Moshe Idel Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers

Editor-in-Chief Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Arizona State University

Editor Aaron W. Hughes, University of Rochester

Volume 8

Leiden • boston The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/lcjp 2014 Moshe Idel

Representing God

Edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes

Leiden • boston 2014 Cover illustration: Provided by Moshe Idel.

The series Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers was generously supported by the Baron Foundation.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Moshe Idel : representing God / edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes. pages cm. — (Library of contemporary Jewish philosophers, ISSN 2213-6010 ; volume 8) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-90-04-28077-9 (hardback: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-28079-3 (pbk: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-28078-6 (e-book) 1. God (Judaism) 2. Idel, Moshe, 1947—Philosophy. I. Tirosh- Samuelson, Hava, 1950– editor. II. Hughes, Aaron W., 1968– editor.

BM610.M675 2014 296.3’11—dc23 2014033841

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface.

ISSN 2213-6010 ISBN 978-90-04-28077-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-28078-6 (e-book)

This hardback is also published in paperback under ISBN 978-90-04-28079-3.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents

The Contributors ...... vii

Editors’ Introduction to Series ...... ix

Moshe Idel: An Intellectual Portrait ...... 1 Jonathan Garb

Torah: Between Presence and Representation of the Divine in Jewish Mysticism ...... 31 Moshe Idel

Panim: Faces and Re-Presentations in Jewish Thought ...... 71 Moshe Idel

The Changing Faces of God and Human Dignity in Judaism ...... 103 Moshe Idel

Johannes Reuchlin: Kabbalah, Pythagorean Philosophy and Modern Scholarship ...... 123 Moshe Idel

Interview with Moshe Idel ...... 149 Hava Tirosh-Samuelson

Select Bibliography ...... 197

The Contributors

Jonathan Garb (Ph.D., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000) is Gershom Scholem Professor of Kabbalah in the department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2014, he will be awarded the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities’ Gershom Scholem Prize for Kab- balah Research. His latest books are: “The Chosen Will Become Herds”: Studies in Twentieth Century Kabbalah (Yale University Press, 2009); Sha- manic Trance in Modern Kabbalah (The University of Chicago Press, 2011); and Kabbalist in the Heart of the Storm: Rabbi Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto (Tel Aviv University Press, 2014).

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (Ph.D., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1978) is Irving and Miriam Lowe Professor of Modern Judaism, the Director of Jewish Studies, and Professor of History at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. Her research focuses on Jewish intellectual history, Judaism and ecology, science and religion, and feminist theory. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters in academic journals and edited volumes, she is the author of the award-winning Between Worlds: The Life and Work of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon (1991) and the author of Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-Being in Premodern Judaism (2003). She is also the editor of Judaism and Ecology: Created World and Revealed World (2002); Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy (2004); Judaism and the Phenomenon of Life: The Legacy of Hans Jonas (2008); Building Better Humans? Refocusing the Debate on Transhumanism (2011); Hollywood’s Chosen People: The Jewish Experience in American Cinema (2012); and Jewish Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century (2014). Professor Tirosh-Samuelson is the recipient of several large grants that have funded interdisciplinary research on religion, science, and technology.

Aaron W. Hughes (Ph.D., Indiana University Bloomington, 2000) holds the Philip S. Bernstein Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of Roch- ester. Hughes was educated at the University of Alberta, The Hebrew viii the contributors

University of Jerusalem, and Oxford University. He has taught at Miami University of Ohio, McMaster University, the Hebrew University of Jeru- salem, the University of Calgary, and the University at Buffalo. He is the author of over fifty articles and ten books, and the editor of seven books. His book titles include Abrahamic Religions: On the Uses and Abuses of History (Oxford, 2012); Muslim Identities (Columbia, 2013); The Study of Judaism: Identity, Authenticity, Scholarship (SUNY, 2013); and Rethinking Jewish Philosophy: Beyond Particularism and Universalism (Oxford, 2014). He is also the Editor-in-Chief of Method & Theory in the Study of Religion. Editors’ Introduction to Series

It is customary to begin studies devoted to the topic of Jewish philosophy defining what exactly this term, concept, or even discipline is. We tend not to speak of Jewish mathematics, Jewish physics, or Jewish sociology, so why refer to something as “Jewish philosophy”? Indeed, this is the great paradox of Jewish philosophy. On the one hand it presumably names something that has to do with thinking, on the other it implies some sort of national, ethnic, or religious identity of those who engage in such activity. Is not philosophy just philosophy, regardless of who phi- losophizes? Why the need to append various racial, national, or religious adjectives to it?1 Jewish philosophy is indeed rooted in a paradox since it refers to philosophical activity carried out by those who call themselves Jews. As philosophy, this activity makes claims of universal validity, but as an activity by a well-defined group of people it is inherently particularistic. The question “What is Jewish philosophy?” therefore is inescapable, although over the centuries Jewish philosophers have given very different answers to it. For some, Jewish philosophy represents the relentless quest for truth. Although this truth itself may not be particularized, for such individuals, the use of the adjective “Jewish”—as a way to get at this truth—most decidedly is.2 The Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud, and related Jewish texts and genres are seen to provide particular insights into the more universal claims provided by the universal and totalizing gaze of philosophy. The problem is that these texts are not philosophical on the surface; they must, on the contrary, be interpreted to bring their philosophical insights to light. Within this context exegesis risks becoming eisegesis. Yet others eschew the term

1 Alexander Altmann once remarked: It would be futile to attempt a presentation of Judaism as a philosophical system, or to speak of Jewish philosophy in the same sense as one speaks of American, English, French, or German philosophy. Judaism is a religion, and the truths it teaches are religious truths. They spring from the source of religious experience, not from pure reason. See Alexander Altmann, “Judaism and World Philosophy,” in The Jews: Their History, Cul- ture, and Religion, ed. Louis Finkelstein (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of Amer- ica, 1949), vol. 2, 954. 2 In this regard, see Norbert M. Samuelson, Jewish Faith and Modern Science: On the Death and Rebirth of Jewish Philosophy (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), e.g., 10–12. x editors’ introduction to series

“philosophy” and instead envisage themselves as working in a decidedly Jewish key in order to articulate or clarify particular issues that have direct bearing on Jewish life and existence.3 Between these two perspectives or orientations, there exist several other related approaches to the topic of Jewish philosophy, which can and have included ethics,4 gender studies,5 multiculturalism,6 and postmodernism.7 Despite their differences in theory and method, what these approaches have in common is that they all represent the complex intersection of Judaism, variously defined, and a set of non-Jewish grids or lenses used to interpret this rich tradition. Framed somewhat differently, Jewish philosophy—whatever it is, however it is defined, or whether it is even possible—represents the collision of particularistic demands and universal concerns. The universal or that which is, in theory, open and accessible to all regardless of race, color, creed, or gender confronts the particular or that which represents the sole concern of a specific group that, by nature or definition, is insular and specific-minded. Because it is concerned with a particular people, the Jews, and how to frame their traditions in a universal and universalizing light that is believed to conform to the dictates of reason, Jewish philosophy can never be about pure thinking, if indeed there ever can be such a phenomenon. Rather Jewish philosophy—from antiquity to the present—always seems to have

3 See, e.g., Strauss’s claim about Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, perhaps one of the most important and successful works of something called Jewish philosophy ever written. He claims that one “begins to understand the Guide once one sees that it is not a philosophic book—a book written by a philosopher for philosophers—but a Jewish book: a book written by a Jew for Jews.” See Leo Strauss, “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” in The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), vol. 1, xiv. Modern iterations of this may be found, for example, in J. David Bleich, Bioethical Dilem- mas: A Jewish Perspective, 2 vols. (vol. 1, New York: Ktav, 1998; vol. 2, New York: Targum Press, 2006). 4 See, e.g., David Novak, Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Elliot Dorff, Love Your Neighbor and Yourself: A Jewish Approach to Modern Personal Ethics (New York: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2006). 5 E.g., the collection of essays in Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy, ed. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004). 6 E.g., Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid a Clash of Civilizations (London: Continuum, 2003); Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility (New York: Schocken, 2007). 7 E.g., Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004); Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Elliot R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (New York: Zone Books, 2011). editors’ introduction to series xi had and, for the most part continues to have, rather specific and perhaps even practical concerns in mind. This usually translates into the notion that Judaism—at least the Judaism that Jewish philosophy seeks to articulate— is comprehensible to non-Jews and, framed in our contemporary context, that Judaism has a seat at the table, as it were, when it comes to pressing concerns in the realms of ethics and bioethics. Jewish philosophy, as should already be apparent, is not a disinterested subject matter. It is, on the contrary, heavily invested in matters of Jewish peoplehood and in articulating its aims and objectives. Because of this interest in concrete issues (e.g., ethics, bioethics, medical ethics, feminism) Jewish philosophy—especially contemporary Jewish philosophy—is often constructive as opposed to being simply reflective. Because of this, it would seem to resemble what is customarily called “theology” more than it does philosophy. If philosophy represents the critical and systematic approach to ascertain the truth of a proposition based on rational argumentation, theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and the articulation of the nature of religious truths. The difference between theology and philosophy resides in their object of study. If the latter has “truth,” however we may define this term, as its primary object of focus, the former is concerned with ascertaining religious dogma and belief. They would seem to be, in other words, mutually exclusive endeavors. What we are accustomed to call “Jewish philosophy,” then, is a paradox since it does not—indeed, cannot—engage in truth independent of religious claims. As such, it is unwilling to undo the major claims of Judaism (e.g., covenant, chosenness, revelation), even if it may occasionally redefine such claims.8 So although medieval Jewish thinkers may well gravitate toward the systematic thought of Aristotle and his Arab interpreters and although modern Jewish thinkers may be attracted to the thought of Kant and Heidegger, the ideas of such non-Jewish thinkers are always applied to Jewish ideas and values. Indeed, if they were not, those who engaged in such activities would largely cease to be Jewish philosophers and would instead become just philosophers who just happened to be Jewish (e.g., Henry Bergson, Edmund Husserl, and Carl Popper). Whether in its medieval or modern guise, Jewish philosophy has a tendency to be less philosophical simply for the sake of rational analysis and

