Wolfson. It is there in the highest reaches of the kabbalistic Godhead, and so it is there in Wolfson's writing on these imaginal conceptions of the Godhead.

This simultaneous insistence on both the philosophical sophistication and the sexual dimensions of kabbalistic mystical thought is intimately related to what is perhaps an even deeper struc­ture of Wolfson's thought – its dialectical nature. Like other success­ful creative thinkers, Wolfson is capable of holding in his mind's eye what other thinkers would resist or unconsciously ignore as incom­patible opposites. Medieval Judaism and American modernity; the "tradition" of kabbalah and postmodern philosophy; the sexual body and the human spirit; ontological truth and the religious imag­ination; revelation and occultation; good and evil; left and right –none of these are true opposites for Wolfson. They are all dialectical poles to think with and intuit through to a deeper level of under­standing. If anything, these poles are exaggerated, not to ultimately affirm one or the other ("modernity is bad," "the true mystic knows no sexual desire," "mysticism and evil are mutually exclusive terms," etc.), but to force a deeper insight into that which grounds them both. For the modern or postmodern interpreter of mysticism, the fruits of such a coincidentia oppositorum are rich indeed. We can think about anything here, and in our own (post)modern terms. Continental and feminist philosophy, hermeneutics, psychoanalytic theory, and contemporary ethical reflection thus enter a vigorous dialogue with texts that are both bizarrely other and yet somehow strangely familiar to us. We need not look away from the graphic sexual nature of mystical experience, from the consistent ethical vio­lations of antinomian traditions, or from the disturbing gender implications of androcentric systems of thought. We can embrace it all in the dialectics of encounter, honesty, and mutual criticism.

Both other and familiar – that is the dialectical nature of any kind of comparative thought, be it comparison traditionally con­ceived in the history of religions, where two different historical trad­itions or figures are juxtaposed and compared, or here, in a more subtle fashion, where a medieval mystical tradition is understood through the figures and categories of contemporary critical theory. In both cases, a fusion of horizons is effected and something gen­uinely new, a tertium or third, appears in the middle, in what we might call the hermeneutical union of the two. This, quite frankly, is what I find to be the most remarkable aspect of Wolfson's work – its uncanny ability to spark comparative and theoretical insights in readers who come from entirely different disciplines or practices. I work, for example, primarily with Christian materials and on early modern Indian Tantric traditions, mostly in Bengal, and yet I am continuously overwhelmed when I read Wolfson's work on medieval kabbalah with the task of scribbling thoughts to myself in the mar­gins of the pages. Ideas come too quickly and in such abundance that it becomes difficult to read. The content and the context are clearly Jewish and medieval, but the ideas transcend both content and con­text to embrace what we can accurately call a developing theoretical and comparative vision. Elliot R. Wolfson "gets it." He knows. And he can communicate, somehow, this gnosis to his attentive and properly prepared readers.

"On the path two become three." This is what Wolfson penned to me in a copy of his Abraham Abulafia. I took it then as a gnomic epigram that encapsulates the essentially dialectical nature of his thought, the mystery of comparison and hermeneutical prac­tice, and the potential profundity of human friendship and deep communication. The reader of these essays is free to take it differ­ently. That too is part of the mystery of comparison and reading; the "two become three."   --Jeffrey J. Kripal 

Introduction

As I sit to write this brief introduction to the essays I have called Luminal Darkness: Imaginal Gleanings from Zoharic Literature, three books that I have been working on, more or less, since 1995 – though the seeds obviously were planted long ago through arduous plowing of the fields of classical and medieval rabbinic literature, including, especially, kabbalistic texts, and works of general philosophy, particularly, hermeneutics and phenomenology – are making their way into the world. The books in order of birth – gestation has proven to be concomitant, thus rendering the books comparable to triplets in the womb – are Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (Fordham University Press, 2005); Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death (University of California Press, 2006); and Venturing Beyond – Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (Oxford University Press, 2006).

The essays gathered in this book span a period from 1986 to 1999, formative years in my development as scholar, thinker, and writer. Since the time these studies were researched, composed, and published, the field of zoharic studies has continued to evolve. A critical turn, as experts in the discipline well know, was the pub­lication of Yehuda Liebes's essay – delivered originally as the inau­gural address of the fourth international conference on Jewish mys­ticism sponsored by the Scholem Centre for Kabbalah Research in the Jewish and National University Library, Jerusalem, sometime in February 1988, as I recall – on how the zoharic compilation came to be, shifting the focus thereby from single to group authorship. There is little question of the importance of this moment in the his­tory of the academic study of zoharic literature. That achievement stands, and likely will continue to stand, and for this we remain indebted.

Without diminishing this contribution, two observations of a critical nature come to mind. First, as I have pointed out in one of the essays included in this collection, published in 1998 but written in 1995, as revolutionary as Liebes and other scholars in the disci­pline have presented his thesis, it builds on previous scholarship. I have no intent here of providing a thorough survey of the scholarly discussion of this topic to legitimate my claim – this could be the work of a student seeking a dissertation topic – but let me say in gen­eral terms that other scholars have ruminated over the possibility that the Zohar is an anthology whose literary components evolved over a period of time and consequently incorporate a variety of voices that, for lack of a better term, might be considered members of a "zoharic circle." Indeed, this very term – as well as the cognate mentioned above "zoharic literature" – is to be found in works of scholars before Liebes, though some in the field consider these to be innovations of Liebes. It is acknowledged unreservedly that the latter has carried the supposition of a circle further than previous scholars, boldly challenging Scholem's thesis that Moses de Leon is the sole author of the bulk of zoharic literature. This cannot be denied.

One notable scholar has raised doubts in print about the thesis of Liebes–Charles Mopsik of Paris. His essay invoked a response on the part of Liebes and a counter-response, which have contributed to the discussion and clarification of the issues. Add­itionally, serious work on the compositional and redactional evolu­tion of zoharic literature has been undertaken by a number of scholars, most prominently, Ronit Meroz, Boaz Huss, Daniel Abrams, and Pinchas Giller. I will not undertake an analysis of the important contributions of these scholars, but let me simply say that they have moved the discourse along to the next phase. It matters little whether we can ever – being led by philological and textual tools of historical scholarship – ascertain an answer to the question "How was the Zohar Written?" – the title of Liebes's seminal lecture. The crucial point is that the question has been articulated, and as such, has reframed the picture, demanding a refocusing of interpretative vision.

In these essays, one will discern a shift in my own thinking, reflective of the more general consensus as it has been changing over time. In the early studies, "Left Contained in the Right: A Study in Zoharic Hermeneutics" (1986), "Light Through Darkness: The Idealof Human Perfection in the Zohar" (1988), and "Beautiful Maiden without Eyes: Peshat and Sod in Zoharic Hermeneutics" (1993), I was operating with a sense of a unified textual whole (excluding, of course, Ra'aya Meheimna and Tiqqunei Zohar, following Scholem's suggestion), as if there were a literary consistency that justified refer­ring to it, and its author, in the singular. The other essays, "Forms of Visionary Ascent as Ecstatic Experience in the Zoharic Literature" (1993), "Coronation of the Sabbath Bride: Kabbalistic Myth and Ritual of Androgynisation" (1997), "Re/membering the Covenant: Memory, Forgetfulness, and the Construction of History in Zohar" (1998), "Fore/giveness on the Way: Nesting in the Womb of Response" (1998), "Occultation of the Feminine and the Body of Secrecy in Medieval Kabbalah" (1999), all derive from what I would call now a middle period – writings from the third period have yet to appear. The middle period is marked by leaning in the direction of a group, of seeing the zoharic work as a lattice woven from different textual threads that wind round the spool of several centuries, reach­ing a crescendo in the sixteenth century as the links between Pales­tine, especially Jerusalem and Safed, and kabbalists in Italy helped secure the publication of the first printed editions of the Zohar.

