Boaz Huss, Ask No Questions

kji010.fm Page 141 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

Boaz Huss

ASK NO QUESTIONS: GERSHOM SCHOLEM AND THE STUDY OF CONTEMPORARY JEWISH MYSTICISM By way of introduction, let me recount something that happened to a young acquaintance of mine in 1924. The fellow came to Jerusalem, unpretentiously bearing his training in philology and modern history, and sought to get in touch with a circle of latter-day kabbalists who had preserved, for over 200 years, the traditional mystical teachings of the Jews of eastern lands. Eventually, he met a kabbalist who told him: “I am prepared to teach you Kabbalah, but on one condition that I’m not sure you’ll be able to fulfill.” Some of my readers may not guess that condition: “Ask no questions.”1 Gershom Scholem used this mythical tale to open his lecture “Kabbalah and Myth” at the Eranos Conference in Ascona, Switzerland, in 1949—the first time he lectured at that conference. In a 1974 interview with Muki Zur, Scholem disclosed that he himself was the young man in the story, a fact that had no doubt been clear to his audience at Eranos. He went on to tell of his reaction to the condition imposed by R. Gershon Vilner, the aged Ashkenazi kabbalist from the “Bet-El” yeshiva, a reaction that was likewise unsurprising: “I told him I wanted to consider it. And then I told him I couldn’t do it.” 2 Paradoxically enough, by his negative response Scholem effectively accepted the condition proposed by the kabbalist, for he chose not to ask questions about—and not to study—Kabbalah as a living, contemporary phenomenon.3 In his partial autobiography From Berlin to Jerusalem, Scholem mentions several more encounters with kabbalists and mystics, but he presents these meetings anecdotally, never raising the possibility that these mystics might be the subjects of study or research.4 Indeed, Scholem’s meeting with contemporary kabbalists left no impression whatsoever on his vast corpus of scholarly work. He labored to examine the most out-of-the-way kabbalistic manuscripts he could find, but he devoted not a single study to the Bet-El kabbalists or any other kabbalistic stream of his own time. The kabbalistic yeshivas that functioned in Jerusalem during Scholem’s time (“Bet-El,” “Rehovot ha-Nahar,” and “Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim”) and prominent kabbalists, most of them likewise doi:10.1093/mj/kji010 © The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected].

kji010.fm Page 142 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

142

Boaz Huss

in Jerusalem during Scholem’s period, such as R. Saul ha-Kohen Dwlck, R. Judah Petaiah, R. Solomon Eliashov, and R. Judah Ashlag, go nearly unmentioned in Scholem’s studies. That is the case as well with respect to the few mystics of his generation for whom Scholem expressed esteem—Rabbi Kook, R. Menahem Mendel Schneerson, and R. Ahrele Roth.5 Gershom Scholem was trained as a philologist and engaged primarily in historical study, and his inattention to contemporary Kabbalah might be attributed to that historical-philological orientation. But Scholem did not merely forgo ethnographic study of contemporary kabbalists; he paid no scholarly attention even to kabbalistic texts that were written and published in his time. Moreover, Scholem sought to use philological and historical methods to get to the metaphysical and mystical basis of the Kabbalah and to describe comprehensively the Jewish mystical phenomenon. In his recent book on three great twentieth-century students of religion, Steven Wasserstrom distinguished Gershom Scholem, who rejected the possibility of learning from kabbalists themselves, from Mircea Eliade, who learned from and received the approval of Indian gurus, and Henry Corbin, who engaged in profound discussions with Sufi sheikhs.6 Noteworthy as well is the distinction between Scholem and his friend Solomon Dov Goitein; the latter also underwent philological and historical training in Germany but, after immigrating to the Land of Israel (sailing on the same ship as Scholem), turned to ethnographic study of Yemenite Jews.7 Gershom Scholem refrained from studying the Jewish mysticism of his own time not because he was a historian and philologist but because he denied its significance and value. In his monumental Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, published in 1941, he issued the following pronouncement: “At the end of a long process of development in which Kabbalism, paradoxical though it may sound, has influenced the course of Jewish history, it has become again what it was in the beginning: the esoteric wisdom of small groups of men out of touch with life and without any influence on it.”8 And in his 1963 article “Thoughts on the Possibility of Contemporary Jewish Mysticism,” he wrote as follows: “When all is said and done, it may be said that in our time, for the most part, there is no original mysticism, not in the nation of Israel and not among the nations of the world.”9 In the present article, I will argue that these findings should be seen not as a description of actual circumstances but as a value judgment reflecting the underlying assumptions of the modern study of Kabbalah and of the conceptual framework and cultural stance that shaped that study. That cultural stance, itself forged in the context of modernist thought and with an orientalist perspective, contributed to the cultural and social marginalization in Israeli society of mystical

kji010.fm Page 143 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism

143

beliefs and practices and of the circles maintaining them. This has made it impossible for Scholem, and, to a great extent, makes it difficult for investigators of Kabbalah even today, to consider the study of contemporary Jewish mysticism. Let me stress that I do not make this argument as a moralistic attack or “indictment,” nor do I mean to downplay the value of the vast scholarly accomplishments of Scholem and his followers. My intention, rather, is to cast a critical eye on the frame of reference and underlying assumptions of the field of research from which and in which I work, so as to test and understand how those perspectives shaped the field’s corpus of knowledge and scholarly practices. A critique of this sort, made possible by the different historical and ideological framework in which I operate, is based on the scholarly achievements of Scholem and his disciples. As Scholem himself made clear, his interest in Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah grew out of the Zionist ideology he had adopted as a young man in Germany. In the interview with Muki Zur referred to above, Scholem says, “I wanted to enter into the world of Kabbalah through my thinking of and believing in Zionism as a something alive, as a renewal of a nation that had deteriorated greatly. . . .I was interested in the question: “Was halakhic Judaism strong enough to persevere and endure? Was halakhah without a mystical foundation really possible? Did it have enough vitality of its own to persevere without deteriorating over the course of two thousand years?”10 Scholem saw Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah as an expression of Judaism’s vitality and revolutionary force, which made possible its existence in exile and, in a dialectical manner, ultimately led to the Enlightenment and to Zionism.11 The modern incarnation of this force, in Scholem’s view, appeared in his generation in a new form as the Zionist enterprise. Thus, in “Thoughts on the Possibility of Contemporary Jewish Mysticism,” Scholem declares: It is a fundamental fact that the creative element, which in the current generation draws on a radical awareness, is invested in secular building blocks. This building, or this reconstruction, of the life of the nation was difficult, or still is difficult, demanding forceful planning and execution; and it is questionable whether it leaves room for productive expression of traditional forms. The force there invested includes much of what in other circumstances would be invested in the world of religious mysticism, known from it and in it as mysticism. But now this force is invested in matters that on their face lack religious sanctity and on their face are entirely secular.12