8 A good example of what we have in mind here is the thought of Maimonides. Although he might well redefine the notion of prophecy, he never abnegates the concept. On Maimonides on prophecy, see Howard Kreisel, Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medi- eval Jewish Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 148–56. xii editors’ introduction to series more constructive. Many of the volumes that appear in the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers will bear this out. The truths of Judaism are upheld, albeit in often new and original ways. Although Jewish philosophy may well use non-Jewish ideas to articulate its claims, it never produces a vision that ends in the wholesale abandonment of Judaism.9 Even though critics of Jewish philosophy may well argue that philosophy introduces “foreign” wisdom into the heart of Judaism, those we call Jewish philosophers do not perceive themselves to be tainting Judaism, but perfecting it or teasing out its originary meaning.10 The result is that Jewish philosophy is an attempt to produce a particular type of Judaism—one that is in tune with certain principles of rationalism. This rationalism, from the vantage point of the nineteenth century and up to the present, is believed to show Judaism in its best light, as the synthesis or nexus between a Greek-inflected universalism and the particularism of the Jewish tradition. What is the status of philosophy among Jews in the modern period? Since their emancipation in the nineteenth century, Jews have gradually integrated into Western society and culture, including the academy. Ever since the academic study of Judaism began in the 1820s in Germany, Jewish philosophy has grown to become a distinctive academic discourse practiced by philosophers who now often hold positions in non-Jewish institutions of higher learning. The professionalization of Jewish philosophy has not been unproblematic, and Jewish philosophy has had to (and still has to) justify its legitimacy and validity. And even when Jewish philosophy is taught in Jewish institutions (for example, rabbinic seminaries or universities in Israel), it has to defend itself against those Jews who regard philosophy as alien to Judaism, or minimally, as secondary in importance to the inherently Jewish disciplines such as jurisprudence or exegesis. Jewish philosophy, in other words, must still confront the charge that it is not authentically Jewish. The institutional setting for the practice of Jewish philosophy has shaped Jewish philosophy as an academic discourse. But regardless of the setting,

9 This despite the claims of Yitzhak Baer who believed that philosophy had a negative influence on medieval Spanish Jews that made them more likely to convert to Christianity. See Israel Jacob Yuval, “Yitzhak Baer and the Search for Authentic Judaism,” in The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians, ed. David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 77–87. 10 Indeed, Jewish philosophers in the medieval period did not even see themselves as introducing foreign ideas into Judaism. Instead they saw philosophical activity as a recla- mation of their birthright since the Jews originally developed philosophy before the Greeks and others stole it from them. editors’ introduction to series xiii

Jewish philosophy as an academic discourse is quite distinct from Jewish philosophy as constructive theology, even though the two may often by produced by the same person. Despite the lack of unanimity about the scope and methodology of Jewish philosophy, the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers insists that Jewish philosophy has thrived in the past half century in ways that will probably seem surprising to most readers. When asked who are the Jewish philosophers of the twentieth century, most would certainly mention the obvious: Franz Rosenzweig (d. 1929), Martin Buber (d. 1965), and Emmanuel Levinas (d. 1995). Some would also be able to name Abraham Joshua Heschel (d. 1972), Mordecai Kaplan (d. 1983), Joseph Soloveitchik (d. 1993), and Hans Jonas (d. 1993). There is no doubt that these thinkers have either reshaped the discourse of Western thought for Jews and non- Jews or have inspired profound rethinking of modern Judaism. However, it is misleading to identify contemporary Jewish philosophy solely with these names, all of whom are now deceased. In recent years it has been customary for Jews to think that Jewish philosophy has lost its creative edge or that Jewish philosophy is somehow profoundly irrelevant to Jewish life. Several reasons have given rise to this perception, not the least of which is, ironically enough, the very success of Jewish Studies as an academic discipline. Especially after 1967, Jewish Studies has blossomed in secular universities especially in the North American Diaspora, and Jewish philosophers have expressed their ideas in academic venues that have remained largely inaccessible to the public at large. Moreover, the fact that Jewish philosophers have used technical language and a certain way of argumentation has made their thought increasingly incomprehensible and therefore irrelevant to the public at large. At the same time that the Jewish public has had little interest in professional philosophy, the practitioners of philosophy (especially in the Anglo American departments of philosophy) have denied the philosophical merits of Jewish philosophy as too religious or too particularistic and excluded it entirely. The result is that Jewish philosophy is now largely generated by scholars who teach in departments/programs of Jewish Studies, in departments of Religious Studies, or in Jewish denominational seminaries.11

11 See the comments in Aaron W. Hughes and Elliot R. Wolfson, “Introduction: Charting an Alternative Course for the Study of Jewish Philosophy,” in New Directions in Jewish Phi- losophy, ed. Aaron W. Hughes and Elliot R. Wolfson (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), 1–16. xiv editors’ introduction to series

The purpose of the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers is not only to dispel misperceptions about Jewish philosophy but also to help nudge the practice of Jewish philosophy out of the ethereal heights of academe to the more practical concerns of living Jewish communities. To the public at large this project documents the diversity, creativity, and richness of Jewish philosophical and intellectual activity during the second half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century, showing how Jewish thinkers have engaged new topics, themes, and methodologies and raised new philosophical questions. Indeed, Jewish philosophers have been intimately engaged in trying to understand and interpret the momentous changes of the twentieth century for Jews. These have included the Holocaust, the renewal of Jewish political sovereignty, secularism, postmodernism, feminism, and environmentalism. As a result, the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophy intentionally defines the scope of Jewish philosophy very broadly so as to engage and include theology, political theory, literary theory, intellectual history, ethics, and feminist theory, among other discourses. We believe that the overly stringent definition of “philosophy” has impoverished the practice of Jewish philosophy, obscuring the creativity and breadth of contemporary Jewish reflections. An accurate and forward looking view of Jewish philosophy must be inclusive. To practitioners of Jewish philosophy this project claims that Jewish philosophical activity cannot and should not remain limited to professional academic pursuits. Rather, Jewish philosophy must be engaged in life as lived in the present by both Jews and non-Jews. Jews are no longer a people apart, instead they are part of the world and they live in this world through conversation with other civilizations and cultures. Jewish philosophy speaks to Jews and to non-Jews, encouraging them to reflect on problems and take a stand on a myriad of issues of grave importance. Jewish philosophy, in other words, is not only alive and well today, it is also of the utmost relevance to Jews and non-Jews. The Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers is simultaneously a documentary and an educational project. As a documentary project, it intends to shape the legacy of outstanding thinkers for posterity, identifying their major philosophical ideas and making available their seminal essays, many of which are not easily accessible. A crucial aspect of this is the interview with the philosophers that functions, in many ways, as an oral history. The interview provides very personal comments by each philosopher as he or she reflects about a range of issues that have engaged them over the years. In this regard the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers editors’ introduction to series xv simultaneously records Jewish philosophical activity and demonstrates its creativity both as a constructive discourse as well as an academic field. As an educational project, the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers is intended to stimulate discussion, reflection, and debate about the meaning of Jewish existence at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The individual volumes and the entire set are intended to be used in a variety of educational settings: college-level courses, programs for adult Jewish learning, rabbinic training, and interreligious dialogues. By engag- ing or confronting the ideas of these philosophers, we hope that Jews and non-Jews alike will be encouraged to ponder the past, present, and future of Jewish philosophy, reflect on the challenges to and complexities of Jewish existence, and articulate Jewish philosophical responses to these challenges. We hope that, taken as individual volumes and as a collection, the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers will inspire readers to ask philosophical, theological, ethical, and scientific questions that will enrich Jewish intellectual life for the remainder of the twenty-first century. All of the volumes in the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers have the same structure: an intellectual profile of the thinker, several seminal essays by the featured philosopher, an interview with him or her, and a select bibliography of 120 items, listing books, articles, book chapters, book reviews, and public addresses. As editors of the series we hope that the structure will encourage the reader to engage the volume through reflection, discussion, debate, and dialogue. As the love of wisdom, philosophy is inherently Jewish. Philosophy invites questions, cherishes debate and controversy, and ponders the meaning of life, especially Jewish life. We hope that the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers will stimulate thinking and debate because it is our hope that the more Jews philosophize, the more they will make Judaism deeper, durable, and long-lasting. Finally, we invite readers to engage the thinkers featured in these volumes, to challenge and dispute them, so that Judaism will become ever stronger for future generations.

Moshe Idel: An Intellectual Portrait

Jonathan Garb

Moshe Idel, the Max Cooper Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is one of the most acclaimed figures in the short yet rich history of Israeli academia, in addition to enjoying wide recognition in Europe and North America. Over the last four decades, Idel has had a dramatic impact on the place of Kabbalah research in the contemporary intellectual landscape. Whereas previously the reception of Kabbalah in both Jewish Studies and the wider intellectual world had been dominated by the towering figure of Gershom Scholem (d. 1982), Idel has played an important role, together with other major Kabbalah scholars, in a far more diverse, complex, and yet widespread appreciation of this difficult and fascinating corpus. Idel’s strong identification with the academic study of Kabbalah renders him, at first glance, a surprising candidate for inclusion in the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers. However, this introduction will show that Idel has made a conscious and consistent contribution to the academic discipline of Religious Studies and to the history of ideas in general. His innovative re-reading of kabbalistic texts has markedly transformed our understanding of the place of Kabbalah in Jewish religiosity. In so doing, Idel has led us to reconsider accepted notions about the contours of the Jewish tradition and the relationship between its many facets, yielding a richer and more complex picture. In particular, Idel has brought academic writing on Judaism into closer dialogue with more traditional understandings of religion, especially regarding the construction of collective identity through ritual practice. Idel’s extensive teaching experience in three Israeli universities, his wide-ranging international activity, and his advising of numerous graduate students have positioned him centrally within a broad network of scholars and thinkers worldwide. However, since Idel’s corpus is rather vast and intellectually challenging—the bibliography of 1997 lists three hundred items and the online bibliography of 2007 lists fifty-four books and translations into several European languages1—this essay makes no attempt to

1 Daniel Abrams, Bibliography of the Writings of Professor Moshe Idel: A Special Volume Issued on the Occasion of His Fiftieth Birthday (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 1997) [Hebrew]; http://jsri.ro/ojs/index.php/jsri/article/view/450. 2 moshe idel: an intellectual portrait provide a detailed analysis of his oeuvre or discuss its scholarly impact. Instead, Idel’s writing will be examined in terms of their thematic coher- ence and ideational consistency. Idel’s work exhibits a rare combination of meticulous philological- historical investigation—identifying, translating, and analyzing thousands of unknown texts extant in manuscripts—with broader theoretical, methodological, and hermeneutical moves. This introduction, like the chapters that follow, focuses on the second aspect of his work because it is more relevant for his contribution to thought and philosophy more generally. Furthermore, one of the trademarks of Idel’s innovation within Kabbalah research is a shift in emphasis from the erstwhile focus on history and phi- lology to the phenomenological approach that he describes in Kabbalah: New Perspectives (1988), his first English book. The exact meaning of the term for Idel (and its relationship to the twentieth-century strand of philosophy known by that name) has already been much debated.2 Here, the phenomenological approach will be treated as a reading of kabbalistic texts with an eye to discerning patterns of meaning and experience, rather than locations within a historical narrative, or variants on a textual record. While Idel is best known as a scholar of Jewish mysticism, especially medieval Kabbalah, he has written, advised, and taught on many other aspects of Jewish thought, starting with the Bible and moving through various corpora of late-antique Judaism through medieval Jewish philosophy, Hasidism in the early modern period, all the way to twentieth-century Jewish philosophy. Such a broad scope manifests Idel’s expressed pluralistic understanding of Judaism, which seeks to uncover broad “panoramas” and locate “inter-corporal” connections. This innovative, wide, and complex method led Idel to use such terms, together with others that readers will encounter below, as part of an idiosyncratic scholarly terminology, char- acterizing his writing and rendering it somewhat challenging for neophyte readers. Idel’s inclusive view of Judaism has changed our understanding not only of the place of Kabbalah within Jewish culture, but also of central themes in Jewish theology and philosophy. I wish to stress that his global view of Judaism, which encompasses many periods, geographical centers, and ideational streams of Judaism, is rooted in the in-depth investigation of many texts in their original languages. This blend of close philological analysis and thematic generalizations enables Idel’s readers to appreciate the sheer