In this period, I assume, one can discern organizing patterns in spite of the obvious multiple voices. In more recent work, I have tended to refer to "zoharic homilies," a term that I use to convey the sense of literary discreteness, leaving open the question of the authorship of these homilies. Being occupied with other matters, philosophic and hermeneutic, I have not focused on the textual issue, that is, the manner by which the fabric of the gathering of these homilies has been woven together to create the semblance of a garment. The curious thing, however, is that one can discern differ­ent voices speaking from within the weave of the fabric, and this does not disrupt the possibility of discerning iteration that renews itself indefinitely, a unifying factor that allows for difference, to think the other without assimilating the other to the same, achieving indiffer­ence, in the Levinasian sense.

To be perfectly candid, there are formulations in the early essays that I would alter now, but they have been allowed to stand as they are not, I trust, entirely irredeemable. On the contrary, the hermeneutical belief briefly laid out in the conclusion of the previ­ous paragraph provides a way to redeem these studies, as it were, to render their exegetical claims still relevant. If we can imagine a prin­ciple of anthologizing that unifies through multiplicity, indifferent to difference, then we can continue to presume it legitimate to speak or write of a distinctive viewpoint that may be classified as zoharic kabbalah. I am no longer comfortable speaking of "the Zohar," but I would maintain that it is possible to think of this as a discrete literary-historical phenomenon, though we will have to expand the imaginal boundaries of each of these classifications. The matter of locating this temporally and spatially is a huge undertaking that would require separate phenomenological/hermeneutical studies. As it happens, many of the pertinent issues, especially as regards the former, are discussed in the trilogy of books I have written. I might even consider now working on another volume on the temporal spa tialization and spatial temporalization that may be elicited from zoharic homilies. Perhaps one day I will produce such a work, though, in some respects, this collection can profitably be characterized in those very terms.

If I were to isolate a current running through the different studies, it would be the search to resolve the ontological problem of identity and difference, a philosophic matter that has demanded much attention in various contemporary intellectual currents, to wit, literary criticism, gender studies, post-colonial theory, social anthropology, just to name a few examples. Indeed, it is possible to say, with no exaggeration intended, that there has been a quest at the heart of my work to understand the other, to heed and discern the alterity of alterity. Thus, I have sought to comprehend configura­tions of the other without and the other within, the two main foci of my work on gender and the Jewish–Christian interface in kabbalistic sources. What has inspired the quest for me has been the discern­ment on the part of kabbalists that the ultimate being-becoming becoming being – nameless one known through the ineffable name, yhwh – transcends oppositional binaries, for, in the one that is beyond the difference of being one or the other, light is dark, black is white, night is day, male is female, Adam is Edom.

Yet, even the matter of utter simplicity is more complex, for, as I argue at length in the chapter in Language, Eros, Being entitled "Differentiating (In) Difference: Heresy, Gender, and Kabbalah Study," there are at least two ways to account for the coincidence of opposites in Ein-Sof and/or the first of the sefirotic emanations,

Keter, either as an identity that effaces or as a mirroring that upholds difference. The moral demands of the day clearly privilege the latter; what is needed above all else is a way of thinking that acknowledges sameness, or belonging-together, as Heidegger would have put it, which fosters, rather than undermines, difference, a genuine sense of indifference that affirms the identity of the non-identical and thereby moves beyond the dialectical identity of identity and non­identity. The theoretical value of applying feminist theory to the critical study of zoharic literature, and kabbalah more generally, is that it compels one to scrutinize repeatedly the question of difference. Indifference to this question, which unfortunately is evident on the part of a number of scholars who work on this matter, runs the peril of mistaking the same for the different, the consequence of which would be masking the different as the same. In my work, I have sought to walk the path between mistaking the same as different and masking the different as same, envisioning the task to behold the same difference that begets what is differently the same. As the ancient voice of wisdom describing the way in the Dao de jing put it,

Dao
engenders one,
one two,
two three,
and three,
the myriad things.

Elliot R. Wolfson

Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism by Elliot R. Wolfson (Oxford University Press) Review pending. Are mysticism and morality compatible or at odds with one another? If mystical experience embraces a form of non-dual consciousness, then in such a state of mind, the regulative dichotomy so basic to ethical discretion would seemingly be transcended and the very foundation for ethical decisions undermined. Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism is an investigation of the relationship of the mystical and moral as it is expressed in the particular tradition of Jewish mysticism known as the Kabbalah. The particular themes discussed include the denigration of the non-Jew as the ontic other in kabbalistic anthropology and the eschatological crossing of that boundary anticipated in the instituition of religious conversion; the overcoming of the distinction between good and evil in the mystical experience of the underlying unity of all things; divine suffering and the ideal of spiritual poverty as the foundation for transmoral ethics and hypernomian lawfulness.

In the course of this work, Wolfson explores several issues that address the relationship of mysticism and morality in the specific history of medieval Jewish esoteric lore and practice, conventionally called by both practitioners and scholars kabbalah, a term that denotes 'tradition'. It should go without saying that kabbalah is not monolithic in nature; on the contrary, it is better described as a collage of disparate doctrines and practices cultivated by elite rabbinic circles from the Middle Ages to the present. It is a commonplace in contemporary scholarship to distinguish between two major typological trends of medieval kabbalah, theosophic and ecstatic." The latter is focused on the cultivation of meditative practices centred around the divine names and the letters of the Hebrew alphabet that lead to prophetic and unitive states of consciousness, whereas the former is concerned primarily with the visual contemplation of the ten sefirot, the hypostatic potencies that collectively constitute the configuration of the Godhead. Wolfson notes, however, that this classification runs the risk of oversimplification. Careful scrutiny of the relevant texts indicates that kabbalists whom we dub as `theosophic' were capable of ecstatic experiences of union, and that kabbalists labelled 'ecstatic' presumed that esoteric gnosis imparted theosophic wisdom. Moreover, shared traditions about the secret names of God, and particularly the most sacred of these names, YHWH, the sefirotic potencies as the means and end of mystical communion, and the theurgical interpretation of ritual, bridge the presumed gap separating the proposed schools of kabbalah.

For the purposes of this study, Wolfson concentrates the analysis on the multi-layered corpus of Zohar, the major sourcebook of theosophic symbolism that has informed the variegated evolution of kabbalistic thought and practice. In each of the chapters, he ventures considerably beyond the historical bounds of zoharic literature, exploring the topics of philosophical inquiry in Lurianic, Sabbatian, and Hasidic sources as well. Nevertheless the initial paths of inquiry arises from Wolfson’s engagement with zoharic material, for the latter provided the symbolic language that exercised a profound influence upon subsequent kabbalists. The literary units that make up the fabric of zoharic literature were composed and began to circulate in the thirteenth and four­teenth centuries, although it seems very likely that the final shaping of this material into the form of a book took place in the sixteenth century, at the time the material was being prepared for print in Mantua and Cremona. A growing consensus in the field of kabbalah study is that the different strata of Zohar, composed in Hebrew and/or Aramaic, were products of a fraternity of kabbal­ists who assembled in the region of Castile. Consistent with other Jewish mystical and pietistic fraternities of this period, the zoharic circle was elitist in its composition. The extant historical documents provide us with relatively sparse biographical information about the Spanish kabbalists who belonged to this circle. Nevertheless, from the style and substance of the relevant texts, we may conclude that they were either rabbinic leaders or had been trained in the talmudic academies and hence were well versed in classical Jewish learning. We can assume, moreover, that these kabbalists availed themselves of the religious institutions that served the rest of their extended communities. In that respect, it is doubtful that kabbalists were separated from the society at large, even though there is good reason to assume that they belonged to small fraternities made up exclusively of fellow practitioners. One must suppose that to some degree these circles functioned autonomously, laying claim to a secretive knowledge that explained the essence of Judaism but that was not readily available to all Jews in an equal manner.