Scholem’s perspective identifies the period of exile as the period in which Jewish mysticism occupied a significant place in Jewish history. Scholem located the start of Jewish mysticism in the heikhalot literature, which he dated to the first centuries C.E., and its conclusion in the establishment of the Bet-El yeshiva and the emergence of the Hasidic

kji010.fm Page 144 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

144

Boaz Huss

movement. His view of Jewish mysticism as the vital force of Diaspora Judaism explains the paradox of Scholem turning his back on the bearers of the kabbalistic tradition precisely when he came to the Land of Israel, settled in Jerusalem—a center of kabbalistic ferment in the 1920s—and finally had the opportunity to meet with them. Instead of doing so, he returned to European libraries to do his research, in order to lay the groundwork for the study of Kabbalah on the basis of the manuscript archives preserved there.13 Scholem’s Zionist perspective made Kabbalah into a significant factor in Judaism’s past, but one that had lost its historical role in the present. In so doing, Arthur Hertzberg argued—using the same locution Scholem himself had applied to the Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars who had preceded him—Scholem provided an honorable burial for Kabbalah: “Scholem was quite clearly reevoking these fascinating shades but ultimately, to use the language of his charge against the scholars of the Wissenschaft school, in order to bury them with due respect. It was part of the Jewish past, the present was Zionism.”14 As noted, Scholem concluded that not only Jewish mysticism but mysticism in general had ceased to be a meaningful phenomenon in the modern world. In his words, “Certainly, in recent generations there have been no individual stirrings producing either new forms of mystical teachings or movements having significance in the life of the community. This is equally the case in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.”15 Scholem does not explain this phenomenon; but his claim that the impediment to formulating significant Jewish mysticism in his day was the lack of belief in “Torah from Heaven” and his declaration that “we all, to a great extent, are religious anarchists” clarify Scholem’s modernistic perspective, which believes in the triumph of secularization and regards the traditional forms of religion as phenomena losing communal significance in the modern world.16 Scholem does not abandon hope that mysticism will reappear on the stage of history, but he assumes that any such reappearance will be in a secularized form rather than in traditional dress: Perhaps mysticism will appear not in the garb of traditional sanctity . . . perhaps this holiness will appear at the very center of this secular essence, and perhaps mysticism will not be known in its new forms in the terms of the tradition. It is possible that this mysticism will not correspond to the terms of the conservative tradition of the mystics, but will instead have secular meaning. What I am alluding to is not something I have cut from whole cloth. There are those who see in our secular lives and in the building of the nation a reflection of the mystical meaning of the secret of the world.17

Scholem concludes his reflections on the possibility of Jewish mysticism in his day with a reference to none other than Walt Whitman—who

kji010.fm Page 145 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism

145

represents, in his words, “a sense of absolute sanctity within absolute secularity”—as an example indicating hope for a renewed appearance of Jewish mysticism.18 Scholem elsewhere expresses this neo-romantic concept, which sees literature and art as the heirs of religiosity in a secular age, in his presentation of Kafka as a modern bearer of the Jewish mystical spirit. He concludes his essay “Ten Non-historical Statements about the Kabbalah” as follows: “For in a uniquely lofty way, Kafka gave expression to the boundary between religion and nihilism. For that reason, certain readers in our day see in his writings—which are representations in secular terms of a kabbalistic sense of the world (which he himself did not know)—something of the demanding light of the canonical, of the variegated whole.”19 These “certain” readers, of course, included Scholem himself, who concluded in his 1974 lecture “My Path to the Kabbalah” (delivered at the Bavarian Academy of Art) that the three “books” that reflect the spirit of Judaism are “the Hebrew Bible, the Zohar, and the writings of Kafka.”20 One could say that this definition of the Jewish canon offers the most succinct expression of Scholem’s understanding of Judaism. The continuation of the Jewish mystical spirit can be found, according to Scholem, not only in literature but also in academic inquiry, from a Zionist perspective, into Jewish mysticism. Scholem saw the Zionist academic study of Judaism in general, and of Kabbalah in particular, as part of Judaism’s spiritual revival; and he strove to reach the metaphysical and mystical foundation of the Kabbalah through the use of philological and historical methods.21 And so, at the end of his 1937 letter to S. Z. Schocken, entitled “A Frank Word about My True Intentions in Studying Kabbalah,” Scholem writes: In the uniquely wondrous mirror of philological criticism, there is first reflected for a man of our times, in the purest possible form and through the time-honored processes of commentary, the mystical splendor of the system whose existence necessarily has been completely hidden precisely through its projection into historical times. It is the force of that paradox, and the anticipation of a response from the mountain top, of a slight, nearly imperceptible movement in history allowing for the truth to speak through what appears to be “development,” that feed my work today as they did when I first set out on my path.22

