Elliot R. Wolfson

Left Contained in the Right: A Study in Zoharic Hermeneutics

Although there has been much in modern scholarship written about the historical and theosophical background of the Zohar, scholars have paid little attention to the literary structure of the work and its relationship to the thematic content contained therein. There is, as far as I know, not one in-depth study of such a nature.

The hermeneutics of visionary experience: Revelation and interpretation in the Zohar

This paper analyses the processes of revelation and interpretation as they function in the classic work of medeival Jewish mysticism, the Zohar. The author points out that visionary experience ofthe divine is not only central to Zoharic theosophy, but that the act of textual study itself must be understood in the light of this phenomenon insofar as the text is nothing but the configuration of divine light. The author demonstrates that the phenomenological structure of these two modes is identical according to the Zohar. Hence, the kabbalist who interprets Scripture attains the level of Moses who received the Torah at Sinai.

Hebraic and Hellenic Conceptions of Wisdom in Sefer ha-Bahir

This article explores the question of the Hebraic and Hellenic heritage in the Jewish Middle Ages by examining the portrait of wisdom in Sefer ha-Bahir, considered by scholars to be the first kabbalistic work to surface in twelfth-century Provence. In more specific terms, I investigate the interplay of two different de- pictions of wisdom in the Bahir against the complicated cultural composite of Hebraism and Hellenism: the mythically oriented characterizations of wisdom as a divine hypostasis and the philosophic characterization of wisdom as the demiurgi- cal Logos. In the bahiric text, the mythic/Hebraic element becomes entwined in philosophic/Hellenic discourse. Many of the scriptural interpretations in the Bahir related to the topic of wisdom reflect the conflation of the mythopoeic and the logocentric orientations. Rather than viewing the kabbalistic doctrine of wisdom as the internal, mythic antidote to the external, philosophical ideal, I propose to examine the more nuanced cultural mix that underlies the speculation on wisdom in the bahiric text. By reexamining this issue, then, we reopen the key question of the relationship of philosophy and mysticism in the period when kabbalistic literary creativity flourished.

Coronation of the Sabbath Bride: Kabbalistic Myth and the Ritual of Androgynisation

Historians of religion have long noted the intricate nexus of myth and ritual: The function of ritual is to instantiate a particular myth, which in turn provides the symbolic narrative that informs and organizes the practitioners behavior in the world. Through ritual performance, therefore, the individual inscribes the mythic belief in the spatio-temporal world. One may challenge the universal application of this nexus to different religious societies, but it is beyond question that the relationship between myth and ritual as delineated above can be applied legitimately to the history of kabbalistic speculation in which the supreme importance accorded normative halakhic practice is upheld. Even the antinomian tendencies, latent in some early sources and actualized in the Sabbatian and Frankist heresies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, are dialectically related to the nom ian impulse: Abrogation of the law was perceived as the ultimate means to fulfill it. As a number of scholars have pointed out in recent years, in the literature of theosophic kabbalah the traditional commandments

Inscribed in the book of the living : Gospel of Truth and Jewish christology

In this study, I shall argue that the Gospel of Truth preserves an archaic Jewish/Christian theologoumenon that provides an alternative account of the incarnation to the version in the prologue to the Gospel of John. It is reasonable to presume a common matrix—most likely related to Jewish Wisdom speculation—for the two accounts. Careful analysis of the text, moreover, sheds light on the spot where the tributaries of Jewish and Christian esotericism converged and diverged. By heeding this site we may contribute in a modest way to the question regarding the intricate relationship between Judaism, Christianity, and Gnosticism in Late Antiquity.

Open Secret in the Rearview Mirror

Much scholarly and popular attention has been centered on whether or not Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh rebbe of the Ḥabad-Lubavitch dynasty, identified himself as the Messiah. While this interest is surely understandable, both doctrinally and anthropologically, in my judgment, it obscures the central question concerning the nature of the messianism he propagated. This line of inquiry might seem gratuitous for two reasons. First, his writings, discourses, and actions are replete with references to a personal Messiah, and since there is no evidence that he ever deviated from the strictures of rabbinic orthodoxy, there should be no reason to cast doubt on his explicit assertions. Second, a distinguishing feature of Ḥabad ideology, in consonance with the general drift of Ḥasidism, is the ostensible commitment to divulging mystical secrets, penimiyyut ha-torah, the spreading of the wellsprings outward (hafaṣat ma‘yanot ḥuṣah) to broadcast the mysteries that impart knowledge of divinity mandatory for proper worship. Prima facie, it would appear that Ḥabad breaks the code of esotericism upheld (in theory if not unfailingly in practice) by kabbalists through the centuries. This is surely the self-understanding sanctioned by the seventh rebbe, and it can be justifiably argued that he went to greater lengths than his predecessor and father-in-law, Yosef Yiṣḥaq Schneersohn—availing himself of the socioeconomic opportunities of the postwar American environment and making use of the instruments of technology—to accomplish the diffusion of the inwardness of the Torah.

