Time, Eternity and Mystical Experience in Kabbalah

CHAPTER 11 Time, Eternity and Mystical Experience in Kabbalah

Adam Afterman

Abstract

In this article, I focus on the nexus between mystical cleaving, unio mystica, and the experience of time in several Kabbalistic sources. First, I examine the philosophical mysticism of the thirteenth-century Jewish mystic Abraham Abulafia, in which union with God happens above and beyond time. The second mystical system I will turn to is that of classic theosophical kabbalah as represented in the Zohar, in which sacred time is the focus of mystical cleaving and union with the divine. In my view, this distinction marks a substantial difference in the religious experience that each mystical path has to offer.

Time is a key component of human experience, including of the religious type. When analyzing religious, and in particular religious-mystical experiences, the modalities of the perception of time become even more important; often they are central to the religious experience itself. For some of the Jewish mystics to be discussed below, the mystical dynamic is that of a movement of escape from the burden of the perception of time towards eternity; yet, for others, time, and specifically “sacred time,” lies at the focal point of the mystical encounter with the divine. The experience of time in Jewish mysticism, and in particular, the experience of “sacred” time and eternity in Jewish mystical sources has been the subject of several important discussions.1 I wish to focus here on the

1 See: Elliot Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death, University of California Press, Berkeley 2006; Elliot Wolfson, “From Sealed Book to Open Text: Time, Memory, and Narrativity in Kabbalistic Hermeneutics,” in Interpreting Judaism in a Postmodern Age, ed. by Steven Kepnes (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 145–178; Elliot Wolfson, “The Cut That Binds: Time, Memory, and the Ascetic Impulse,” in God’s Voice from the Void; Old and New Studies in Bratslav Hasidism, ed. by Shaul Magid, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 103–154; Elliot Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow and Temporal Transcendence: Angelic Embodiment and the Alterity of Time in Abraham

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi ��.��63/9789004290310_012 Time, Eternity and Mystical Experience in Kabbalah 163 nexus between mystical cleaving, unio mystica, and the experience of time in several kabbalistic sources. To this end, I will compare two different Jewish mystical systems and I will examine the place given to time—in particular sacred time—in each system. Finally, I will examine the way in which time is associated with mystical cleaving and unio mystica in each of those systems. First, I wish to examine the philosophical mysticism of the thirteenth- century Jewish mystic Abraham Abulafia, in which union with God ensues above and beyond time.2 The second mystical system that I will turn to is that of classic theosophical kabbalah, particularly the Zohar, in which sacred time is the focus of mystical cleaving to and union with the divine. While both mystical systems promote mystical experience and spiritual empowerment, including the much desired cleaving to and mystical union with the divine,3 there is a fundamental difference in their respective approaches to the perception and experience of time. The first type of mystical union, the “philosophical union” of Abulafia, includes a static union in the midst of Eternity, while the “theosophical union” is a much more dynamic type of mystical cleaving to hypostatical or theosophical time. In my view, this distinction marks a substantial difference in the religious experience that each mystical path has to offer. In the following, I wish to examine how these different approaches to time impact the ways in which each mystical path articulates its respective understanding of mystical experience and the ideal mystical state. Since Philo introduced the religious ideal of unio mystica for the first time,4 Jewish mystics have articulated different ideals of mystical union, drawing on

Abulafia,” Kabbalah, 18 (2008): 133–190; Elliot Wolfson, “Undoing Time and Syntax of the Dream Interlude: a Phenomenological Reading of ‘Zohar’ 1:199a–200a,” Kabbalah, 22 (2010): 33–57; Moshe Idel, “Some Concepts of Time and History in Kabbalah,” in Jewish History and Jewish Memory; Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, ed. by Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron, David N. Myers (Hanover, nh: University Press of New England; Brandeis University Press, 1998), 153–188; Moshe Idel, “Sabbath: On Concepts of Time in Jewish Mysticism,” in Sabbath—Idea, History, Reality, ed. by Gerald J. Blidstein (Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2004), 57–93. 2 For an alternative reading of the mystical experience of time in Abulafia’s ecstatic Kabbalah, see the important article by Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow,” 177–190. 3 See: Adam Afterman, Devequt: Mystical Intimacy in Medieval Jewish Thought (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2011) (Hebrew); Wolfson, ‘Kenotic Overflow’, 175–176; Elliot Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia-Kabbalist and Prophet: Hermeneutics, Theosophy and Theurgy (Los Angeles, Cherub Press,2000), 55–57. 4 See: Adam, Afterman, “From Philo to Plotinus: The Emergence of Mystical Union,” The Journal of Religion 93.2 (2013): 177–196.