In that sense, as David Biale has argued, Scholem saw the academic study of Kabbalah as the modern heir of the kabbalistic tradition: “Scholem therefore sees the Kabbalists as his precursors and Kabbalistic theology as the precursor to his theological anarchism—but they are not the same. Modern historiography is a new development in the history of commentary in which the Kabbalah was an earlier stage.”23 It follows that in Scholem’s view, the continuation of the Jewish mystical spirit is to be found not in contemporary kabbalistic and mystical

kji010.fm Page 146 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

146

Boaz Huss

circles but, rather, in the secular world—in Kafka’s literary creations, in the Zionist effort to build the nation, and in the philological-historical study of Kabbalah as practiced by Scholem’s school. The modernist and Zionist perspective of Scholem’s scholarly enterprise took shape, as some have recently shown, in the context of orientalist discourse.24 Biale has considered the distinctive and complex nature of the orientalist perspective of European Jews, in whose consciousness the concept of “the Orient” became bound up with their self-identification as Europeans and Jews (i.e., orientals) at one and the same time.25 Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin has pointed out Zionism’s ambivalence toward “the East”: “In a seemingly paradoxical way, the Jews’ exodus from Europe and the establishment of Jewish settlement in the East actually provided a basis for their integration into the West, and for defining the Jews as a European nation.”26 This perspective provides the background for Scholem’s decision to immigrate to the Land of Israel and to make the Kabbalah the focus of his scholarly work: the latter, like the former, partook of a turning to the East. The fields of study in which Scholem determined to engage—Judaism and mysticism—were regarded in nineteenth- and early-twentiethcentury western Europe as manifestly “oriental” categories.27 Scholem’s turn to the “East,” like that of many other Jewish intellectuals of his time, entailed typical orientalist ambivalence—a posture of being both drawn to and repelled by the East, which was simultaneously regarded as exotic and as degenerate, as authentic and as primitive. This ambivalence, which took on particular complexity in European Jewish consciousness generally and in Zionist consciousness in particular, gained expression in Scholem’s emphatic insistence that the return to the Land of Israel did not imply absorption into the Levant.28 It shows up as well, as Gil Anijar has stressed, in Scholem’s remarks on the feelings of admiration and disgust aroused in him by his reading of the great kabbalists.29 A prominent manifestation of Scholem’s ambivalence toward Kabbalah is his negation of contemporary Jewish mysticism. In assigning enormous importance to Jewish mysticism as a historical phenomenon while spurning its present-day manifestation, Scholem displays a characteristically orientalist stance, exalting the “East” as a source of arcane and authentic information while regarding the “oriental” present (which included, in the consciousness of western European Jews, the milieu of their eastern European brethren) as fossilized, degenerate, and backward.30 As we know, Scholem traces the roots of Jewish mysticism to the East. The last significant developments in Jewish mysticism took place, in his opinion, during the eighteenth century, with the establishment of the “Bet-El Yeshiva,” which he described as “the center for kabbalists

kji010.fm Page 147 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism

147

from the Sefardic and arabized tribes (as well as the Yemenites),” and with the appearance in eastern Europe of Hasidism, which Scholem defined as “the last great religious outburst within Judaism, as the gates were about to close.”31 After Hasidism, Scholem says, “our creative forces turned, during the period of emancipation and liberalism, in a totally different direction”—that is, toward the Enlightenment and thence, dialectically, to Zionism, the final stage in the dialectical development of the Jewish mystical spirit.32 Cultural phenomena that failed to take part in that process—including the mystical currents of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which continued to flow throughout the Islamic world and in eastern Europe—were relegated, in Scholem’s view, to the margins of Jewish history.33 The Jewish mysticism of his day, which continued as the living tradition of the eastern European Hasidim and “the Sefardic and arabized tribes,” was portrayed by Scholem in terms of preservation and decadence: “In this generation, the earlier forms continue, as a precious living inheritance or as an inheritance that has decayed but that continues to exist in its external garb, even though its soul has departed from it.”34 The conception of Jewish mysticism held by Scholem and his school became intertwined with the negative attitude of the hegemonic streams in Israeli society toward the bearers of the mystical traditions and the avatars of “diasporism”—emigrants from Islamic countries and eastern European haredim, the “blacks” within “white” Israeli society.35 The academic study of Kabbalah afforded a degree of legitimacy to Jewish mysticism; at the same time, it justified marginalizing the bearers of that tradition within Israeli society.36 There are, however, some exceptions to Scholem’s disdain for the Jewish mysticism of his day. In reflecting on the possibility of Jewish mysticism in his time, Scholem mentions three phenomena that he found interesting: the Hasidism of R. Ahrele Roth, the Habad movement, and, especially, Rabbi Kook.37 The importance he assigns to Rabbi Kook—whom he elsewhere labels as the last instance of productive kabbalistic thought that he knows of—highlights Scholem’s nationalist, secular, and orientalist perspective.38 The importance of Rabbi Kook’s mysticism flows, in Scholem’s view, from the Zionist perspective of Kookian mysticism, from its ties to the intellectual world of European philosophy, and from Kook’s readiness to acknowledge the sanctity within the secular.39 Moreover, as already noted, Scholem regards Rabbi Kook’s devotion to “Torah from Heaven” as an obstacle to his mysticism being meaningful to the public of his day. Along with the mysticism of the “oriental” kabbalists and of eastern European Hasidism (which Scholem classified as fossilized and decayed) and the mysticism of Rabbi Kook and a few other figures (which Scholem regarded as authentic mysticism but void of historical

kji010.fm Page 148 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

148

Boaz Huss

significance in the modern age), Scholem also considered several representatives of contemporary occult circles—Jewish and non-Jewish— who showed an interest in Jewish mysticism. Although Scholem had a certain curiosity about some of these circles, which arose in western Europe, he rejected them as delusions, charlatanisms, and pseudoKabbalah.40 This hostility exposes Scholem’s stance, which accepts traditional involvement in Kabbalah as authentic (albeit decadent and lacking historical significance) and the academic study of Kabbalah as professional. Nontraditional circles involved in Kabbalah in a nonacademic manner, as seen from this perspective, are nothing more than inauthentic charlatans. To a great extent, Scholem’s studies defined the field of research into Kabbalah, and his disciples and their successors continue their work within the framework of discourse he shaped. And even though his successors, as we shall see below, challenged many of the basic premises that guided Scholem’s work, contemporary mysticism remains beyond the pale of the research and teaching conducted by academic investigators of Kabbalah. Most of the studies in the field are done by sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and folklorists. Departments of Jewish Thought in Israeli universities offer a course of study in modern Jewish philosophy alongside the program in medieval Jewish philosophy, but not one university has a course of study—or a scholar—devoting time to modern Jewish mysticism. Academic students of Kabbalah treat contemporary mysticism—to the extent they treat it at all—as outside the context of their scholarly work, primarily in media interviews. Contemporary groups of kabbalists or mystics are presented, at best, as “preservers” of the kabbalistic tradition and, at worst, as charlatans. Jewish mysticism is treated as a phenomenon that has lost its relevance in modern times, and the key to understanding it is said to lie with the academic investigators, not with those who see themselves as its contemporary practitioners. Thus, according to Joseph Dan, “the wellsprings of spiritual, intellectual, moral, theological and even mystical creativity ran totally dry” after the Holocaust.41 Dan, like other researchers of Kabbalah, rejects nonacademic engagement with Kabbalah on the part of nontraditional circles (especially R. Philip Berg’s Institute for the Study of Kabbalah), and he regards them—as Scholem did the occultist groups in his time—as delusional or as charlatans.42 Rachel Elior manifests a similar attitude toward Yigal Arikha, the author of popular books on Kabbalah. In a review of his book Practical Kabbalah (Heb.), she assigns an aesthetic value to Kabbalah and magic, which she places, along with religious thought in general, in the realm of art and literature, but she dismisses the effort to present mystical or magical traditions as relevant in the present.43