2 See, e.g., Daniel Abrams, “Phenomenology of Jewish Mysticism: Moshe Idel’s Method- ology in Perspective,” Kabbalah 20 (2009): 7–146. moshe idel: an intellectual portrait 3 scope and depth of the Jewish world, spanning millennia and continents, without losing sense of the richness and complexity of its texts and ideas. In formulating and expressing this view, Idel takes great care to avoid reducing the staggering diversity of Judaism to any single essence, linear narrative, or ideological lens. Idel reflects the richness of Judaism by employing unique terminology such as “polychromatic,” “eclectic methodology,” and “stream of traditions.” At the same time, he also identifies discrete “models” and follows their complex combinations and re- combinations. In so doing, Idel attempts to capture diversity and change over time as well as constancy and continuity, while being keenly aware that his own situatedness shapes his analysis of Judaism. Idel is a postmodern intellectual, traditional yet not Orthodox, globally mobile yet living in Jerusalem as a conscious Zionist choice and actively involved in Israel’s cultural life. Though this self-awareness is often implicit rather than explicit, Idel is highly conscious of the evolution of his own thinking over the decades, also reflecting broader cultural shifts, such as the advent of “postmodernism” and critical theory. The discussion below follows the trajectory of Idel’s life of the mind by explaining how major themes of his thought are expressed in each of his major books. This will enable the reader to grasp Idel’s formidable tomes. Idel has clear views and well-argued positions, but his distaste for ideology and his insistence on the primacy of textual analysis has made it difficult for him to assume the role of a public intellectual, a theologian, or a spiritual authority. He has no aspiration to create new forms of Jewish religiosity, but rather to expose the wealth and depth of existing modes of thought. Indeed, Idel is reluctant to offer any overreaching Jewish “worldview” or “core beliefs,” because he holds that the complexity of such a widespread and venerable tradition is so great that “Judaism” as a general term is not viable. Instead, he constantly stresses that he is articulating the full complexity and sophistication of the ideas found in texts, rather than prop- agating his own notions about the sources at his disposal. Therefore, Idel’s views on philosophy, theology, spirituality, and other domains of cultural and intellectual life, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are embedded in a host of detailed studies rather than in generalized pronouncements.

Biography and Career

Moshe Idel was born on January 19, 1947, in Tirgu Neamtz (Neamț County), Romania, and immigrated to Kiryat Ata in northern Israel in 1963. The culture and history, both Jewish and general, of Romania has continued 4 moshe idel: an intellectual portrait to hold a significant place in his thought. This is all the more true for the complex position of the State of Israel, made vivid for him through his service in the Israel Defense Forces (regular and reserve forces) in which he took part in three major military campaigns (the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1968–1970 “War of Attrition,” and the 1973 Yom Kippur War). In his earliest years, the situation in Romania still enabled Idel to receive traditional Jewish education (heder), this possibly affecting the high importance he ascribes to traditional approaches to Judaism. Being deeply rooted in Jew- ish traditional life explains the complex balance between the local and the global in his intellectual character. After migrating to Israel as a teenager, Idel studied at Haifa University (1967–1969) and graduated with a B.A. degree in Hebrew Literature and in English Literature. His undergraduate training shaped his sensitivity to literary issues, which has informed his theoretical approach to the history of ideas. In 1971 Idel enrolled at the Hebrew University to pursue graduate training in the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah (which was renamed the Department of Jewish Thought in 1979). During these years, Idel’s advisor/mentor was Professor Shlomo Pines (d. 1990), primarily an expert in Jewish and Islamic philosophy, yet one who included Kabbalah in his wide-ranging interests. Idel developed his expertise in Jewish mysticism by studying the manuscripts of the medieval kabbalist Abraham Abulafia, an idiosyncratic thinker whose mystical system was developed through commentaries on Maimonides. Throughout his graduate training, Idel worked closely with Professor Gershom Scholem, the founder of Kabbalah Studies, as well as with Scholem’s student Professor Yehuda Liebes (who joined the teaching staff of the department together with Idel). From the very start of his academic career, Idel pursued the interplay between Kabbalah and philosophy, a theme that has persisted throughout his career. Idel’s academic career was rather meteoric, especially in Israeli academe. After receiving his Ph.D. degree (summa cum laude) in 1976, Idel was appointed Assistant Fellow Lecturer and shortly afterwards was appointed Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor in the United States) at the Hebrew University as well as at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheba. In 1979 he received a dual appointment at the Hebrew University and Haifa University, giving up his position in Ben Gurion University. Upon becoming Associate Professor at the Hebrew University in 1984, he relin- quished his other appointments, and became Full Professor in 1987 and holder of the Max Cooper chair since 1991. Though Idel was trained in Israel, his academic horizons were not limited to Israel. In 1981 he spent his first sabbatical at Harvard University, moshe idel: an intellectual portrait 5 where he began to develop a close relationship with the North American academe. Subsequently he has held numerous appointments as Visiting Professor and Research Fellow in universities throughout the United States. At the same time, his European upbringing and the European background of Professor Pines, his advisor, led to close ties with the academic world in France. For example, in 1984 he worked at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and developed close personal relationships with leading French intellectuals such as Jacques Derrida and Emanuel Levinas. Another venue that enabled Idel to forge international contacts was the Institute of Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, where he held four fellowships (starting with 1990 and 1992). In all of these settings, Idel’s close scholarly associations extended beyond Jewish Studies, and even beyond the humanities, making him a versatile intellectual. A major landmark in Idel’s international career was the series of lectures at the centennial events at the Jewish Theological Seminary, published as Kabbalah: New Perspectives in 1988.3 This book, which received the Present Tense/Joel H. Cavior 1988 Literary Award for Religious Thought and a National Jewish Book Award, aroused both acclaim and controversy, being reviewed by several major American scholars (see below). Although the Hebrew University remained Idel’s academic home, he also worked outside that institution. In 1990, Idel began his long-term association with the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, where he developed close ties with the philosophers and theologians who attended the Institute’s annual international conferences. An avowed and even patriotic Israeli, Idel has a deep knowledge of Jewish culture in the Diaspora as well as a network of personal relations with intellectuals all over the world. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the opening of the ex-Soviet bloc, specifically Romania, to foreigners, Idel developed close ties with the academic communities in these countries. Idel has returned often to his country of birth and also delivered the Ioan P. Culianu Lectures at the Central European University in Budapest in September 2003. These lectures were published under the title Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders (2005).4 The personal relationship between Idel and the ex- Romanian scholar Professor Ioan Culianu (d. 1991) is a case in point. Culianu was a student of the Romanian scholar of world religions, Mircea Eliade (d. 1984), who shaped the field of Religious Studies in America. Both Eliade

3 Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). 4 Moshe Idel, Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2005). 6 moshe idel: an intellectual portrait and Culianu taught at the University of Chicago, where Idel met Culianu in 1988. Idel was deeply critical of Eliade’s interpretation of religion as well as his place in Romanian cultural history. Most recently Idel published an intellectual biography of Eliade entitled Mircea Eliade: From Magic to Myth, where he contrasts the latter’s sweeping view of entire religions (such as Judaism) in homogenous terms with his own attempt to expose the multiplicity of strands in each tradition.5 Since the 1990s Idel’s intellectual contribution to the study of Jewish thought and his international fame has been formally recognized with several prestigious awards in Israel: the Haim Nahman Bialik Prize in Jewish Studies (1993), the Israeli Academy for Sciences and Humanities’ Gershom Scholem Prize for Research in Kabbalah (1995), membership to this same academy (2006), the Israel Prize for Jewish Thought (1999), the Emmet Prize for Jewish Thought (under the auspices of the Prime Minister of Israel, 2002), and more recently the Rothschild Prize (2012). These were accompanied by various forms of recognition abroad, including the degree Doctor Honoris Causa in universities in the United States and Eastern Europe. During this period, a rarely large number of his many graduate advisees obtained senior positions in academic institutions in Israel and also abroad. Idel retired from the Hebrew University in 2007 but he continues to advise doctoral students, as well as to develop new directions of research. His passion for manuscripts has not waned and he continues to uncover texts which have been previously either unknown or understudied. Most recently, for example, he discovered an entire corpus of texts by the medieval Ashkenazi prophetic figure R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo that sheds new light on the relationship between magic, mysticism, and liturgy in the formative period of medieval Jewish mysticism.6 Idel’s unwavering commitment to the study of texts, especially those extant in manuscripts, is part of his deeper commitment to the humanities. He has also warned (in the Israeli media) against the decline of the humanities, especially Jewish Studies, both in terms of governmental funding and internal academic priorities. Precisely because Judaism is a text-centered religion, Idel has rightly

5 Moshe Idel, Mircea Eliade: From Magic to Myth (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2014). 6 See Moshe Idel, “Some Forlorn Writings of a Forgotten Ashkenazi Prophet: R. Nehe- miah Ben Shlomo ha-Naviʾ,” Jewish Quarterly Review 95 (2005): 183–96; Moshe Idel, “From Italy to Ashkenaz and Back: On the Circulation of Jewish Mystical Traditions,” Kabbalah 14 (2006): 47–94. moshe idel: an intellectual portrait 7 understood the cultural implications of the neglect of Jewish Studies for the future of Judaism and Jewish culture.