The particular themes that Wolfson discusses include the denigration of the non-Jew as the ontic other in kabbalistic anthropology (Chapter 1) and the eschatological crossing of that boundary anticipated in the institution of religious conversion (Chapter 2); the overcoming of the distinction between good and evil in the mystical experience of the underlying unity of all things (Chapter 3); divine suffering and the ideal of spiritual poverty as the foun­dation for transmoral ethics and hypernomian lawfulness (Chapter 4). While this list by no means exhausts all of the pertinent questions that pertain to an analysis of ethics and mysticism, an exploration of these topics does provide an entry into this critical but relatively neglected field of inquiry. The few scholars who have written on the theme of mysticism and ethics in the case of Judaism have analysed sources that fall under the rubric of sifrut musar, which is typically translated as 'ethical literature'. It is Wolfson’s contention that this locution has been determined by an internal consideration alone. That is to say, the issue of ethics in Jewish mysticism has been cast exclusively from the standpoint of treatises that stem from different cultural settings but that nevertheless all equally present a pietistic worldview promoting strict adher­ence to rabbinic ritual.

In the course of history, sundry currents of a mystical nature have enhanced the ideological framework of rabbinic pietism. Three examples of this phenomenon that began to have a discernible impact in the thirteenth century are: Sufi-like mysticism that fostered the experience of intellectual conjunction; the esoteric theology promulgated by the Rhineland Jewish pietists based on the meditational techniques of letter-combination and vocalization of the divine names, leading to the imaginary visualization of the divine glory; and the theosophic symbolism of the sefirotic kabbalah related to the contemplative vision of the imaginal body of God. All three religious movements produced treatises that are classified as sifrut musar, texts that sought to address the spiritual needs of the Jewish population at large by promoting an intensified rabbinic religiosity with particular emphasis on matters of social justice. Similar claims have been made for the kabbalistic-ethical literature that evolved in the sixteenth century, especially in the school of the Safedian kabbalist Moses Cordovero, and continued to flourish in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

No previous scholar, to the best of Wolfson’s knowledge, has asked the harder question concerning the appropriateness or inappropriateness of applying the term 'ethical' to this material. To answer this query, one must probe more critically into the anthropology underlying these pietistic texts, related to such issues as the attitude of Judaism to other religious cultures or towards women. That there is a strong ethos tied to the notion of ethnos, a distinctive sense of custom correlated with a specific portion of the human community, com­municated in these compositions is not in question. As a number of scholars have noted, one of the most important features of the kabbalah is that it provided a rationale for normative observance by ascribing cosmic signifi­cance to every one of the traditional commandments, and thereby furnished a powerful motivation to impel Jews to follow the path of nomian observance. If this is the standard by which we evaluate the appropriateness of using the term 'ethical' to characterize the pietistic sources influenced by the kabbalah, then we are justified in speaking of kabbalistic ethics. If, however, we move from a sense of ethos to the ethical, then we must evaluate whether or not these texts exemplify a perspective that is indeed moralistic in nature.

In our time there has been a marked increase of interest in mysticism and the occult, which in part can be explained by a dissatisfaction with conventional forms of Western monotheism (particularly in Christian and Jewish congregations of different denominations) and the consequent quest for authentic religiosity (or spir­ituality as it is often called). Given the alluring power of the mystical, it is all the more imperative to test the mystical phenomenon as it has been articulated within different historical contexts by its ethical implications.

Falling short of a moral standard may not challenge the validity of the mystical dimension of a specific tradition, but it does render that tradition problematic as an ideal that would regulate the belief and behavior of a religious community. These reflections on mysticism and ethics in the history of kabbalistic speculation, therefore, should be seen as more than an academic exercise in historiographical scholarship. They are nothing less than one individual's attempt to pierce beneath the veil of an admittedly seductive symbolism to determine the ultimate ethical meaning of a particular mystical path. The critical investigation of the primary literary sources provides an opportunity for an alchemical transmutation of the tradition by means of which the cultural dross may be discarded. That which remains submerged, however, never stands a chance of being cast aside and, consequently, the stone can never be turned to gold.

Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death by Elliot R. Wolfson (Taubman Lectures in Jewish Studies: University of California Press) This highly original, provocative, and poetic work explores the nexus of time, truth, and death in the symbolic world of medieval kabbalah. Demonstrating that the historical and theoretical relationship between kabbalah and western philosophy is far more intimate and extensive than any previous scholar has ever suggested, Elliot R. Wolfson draws an extraordinary range of thinkers such as Frederic Jameson, Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig, William Blake, Julia Kristeva, Friedrich Schelling, and a host of kabbalistic figures into deep conversation with one another. Alef, Mem, Tau also discusses Islamic mysticism and Buddhist thought in relation to the Jewish esoteric tradition as it opens the possibility of a temporal triumph of temporality and the conquering of time through time.
The framework for Wolfson's examination is the rabbinic teaching that the word emet, "truth," comprises the first, middle, and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, alef, mem, and tau, which serve, in turn, as semiotic signposts for the three tenses of time--past, present, and future. By heeding the letters of emet we discern the truth of time manifestly concealed in the time of truth, the beginning that cannot begin if it is to be the beginning, the middle that re/marks the place of origin and destiny, and the end that is the figuration of the impossible disclosing the impossibility of figuration, the finitude of death that facilitates the possibility of rebirth. The time of death does not mark the death of time, but time immortal, the moment of truth that bestows on the truth of the moment an endless beginning of a beginningless end, the truth of death encountered incessantly in retracing steps of time yet to be taken--between, before, beyond. 

With this creative philosophical and religious study on the interrelationship between truth, death, and time, Wolfson continues to create a new form of academic hybrid discourse that blends insights from the esoteric kabbala with philosophical speculations derived from a host of top-flight thinkers.  Though the tone of these lectures is rigorously academic, regaled with subtle allusions, ironic wordplay, excessive citation from a stellar cast of contemporary and arcane sources and authorities, Wolfson is not without a playful and even poetic adventuresomeness, that is willing to dabble between the in accident of abstractions in the metaphor of images.  To these initial three lectures in this published version, Wolfson has added two hefty introductory chapters. The first outlines the philosophical sources that have shaped his hermeneutical understanding of time, and which generally necessitates a temporal understanding of the nature of hermeneutics the second offers a conception of temporality, culled from a wide range of kabbalistic texts, that serves as a backdrop for the specific analysis is in the three chapters on alef/past, mem/present, tau/future. Elliott takes most of his textual reasoning from two main kabbalistic anthologies which can be viewed as the limits of kabbala stick literary activity from the 12th and 13th centuries: Sefer ha-Bahir and the Sefer ha-Zohar. His choice of these texts is deliberate: the mesh radical disposition exhibited in the Bahiric parallels in the so zoharic homilies provides a particularly useful prism through which to consider a narratological conception of temporality that defies the doctrinaire distinction between truth and appearance, reality and imagination.