kji010.fm Page 149 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism

149

This approach is typical of hegemonic Israeli discourse, as it appears in Israeli communications media. Early kabbalistic literature and the academic investigators who work with it are regarded as worthwhile, authentic, and “professional,” but contemporary kabbalistic belief and practices (such as prostration on the graves of the righteous, ritual reading of the Zohar, and exorcism of dibbuqs) and the kabbalists who believe in and practice them are considered to be primitives, charlatans, and even a menace to modern Western-Israeli culture.44 During the eighties, as noted above, several scholars (including Moshe Idel, Yehudah Liebes, Eliot Wolfson, Charles Mopsik, and others) questioned the meta-narrative at the basis of Scholem’s studies and many of the basic premises that shaped research into Kabbalah.45 In the context of this revision, the chronological framework of Jewish mysticism constructed by Scholem was broken. In particular, texts from earlier periods, including rabbinic and biblical literature, were added to those considered by researchers of Kabbalah; but, at the same time, scholars also became increasingly interested in various aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Kabbalah that had not been considered in Scholem’s studies.46 In this revisionist context, some of the scholars proposed a new approach to contemporary mysticism. In his book Kabbalah: New Perspectives, published in 1988, Moshe Idel suggested that investigators of Kabbalah forge links with contemporary kabbalists, pointing out that familiarity with them could “enrich the academic conception regarding the essence of Kabbalah.”47 A similar approach was recently suggested by Yehudah Liebes in his lecture “Reflections on the Religious Significance of Research on Kabbalah”: “I do not share the opinion of colleagues who disparage the kabbalists who work among us—Rabbi Kadouri will not learn from me what Kabbalah is; rather, we investigators must learn from him.”48 Despite these recommendations by Idel and Liebes, the study of present-day Jewish mysticism remained very much at the margins of their research efforts and those of other late-twentieth-century investigators of Kabbalah. Recently, however, scholars have begun to show a greater interest in contemporary Kabbalah. A comprehensive review of twentieth-century Jewish mysticism and mystical groups appeared for the first time in Charles Mopsik’s book Cabale et Cabalistes, published in 1997.49 Jonathan Garb, in his 2002 article “The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” offered a review of the various contemporary mystical streams as well as analyses of various aspects of these phenomena. And other investigators have recently presented lectures dealing with various aspects of contemporary Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism.50

kji010.fm Page 150 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

150

Boaz Huss

The recent (limited) awakening of interest in contemporary mysticism on the part of investigators of Kabbalah can be explained as a reaction to the enhanced status of mysticism in the Western world in general and in Israel in particular. But, as I argued at the outset, the neglect of contemporary mysticism in the work of Scholem and his successors resulted not from mysticism’s disappearance but from a cultural stance that denied the value and significance of present-day mystical practices and beliefs and fostered the shunting of these phenomena, and of the circles devoted to them, to the margins of the hegemonic Israeli culture. The increasing scholarly awareness of contemporary mysticism can be seen not only as a response to “the revival of mysticism” but as part of the process allowing mysticism a more prominent presence in Israeli culture.51 In his study “The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” Garb attributes the current rise of mysticism to, among other things, the dismantling of the modernist-rationalist narrative and the weakening of Western-Zionist cultural hegemony.52 In my judgment, these factors, which have contributed to the more prominent presence of mysticism in Western culture generally, and in Israeli culture in particular, have also made it possible for researchers to direct their attention to contemporary Jewish mysticism. And so, research into contemporary Jewish mysticism is possible in the twenty-first century, though it remains at the margins of the field. The study of this mysticism poses challenges and difficulties, not only because it requires new research methods but also—indeed, primarily—because it requires confronting the framework of discourse and cultural stances that shaped the field of study in which scholars of Kabbalah (myself included) have labored. Turning scholarly attention to the Jewish mysticism of today constitutes not merely a widening of the investigative field of vision but also the adopting of new types of perception, requiring researchers to direct a critical glance at themselves and to confront the basic premises that shape their research methods and establish their identity. BEN GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV

NOTES

This article is based on a lecture delivered at a conference of Departments of Jewish Thought held at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in March 2003. A Hebrew version appeared in Pe’amim, vols. 94–95 (2003). My thanks go to Yoni Garb, Hanan Haver, Andra Levy, Havivah Pedya, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin,