The Importance of Kabbalah for Judaism and Beyond

Idel has changed our perception of the importance of Kabbalah through exposing the variety of its forms and through rendering hundreds of its works accessible to the modern reader. As a result, we now have a more accurate understanding of the place of Kabbalah within the Jewish intellectual and spiritual world. In Kabbalah: New Perspectives he proposed a radical “reconstruction” in which medieval Kabbalah was now seen as a continuation of major mythical themes in rabbinic thought. Although this also joins a reevaluation of the role of myth in the rabbinic corpus itself, the full force of this move is in positioning Kabbalah as part of normative, mainstream Judaism, rather than as a later eruption of alien origin, either Gnostic or Neoplatonic, as Scholem has proposed. Idel offered a striking reversal: Rather than the Kabbalah being influenced by forms of mythical thought such as Gnosticism, the Kabbalah is a development of the same ancient Jewish traditions that formed Gnosticism. Through these and other interpretative shifts, articulated rather early in his academic career, Idel profoundly changed the prevailing schema of Jewish intellectual history by locating kabbalistic ideas within the rich religious world of antiquity. However, this shift was not merely of historical significance. As part of the phenomenological approach guiding the book, Idel saw the close relationship between Jewish mysticism and rabbinic views in terms of a shared emphasis on the centrality of the commandments. Not only through resonance with formative texts, but also through affinity with the shared practice of traditional Judaism, Idel envisioned and presented Kab- balah as a traditional, rather than as a subversive phenomenon. The inherently (though not admittedly) speculative move of phenomenological reconstruction was challenged even by the more sympathetic reviewers of the book. Several scholars claimed that Idel was throwing out the Scholemian baby with the phenomenological bathwater, so to speak, when he deemphasized the immediate historical context. The reviewers pointed at several methodological pitfalls resulting from this move, such as the circularity of reading earlier texts in light of later texts and then claiming that the ideas found in the earlier texts continue in the later ones, or the assumption that conceptual terms retain a relatively stable meaning over time. In effect, these critics were calling on Idel to conduct a more detailed 8 moshe idel: an intellectual portrait methodological discussion—for example by acknowledging his debt to the French structuralist approach that also seeks to uncover mental structures that remain constant over long historical periods.7 Indeed, the place of historical narrative in Idel’s thought is complex: Idel is certainly a historian of ideas, opting to explore internal developments within a tradition rather than its response to external events (as in Scholem’s well-known hypothesis concerning the effect of the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Spain on subsequent kabbalistic thought). Concomitantly, his predilection is for uncovering larger structures (here called “streams” and later “models,” defined as “a cluster of concepts that constitute a relatively consistent religious structure”8 and still later “forms of order”), rather than specific periods. Thus, in this book Idel demarcated his claims to continuity and traditionalism by stressing (though not always with full force) that these characterize only the main form of Kabbalah that he described as “theosophical-theurgical.” The theosophical dimension reflected the internal composition and dynamics of the Godhead, perpetuating views of the plurality of divine forms found in Talmudic-Midrashic or rabbinic texts, as well as in Gnostic ones. It is readily apparent that such a conception of the structure of the divine realm challenges accepted understandings of Judaism as a monotheistic religion. The theurgical aspect captures the aspiration of the kabbalist to affect this complex divine realm through the performance of the commandments detailed in Jewish Law. Here, Idel underscored and brought to much wider attention one of the theologically disturbing tenets of most forms of Kabbalah: the belief that “God is in need of Mankind” (as Abraham Joshua Heschel [d. 1972], himself of Hasidic origin, famously put it). Idel’s innovation lies in the bold claim that rather than being a foreign import or marginal semi-heresy, the theurgical stream brought to greater degrees of complexity existing rabbinic tendencies. Furthermore, it is precisely because the kabbalists understood the commandments theurgically that Kabbalah enhanced traditional Judaism and contributed to its longevity. Idel insightfully noted that kabbalistic texts were rarely challenged by authoritative figures, yet Kabbalah seemed so revolutionary because many modern scholars gravitated to Maimonides’ purist monotheism

7 See, e.g., Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, “Continuity and Revolution in the Study of Kab- balah,” AJS Review 16 (1989): 161–92; Ronald C. Kiener, “Idel’s Kabbalah,” The Jewish Quar- terly Review 82 (1991): 224–26; Elliot R. Wolfson, “Review of Kabbalah: New Perspectives by Moshe Idel,” The Journal of Religion 72 (1992): 137–39. 8 Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 49. moshe idel: an intellectual portrait 9 and similar rationalistic theologies, which they believed represented the thrust of the Jewish tradition. It is not merely in the insistence on plurality of forms and their susceptibility to human influence that Idel’s picture undermines Maimonidean theology. Rather, the foregrounding of explicit discussions of the divine form that can be affected by the human body, due to structural resemblance, undermines the Maimonidean insistence on the formless nature of the divine, opening up the possibility that a form of anthropomorphism is found in the heartland of Jewish thought. Idel’s method of reconstruction and his emphasis on the continuity of religious ideas (transmitted both orally and in writing) challenged the common understanding of monotheism and anthropomorphism. The implications of these novel interpretations extended beyond the Jewish world to include other monotheistic traditions. It is not surprising, then, that Idel’s first English-language book, Kabbalah: New Perspectives is a clarion call for the integration of Kabbalah scholarship within the wider world of “human- istic studies,” and especially Religious Studies.9 At the same time, though Idel did not spell it out in writing, his critique of standard perceptions of monotheism and related issues has great import for theology, also outside the halls of academe. Yet for Idel there is a second major stream in Jewish mysticism, less prominent, but not necessarily less significant, phenomenologically speaking. Here, he continued his intensive graduate work on the thirteenth century Spanish kabbalist Abraham Abulafia and his “ecstatic Kabbalah” (to which he devoted a trilogy in this period).10 Idel has shown Abulafia to be an important commentator on Maimonides’ philosophy, in harmony with many of its central ideas (and thus more responsive to the medieval context than more traditionalist forms of Kabbalah, such as that propagated by Maimonides’ critic, Nahmanides). Yet, this kabbalist gave the doctrine of the great philosopher a mystical, experiential application. In developing his technique of employing letters and other linguistic units in order to trans- form consciousness, Abulafia diverged from the Maimonidean account of the Hebrew language as a mere convention, rather viewing it as conveying the true nature of reality. By calling greater attention to this fascinating figure and his rich spiritual biography, Idel balanced the split he himself had emphasized between perceptions of Kabbalah and the Maimonidean

9 See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 24. 10 Moshe Idel, The Mystical Experience in R. Abraham Abulafia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988); Moshe Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988); Moshe Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abu- lafia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). 10 moshe idel: an intellectual portrait world. In doing so, he brought Jewish mysticism into an even closer conversation with the world of medieval philosophy, Jewish and general, of which Maimonides was a paragon. By focusing on Abulafia, Idel challenged facile distinctions between philosophy and Kabbalah by increasing the complexity of the latter corpus. As part of demonstrating the complexity of kabbalistic systems of thought, Idel showed that Neoaristotelian approaches to union with God (via the intellect) were as significant as Neoplatonic views, whose impact on the development of Kabbalah was stressed by Scholem.11 This reexamining of the accepted separation between Kabbalah and philosophy also led Idel to investigate the works of figures in the “borderlands” between the two realms, such as the Spanish writer R. Isaac Ibn Latif or the Renaissance thinker Leone Ebreo (R. Yehuda Abravanel). After the publication of Kabbalah: New Perspectives it became difficult to speak of “the Kabbalah,” just as it rendered blanket statements on “Jewish belief” problematic. Idel’s studies of Abulafia in the 1980s (to which he later added a book devoted to one of Abulafia’s disciples, R. Nathan Ben Saʿadyah Harʾar),12 showed that intense mystical experiences, cultivated through an assort- ment of techniques, played a major role in the inner life of such kabbalists. Idel went further to claim that these techniques played a role in Hasidism. Idel could make these arguments because he employed the comparative methods of Religious Studies. In so doing he integrated the study of Kabbalah into the discipline of Religious Studies, through comparisons between the methods and practices found in mystical traditions from both the West and the East. Yet the most controversial and seminal claim in this context was found in the central chapter of Kabbalah: New Perspectives, in which Idel showed, contrary to the opinion of Scholem, that many texts contain claims to deep experiences of union with God (unio mystica). Here again, common wisdom on the beliefs of “Judaism” was reversed, and Kabbalah was brought squarely into the global “family” of mystical traditions. As in the case of theurgy, Kabbalah was rendered more important for anyone interested in religion, by virtue of being bolder and more challenging than previously imagined.

11 See, e.g., Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah (Philadelphia and Prince- ton: Jewish Publication Society and Princeton University Press, 1987), 221, 228, 265, 270; Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), 20, 166. 12 Moshe Idel and Maurizio Mottolese, Le Porte Della Giustizia: Sa‍ʾare Sedeq, Nathan Ben Saʿadyah Harʾar (Milano: Adelphi, 2001). moshe idel: an intellectual portrait 11

The main historical axis of Kabbalah: New Perspectives was the continuity between late antiquity and the rise of medieval Kabbalah. However, Idel also devoted his concluding chapter to the importance of Jewish mysticism as a “cultural factor” in the modern world. Tracing the growing interaction of the Kabbalah with Western culture as it became less esoteric, he pointed at the following paradox: It was the divestment of this lore from its theurgical, and thus particularistic concerns with Jewish Law that enabled its relatively wide reception in modern European culture. It is not surprising that the last paragraph of the book discusses the “last remnants of Jewish mysticism operating in a world in which the confidence in man’s acts has disintegrated,” the world portrayed in the best-known modern Jewish literature—that of Franz Kafka, in which “the loss of self- confidence, faith and energy leaves man with only the capacity to tell mystical stories about an impersonal, fascinating world . . . beyond his reach.”13 Subtly, but tellingly, Idel ends the book by opening the possibility of entering and reaching the “mystical dimension of the Law,” and not merely viewing its radiance from outside, as in the case of this tragic writer.14

Widening the Range of Jewish Thought

In his next major English-language book, the above-mentioned Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, Idel went much further to extend the range of “Jewish thought.” Here, the binary division of kabbalistic literature into two streams, theosophical-theurgical and ecstatic-prophetic, was reworked into a set of complex combinations of three models: ecstatic/mystical, theosophical-theurgical, and magical. Idel also markedly extended his thesis of long-term continuity by claiming that sources from late antiquity and the medieval period influenced a social movement in the heart of the modern period. As part of this “panoramic” move, as Idel now termed it, he reinforced his claim as to the importance of Abulafia by establishing his influence on Hasidism and especially its ideas of language. Although this book was much less widely received and translated than Kabbalah: New Perspectives, it brought a more advanced version of Idel’s theories to bear on the most widespread social movement in the history of Jewish mysticism. Western access to Hasidic texts was due mainly to the works of Martin Buber (whose ideas also shaped Idel’s reconstruction of Hasidism)