Wolflson is exploring the realm between the signifier and the signified, which in postmodern times has enjoyed an erasure following the evaporation of certain essences.  The impossibility of certainly locating presence “-- the rallying call postmodern hermeneutics -- is inseparable from the impossibility of absence in his match as there can be no presents but in the presence of absence, just as there can be no absence but in the absence of presents.” In the third chapter which was the first of lectures, Wolfson explores the paradox of beginning: to begin, and beginning needs to have to began to be the beginning it is to be, but if this is so, then he would not be and beginning it must be if it is the beginning of what it is to be.  Here we have the mystery of doubling as encoded in the opening letter of the first verse Genesis begins Torah, beit. This is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the cipher for the number two.  Beginning is symbolized by beit, but before beit there is alef, the mystery, pele. (Rabbinic anagram).

The central point for Wolfson is to show how time can be the means of conquering time. Starting with the symbolic world of the medieval kabbala, it is not confined himself to one work or historical epoch but rather develops a thematic approach based on the three Hebrew letters to point to the space of a timeline.  Following the imaginative thinking of his kabbala stick sources, Wolfson seeks to articulate an ontology of time that is a grammar of becoming.  The correlation of truth and divinity underscores the truth, which embodies its hermeneutical constellation of the triadic temporality, is a mark of the divine eternally becoming in time.  This is a formulation that is still too dichotomous, as the divine becoming is not an event in time but the eventuality of time, an eventuality instantiated in the momentous or rupture of the moment where life and death converge in the coming to be of that which endures everlastingly and the endurance of that which comes to be provisionally.  This insight becomes the central truth for Wolfson that time manifestly concealed in the time of truth, the beginning cannot begin if it is to be the beginning, the middle that re/marks the place of origin and destiny, and the and is that figuration of the impossible disclosing the impossibility of figuration, the finitude of death that facilitates the possibility of rebirth, the closure that opens of the opening that closes.  In many ways, Wolfson attempts to show us that the kabbalistic tradition fosters an understanding of the radical becoming of time-being in its being-time, and interruptive narration that militates against the feasibility of constructing a contemporaneous myth in which past, present, and future converge in an absolute that is all-in-all.  In other words, the time of death bespeaks not the death of time, but time immortal, the moment of truth that bestows on the truth of the moment an endless beginning of a beginningless end, the truth of death encountered incessantly in retracing steps of time yet to be taken – between, before, beyond.

Obviously, Wolfson's musings are so embedded in the kabbalist tradition and in contemporary thinking, especially in postmodernist abstract jargon, that only someone well-versed in the literature will find his insights especially illuminating and playfully insightful and poetic.

Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics And Poetic Imagination Eliot Wolfson (Fordham University Press) This long-awaited, magisterial study—an unparalleled blend of philosophy, poetry, and philology—draws on theories of sexuality, phenomenology, comparative religion, philological writings on Kabbalah, Russian formalism, Wittgenstein, Rosenzweig, William Blake, and the very physics of the time-space continuum to establish what will surely be a highwater mark in work on Kabbalah. Not only a study of texts, Language, Eros, Being is perhaps the fullest confrontation of the body in Jewish studies, if not in religious studies as a whole.

Elliot R. Wolfson explores the complex gender symbolism that permeates Kabbalistic literature. Focusing on the nexus of asceticism and eroticism, he seeks to define the role of symbolic and poetically charged language in the erotically configured visionary imagination of the medieval Kabbalists. He demonstrates that the traditional Kabbalistic view of gender was a monolithic and androcentric one, in which the feminine was conceived as being derived from the masculine. He does not shrink from the negative implications of this doctrine, but seeks to make an honest acknowledgment of it as the first step toward the redemption of an ancient wisdom.

Comparisons with other mystical traditions—including those in Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam—are a remarkable feature throughout the book. They will make it important well beyond Jewish studies, indeed, a must for historians of comparative religion, in particular of comparative mysticism.

Reincarnation in Jewish Mysticism and Gnosticism (Volume 25) by Dina Ripsman Eylon (Jewish Studies Series: The Edwin Mellen Press) There is a popular misconception that Judaism does not advocate and endorse the idea of reincarnation. Reincarnation in Jewish Mysticism and Gnosticism does much to dispel this fallacy. Reincarnation entered the mainstream of medieval European Jewish thought in the 13th century. By the 17th century it had become so pervasive that R. Manasseh b. Israel in his Sefer Nislzmat Hayyim could claim that all rabbinic authorities accepted this doctrine, with a few his­torical exceptions. Eylon focuses on the starting point of this process. In doing so she provides an important window into how reincarnation became integrated into medieval Jewish thought.

The centerpiece of Eylon’s study is the seminal kabbalistic work Sefer ha­ Bahir. This dense and difficult text was viewed by Gershom Scholem, the pioneer of the academic study of Jewish mysticism, as the earliest existent work of the Kabbalah.

Embedded within the midrash-like homilies of the Bahir are a number of allusions to the afterlife of the soul. Although Scholem identifed these as referring to the concept of reincarnation, Eylon offers the first systematic and methodical analysis of these texts. She provides a comprehensive presentation of the pertinent selec­tions from the Bahir, as well as the Rabbinic sources of this material.

An important aspect of Eylon’s study is a protracted discussion of reincarna­tion in the classical world. In contradistinction to Scholem, who denied that rein­carnation is found in Rabbinic literature, Eylon expands upon obscure Talmudic sources first noted by Herbert Loewe in 1938. Eylon presents passages that seem to affirm the reincarnation of animal souls. She effectively draws parallels between this material and the Greek philosophical tradition.

Eylon also offers a first-rate overview of reincarnation in Gnostic litera­ture. Focusing primarily on the Nag Hammadi corpus, she presents a wealth of interesting sources. This not only establishes a background for the dissemina­tion of the doctrine, but it helps situate the Bahir as a Jewish expression of a gnostic orientation.

Eylon admirably succeeds in presenting a readable and informa­tive discussion of a key aspect of the Jewish mystical tradition. This is especially praiseworthy, owing to the scope and complexity of the material. Anyone who is interested in the fascinating topic of reincarnation will greatly profit from consult­ing Reincarnation in Jewish Mysticism and Gnosticism.

Kabbalah and Alchemy: An Essay on Common Archetypes by Arturo Schwarz (Jason Aronson)  The author, Arturo Schwarz, points out that both alchemy and Kabbalah are frequently distorted in popular as well as scholarly literature. The real concern of alchemy is not to transmute lead into gold, but rather, through the investigation of the self, to evolve from the state of ignorance (symbolized by lead) to that of awareness (symbolized by gold). As Schwarz points out, "this drive toward self-awareness is also basic in the teachings of the major kabbalists." Schwarz goes on to explain that in both systems "one of the major instruments of understanding our inner self is love, both physical and spiritual." Through a careful analysis of the use of sexual imagery in both systems, Schwarz builds his fascinating and eye-opening thesis that alchemy and kabbalistic tradition share profound similarities.

Kabbalah and Alchemy is far more than a study that clarifies the true nature of both eso­teric systems. As Arturo Schwarz writes, "Kabbalah and alchemy were instruments of an initiatory form of knowledge that sought to illuminate the way toward liberation from life's contingencies and contradic­tions." Schwarz, to select just one example, establishes the intimate correspondence between the allegorical significance of met­als and the spiritual value of the Sephirot.

Kabbalah and Alchemy, which includes forty‑four graphic illustrations, will surely have a significant impact on our understanding of both alchemy and Kabbalah, and the now apparent inter­connection between the two.