kji010.fm Page 151 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism

151

and Ada Rappoport Albert, who provided important comments on an early draft of the article. My thanks also go to Moshe Idel, who, despite his reservations about some of my contentions, engaged with me in a fruitful conversation that helped me to sharpen my arguments. The article is dedicated to the memory of the late Charles Mopsik, who opened new paths in the modern study of Kabbalah and many other areas of Jewish mysticism. The English translation was done by Mr. Joel A. Linseder. 1. Gershom Scholem, Pirqei Yesod (Jerusalem, 1961), p. 86. 2. Gershom Scholem, Devarim be-Go (Tel Aviv, 1975), p. 45. 3. Steven R. Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade and Henry Corbin at Eranos (Princeton, 1999), pp. 32, 39–40. 4. On Scholem’s meetings with members of Oscar Goldberg’s circle, see Gershom Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth (Tel Aviv, 1982), pp. 174–178 (and see n. 42). On his meetings with R. David ha-Kohen, see Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem, p. 204 (and n. 39). It is noteworthy that Scholem does not speak in his autobiography of his meetings with the kabbalists of Bet-El. They, along with the kabbalists of the “Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim” and “Porat Yosef” yeshivas, are mentioned in the context of the kabbalistic book market in Jerusalem (Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem, p. 206). Fanya Scholem (Kol ha-Ir, January 19, 1990) told of kabbalists meeting with her husband during the World War II period, but these were kabbalists who had come to take counsel with Scholem. 5. A brief overview of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Jewish mystics can be found in “Kabbalah,” Encyclopedia Judaica; it appears as well in Scholem’s collected encyclopedia articles: Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York, 1974), p. 85. A brief treatment of R. Ashlag’s Kabbalah appears in Scholem’s review essay of a book by R. Levi Isaac Krakovsky, a disciple of Rabbi Ashlag, in Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 15 (1953), p. 312. On the absence from Scholem’s (and from his followers’) work of any research into Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah as living phenomena, see Charles Mopsik, Cabale et Cabalistes (Paris, 1997); Daniel Abrams, “Presenting and Representing Gershom Scholem: A Review Essay,” Modern Judaism, Vol. 20 (2000), p. 231; Jonathan Garb, “The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time— Innovation versus Conservatism in the Thought of Joseph Ahituv,” in Jewish Culture at the Eye of the Storm—Festschrift in Honor of Joseph Ahituv’s Seventieth Birthday, ed. A. Sagi and N. Ilan (Ein Zurim, 2002), p. 175. Ira Robinson noted this as well in “Kabbalah and Orthodoxy: Some Twentieth-Century Interpretations,” paper presented at the American Academy of Religion, 1987; my thanks go to Prof. Robinson for sending me a copy of his lecture. 6. Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion, pp. 32, 40. 7. Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem, pp. 186, 190–193; Miriam Frenkel, “Historiography of the Jews of Islamic Lands in the Middle Ages: Landmarks and Prospects” (Heb.), Pe’amin, Vol. 92 (2002), pp. 48–50. 8. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1974), p. 34. 9. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 71. See also Arthur Hertzberg, “Gershom Scholem as Zionist and Believer,” in Gershom Scholem, ed. H. Bloom (New York, 1987), p. 198; and see Weiner’s impressions of Scholem’s lecture in Herbert Weiner, 91/2 Mystics (New York, 1971), pp. 84–87. My thanks go to Dr. Yoni Garb, who directed my attention to Weiner’s comments.

kji010.fm Page 152 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

152

Boaz Huss

10. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 26–27. 11. See David Biale, Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, and Counter-History (Cambridge, MA, 1979), pp. 162–163; David Myers, Re-inventing the Jewish Past (New York, 1995), pp. 163–164, 167; Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “The Nationalist Representation of the Diaspora: Zionist Historiography and Medieval Jewry,” Ph.D. dissertation (Tel-Aviv, 1996), p. 132. 12. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 81–82. 13. In his 1937 review of kabbalistic research at the Hebrew University, Scholem reaches the conclusion that research into Kabbalah can be conducted only in Jerusalem, for only there can the scholar meet the still-extant remnants of Kabbalah. But it becomes clear from the ensuing passages that he is speaking of books and manuscripts, not flesh-and-blood kabbalists. See Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah in the University (Jerusalem, 1973), p. 12. 14. Hertzberg, “Gershom Scholem as Zionist and Believer,” p. 199. Ira Robinson (“Kabbalah and Orthodoxy”) uses the same phrase in connection with Scholem’s attitude toward the kabbalistic tradition. 15. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 71. 16. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 79–80. In his article “Reflections on the Religious Significance of Research on Kabbalah” (forthcoming), Yehudah Liebes considered Scholem’s denial of the possibility of new modern Kabbalah on the grounds that a modern person cannot sustain a belief in “Torah from Heaven.” I thank Prof. Liebes for providing me a copy of his article, which has not yet been published. In Garb’s view, Scholem’s position “apparently reflected the Ben-Gurion position that saw religious Judaism as a forgotten resource” (“The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” p. 175). 17. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 82. See also Hertzberg, “Gershom Scholem as Zionist and Believer,” p. 199; Gershom Scholem, The Fullness of Time, Poems, intro. and annotation by Steven M. Wasserstrom (Jerusalem, 2003), pp. 38, 139; Abrams, “Presenting and Representing Gershom Scholem,” p. 230; and Liebes, “Reflections on the Religious Significance of Research on Kabbalah.” See also Scholem’s comments at the end of Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism: “The story [of Jewish mysticism] is not ended, it has not yet become history, and the secret life it holds can break out tomorrow in you or in me” (p. 350). For an examination of these comments, see Garb, “The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” p. 99; and Moshe Idel, “Abraham Abulafia, Gershom Scholem, and R. David ha-Kohen (‘The Nazir’) on Prophecy” (forthcoming). I thank Prof. Idel for providing me a copy of this yet-unpublished article. As I read these remarks, they expresses Scholem’s premise that the revival of Jewish mysticism will take place within his own peer group (“in you or in me”) rather than in traditional kabbalistic circles. 18. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 82. In an interview with Muki Zur, Scholem tells that he “took a beating” for referring to Walt Whitman in this context. See Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 54; Weiner, 91/2 Mystics, p. 87; and Steven M. Wasserstrom, “Introduction,” in Gershom Scholem, The Fullness of Time, Poems (Jerusalem, 2003), pp. 38, 139. 19. Gershom Scholem, Od Davar (Tel Aviv, 1989), p. 37. See also Scholem’s comments in his letter to S. Z. Schocken: “Agitated examination of the question has led me both to an extremely rational skepticism about my areas of inquiry