13 Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 271. 14 Ibid. 12 moshe idel: an intellectual portrait as well as to the writings of Buber’s friend and colleague, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and other popularizers of Hasidism such as Elie Wiesel. In contemporary culture, familiarity with Hasidism has become even more common with the success of Hasidic groups such as Chabad-Lubavitch in marketing their ideas and music throughout the world.15 Interestingly, Idel’s innovative approach to Hasidism and his insistence on the importance of Abulafia also entered popular culture when the novel The Bee Season by Myla Goldberg, which centered on Abulafia’s methods, was made into a film. Beyond the specific theme of Hasidism, this book dramatically altered current perceptions on the limits of Jewish belief by locating magical beliefs and practices in the heart of Hasidic thought as well as in earlier kabbalistic texts. Idel’s challenging claim was that magic is not merely a form of folk religion closely aligned with superstition (as in the influential early portrayal by Joshua Trachtenberg),16 but rather part of the worldview of elite figures, such as the Renaissance kabbalist Yohanan Alemanno (another favorite subject for Idel throughout the years). More than any other figures, Alemanno demonstrates the fluid boundaries between philosophy and Kabbalah, the importance of magic and astrology, and the absorption of Renaissance culture by outstanding Jewish intellectuals. By doing so, Idel significantly extended the range of ancient influences on Kabbalah, bringing Hermeticism, another esoteric tradition that dates back to antiquity, into play. While Kabbalah: New Perspectives brought Kabbalah research into much closer contact with Religious Studies, Idel’s discussion of Hasidism, a modern social movement, inaugurated an ongoing dialogue with the social sciences. For example, the relocation of magic from folklore to elite thought enables a much closer alliance with anthropology of religion, in which magic has always been a major theme. Indeed, around 2000 Idel devoted shorter studies to issues belonging to the field of sociology of knowledge, such as leadership, elites, mobility, and transmission.17

15 Most importantly, through their home page (http://lubavitch.com) and the dissemination of Chabad Hasidism by means of shluhim, representatives of the movement sta- tioned all over the world and intensively engaged in outreach work. See Sue Fishkoff, The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad Lubavitch (New York: Schocken Books, 2003). 16 Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (Phila- delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 2012 [1939]), with a foreword by Moshe Idel. 17 See especially Moshe Idel, “On Mobility, Individuals and Groups: Prolegomenon for a Sociological Approach to Sixteenth-Century Kabbalah,” Kabbalah 3 (1998): 145–73; Moshe Idel, “Transmission in Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah,” in Transmitting Jewish Tradi- tions: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Diffusion, ed. Yaakov Elman and Israel Gershoni (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 138–65. See also Moshe Idel and Mortimer Ostow, eds., Jewish Mystical Leaders and Leadership in the 13th Century (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1998). moshe idel: an intellectual portrait 13

In a short and somewhat overlooked formulation towards the end of the book, Idel comes close to making a personal statement on the significance of his findings for what a contemporary thinker, Jonathan Sacks, often describes as “Jewish continuity”: Some of the formulations of anthropologists or sociologists of religion regarding the routinization of the initial charisma in revivalist movements . . . are not so pertinent as far as Hasidism is concerned. Today it is sufficient to observe, even superficially, the followers of the various nineteenth-century trends of Hasidism to see that the terrible encounter between their ancestors, in their strongholds in Poland and Russia, and the bearers of scientific- mythological Nazism, was unable to extirpate their vital religiosity. The “magic” of language is sometimes able to prevail over the efficiency of technology.18 It is significant that Idel calls on the evidence of observation of the followers of Jewish mystical traditions today. Already in Kabbalah: New Perspec- tives, he had called on scholars to move beyond exclusive concentration on the textual records and observe the daily practice of Kabbalah in placed such as Jerusalem. Idel followed his own advice, forming close ties not only with anthropologists conducting fieldwork on contemporary Hasidism or practitioners of magical traditions, but also with senior teachers in kabbalistic yeshivas. This openness to the present expressed Idel’s realization that Kabbalah is not merely a set of literary remains of a world that once was, but a vibrant living tradition. Once again, one can note the convergence between Idel’s work and social context, as the course of his career paralleled the global resurgence of mysticism from the 1960s onwards, with the Kabbalah playing increasing importance. In this context one should note the rehabilitation of the respectability of magic through the New Age movement and the vast literary-cinematic phenomenon of Harry Potter that has given magic a strong presence in popular imagination.19

Jewish Thought in Jewish History

When his book on Hasidism was published, Idel was already intensively researching what he described to me once as his most important book: Mes- sianic Mystics (1998).20 Here, one may find his most sustained reflection on

18 Idel, Hasidism, 222–23. 19 See Paul Heelas, The New Age Movement: The Celebration of Self and the Sacralization of Modernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996); Elizabeth E. Heilman, ed., Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter (New York: Routledge, 2008). 20 Moshe Idel, Messianic Mystics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 14 moshe idel: an intellectual portrait the role played by Jewish thought in the course of Jewish history. The phenomenon of messianism has shaped not only modern Jewish history but also modern history in general, through secularized versions such as Marxism. Not surprisingly, this was a recurring theme of both research and public writing for Scholem and his students (such as Liebes)21 and numerous other scholars, including Israel’s third President Zalman Shazar (d. 1974).22 Implicit in the work of a major twentieth-century Jewish intellectual such as Hannah Arendt (d. 1975),23 messianism is currently a central theme in the contemporary and influential critical theory of Giorgio Agamben.24 Against this background, one can better appreciate the uniqueness of Idel’s claim that the diverse forms of Jewish messianism were often directed to a variety of spiritual-mythic realms: theurgical, psychological, ecstatic, and magical, rather than merely aspiring to the impact of external history. Con comitantly, messianic trends were less the result of external historical events (such as the expulsion from Spain in 1492 or the pogroms in the Ukraine in 1648–1649) but rather the elaboration of earlier, often ahistorical views, such as Abulafia’s philosophically oriented and psychological view of redemption. Not surprisingly, this novel argument, which undermined the reigning theory in Kabbalah Studies, constituted the central chapter in the book. Messianic Mystics also remains Idel’s most detailed statement on the theme of myth. Myth is not only a mainstay of Religious Studies, but also a central theme in psychoanalytic (especially Jungian) literature (from T. S. Elliot’s “The Wasteland” through J. R. R. Tolkien’s now vastly popular The Lord of the Rings), and anthropology. Drawing on the work of the “myth and ritual” school in Religious Studies,25 Idel shows that Abulafia and others located messianic experiences within the yearly ritual cycle of

21 Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spiritu- ality (New York: Schocken Books, 1971); Yehuda Liebes, Studies in Jewish Myth and Jewish Messianism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). 22 On Shazar’s scholarship on Sabbateanism, see Liebes, Studies in Jewish Myth, 93 and 178 n. 3. 23 See, e.g., Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb, Regions of Sorrow: Anxiety and Messianism in Hannah Arendt and W. H. Auden (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). 24 See Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, trans. P. Dailey (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). 25 See Idel, Messianic Mystics, 21–22 and 331 n. 45. For the “myth and ritual” school, see, e.g., Samuel Henry Hooke, Myth, Ritual, and Kingship: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Kingship in the Ancient Near East and in Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958); Sigmund Mowinckel, He That Cometh (New York: Abingdon Press, 1954). moshe idel: an intellectual portrait 15 the Jewish calendar. In other words, the seemingly disruptive manifestations of messianism was closely related to the shared “microchronos” (as he put it elsewhere) of normative Jewish life. Similarly, when discussing the oft-debated question of Hasidic messianism, Idel showed that many thinkers in this school conceived of messianic redemption as the experience of plenitude afforded by the performance of the commandments in “normal life,” rather than in an anticipated historical future.26 Here, he is subtly coalescing two of the main themes of the decade of writing since Kabbalah: New Perspectives: experience and the centrality of the commandments. Throughout the seven other chapters of his longest book till then, Idel can be seen developing themes found in his earlier works: the “polychromatic” nature of kabbalistic thought, the resulting failure of any linear historical narrative, panoramic influences, the central role of theurgy, the role of elites, and others. However, Idel went way beyond his earlier work in what is tantamount to a declaration of independence of Jewish thought from Jewish history, namely, the independence of ideas from events, although he does not say so explicitly. Undermining the historicist paradigm went along with challenging the self-enclosed self-identity of modern Judaism, through the traditionalist move of tracing modern developments to intellectual streams running deep into antiquity. It is in this book that Idel first comes close to offering a comprehensive overview of Jewish thought that extends from the Bible up to twentieth-century thinkers such as Abraham Isaac Kook (d. 1935), an important inspiration of Religious Zionism. Ironically, in his ahis- toricist reconstruction of Judaism, Idel’s panoramic view brings him close to articulating the “essence” of Judaism, even though he labored to prove that such an essence does not exist. It is not too far-fetched to suggest that Idel’s unease with historicism has something to do with his biography. Understandably for an immigrant from a Communist dictatorship, Idel’s position is diametrically opposed to Marxist historical materialism and its later offshoots in European thought, such as the Frankfurt School. Marx is never mentioned in this book (nor in the other works discussed here), yet as we shall now see, Idel refers almost explicitly to the fall of the Iron Curtain, a historical event with vivid personal and professional meaning for him. Notwithstanding his commitment to phenomenology, Idel cannot ignore history or take his own scholarship outside of history. As in the above-discussed earlier

26 See especially Idel, Messianic Mystics, 288–89. 16 moshe idel: an intellectual portrait works, towards the end of this book one can once again find a terse yet even more personal and contemporary reflection: Buber and Scholem explicated their views against the background of a flow- ering national movement, Zionism, that emphasized historical and external actions . . . The present treatment reflects, consciously or not, quite different historical circumstances . . . Is it the present moment that has inspired the emphasis on those more conservative elements in messianism . . .? Is the possibility of looking backward from a broader perspective related to a less tumultuous period that enables a scholar to adopt a less ideological definition, a more pluralistic and perhaps more centrifugal approach . . .? Or is the postmodern emphasis on variety and diversity having too great an impact on these inquiries, in comparison to the modern approach, which emphasized monochromaticism? Is the retreat from the more communal narrative toward a more individualistic one, visible in Western culture in a decade that has seen the weakening and even the dissolution of ideologies, influencing my argument for a need to reevaluate the importance of the inner, more personal experiences? . . . I prefer to leave it to a careful reader to decide the answers to these questions. I have enumerated them in order to clarify for myself what forms of social and cultural circumstances may inform and eventually distort my discussions. The impact these circumstances may have on my work is an issue that readers and critics of this book may wish to engage.27 When Idel wrote this statement he reached the zenith of his public recognition, having just received the prestigious Israel Prize. In what he has described as his major work, Idel did not merely correctly predict the interest and lively debate reflected in the reviews on the book.28 Rather, he paused to ponder and reflect on the results of his formative scholarly period and its relationship to the dramatic political events in his country of birth, on the one hand, and the stable (relative to his period in the military) state of his country of choice, as well as wider intellectual trends. Idel also interrogates his degree of self-awareness as a writer who aspires to overturn conventional perspectives on key concepts such as messianism and myth, and inviting critical evaluation.