Secrecy, Modesty, and the Feminine: Kabbalistic Traces in the Thought of Levinas

A number of scholars have discussed the possible affinities between Levinas and the kabbalah. In this essay, I explore the nexus between eros, secrecy, modesty, and the feminine in the thought of Levinas compared to a similar complex of ideas elicited from kabbalistic speculation. In addition to the likelihood that Levinas may have been influenced by the interrelatedness of these motifs in kabbalistic lore, I argue that he proffers an anti-theosophic interpretation of kabbalah, which accords with his rejection of the dogma of incarnation and the related polemical depiction of Christianity as idolatry. The appropriation of the kabbalistic hermeneutic on the part of Levinas, therefore, entailed a major revision. In translating the ontological into the ethical, Levinas divests the secret of its secretive potency, but thereby fostered an esoteric reading of Jewish esotericism.

The Body in the Text: A Kabbalistic Theory of Embodiment

O NE O F T HE M ANY C ONTRIBUTIONS that feminist scholarship has made to the academic study of culture and society is a heightened emphasis on the body for a proper understanding of the construction of human subjectivities. To be sure, speculation on the body is as ancient as recorded human history, but the approaches sponsored by contemporary feminist theories are distinctive insofar as they insist on the need to consider embodiment from the vantage point of gender and sexual difference. Like other disciplines in the humanities, the study of religion has been transformed by the feminist concern with engendered embodiment. In the specific case of Judaism, there has been significant progress as well in the application of feminist criticism to the study of this complex religious phenomenon, though predictably one can still detect resistance on the part of some Judaic scholars to the adoption of this method as a legitimate critical tool to engage the past; in fact, in some cases, one encounters ignorance laced with outright hostility, a posture that seems to me far worse and morally reprehensible than simple resistance. An area where the insights of feminist criticism are especially applicable is the esoteric wisdom cultivated in the late Middle Ages, even though it is quite likely that there is some credence to the claims of kabbalists that their teachings and practices were older. An essential component of the kabbalistic worldview is the anthropomorphic representation of the divine to the point that the priestly notion of the image of God by means of which Adam was created is applied by kabbalists to limbs of the supernal human form configured in the imagination. Moreover, just as Adam is described as having been created as male and female, so the imaginal body of the sefirotic potencies is portrayed in terms of a gender binary, with the female, emblematic of the capacity to receive, linked to the left side of judgment, and the male, emblematic of the potential to bestow, linked to the right side of mercy. The erotic language embraced by kab

Ontology, Alterity, and Ethics in Kabbalistic Anthropology

Abstract alles ist weniger, als es ist, alles ist mehr. Celan

Occultation of the Feminine and the Body of Secrecy in Medieval Kabbalah

the occult tradition of Judaism, which by the high middle ages is re ferred to most frequently by the generic term kabbalah, literally, “that which has been received,” is usually studied under the rubric of mysticism. a far better term, however, to capture the nature of this phenomenon is esotericism. indeed, as i have argued elsewhere, the mystical dimensions expressed in Jewish sources—and here i extend the scope to include more than just kabbalistic texts—are contextualized within the hermeneutical framework of esotericism.1 here it is relevant to recall as well that in the first of his ten unhistorical aphorisms on the history of kabbalah, Gershom Scholem duly noted the central concern with the issue of secrecy in the kabbalistic sources. he remarked that the fundamental problem that presents itself is that, on the one hand, the kabbalists presume that truth is transmitted from generation to generation, but on the other hand, the truth of which they speak is secretive and thus cannot by nature be fully transmitted. in his inimitable style of ironic paradox, Scholem wrote, “authentic tradition (echte Tradition) remains hidden; only the fallen tradition (verfallende Tradition) falls (verfällt) upon an object and only when it is fallen does its greatness become visible.”2 the truly esoteric knowledge cannot be divulged if it is to remain