kji010.fm Page 153 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism

153

and to an intuitive affirmation of mystical theses situated at the delicate boundary between religion and nihilism. The perfect expression of that border, which cannot be improved upon, is a secularized account of a contemporary man’s kabbalistic sense of the world, and it is that which later led me to see in Kafka’s writings an almost canonical splendor” (Od Davar, p. 29). 20. Scholem, Od Davar, p. 304. 21. Biale, Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, and Counter-History, pp. 74, 100–103; Raz-Krakotzkin, “The Nationalist Representation of the Diaspora,” p. 141 n. 37; Idel, “Abraham Abulafia, Gershom Scholem, and R. David ha-Kohen (‘The Nazir’) on Prophecy”; Liebes, “Reflections on the Religious Significance of Research on Kabbalah.” 22. Scholem, Od Davar, pp. 30–31. Even earlier, in 1925, Scholem had concluded his famous letter to Bialik as follows: “At the end of these projects, I hope to do what previously brought me to all these studies and led me, unwillingly, to devote myself to philological studies whose limits I am well aware of; that is, to answer the question, ‘Is there value to Kabbalah or not?’. . . And I acknowledge unashamedly to you that it is this philosophical interest that has supported me even while I was doing linguistic and historical research” (Devarim be-Go, p. 63). 23. Biale, Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, and Counter-History, p. 102. 24. See Gil Anijar, “Jewish Mysticism Alterable and Unalterable: On Orienting Kabbalah Studies and the Zohar of Christian Spain,” Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 3 (1996), pp. 96, 114–118; David Biale, “Shabbetai Zevi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism,” in The Dream and Its Destruction: The Sabbatean Movement and Its Branches—Messianism, Sabbateanism, Frankism, ed. R. Elior (Jerusalem, 2001), pp. 107–110; Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “Orientalism, Jewish Studies, and Israeli Society,” Jema’a, Vol. 3 (1999), pp. 49–52; Amnon RazKrakotzkin, “From Covenant of Peace to Holy Temple,” Theory and Criticism, Vol. 20 (2002), pp. 100–110; and Abraham Elqayam, “The Horizon of Reason: The Divine Madness of Sabbatai Sevi,” Kabbalah, Vol. 9 (2003), pp. 43–48. 25. Biale, “Shabbetai Zevi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism,” p. 88. On Western European Jews confronting their oriental image, see P. Mendes-Flohr, “Orientalism and Mysticism—The Aesthetics of the Turn of the Nineteenth Century and Jewish Identity,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, Vol. 3 (1984), pp. 631–633. 26. Raz-Krakotzkin, “Orientalism, Jewish Studies, and Israeli Society,” p. 44. See also Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “From Covenant of Peace to Holy Temple,” pp. 100, 406–407; and Biale, “Shabbetai Zevi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism,” p. 89. 27. On the orientalist connection of the infatuation with mysticism in the Germany of that time, see Mendes-Flohr, “Orientalism and Mysticism,” pp. 623–629; on the Jew as an Oriental, see Mendes-Flohr, “Orientalism and Mysticism,” pp. 629–641. On the European inclusion of Jewish studies within the rubric of orientalist studies, and on the connection and distinction between “Hebraism” and “Orientalism,” see Raz-Krakotzkin, “Orientalism, Jewish Studies, and Israeli Society,” pp. 37–40. The commingling of the terms mysticism and orientalism in Israeli anthropological research was considered by Andrei Levy in his lecture “Anthropology and the Anthropologization of Eastern Mysticism in Israel” (Heb.), delivered at the Van Leer Institute, June 2000.

kji010.fm Page 154 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

154

Boaz Huss

On orientalist perspectives in the study of Kabbalah, see Anijar, “Jewish Mysticism Alterable and Unalterable,” pp. 113–118 (and see Moshe Idel’s response to Anijar in “Orienting, Orientalizing or Disorienting: An Almost Absolutely Unique Case of Occidentalism,” Kabbalah, Vol. 2 (1997), pp. 13–47). I do not join in Anijar’s belligerent criticism of Idel and Liebes; on the contrary, I believe the recent research suggests new perspectives that make it possible to examine critically the frame of discourse and basic assumptions of research into Kabbalah. See also Raz-Krakotzkin, “Orientalism, Jewish Studies, and Israeli Society,” p. 50 n. 17. 28. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 143. See also Biale, “Shabbetai Zevi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism,” pp. 89, 107–108. 29. Anijar, “Jewish Mysticism Alterable and Unalterable,” pp. 90–91. Scholem writes, “If one turns to the writings of the great Kabbalists, one seldom fails to be torn between alternate admiration and disgust” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 36). It is noteworthy that a similar turn of phrase appears in Buber’s introduction to the legends of R. Nahman of Braslov; Buber writes: “And thus were created texts such as the Book of the Zohar, which arouse both admiration and disgust” (Abraham Huss’s Hebrew translation of Buber in Od Davar, p. 381); and see Martin Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman (Bloomington, IL, 1962), p. 5 (where the wording is softened a bit). Ron Margolin (“The Internalization of Religious Life and Thought in the First Generations of Hasidism—Sources and Epistemological Foundations,” Ph.D. dissertation [ Jerusalem, 1999], p. 5) observed that Buber’s introduction (first printed in German under the title Der Jüdische Mystik) constitutes the schema used by Scholem in writing Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Scholem’s ambivalence toward Kabbalah and mysticism is expressed as well in his assessment of the Zohar’s author’s personality (typical, according to Scholem, to many mystics): “The author’s spiritual life is centered as it were in a more archaic layer of the mind. Again and again one is struck by the simultaneous presence of crudely primitive modes of thought and feeling and of ideas whose profound contemplative mysticism is transparent . . . a very remarkable personality in whom, as in so many mystics, profound and naïve modes of thought existed side by side” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 175). And see Anijar, “Jewish Mysticism Alterable and Unalterable,” pp. 90, 117; and Raz-Krakotzkin, “From Covenant of Peace to Holy Temple,” p. 100. 30. See Andrea Grace Diem and James R. Lewis, “Imagining India: The Influence of Hinduism on the New Age,” in Perspectives on the New Age, ed. J. R. Lewis and S. J. Gordon (Albany, 1992), p. 53; and Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1994), pp. 53, 92–93. See also Steven E. Ascheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923 (Madison, WI, 1982), p. 20; Aziza Kazum, “Western Culture, Ethnic Stigmatization, and Social Barriers—The Background for Ethnic Inequality in Israel,” Israeli Sociology, Vol. 1 (1999), pp. 395–396 (Heb.) (on the conflation in western European Jewish consciousness of the Jews of the Islamic countries with those of eastern Europe, see also p. 399); and Mendes-Flohr, “Orientalism and Mysticism,” pp. 632–633. It is noteworthy that Buber manifested a similar “orientalist” ambivalence toward Hasidism, whose origins he exalted but whose present-day reality he saw as degenerate. See Ascheim, Brothers and Strangers, p. 126; Sander Gilman, “The Rediscovery of the Eastern