27 Ibid., 293. 28 See especially Elisheva Carlebach, “Review of Messianic Mystics by Moshe Idel,” Jewish Quarterly Review 91 (2000): 211–13; Matt Goldish, “New Approaches to Jewish Mes- sianism,” AJS Review 25 (2000–2001): 71–83; Alan Nadler, “Moshe Idel’s Messianic Mystics,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 4, no. 1 (2001): 176–180. moshe idel: an intellectual portrait 17

Language, Representation, Interpretation

We have just witnessed how Idel reflects on the relationship between his writing and the intellectual, artistic, and literary trends loosely known as postmodernism. However, one should focus this engagement more precisely on the set of ideas on language, symbolism, representation, textuality, and hermeneutics, belonging to what has been termed “the linguistic turn.” As we have just seen, Idel has displayed far less interest in post- Marxist Critical Theory (e.g., the Frankfurt School) and has also abstained from explicit discussions of the works of Michel Foucault, despite his consistent interest in the question of power, as it manifests in theurgical and magical contexts. Idel’s long-standing interest in literary and linguistic theory can be discerned already in his first book, where he critiques existing understandings of central kabbalistic images such as the ten sefirot (divine potencies) as symbols. Drawing mostly on the works of Paul Ricoeur (d. 2005), Idel stressed the profound dynamism of kabbalistic symbols. In his reading, the kabbalists saw the sefirot “not as ideas existing in frozen perfection within the divine thought but as living entities whose dynamism often attained imperfect states, to be repaired by human activity.”29 Thus “a Kabbalistic symbol invited one to act rather than to think.”30 In other words, the use of symbols is less about “disclosure of an inexpressible realm” (as in classical definitions of symbolism), but rather in its stirring theurgical participation in the workings of the divine. This reversal of accepted views has pronounced implications for the understanding of the sacred text in Kabbalah, one of Idel’s most central theoretical concerns: as undergoing a constant and infinite process of change, just like the ever-fluid divine realm that the kabbalistic text not only describes, but extends and embodies. One can speculate that Idel’s methodological pluralism, refusing a closed, ideological reading of a text or fixed canons and maintaining an open-ended process attuned to shifts in the broader intellectual climate, reflects his understanding of the materials with which he is so deeply engaged.31 Idel’s reciprocal exchange in this period with leading theoreticians associated with this late twentieth-century development (especially Harold Bloom, Jacques Derrida [d. 2004], and Umberto Eco), was soon expressed in a much larger work, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation

29 Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 223. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., 223, 247. 18 moshe idel: an intellectual portrait

(2002). The most obvious manifestation of postmodern theories of language and textuality is found in his discussions of the “radical hermeneutics” of Abulafia that he explicitly compares to Derridean “deconstruction.” Idel shows how Abulafia’s textual interpretation aggressively violates Hebrew syntax and grammar, enabling him to disrupt the enclosure of the traditional Jewish corpus and indeed the Hebrew language in which it was mostly written, introducing affinities with alien concepts, such as Neo-Aristotelian physics. Thus, for example, Abulafia’s exegesis extended to calculating the gematria (namely, the numerical value of letters) of Greek, Latin, and Arabic words. Reflecting on the wider theoretical and cultural implications of Abulafia’s method, Idel writes, “Just as a modern deconstructive thinker would consider language as taking over the author and thus obliterating the importance of the authorial intent, so some of the Jewish mystics claim that their interpretations are transmitted to them by higher entities with which they either communicate or identify.”32 The significance of this comparison is that it highlights the mystical process in which the experience of reading, interpreting, and writing the text erase any static sense of its meaning. He then traces the historical process in which these “semantically radical interpretations became an integral part of the conceptualization of Judaism.”33 As Idel well put it, this is indeed “one of the most interesting processes in the intellectual expansions of Jewish thought.”34 For once the text loses any stable meaning independent of its exegesis (again going back to the dynamism of symbolism), it can acquire ever more numerous and much more fluid positions within diverse intellectual systems. If there is a main theme in this massive and somewhat less well-organized book it is that the elaboration of kabbalistic hermeneutics was a major mechanism for the extensive absorption of external ideas within mainstream Jewish culture, while still maintaining a strong adherence to canonical texts. To put it more simply, new and often divergent worldviews were incorporated within Jewish civilization by reinterpreting the deeper or hidden meaning of classical texts in new and often “eccentric” ways. It is clear that understanding this process has implications ranging far beyond Kabbalah, as it captures the secret of the Jewish world’s ability to constantly update itself while retaining its cohesion and intergenerational continuity.

32 Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 270. 33 Ibid., 271. 34 Ibid. moshe idel: an intellectual portrait 19

More recently Idel has returned to these questions in his Old Worlds, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought (2010). He makes a sociological distinction, the sharpness of which was contested by some reviewers: The “new academic elite” of Jewish intellectuals operating outside the Jewish world and writing in European languages, such as Walter Benjamin, George Steiner, and Jacques Derrida, were concerned with the ideas of more speculative Jewish elites of the past rather than the totality of Jewish writing. Subsequently, this predilection led to understandings of Judaism that “bore no resemblance to the beliefs of most contemporary Jews,”35 these being less philosophical. Writing in a rare autobiographical vein, Idel contrasts this outlook with his own “shaped by early experience of a deeply traditional Eastern European Jewish environment.”36 Idel’s claim in the book is that using the traditional approach as a corrective in analyzing the conceptions of Judaism propagated by the new elite will enable a far more complex picture of Judaism. Elsewhere, critiquing George Steiner, Idel returns to this theme in a more trenchant fashion (hence the controversy): “The phantoms of a culture created by Jews who attempted to integrate, assimilate, disguise, or even eradicate their relation to Judaism are now more visible in the larger culture in both Europe and America . . . Out of the ocean of Jewish literature and thought, a tiny drop is deemed to be representative.”37 At the same time, Idel clearly recognizes here the value of the preoccupation of thinkers in that elite group with questions of language, textuality, and hermeneutics, and points at numerous subtle parallels with kabbalistic thought, especially that of Abulafia. As we shall see below when presenting the essays in this volume, Idel has contributed greatly to the ongoing discussion of Judaism and art through applying his earlier findings on kabbalistic anthropomorphism to a thorough reevaluation of the place of visual representation in Jewish religiosity. As we shall see, Idel has especially stressed the importance of the graphic form of the letters (as well as their sonorous articulation and of course their semantic meaning within words) as well as experiences of vision of the divine face (continuing his thorough undermining view of Jewish conceptions of God as formless and disembodied). This being said, due to his stress

35 Moshe Idel, Old Worlds, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 7. See Steven E. Aschheim, “New Thinkers, Old Stereotypes—Review of Moshe Idel, Old Worlds, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought,” Jewish Review of Books 3 (2012): 27–30; David N. Myers, “A Novel Look at Moshe Idel’s East-West Problem,” Jewish Quarterly Review 102 (2012): 289–96. 36 Idel, Old Worlds, New Mirrors, 10. 37 Ibid., 70. 20 moshe idel: an intellectual portrait on language (apparent also in the quote adduced earlier on the triumph of language over technology), he is close to those thinkers, such as Emmanuel Levinas or R. David Kohen (student of R. Abraham Isaac Kook) in traditional circles, who regard the Jewish world as being more concerned with words and sounds than with images. This affiliation explains Idel’s keen dialogue with musicologists, expressed in several discussions on the role of music and musical imagery in Jewish mysticism.38

Performance, Sound, and Relationality

Idel dedicated what I consider to be his next major book, Enchanted Chains: Techniques and Rituals in Jewish Mysticism (2005),39 to the question of ritual performance. Here, Idel clearly expresses his traditionalist approach, stressing basic elements of normative Jewish life, such as collective ritual performance, especially through speech and sound. Indeed, despite his distaste for essentialist conceptions of “Judaism,” here, Idel comes close to defining practice as its core, claiming that the emphasis on technique and performance is “the deep structure of classical Judaism,” bridging the gaps between the various streams of Kabbalah that he took such care to parse.40 In this recent book one can discern a new development in Idel’s thought when he comes closest to joining the revival of ontology in twentieth- century thought by focusing on the question of being and on cosmology. As indicated in the title, the book is an ongoing critique of the formative study The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea by the philosopher and intellectual historian Arthur O. Lovejoy (d. 1962). Throughout this book, Idel strives to balance Lovejoy’s emphasis on metaphysical, ontological structures with explorations of experiences of participation in the great chain of being as well as a far greater emphasis on the role of language, both human and divine. As such, it represents a strong move from the field of Kabbalah into the wider domain of the history of ideas. Expanding his discussion of mystical union in Kabbalah: New Perspectives, Idel claims that kabbalistic techniques were regarded as forming “ontic continua,” bridging the divide between the human and the divine realms. Typically, Idel

38 See, e.g., Moshe Idel, “Conceptualizations of Music in Jewish Mysticism,” in Enchant- ing Powers: Music in the World’s Religions, ed. Lawrence E. Sullivan (Cambridge, MA: Har- vard University Press, 1997), 159–88. 39 Moshe Idel, Enchanted Chains: Techniques and Rituals in Jewish Mysticism (Los Ange- les: Cherub Press, 2005). 40 Ibid., 34. moshe idel: an intellectual portrait 21 stresses the variety of such continua. For example, Abulafian practice “actualizes” and perfects the human intellect, rendering it capable of connecting the human and superhuman realms. Yet theosophical-theurgical kabbalists envisage a set of interlocking links connecting the supernal and lower worlds. As this structure is profoundly flexible, ritual activity can impact various nodes in this structure, as the lower links draw down influx from the higher ones.41 Again, human agents can insert themselves within this structure rather than merely beholding and describing it. Elsewhere in the book, Idel goes so far as to posit that the principle of connectivity “underlies the basic notion of religion as such.”42 However, these ontological discussions are never abstract, and thus diverge significantly from Lovejoy’s “history of ideas”: Throughout his book, Idel’s focus on praxis is explicitly contrasted to scholarly approaches (such as that of Scholem) that focus on theological beliefs or speculative theories. Tellingly, Idel calls for greater reliance on disciplines such as psychology and linguistics, rather than theology. However, we shall now see that theology is transformed rather than sidelined by Idel, as he uncovers a co- relational theology, in which the dynamic connection between the human world and the divine world replaces mere knowledge of a static supernal realm. As he puts it: “The lower not only knows the higher, but also contributes to its making.”43 Thus, even though Idel does not present himself as a theologian, his interpretation of Jewish texts is either informed by theology or spells out the theological content of the texts in his disposal. Of these two approaches, linguistics is more obviously present in the book: Idel coins the term “linguo-theology” to describe widespread views of language as linking all the levels of reality. Idel cites numerous texts describing the Hebrew language as a “luminous cord” extended from the divine realm, so that “speaking Hebrew is, accordingly, the corporeal articulation of the divine outpouring.”44 Here, Idel is choosing to focus on the act of speech, and towards the end of his book focuses yet further on the voice. As he puts it in his discussion of Hasidic prayer, “divine presence takes possession of the human vocal apparatus during prayer.”45 In other words, the voice enables a strikingly direct form of contact with the divine. Explicitly reflecting on the implications of these findings for linguistics, Idel soon adds: “Words of power weighed much more heavily in the general economy