 Kabbalah: The Splendor of Judaism by David M. Wexelman (Jason Aronson) applies Kabbalah to everyday life activities such as business, pleasure, and politics. David M. Wexelman shows readers that the meaning of success in life and the way to world peace are made possible by the wisdom in the Kabbalah.

This volume is primarily derived from the work of Rabbi Chaim Vital entitled The Fruit of the Tree of Life. In traditional Jewish circles, the teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria (known as the "Ari") are considered to be from as high a source and prophecy as the teachings of Elijah the Prophet and Moses. Rabbi Chaim Vital is the major transmitter of the teachings of the Ari.

The author writes: My interest in the Kabbalah brought me from America directly to the holy city of Safed, where once lived the holy Arizal. In Safed I studied the first year with the Breslov hasidim, under the leadership of the son of Rabbi Gedalya Koenig, of blessed memory, who was the leader of Breslov in his generation. I spent my evenings at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai in Meron, where I became accustomed to study the Zohar and the Tikunei Zohar. These books are the foundation of the Kabbalah, the gateway to the redemption. In Meron I made the acquaintance of many great kabbalists, including Rabbi Daniel Frish, the kabbalist of our age, author of Explanations on the Zohar and Tikunei Zohar, which have opened up the wellsprings of Kabbalah. I became a student in the school of Kabbalah and halachah of the renowned scholar Chassid Vishnitz and kabbalist Rabbi Meir Stern, Shlita, the Rabbi of the Tomb of Rebbe Shimon.

Six years ago our family moved from Safed to Jerusalem, where I was accepted as a student in the Yeshiva Chaim Vital of Rebbe Pincas, an old Sephardic kabbalist who is occupied day and night with the learning and practice of the intentions of the Kabbalah. In his classes Rebbe Pincas has covered all the volumes of the Kabbalah of the Arizal with its many interpretations, such as the explanation called "River of Peace" of Rebbe Sholom Sharabi. I cannot say in this short time that I have reached the level of comprehension of Kabbalah of these great saints, or the level of their holiness. However, they have given me the foundation and knowledge to write this book. Being an American, a speaker of English, I felt that it was my purpose to bring the English‑speaking world authentic literature on the Kabbalah. The markets have become filled with trash that has distorted the concepts of Kabbalah and profaned God's name. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan was the first to spread the Kabbalah in English. In the beginning it was very difficult for him. Jewish publishers were not willing to accept English writing on Kabbalah, so he was forced to publish the Kabbalah through secular authors. He later became more respected in the Jewish world, and today after his death, his works fill the shelves in all the big bookstores in the Jewish world. His books are enlightening to English readers interested in the deep understanding of the Torah. Other authors have followed him, such as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz and Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg‑the latter has been one of my teachers and has fostered my development and maturity in the learning and understanding of the Kabbalah. I have used many of his thoughts in these books.

This book, Kabbalah, is primarily derived from the work of Rabbi Chaim Vital called The Fruit of the Tree of Life. The divine intentions that were handed over from the Arizal to Rabbi Chaim Vital are from as high a source and prophecy as the teachings of Elijah the prophet and Moses our teacher. The word of the Arizal is the word of the living God and his Kabbalah is the Torah given on Mount Sinai. My intention in writing this book is to be an intermediary, to connect English readers with the wisdom of the Kabbalah, so that they may appreciate the greatness of God's Torah. In order to accomplish this task, I have summarized through my own comments the practical meaning of these intentions in reference to the personal realization of the soul. In the Tkunei Zohar, in the section Petach Eliyahu, which is translated and commented on at the end of the book, it is explained that the heavens and earth were created to relate to man the supernal unities above. The knowledge received from the Arizal about the supernal unities and intentions of each mitzvah is the giving of the Living Torah from above to below, like water that flows from Heaven. The completion of the task of receiving the Torah is the work of servants of God‑to understand these higher unities and to unite them below through taking them into the heart. The servant of God looks up to the heavens, from below to above. A most essential part of understanding God and His supernal unities is to understand and relate to them through our own selves. Knowing our own secrets opens up the secrets of the supernal worlds. Self­realization is one goal of the study of the Kabbalah. The other goal is God‑realization. These two knowledges, the upper and lower knowledges, are woven one within the other.

With God's help, each person should achieve both self­realization and God‑realization and merit freedom from all doubts in the unity of God and faith. We should all be crowned with the supernal crown of Atik Yomin.

May Hashem forgive me for any accidental errors in these texts due to typesetting, proofreading, printing, or my own ignorance. Kabbalah is called Hod or splendor. It is the splendor of Judaism. From this the title, Kabbalah; The Splendor of Judaism, is derived.

Kabbalah and the Art of Being by Shimon Shokek (The Smithsonian Lectures: Routledge) introduces Kabbalah as a spiritual Jewish way of living and suggests that the central ingredient in the spiritual teachings of Jewish mysticism is to be found in the Kabbalistic theme of Creation.

This book looks at the treasures of the doctrine of Jewish mysticism of the last millennium, known as Kabbalah, from existential and psychological points of view. It examines some of the major and profound components of Kabbalah as they emerge from the complex descriptions of the classic texts of the Jewish mystics, the Kabbalists, who created and crafted a new religious and spiritual force in the Jewish faith. This study does not reject the accepted scholarly assumption that divides the major trends in Kabbalah into the theosophical/­theurgical and the ecstatic, but it is not based on this scholarly assumption. For the goal of this book is not to present a Kabbalistic historical or conceptual survey of the major schools of Jewish mysticism. Nor is it to divide Kabbalah into theoretical mysticism as opposed to experiential mysticism, and thus separate the unifying elements that tie together the various ingredients of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah. Instead, this book aims at looking into the teachings of Kabbalah as a religious phenomenon and a way of life; it aims to explore Kabbalah as the exemplary teaching of the mystical Jewish wisdom that has shaped the spirit of the Jewish people for centuries; that taught the Jew how to survive in strenuous times, how to become an actualized and fulfilled human being, and how to flourish and live a complete and healthy life. Thus, this work asks the following questions: What is that "thing" which is depicted in the spirit of the Jewish mystics and Kabbalists that enraptures the hearts and the minds of the Jewish people? How and why have the ideas of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah been integrated into the lives of the Jewish people and shaped their identity and spirituality? What is the secret behind the fascination of Kabbalah that has caused it to become the major force of Jewish spirituality, and, what is the nature of the truth behind its reality? Can we understand Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah, which is after all the creation of the human spirit, in light of contemporary psychological theories? And finally, can Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah be considered as an art of being, a practical wisdom of the sages that has opened a new path of spiritual and psychological life for the Jewish people?

These questions lead eventually to an individual search, for, when a student of Kabbalah enters into the mystery of the pardes, the domain of the spirit, there necessarily emerges a personal relationship between the subject and the object; between the person and God, who are separate in the beginning of their relationship but can be inseparable as one reveals himself to another. The reader who studies this book will discover that the end of this book is already in its beginning, since according to Kabbalah every reality is composed of a dialectical ontology comprising an entity and its opposite simultaneously. I will return to this point in its own chapter below. Here and now I am determined to present a primary Kabbalistic point of departure that, I believe, can serve as the existential and psychological foundation for the core teachings of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah; I call it the Kabbalistic creation myth,

If all the mystical, scholarly, and scientific knowledge were to be shattered and destroyed and only one sentence passed on to the succeeding generations of humanity, what statement would contain the most significant information from the world of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah? I believe it is the Jewish creation myth, that all things come from the One, depend on the One, wish to imitate the One, and yearn to return to the One. The Neoplatonic quality of this statement embraces the "stem cell" of the major teachings of Kabbalah; for in Kabbalah everything stems from this belief, whether physical or metaphysical, concrete or abstract. Most importantly, the Kabbalistic creation myth determines in Jewish spirituality the character of the two major "partners" in the "partnership" of existence: God and Man. And thus, every aspect of the creation myth should be studied, for it is the key to the understanding of the true essence of Kabbalah.