kji010.fm Page 155 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism

155

Jews: German Jews in the East, 1890–1918,” in Jews and Germans, 1860–1933, ed. D. Bronsen (Heidelberg, 1979), pp. 345–349; and Mendes-Flohr, “Orientalism and Mysticism,” p. 656 n. 122. Buber (The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, p. 3) also denied the existence of significant contemporary Jewish mysticism, regarding R. Nahman of Braslov as the last Jewish mystic. 31. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 71; Scholem, Od Davar, p. 205. The chapter on Hasidism in Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism is titled “Hasidism, the Latest Phase”; see Margolin, “The Internalization of Religious Life and Thought in the First Generations of Hasidism,” p. 5. 32. Scholem, Od Davar, p. 205. 33. Thus, the North African and Near Eastern Kabbalah of relatively recent times (including that of R. Shalom Shar‘abi and the Bet-El kabbalists), as well as that of the Vilna Ga’on and his disciples, merited very little attention in Scholem’s research. 34. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 75. 35. Translator’s note: In this context, the Hebrew imagery alludes not only to the ethnic divisions within Israeli society but also to the black attire characteristic of the haredim. 36. It is interesting to compare the attitude of the Christian Hebraists toward the Judaism and Jews of their time, as A. Raz-Krakotzkin describes it, to Scholem’s attitude, and that of other investigators of Kabbalah, toward contemporary Kabbalah and kabbalists. Raz-Krakotzkin pointed out that Hebraist discourse “made possible a distinction between various aspects of Jewish literature that were taken to be authentic expressions of ancient truth, and those aspects of the Jewish way of life that were regarded as foreign, or even hostile, to the Christian European culture. The images of the Jews in this context are paralleled by those assigned to ‘the Orient’ in Orientalist discourse” (“Orientalism, Jewish Studies, and Israeli Society,” p. 39). On the similar position assigned in hegemonic Israeli discourse to contemporary Kabbalah and kabbalists, see n. 44 below. 37. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 75–76. Scholem (Devarim be-Go, p. 73) also cites Nathan Birnbaum as an authentic mystic. In From Berlin to Jerusalem (p. 187), he tells of his meetings with Birnbaum, in which he apparently learned of the latter’s mystical experiences. In contrast, Scholem had no particular regard for Rabbi Kook’s disciple, R. David ha-Kohen, “the Nazir”: “All my efforts to penetrate his thought produced only confusion, but what we share is the impression made upon us by the thirteenth-century writings of R. Abraham Abulafia. While we were neighbors, I visited him from time to time . . .but to discuss the methods for studying Kabbalah and understanding it with a ba‘al teshuvah is a hopeless assignment, as I foresaw in my gut” (From Berlin to Jerusalem, p. 204). It is interesting to note that all of these mystics were Ashkenazim. Even when Scholem met with one of the kabbalists of Bet-El, “the center for kabbalists from the Sefardic and arabized tribes (as well as the Yemenites),” the individual he met was an Ashkenazi kabbalist, R. Gershon Vilner! 38. Scholem writes, “Rabbi Kook’s great work . . .is a veritable theologia mystica of Judaism equally distinguished by its originality and the richness of its author’s mind. It is the last example of productive Kabbalistic thought of which I know” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 354 n. 17). But in Reflections, written later, Scholem downplays the importance of the kabbalistic and mystical

kji010.fm Page 156 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

156

Boaz Huss

element in Rabbi Kook as well as in the other mystics he mentioned: “These already are not kabbalists in the manner of the Bet-El kabbalists or their predecessors. One who reads Rabbi Kook’s book Orot ha-Qodesh understands immediately that this is no kabbalist; rather, it is a great man who translated his religious experience, drawn from the legacy of the generations, into human terms. . . . [A]ll three of these phenomena share something strange from the point of view of our question: they reduce to the extent possible the mystical element of their inspiration to the point that it cannot be recognized” (“Thoughts on the Possibility of Contemporary Jewish Mysticism,” pp. 76–77). 39. See Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “The Golem of Scholem,” in Politik und Religion im Judentum, ed. C. Meithing (Tübingen, 1999), pp. 225–227; and Scholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 77–78. 40. Scholem met with members of Oscar Goldberg’s group, whom he labeled “metaphysical magicians” (Walter Benjamin [Tel Aviv, 1987], pp. 98–100 (Heb.); Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem, pp. 174–178). Despite Scholem’s negative attitude toward Goldberg, whom he perceived as “schizoid” and “delusional,” he showed a degree of interest in his circle (From Berlin to Jerusalem, p. 154) and even dedicated an article to him in the Encyclopedia Judaica. Scholem also met with the mystical writer Gustav Meyrink, whom he labeled a “charlatan” and whose books he labeled “pseudo-kabbalah” and “historical castles-in-the-sky” (From Berlin to Jerusalem, pp. 156–158; on Meyrink, see also Mendes-Flohr, “Orientalism and Mysticism,” p. 634). In contrast, Scholem classified Alfred Schmid-Noerr, the ghostwriter who wrote Meyrink’s last book, as an “authentic mystic” (From Berlin to Jerusalem, p. 159). Scholem called the works of occultist Eliphaz Levy (Alphonse Louis Constant) “the products of charlatanism rich in imagination” (From Berlin to Jerusalem, p. 158), and he termed the works of Aleister Crowley “humbug” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 2). My thanks go to Yoni Garb for directing my attention to these matters. Scholem called the theosophical circle of Madame Blavatsky a “pseudoreligion” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 206, 398–399 n. 2). 41. Joseph Dan, “From Belief in the Torah to Belief in the Pious Man” (Heb.), Ma‘ariv, February 12, 1988. See also Garb, “The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” p. 175 n. 9. 42. See Sarit Fuchs: “There is a discernable tendency on the part of academic researchers into Kabbalah to buttress their scientific rigor so as to place a clear divide between themselves and groups of humbugs who, according to Prof. Dan, are sometimes boors and ignoramuses wrapping themselves in a kabbalistic mantle. The populism of Kabbalah—which does not exist among true kabbalists, who tend to keep their studies under wraps—infuriates Prof. Dan. He regards it as a monstrous perversion of Jewish spirituality, dissociated from the 613 commandments and seriously distorting the historical nature of Kabbalah, which was always anchored in a life filled with study of Torah and observance of the commandments. These religious sects, which arrived here from California and speak of ‘pure spiritual life’ or ‘mystical contemplation of reality,’ offer the masses the drug of false bliss” (“Where Are the Roots of the Tree of Souls?” [Heb.], Ma‘ariv, February 14, 1986). M. Halamish, in the preface to his book Introduction to the Kabbalah (Jerusalem, 1991) (Heb.), warns against secondary effects entailing dangers and charlatanism that are to