41 Ibid., 42–49. 42 Ibid., 25. 43 Ibid., 139. 44 Ibid., 57. 45 Ibid., 199. 22 moshe idel: an intellectual portrait of kabbalistic literature than the mentalistic understanding of this lore typical of modern research which basically evaluates linguistic experience on the basis of semantics.”46 However, language performs a connective function not only in the cosmic domain but also in the social world of collective identity: “Jews are united because they share the same semantic world.”47 Further developing the theory of textuality found in his Absorbing Perfections (and also expressed strongly in the interview below), Idel applies these insights to what is perhaps the most central Jewish ritual: Torah study. Here he coins yet another neologism, when he describes views of Torah study in theosophical Kabbalah as “meso-cosmic.” That is to say, the divine text is regarded less as a repository of semantic meaning than as “an intermediary man, a meso-anthropos,” as Idel terms it, so that “God, Torah and man share the same structure, and this is the reason why the scholar is able to ascend on high.”48 As always, Idel contrasts theosophy to other streams, as in his discussion of Hasidic Torah study (developing the insights in his earlier book on this movement). Here, study is indeed depicted in psychological, rather than cosmological terms, as it revolves on personal transformation. Idel explicitly contrasts this “warmer,” emotional approach to study to the “colder,” more technical kabbalistic approach.49 Idel’s appreciation for the role of traditional practices and structures is also apparent in Kabbalah and Eros (2005), in which he stresses the role of the family (a well-known cornerstone of Jewish collective identity) in kabbalistic imagery as well as lifestyle. Although he could have integrated this insight more with the rich feminist historiography of recent decades, Idel (building on earlier shorter studies on gender in Kabbalah), pointed at the uniqueness of a mystical system that usually supports the “normal fabric of family or communal life,” especially in the stress on the theurgical impact of procreation.50 Echoing his theory of connectivity in Enchanted Chains, Idel shows here how notions of “cosmo-eroticism” are part of the general “search for more direct contacts with the divine.”51 For Idel, Judaism con- tains a “culture of eros,” that he opposes to the Aristotelian conception of a

46 Ibid., 205. 47 Ibid., 221. See also my more extensive discussion in Jonathan Garb, “Moshe Idel’s Contribution to the Study of Religion,” Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 18 (2007): 116–29. 48 Idel, Enchanted Chains, 141. On ascending on high, see Idel, Ascensions on High. 49 Ibid., 161. 50 Ibid., 224. 51 Moshe Idel, Kabbalah and Eros (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 241. See also Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, “Review of Moshe Idel, Kabbalah and Eros,” AJS Review 31 (2007): 187–190. moshe idel: an intellectual portrait 23 disembodied God and concomitant intellectual ideal. While acknowledging the influence of the latter worldview on Jewish thought (including that of Abulafia), Idel shows that most kabbalists regarded eros and sexuality as essential not merely for the perpetuation of the Jewish collective but also for the parallel “well-being of the supernal system.”52 Idel’s approach to Torah study and practice should be compared to that of the major twentieth-century Orthodox philosopher Joseph Baer Soloveitchik, although Idel very rarely addresses his ideas directly. Unlike more secular thinkers (such as those Idel critiqued in his Old Worlds: New Mirrors book), both writers, each from his own distinctive perspective, underscore the importance of halakha. Soloveitchik regards Jewish law as a self-contained world resting on rationalistic foundations, grounded above all in abstract categories reached through intense analytical study (developed by his forefathers, of the Lithuanian Brisk School of Talmudics). Idel’s approach innovatively compares the stress on punctilious performance in halakha to the focus on technique in Kabbalah. In so doing, he places both disciplines within a far wider context, including strong mythical and magical elements, many of which are markedly noncognitive. Although Idel, in his personal life, intellectual milieu, and general belief system cannot in any way be described as Orthodox, his writings contain some of the stron- gest claims as to the centrality of ritual activity for Jewish life that can be found anywhere within modern scholarship.

Judaism and Other Religions

In Kabbalah: New Perspectives Idel made a programmatic pronounce- ment on the integration of Kabbalah research within the discipline of Religious Studies. Towards concluding this overview of Idel’s main book- length studies, one should ask: To what extent has he himself realized this agenda? Although Idel’s commitment to the “linguistic turn” and his stress on text and language preclude any alliance with universalistic beliefs in a “perennial” or “pure” mystical experience, we have seen that comparison with other mystical traditions has a certain place already in his first major book. Understandably, Idel has devoted most of his comparative research to the relationship between Kabbalah and Christianity. One of the most obvious locations for such a comparative enterprise is that of messianism, and indeed Idel devotes several pages in his Messianic

52 Idel, Kabbalah and Eros, 243. 24 moshe idel: an intellectual portrait

Mystics to comparisons between Jewish messianic mysticism and non- Jewish (especially Christian) manifestations of this important phenomenon. In the personal reflection at the end of this book, Idel sees these observations as embedded in a “novel, less apologetic situation also less dependent on the differences between Jewish thought and other systems, more open to seeing the common denominators.”53 Likewise, in Enchanted Chains, several pages discuss a notable example of Christian influence on generations of kabbalists: the reverberations of the mystic of late antiquity, Pseudo-Dionysius, on kabbalistic ideas of prayer as a luminous chain. However, the most significant and culturally relevant discussion of the relationship of Jewish myth mysticism and Christianity was presented two years later (2007) in Idel’s largest book to date, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism.54 Here Idel extends the reversal of directions of influence that he proposed already in Kabbalah: New Perspectives. For him, numerous descriptions of the Son of God in Jewish mysticism are less the con- sequence of Christian influence than reverberations of the same antique mythologomena that shaped Christianity. Idel can be observed here deep- ening his sense of long-term continuities reaching all the way back to the Bible. However, he acknowledges that later there were “back-borrowings” of such ancient Jewish themes from Christian sources. Idel’s bold claim here is that the differences between Judaism and Christianity are not about the notion of divine sonship itself, but rather over the form that it takes: Christology focused on one particular figure, whereas in Judaism a more “democratic” or pluralistic form of sonship was endorsed. Furthermore, working from his emphasis on language, Idel pos- its that “Jewish types of sonship are much less interested in the dramatic life of the son than in the properties of his name in Hebrew,”55 as opposed to the lack of Christian interest in the linguistic constituents of the name of Jesus (due partly to the centrality of visual, iconic representation). Needless to say, this distinction greatly sharpens our understanding of the theological system of both religions. In his customary general statement at the end of the book, he writes that a very important conclusion of his study is its possible contribution to a better understanding of Christianity, going so far as to say that “the history of the main theological pillar of Christianity should be rewritten.”56

53 Idel, Messianic Mystics, 293. 54 Moshe Idel, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007). 55 Ibid., 612. 56 Ibid., 635. moshe idel: an intellectual portrait 25

Famously, the most explicit interchange between Jewish and Christian mysticism took place during the Renaissance, especially in Italy, where contacts between kabbalists and leading Christian thinkers galvanized the development of Christian Kabbalah. This was the main research topic of Scholem’s student Chaim Wirszubski (d. 1977), with whom Idel studied during his graduate training at the Hebrew University. More broadly, the Warburg School of intellectual and art history, and especially the works of Dame Frances A. Yates (d. 1981) were a crucial influence on Idel’s interpretation of the Renaissance. Indebted to these scholars, Idel has written several long articles on Christian Kabbalah, on the cultural exchanges between the Jewish and Christian worlds in this period, as the background to his interpretation of Kabbalah in Italy. In his most recent book on the topic, Idel’s interpretation of Italian Kabbalah also manifests his close association with the Romanian historian of religion, Ioan Culiano (d. 1991), whom we mentioned above. Like Culiano, Idel highlighted the important role of magic and astrology in the intellectual world of the Renaissance, setting aside other dimensions of the Renaissance such as civic humanism. Idel’s insistence on the importance of astrology in Judaism is also evident in another recent monograph devoted to a major theme of the Warburg school: the image of Saturn.57 With this emphasis on astrology and magic, the Judaism that emerges out of Idel’s investigations turns out to be quite different from the conventional perceptions.

The Essays That Follow

The four essays that follow, all from the last decade or so, provide a “snapshot” of Idel’s current thinking. In the first essay, “Torah: Between Presence and Representation of the Divine in Jewish Mysticism,”58 Idel sharpens the contemporary theoretical problem of the relationship of book and author, as it manifests in a tradition in which the author is divine and active in human history, yet the sacred book itself is also a powerful source of authority. Idel describes exilic Jewish culture as nomadic and thus centered on the book as a portable focus of identity (while also subsisting in majority cultures espousing other sacred books). As in his

57 Moshe Idel, Kabbalah in Italy 1280–1510 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011); Moshe Idel, Saturn’s Jews: On the Witches’ Sabbat and Sabbateanism (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011). 58 Originally published in Representation in Religions: Studies in Honour of Moshe Barasch, ed. J. Assmann and Albert Baumgarten (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 197–235. 26 moshe idel: an intellectual portrait

Absorbing Perfections (written in the same period), Idel foregrounds the convergence of the book and author in many kabbalistic texts: On the one hand, kabbalists can be again seen as continuing the rabbinic tradition, as in the notion that the Torah is “not in heaven,” and thus the divine author’s interference in the interpretation of His own book is restricted. However, for the mainstream kabbalists the idea of isomorphism between the divine realm and entities accessible in our world opened up new and radical possibilities: The resonance between the graphic form of the letters, the divine form, and the human form, made the divine author available in a very concrete way through and in His book. Furthermore, due to the strong presence of theurgy in such theosophic views, study is not merely a path to contact but to participating in the very making of the divine structure. As Idel put it: “Knowing God becomes now no more knowing only the divine will, neither only His nature, but also intuiting His form by means of studying the Torah . . . the lower not only knows the higher, but also contributes to its making.”59 In this essay Idel also continues to develop his earlier ideas on the central role of language in the Hasidic world. For the Hasidim, the words of the Torah were not seen as symbolic representations of the divine. Rather, incorporating the Abulafian technique of reducing words to letters, they saw linguistic units as magical talismans for drawing down the divine presence. This shift enabled a sense of the plentitude of the experience of direct contact with the divine presence. Presaging his later Enchanted Chains, Idel shows that the Hasidim described the letters of the Torah as bridging the gap between the world and God by creating a tangible, “substantial continuum” between them.60 In the second essay, “Panim: Faces and Re-Presentations in Jewish Thought,”61 Idel places his earlier theme of theurgy within the wider framework of “correlational religiosity/theology.” This is not a form of static knowledge of the divine realm, but rather an inspiration for action. The center of the relationship between God and mankind described here is the face, as in the contemporary theology of Emmanuel Levinas (also reflecting Idel’s conversations with this influential Jewish intellectual). Idel shows how the medieval kabbalists, utilizing the schema of the ten sefirot, developed rabbinic notions of the multiplicity of divine faces disclosed in moments of revelation.