Since "all comes from the One and all returns to the One," all Jewish mystics and Kabbalists agree that the center point of Kabbalah, which is cleaving to God, knowing Him, and uniting with Him, must be contemplated through the study of the relationship between God and the creation.' I therefore wish to begin with a few remarks that may shed some light on the relationship between God and creation in Jewish mysticism and other religions. This will illuminate the crucial assumption that the pneuma of the Kabbalistic teachings is rooted in the distinctive meeting point of the Divine and the universe.

However, I invite the reader to look not only at the creation itself, but also at the Godly intent that led to the creation. The classic descriptions that reveal the notion of creation in Kabbalah do not concentrate on the cosmology only but rather on the cosmogony and theogony. Cosmology, cosmogony, and theogony ought to have an in-depth discussion, but I will limit my explanation of these terms and say here only the following: cosmology describes the acts that occur at the time of the creation, cosmogony describes the processes that led to the creation, and theogony describes the rise of awareness in God's mind even before the rise of the processes that led to the creation. Thus, theogony is the birth of God's consciousness: it is the genesis of genesis and the initiation of His intent in creation that pre-existed the genesis of the creation of the world. Indeed, exploring the processes that led to the creation and the intent of

God before the creation of the world is a task involving risk. Our Rabbis warned us in the Mishnah not to speculate about anything regarding what preceded the creation of the world: "Whoever speculates upon four things, a pity for him! He is as though he had not come into the world: What is above? What is beneath? What is before? What is after? The Jewish mystics and Kabbalists did enter, however, into a long path of investigation in this obscure area: what is before the creation has become one of the most sensitive issues among the esoteric teachings of Kabbalah. Thus, the mystery of creation has become the central theme in the texts of the medieval classic Kabbalists of Provence, Gerona, Safed, and even among the masters of Hasidism of the last three centuries. These Kabbalists and Hasidic masters arrived at some fascinating and startling conclusions: a small part of their heritage is what I wish to share with the reader of this book.

 

Tree of Life, Tree of Knowledge: Conversations with the Torah by Michael Rosenak (Westview) Viewing education through the prism of the Torah, Tree of Life, Tree of Knowledge takes the reader through the stages of learning, growth, and self-development that characterize human lives. The journey begins with education as it happens in the home, moves on to the institutions of society, especially schools, and then on to the questions of identity and commitment which constitute the hidden agenda of "informal educational networks." The self-education of the individual is explored: When does one "grow up"? What is really worth knowing? How does one cope with memories, illness, and anticipations of what lies ahead? This book examines some of the millennial conversation in an attempt to discover an educational philosophy in the Torah that can be relevant to life in the contemporary world.

 

Tree of Life, Tree of Knowledge is divided into an Introduction, fol­lowed by four parts, each dealing with a different avenue of educa­tional initiation and encounter. In Part 1, my concern is with the parent-child relationship. I suggest that "the beginning" of that re­lationship, with its happy but also fearful anticipation, may well bring parents to inquire about beginnings: Where did "we" begin and who were our first parents? What were the hopes of these an­cestors, and what did they anticipate for us? Perhaps more crucially, what did later generations, upon becoming parents themselves, think about their first parents?

This concern leads, in Chapter 1, to an exploration of quite di­verse characteristics that midrashic and philosophical literature have "found" in Abraham and Sarah. I present diverse models for thinking about what we want our children to become.

In Chapter 2, I look at the kind of educational encounters the home can initiate by observing the "four children" the Passover service draws out of the Torah. Two of them, the "wise" and the "wicked," seem greatly concerned with what is going on at this fes­tive family affair, whereas the other two, the "simple" and the " - questioning," are mildly or not at all interested. The distinction be­tween the first pair and the second suggests that the "wicked" child

is a more promising hype than the "simple" questioner. Here I also discuss how the education of the home is essentially different from that of the school.

The issue of trust in a mysterious, often confusing, and at times incomprehensibly cruel world, is the subject of Chapter 3. What is the sense of Abraham's "walking together" with Isaac to the binding and anticipated sacrifice of his son? What kind of a father is he? Who is the God he serves? Is there anything educational about all this? Psalm 73, attributed to Assaf, an educational personality of King David's time, sheds some light on the significance of "holding hands" in times of trouble.

Chapter 4 treats of what in Jewish tradition is the "evil inclina­tion," which often seems to sabotage education and to undermine the "good inclination," which parents and teachers wish to foster. To illuminate the question of "nature versus nurture," I examine some midrashic attitudes towards Esau, the Bible's best-known "problem child." Was he born problematic, or was he miseducated? Must we view Isaac and Rebecca as unsuccessful in the education of their older son or as victims of his evil inclination?

Finally, if we think of parental education not only as getting chil­dren to do things right, but also as guiding them toward thinking and solving unanticipated problems, can the language and literature of Torah be helpful, or is it too narrowly normative to make room for novelty and innovation? In Chapter 5,1 examine the question of how children can learn to make decisions against the backdrop of an impending disaster: of (Israel's) being caught between Egyptian chariots behind them and the menacing waters of the Red Sea in front, immediately after the Exodus. The desperate question, What shall we do now? is not what the Israelites anticipated when joyfully leaving Egypt. Our biblical text and the midrashic commentary on it help us to discuss some crucial questions. How can children be prepared for addressing deliberative issues intelligently within a normative tradition? How can they become responsible through the guidance of trustworthy mentors?

The issues discussed in Part 1 seem to belong primarily in the home. But even in the best of times-and for family life these are not the best of times-the community too is entrusted with teach­ing its language through the literature that sustains its collective life. Examples of how the community teaches its literature is the focus of Part 2.

As Part 1 opened with family "beginnings," so Part 2 begins with the community's teaching, through Torah, about the beginning-of the "world." For this language-literature of beginnings to make sense to the young, it must be related to the manner in which chil­dren understand beginnings. This issue is explored in Chapter 6, with an assist from the medieval commentator Rashi. He teaches us to be concrete when initiating children into our world, even at the expense of theological finesse.

Chapter 7, like the previous one, is centered on a single "portion of the week," but one seemingly far less interesting or relevant. It is the section of Leviticus that details the garments worn by the High Priest. In the tradition of the Bible of the Synagogue, I connect these splendid garments of Aaron, in contradistinction to the undistinguished apparel of Moses, to the conception of "honor" suggested by a team of sociologists, and juxtapose it to their con­ception of "dignity." What may we learn from these priestly clothes, from Moses' "informal" dress, and from the ceremonies of Yom Kippur, if we wish to help our children move toward dignified autonomous lives that are yet endowed with socially significant meanings and "honor"? Truly a midrashic enterprise.

Chapter 8 addresses the issue of Jewish law, the halakhah, a focus of Jewish literature, and a window to its language. Following midrashic sages, and with an assist from the contemporary moral philosopher, John Kekes, I relate diverse legitimations of the ha­lakhah to diverse understandings of human character. Here we come upon the polemical question whether the "halakhically edu­cated" child is a curious one or a conformist.