kji010.fm Page 157 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism

157

be found in “institutes and courses of various sorts that ‘sell’ Kabbalah to all who ask” (p. 7). 43. Rachel Elior writes, “In no event does Kabbalah or magic withstand a test of its objective force, of its capacity to heal, of its connection to the laws of nature, or the discernable fulfillment of its promises. In other words, like art, literature, or religious thought, they are found in the fascinating domain of human creativity and cultural history, but they do not exist in the areas of natural forces or scientific understanding. Every attempt to present practical Kabbalah and magic in scientific terms involving ‘energies and connections’ and removing it from the field of religion, belief, and creativity has a degree of the misguided. . . . [I]t is necessary to distinguish clearly between, on the one hand, folk beliefs, magical and mystical traditions, and customs and religious thought grounded in the past . . . and, on the other, modern life, based on open, free, and critical rational understanding of the present” (review of Yigal Arikha’s Practical Kabbalah [Heb.], Yedi‘ot Aharonot, June 19, 1998). 44. One expression of this attitude—exalting “classical” Kabbalah (and, even more, its academic study) while disdaining and manifesting hostility toward its contemporary manifestations—can be found in the aricle of Sarit Fuchs. Distinguishing between “sects of humbugs . . . who wrap themselves in a kabbalistic mantle” and academic researchers of Kabbalah, Fuchs writes: “But let us leave the delusions alone and consider the newly discovered scholarly truths at the center of the academic conference” (“Where Are the Roots of the Tree of Souls?”). Ya’ir Sheleg, in his article “An Academic Dispute in the Shadow of a Folk Ritual,” likewise distinguishes between “astrology sections . . . new-age shops . . . the copy of the Zohar kept in many homes as a sort of good luck charm against the evil eye . . . or even in roadside restaurants under a picture of Rabbi Kadouri or some other kabbalist . . . an entire industry of institutes and groups for the study of the Zohar” and academic scholars: “A totally different group of students of the Zohar gathered last Friday at the Hebrew University’s Institute for Advanced Studies. About 25 scholars from Israel and the United States, experts in research into Kabbalah” (Ha-Aretz, February 8, 1999). Sheleg writes that those who study the Zohar in such places (roadside restaurants?) see the texts not as symbolic myth but as straightforward accounts of the divine reality. Like Fuchs, who prefers “new academic truths,” Sheleg presents the academic reading, which interprets the texts as “symbolic myth” and rejects its original meaning (“a straightforward account of the divine reality”) as the legitimate, authoritative reading of the Kabbalah. 45. On the challenge by Moshe Idel and Yehudah Liebes to Scholem’s ur-narrative and its context, see Amos Funkenstein, “Annals of Israel among the Thorns,” Zion, Vol. 60 (1995), pp. 335–347 (Heb.), especially pp. 342–344. For an examination of various aspects of this revision, see Raz-Krakotzkin, “The Nationalist Representation of the Diaspora,” pp. 134–139. See also Liebes’s comments in his review of Idel’s book: “It seems that Idel’s world, like those of others today (myself among them) differs somewhat. In a certain sense, we are dealing with post-Zionism. This should not be understood as repudiating the ideas of the Zionist revival. On the contrary: We are in a situation in which Zionism is taken as self-evident, as a fixed and necessary circumstance that makes the next stage possible. . . . What flows from this is an examination of

kji010.fm Page 158 Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:17 PM

158

Boaz Huss

Judaism’s religious and historical circumstances in their entirely, with no particular direction being emphasized for reasons of ideology or apologetics. . . . This approach enabled Idel (and others) to see additional possibilities that could not be seen in Scholem’s time” (“Metaphysics of Interpretation” [Heb.], review of Moshe Idel’s Kabbalah: New Perspectives, Ha-Aretz, October 15, 1993). 46. Some of these studies are summarized in Garb, “The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” p. 181. 47. Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven, 1988), p. 43. 48. Liebes, “Reflections on the Religious Significance of Research on Kabbalah.” In an interview with Ya’ir Sheleg (Kol ha-Ir, May 19, 1995), Liebes told of contacts he had had with kabbalists that did not turn out well. Liebes blamed the failure on his own deficiency: “When I began to study Kabbalah, I made several attempts to approach those referred to as kabbalists. It did not turn out well. I do not make an ideology of that. It was an aspect of it that I found less engaging, and I see that as a flaw. But I deal with written sources” (“Reflections on the Religious Significance of Research on Kabbalah”). 49. Mopsik, Cabale et Cabalistes, pp. 239–270. Mopsik also published an article dealing with Kabbalah in twentieth-century France; see Charles Mopsik, “La Cabale dans le pense francaise; available online at http://www.jec.cm.free.fr/ artmop.htm. 50. For example, lectures on contemporary Israeli mysticism were delivered at the Van Leer Institute’s June 2000 conference “Kabbalah and Israeli-ness.” At the Association for Jewish Studies conference in Los Angeles in December 2002, Jody Myers presented her study of the Institute for Research in Kabbalah led by Rabbi Berg, and I recently examined the activities of the Center for the Study of Kabbalah and of “Benei Barukh” in a lecture delivered at Ben-Gurion University in May 2003. In a lecture that same month at Hebrew University, Moshe Idel considered the contemporary revival of R. Abraham Abulafia’s prophetic Kabbalah. 51. Garb (“The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” pp. 182–183) notes that developments in the academic study of Kabbalah can not be severed from the position of Kabbalah within the broader community. 52. In addition to these factors, Garb (“The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” pp. 194–196, 199) cites the inherent power of the mystical ideas, as well as other factors.