Chapter 9, which closes Part 2, is a midrashic and historical-soci­ological journey through ways of understanding two verses in Deuteronomy that state succinctly "what God asks of you." If at first it seems quite simple to educate children to be "ideal persons," the task, once analyzed and explored, appears impossible. What do commentators, ancient and modern, have to say about it? Is the community to educate each person to only one aspect of the educa­tional ideal? And if that seems overly organic and hierarchical, what other options are there?

In Part 3, the problem, which arises within the home but is in­tractable without the community and its public presence, is how, in the face of other, sometimes "idolatrous" languages and sometimes pagan literatures, shall we defend ours? Can the integrity of Jewish identity be maintained without parochialism and closed minded­ness? What is there in the language and literature of Judaism that mandates apartness and even seclusion? Conversely, which options and even demands for empathy, participation, and fellowship do we find there? What is really "inside" and what "outside" for the edu­cated Jewish person?

Four chapters are devoted to this issue. In Chapter 10, we find ourselves in a seemingly simple world of "we" and "they," of Jacob and Esau. Jacob here is zealously concerned with self-defense, with keeping away from Esau, even when, and perhaps especially when, that stranger-brother seems "nice and cultured." The question arises, Is that paradigm of segregation and alienation still tenable in the open society of today? Or has it perhaps been horribly recon­firmed by the Holocaust?

Chapter 11 treats of the opposite phenomenon: Joseph's broth­ers, and even his father, have been invited to Egypt by Pharaoh who gave them "the land of Goshen" for their settlement, and they learn to feel very much at home there. Joseph and his sons develop a dual identity, an insider-outsider set of languages. Even portents of im­pending slavery do not suffice to get the family to return to Canaan, to really go home. Later, too, in the Greco-Roman world as well as in our own, we find Diaspora appearing as a normal component of Jewish life. Is it, then, hypocritical to teach love for the Land of Is­rael and prayers for a speedy return to it?

In speaking of "our" vis-à-vis "their" language, we tend to assume that "ours" is always particularistic, whereas the "general" culture is universalistic. But that assumption is based on the axiom that Jew­ish tradition is zealously solicitous about Jewish identity at the expense of universalism and in almost sneering disregard of it. In Chapter 12,1 examine this view through the prism of the Noah story and take issue with it. I argue that the messianic aspect of Torah makes universalism an internal value. Jewish education, I submit, must teach covenantal commitment as a universal as well as a particular imperative.

Chapter 13 addresses an academic challenge to the conversation of Torah: The universal world of the university sponsors research into the holy literature of Judaism, the Torah, armed with a rhetoric of suspicion. Does that make the university "them," as in the Jacob­Esau model? Or is it possible to maintain the faith of Judaism with­out alienation from scientific inquiry? In educating young people to blanket denials of modern research into biblical texts, are we creat­ing a false model of authenticity that, for the sake of wholeness, de­nies comprehensive intellectual and spiritual development? I sug­gest a tentative and personal approach for linking tradition to modern biblical scholarship.

Part 4 brings us to those later stages of life in which all education is, in fact, self-education. Neither the home nor the community can now tell us what to do or who we are, though we have been shaped, given a language, by both. Yet we must now understand that "putting it all together" is our responsibility, and that the ways we do so are our choices.

To begin this part, I return, in Chapter 14, to the family of Jacob, specifically, to the "spoiled brat" of the family, Joseph. How did this fascinating figure, many years after leaving his family, earn the title of "Joseph the righteous"? What happened? When did he achieve moral maturity? Is it possible for a person to change? In looking at these questions, I have recourse to the model of "four perfections" as the predominant thinker of the Jewish Middle Ages, Moses Mai­monides, depicts them.

Then in Chapter 15,1 return to Jacob himself. How did he learn, in his own old age, to make his peace with the memory of his father Isaac, who blatantly favored his brother, Esau, over him? How we cope with what we remember is a significant feature of who we are. It is, like the growth for which we are ourselves responsible, an as­pect of teshuvah, "returning," "getting somewhere" in the search for ourselves.

The family, the community, and the school are involved in our infirmities and illnesses, but in a profound sense, we are left alone with them. The way that Midrash and biblical exegesis deal with the Torah's laws of leprosy and the leper is a blatant example of how sages and exegetes interpret the holy text to convey a message that is innovative yet within the rhetoric and the spirit of the language. The delicate balance between the community's tendency to stand in judgment over the ill and the understanding that it does not deserve to do so initiates the exercise in social relations and self-knowledge that is the subject of Chapter 16.

The subject of dying is one usually ignored by modern education and considered by contemporary adult society an unmentionable accident. The midrashic discussion of Moses' death at age one hun­dred and twenty, in conjunction with some halakhic literature, leads me to suggest what might be meant by being "one hundred and twenty years old." How do texts of Torah view death and how they relate it to life? The way the texts of Torah and Midrash consider this anthropological issue and some ramifications of it for education are the subject of Chapter 17.

Underlying the concept of self-education is the developing abil­ity of individuals and communities to decide what and who they are. This ability involves philosophical acumen and practical com­petence to determine what is really worth knowing, not because it is useful in achieving other ends, but because this knowledge de­fines us and gives us a perspective for seeing things whole. Learning "for its own sake" begins in the home, continues in the humanistic segment of schooling, yet eventually becomes a personal quest. In the classic Jewish idiom the question is, What does Torah lishmah, "Torah for its own sake," mean? With an assist from a contempo­rary philosopher of education, M. A. B. Degenhardt, I examine in Chapter 18 how this concept can guide curriculum scholars and teachers and allow learners to discover, perhaps after the passage of many years and far from the educational limelight, what the intrin­sic learning that they know as "Torah for its own sake" is.

My postscript brings us back explicitly to the mysterious trees that give this book its name. I note that each of the issues raised in this book has something to tell us about the questions: How does the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil stand together with the Tree of Life? Is restraint indeed linked at the roots with self-realization? How much obedience and how much autonomy characterize the well-educated person? In the spirit of the book, I conclude with questions like these.

Sepher Rezial Hemelach: The Book of the Angel Rezial by Steve Savedow (Weiser) is one of the most important Kabbalah text ever produced, and likely the original source for most modern literature on Hebrew angelic hierarchy and mythology, as well as Biblical astrology and gematria. The translation is very readable and from what I can tell by my own Hebrew edition, quite accurate.

Excerpt from translator’s preface:

According to Hebrew legend, the Sepher Rezial was presented to Adam in the Garden of Eden. It was given by the hand of God, through the medium of the angel Rezial. It is, therefore, suggested that this is the first book ever written. The text is an extensive com­pendium of ancient Hebrew magical lore, and quite probably the original source for much traditional literature on angelic hierarchy, astrology, qabalah, and Gematria.

There is very little published bibliographical information avail­able on the Sepher Rezial. It is noted in the bibliography of Gustav Davidson's Dictionary of Angels that the Sepher Rezial is sometimes titled Raziel ha-Malach, and credited to Eleazer of Worms. Davidson mentions a Hebrew edition, published in 1881, and an English manuscript in the British Museum. The bibliography of Joshua Trachtenberg's Jewish Magic and Superstition notes a 1701 edi­tion of Raziel ha-Malach published in Amsterdam, and "a German ­rabbinic script that does not correspond throughout with the printed text, but often contains a more complete text." Trachtenberg further states: "Sefer Raziel, probably compiled in the 13th century and containing much Geonic mystical material (so potent were its contents considered that mere possession of the book was believed to prevent fires)."

In Appendix IV of Aryeh Kaplan's translation of Sefer Yetzirah, Kaplan notes 25 various 19th-century editions of Sepher Rezial. He also notes that Eliezer (ben Yehudah) Rokeach of Worms (Garmiza) lived in the years 1160-1237.

There is certainly no evidence to support the theory that the Sepher Rezial was actually written over 5000 years ago. There are how­ever, references to the Sepher Rezial in several scholarly texts establishing a certain amount of validity to its claim to antiquity, dating it at least as far back as the 13th century. There have been various quotes printed from Sepher Rezial in a few English texts on Hebrew folklore, such as the Trachtenberg book mentioned earlier, and Myths and Legends of Ancient Israel by Angelo Rappaport. (For the record, no English edition was cited in either of these books' ample bibliogra­phies.) Also, diagrams from Sepher Rezial were printed in Davidson's Dictionary of Angels, Trachtenberg's Jewish Magic and Superstition, and David Goldstein's Jewish Folklore and Legend.

The introduction of the ancient Hebrew grimoire, The Sword of Moses states that ". . . the so-called Sefer Raziel, or the book deliv­ered to Adam by the angel Raziel shortly after he had left Paradise. It is of composite character, but there is no criterion for the age of the component parts. The result of this uncertainty is that it has been ascribed to R. Eleazar, of Worms, who lived about the middle of the 13th century. One cannot, however, say which portion is due to his own ingenuity and which may be due to ancient texts utilized by him. I am speaking more particularly of this book as it seems to be the primary source for many magical or, as it is called now, a cabbalistical book of the Middle Ages."

Trachtenberg states, "The long list [of magical incantations] in such a work as Sefer Raziel are proof of the arduous training that the novice in magic must undergo if he would learn how to direct all the memunium [Hebrew for "in charge of" or "appointed to"] of air, wind, date, time, place, etc., which can control a situation at a given moment. " In Folklore in the Old Testament, J. G. Frazer notes, "He (Noah) learned how to make it (the ark) from a holy book, which had been given to Adam by the angel Raziel, and which con­tained within it all knowledge, human and divine. It was made of sapphires, and Noah enclosed it in a golden casket when he took it with him into the ark, where it served him as a time-piece to distin­guish night from day, for so long as the flood prevailed, neither the sun nor the moon shed any light on the earth."

Sepher Rezial is also mentioned briefly in James Hastings' Encyclo­pedia of Religion and Ethics. "The Book of Raziel, said to have been taught to Adam by the angel Raziel, and also to Noah, is a compila­tion, probably by various writers. It has affinities to the Shiva Koma and Sword of Moses. According to Zunz, Raziel was the work of Eleazer of Worms. It describes the celestial organization, and gives directions for the preparations of amulets."

In the first section of this book is the Book of the Vestment. Therein are works of the book, of how it was given to man by Rezial, the angel, and how to be guided therein. Also, the names of the seasons, and the names of the Malachim ministering in every season and every month and every day. Also, the names of the heav­ens and Earth, and every spirit and angel ministering over every sign of the zodiac, and the angels of the seven planets in every sea­son, and days of the week.

In the second section is the Book of the Mighty Rezial. The corrected doctrine is sweet as honey dropped from the honeycomb. Also, the work of Merkabah and words of wisdom. All words are properly corrected and suitable to be revealed to the worthy. Also the works and actions of the Malachiem, and knowledge of winds and rains and such things.

In the third section is knowledge of the 72-fold name and the actions of the letters and vowel signs.

In the fourth section is the Book of Noah. The actions of the greatest works are written. Also, of the work of Berashith and prayers to rise up in exaltation.

In the fifth section is the Book of the Signs of the Zodiac. Also the charms [Qomeya'avoth] over all things, tried and proven. Also the 22-fold name and 42-fold name, and their actions.

It is required to establish and make known, not to speak the most holy names aloud. Only regard them in the heart, even in prayer. It is written in the Gemara, worship the Lord the true God in all hearts. The prayers are difficult to learn. Much sleep is re­quired to learn the meanings of the letters. Remember the holy names, as required to prepare, but do not speak them aloud.

It is also required to prepare, by rabbinical consecrations and devotions not printed in this book, for a period of ten years. These are not printed here, as a wise man said it is not appropriate to print them in this holy book. Knowledge against knowledge hin­ders understanding. The rabbinical, combined with that printed here, are united as one. Forsake them and be cursed by all plagues foretold in the Torah of Moses. It is established, those not keeping every commandment of the Torah are accursed. Forsake one com­mandment and sin unintentionally, the foolish are accursed. Let it be known the knowledge is reserved for those prepared by rabbini­cal consecrations and devotions. The scholars of Earth are favored in the eyes of the Lord.

Now it is time the transcription is printed. I have copied it letter by letter, with special attention to the most holy names, and also the names of the Malachim. I proofread it four times, letter by letter. If there are any errors, I beg the Lord to forgive me. It is now pre­pared to be printed and bound by Isaac Ben Checheber Abraham, Amsterdam.”

Sefer Yesira critical text compiled, edited, translated with commentary by A. Peter Hayman (Mohr Siebeck) Sefer Yesira is a short, enigmatic text that has fascinated scholars since it first emerged into the light of day in the early tenth century. It was initially understood to be a philosophical text that had descended by oral tradition from Abraham himself. Consequently it was commented on by many of the major figures in the Jewish world in the early medieval period. Subsequently it was understood as a mystical text and became a crucial influence on the medieval mystical movement (the Kabbalah). More than seventy kabbalistic commentaries on it are known. It continued to be of interest to Christian kabbalists at the time of the Renaissance and to scholars of Judaism and mysticism to the present day. Peter Haymans study provides the first comprehensive critical edition of this text. The texts of the earliest manuscripts of the three main recensions of Sefer Yesira (the Short, Long and Saadyan Recensions) are printed in synoptic columns with a critical apparatus, drawn from nineteen selected manuscripts, at the bottom of each column. There is an English translation of each of the recensions followed by a commentary discussing the variant readings of the manuscripts and the text of Sefer Yesira presupposed in the earliest commentaries on it. Both in the introduction and the commentary an attempt is made to reconstruct an early form of the text from which the later recensions have developed. There are four appendices setting out what parts of the text are attested in each of the manuscripts and in what order, a hypothetical reconstructed text and the text of the tenth century Vatican scroll of Sefer Yesira with the probable added material underlined. The introduction concludes with an attempt to outline how the text grew into the form which has come down to us from the medieval period.

The volume is designed for questions of textual variation and the never presents a straightforward translation. Some Hebrew would be helpful to follow the details of the arguments. Considering the importance of this text for the development of kabbalah this work deserves close attention.

 

Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation by Moshe Idel (Yale University Press) In this wide-ranging discussion of Kabbalah-from the mystical trends of medieval Judaism to modern Hasidism-one of the world's foremost scholars considers different visions of the nature of the sacred text and of the methods to interpret it. Moshe Idel takes as a starting point the fact that the postbiblical Jewish world lost its geographical center with the destruction of the temple and so was left with a textual center, the Holy Book. Idel argues that a text-oriented religion produced language-centered forms of mysticism. Against this background, the author demonstrates how various Jewish mystics amplified the content of the Scriptures so as to include everything: the world, or God, for example. Thus the text becomes a major realm for contemplation, and the interpretation of the text frequently becomes an encounter with the deepest realms of reality. Idel delineates the particular hermeneutics belonging to Jewish mysticism, investigates the progressive filling of the text with secrets and hidden levels of meaning, and considers in detail the various interpretive strategies needed to decodify the arcane dimensions of the text.