59 See below, 46 (211–12 in original). 60 Ibid., 65 (231 in original). 61 Originally published as “Panim: On Facial Re-Presentations in Jewish Thought: Some Correlational Instances,” in On Interpretation in the Arts, ed. Nurit Yaari (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2000), 21–57. moshe idel: an intellectual portrait 27

As always, Idel stresses that the ecstatic Kabbalah took a different path, in which anthropomorphic imagery such as that of the face is spiritualized. The fascinating Abulafian texts cited here describe the mystic as creating the face of God, as the source of prophetic inspiration, through his own imagination. “Thus, while the theosophical Kabbalists multiply divine faces within the supernal world, the ecstatic Kabbalist understands the revealing face as part of a self-revelation.”62 This marked divergence within kabbalistic tradition also leads to a different approach to interpretation (again echoing Absorbing Perfections from this period). For Abulafian kabbalists, the biblical text is not merely a subject for exegesis, but serves as a model for intensely psychological experience in the present. Prophecy becomes an actual possibility, rather than a sacral repository. In the third essay, “The Changing Faces of God and Human Dignity in Judaism,”63 Idel returned to the theme of the face. Here he more openly explicates biblical theology, centering the theme of the divine image on the face and interpreting biblical accounts of the radiance of the visage of Moses as isomorphism with the luminous face of God. In other words, Idel anchors medieval mystical discourses on divine light within the biblical text itself. At the same time, Idel again stresses the radical innovation of the kabbalists in reversing the relationship between the divine and human forms: In their mythical understanding of ritual (here echoing Messianic Mystics), human action, rather than divine redemptive intervention in history, is the true source of power. The dignity of the human lies not merely in a morphic resemblance to the divine features, but in the capacity to intervene in the structure of the divine realm: “The Kabbalistic theurgical anthropology assumes the need of the Divinity for human help, or human power, in order to restore the lost sefirotic harmony . . . only his [man’s] initiative can improve Divinity.”64 In the fourth and final essay, “Johannes Reuchlin: Kabbalah, Pythagorean Philosophy and Modern Scholarship,”65 Idel performs a historical analysis of the “pan-symbolic” understanding of Kabbalah that he has critiqued throughout. Idel traces this view of Jewish mysticism to the Christian kabbalist Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522) and to his earlier sources in the Italian Renaissance. Idel strongly links such philosophical interpretations

62 See below, 94 (41 in original). 63 Originally published in The Image of God: Foundations and Objections within the Discourse on Human Dignity: Proceedings of the Colloquium Bologna and Rossena, ed. A. Melloni and R. Saccenti (Berlin et al.: LIT Verlag, 2011), 45–65. 64 See below, 121 (63 in original). 65 Originally published in Studia Judaica 16 (2008): 30–55. 28 moshe idel: an intellectual portrait of Kabbalah to an attempt to divest this lore of its Italian Renaissance. Thus, Reuchlin’s central role in the reception of the Kabbalah in modern Europe can be seen as influencing modern (especially Scholemian) scholarship, in homogenizing the diverse kabbalistic traditions. In doing so, Reuchlin and subsequent writers sidelined the more experiential-ecstatic parts of this tradition. In considering the yet earlier sources of this position in the Italian Renaissance, Idel describes the transformation of Kabbalah from a lived tradition integrated in a way of life to a more abstract theory studied from books. Though this is not stated very forcefully here, Idel is reiterating his traditionalist understanding of Kabbalah, and the Jewish tradition in general, as centered on a lived experience of obligatory deeds, rather than on mere intellectual cognition. Also, as elsewhere in his writing, Idel attempts to expose the underlying agenda and the historical roots of the scholarly positions that he challenges, through applying his own methodology of searching for long-term historical patterns.66 In tandem, these four essays elaborate several of the leitmotifs of Idel’s writing stressed throughout this introduction: the multiplicity of divine forms, the possibility of human participation in this fluid and complex divine structure, and thus the ever-present possibility of an experience of profound proximity to the divine. The panorama emerging from this portrait provides a powerful alternative to conventional truisms as to the nature of Jewish tradition, and intentionally arouses a fresh and critical re- reading of its vast textual heritage. This is only fitting, as the text, in all of its forms and meanings, is perhaps Idel’s most central concern. Idel’s strong focus on the text and on language in general informs his consistent rejection of essentialist depictions of Judaism. In this sense, he is close to the postmodern thinkers who were influenced by his work. However, precisely because of his commitment to the primacy of the text, Idel avoids allegiance with a specific philosophical school, regarding interpretative approaches as aids for appreciating the complexity of texts rather than systems that we are to be beholden to. Therefore, despite the numerous philosophical and theoretical implications of Idel’s analyses, he is ultimately an interpreter and champion of the text.

66 See Moshe Idel, “On the Theologization of Kabbalah in Modern Scholarship,” in Religious Apologetics—Philosophical Argumentation, ed. Y. Schwartz and V. Krech (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 123–74. moshe idel: an intellectual portrait 29

The metaphor of the “tool” frequently appears in Idel’s methodological discussions. In a strong critical mode he writes in his Kabbalah and Eros: “Modern methods of study in the humanities (Freudian, Jungian, feminist, structuralist, anthropological, cultural studies, etc.), contributing though they have to new and more nuanced understandings of earlier texts . . . all reflect, in a rather deep sense, specific though different social agendas based on twentieth-century sensibilities. I assume that they offer fewer insights into those complexities which are characteristic of medieval situations. There is no need to adopt any of them as final truths. They are pro- visional and often feeble truths to be used carefully, wisely and selectively, not truths to be projected indiscriminately onto too many texts.”67 It remains to Idel’s appreciative yet critical readers to determine, also assisted by hints scattered through his writings, to what extent he himself is guided by subtle assumptions in reading the texts (for example the marked stress on the medieval period apparent in this passage). Such an investigation is necessary in order to prevent Idel’s constantly evolving project from solidifying into a new form of scholarly orthodoxy.

67 Idel, Kabbalah and Eros, 15.

Torah: Between Presence and Representation of the Divine in Jewish Mysticism

Moshe Idel

The Jew lives on intimate terms with God, and God with the Jew, within the same words: A divine page. A human page. And in both cases the author is God, in both cases the author is man. Edmond Jabes, “Key.”

1. Introduction

The tension between iconic and non-iconic concepts of divinity is evident for any reading of the Hebrew Bible, a composite document reflecting different modes of thought. In addition to expressions dealing with the image, tzelem, picture, temunah, and face, panim, of God, there is also an assumption that a vision of these divine representations, though not impossible, is a lethal experience. There are, on the other hand, some biblical expressions where anthropomorphic statements includes also elements of light imagery as the enlightenment of the divine face.1 In a later development, found in the Talmud, the assumption is that God cannot be seen just as the soul is invisible,2 while elsewhere in the same corpus and in the Heikhalot literature there are quite anthropomorphic descriptions.3

1 Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, (Claredon Press, Oxford, 1983), pp. 329–334. 2 BT, Berakhot, fol. 10a. 3 On ancient Jewish anthropomorphic theology see Joseph Gutmann, “Deuteronomy: Religious Reformation or Iconoclastic Revolution?” in ed. J. Gutmann, The Image and the World, Confrontations in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, (AAR, SBL, Scholars Press, 1977), pp. 5–25; Moshe Halbertal & Avishai Margalit, Idolatry, tr. Naomi Goldblum, (Harvard Uni- versity Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1992), pp. 1–2, 46–47, 50; Alon Goshen Gottstein, “The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature,” Harvard Theological Review, vol. 87 (1994), pp. 171–195; David H. Aaron, “Shedding Light on God’s Body in Rabbinic Midrashim: Reflec- tions on the Theory of a Luminous Adam,” Harvard Theological Review, vol. 30,3 (1997), pp. 299–314; especially the bibliographical references adduced on p. 300 note 5; Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines, Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism, (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1994), pp. 16–51; Shlomo Pines, “Points of Similarity between the Doctrine of the Sefirot in the Sefer Yetzirah and a text from the 32 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM

When Jewish thinkers encountered in the Middle Ages Greek philosophical concepts of the divinity which assume a complete spiritualization of the concept of God, a variety of strategies of appropriations and interpretations emerged, which represent the most sustained medieval Jewish theologies, philosophical and Kabbalistic altogether.4 In my opinion, the anthropomorphic aspects of the biblical and rabbinic thought did not disappear in the Middle Ages. Neither the Rabbinic thinkers who remained within the the literary genres of classical Rabbinism, neither most of the more speculative oriented medieval thinkers, renounced to the biblical terms and imagery, but rather applied them to other entities. So, for example, the divine face became an angel, the angel of the face, Sar ha- panim, the divine image and picture were applied to the ten sefirot, as it happened also to the concept of face.5 In the following I shall be concerned with the conceptualizations of the Torah as representing a divine form, and sometimes the amorphous transcendence of this form. Those conceptualizations reflect assumptions upon which the specific theology or theosophy of the thinkers is based. An important development in the history of Jewish mysticism may be formulated as follows: we shall survey a gradual convergence of the divine being and the canonical book or, if someone prefers a more literary nomenclature, the gradual convergence between the Author and His Book. Each thinker was striving to introduce the “Author” in which he believes within the canonical book. As we shall see below, there are some examples in late Midrashic and much more in Kabbalistic sources which evince cases of partial or full identifications between the two, but this was much more

Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, The Implications of this Resemblance,” The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, vol. VII, no. 3 (1989), pp. 101–103; Martin S. Cohen, The Shiʾur Qomah: Texts and Recensions (Mohr, Tuebingen, 1985); idem, The Shiʾur Qomah: Liturgy and Theurgy in Pre-Kabbalistic Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, New York, London, 1983), Yair Lorberboim, Imago Dei: Rabbinic Literature, Maimonides and Nahmanides, (Ph. D. Thesis, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1997) (Hebrew); Michael L. Klein, Anthropomorphisms and Anthropopathisms in the Targumim of the Pentateuch, (Makor, Jerusalem, 1982) (Hebrew). For some important aspects of anthropomorphism in early Islam, (which may be related to Jewish ideas) see Joseph van Ess, “The Youthful God: Anthropomorphism in Early Islam,” The University Lecture in Religion at the Arizona University, (Arizona State University, Tempe, 1989), pp. 1–20. See also Anthony Welch, “Epigraphics as Icons: The Role of the Written Words in Islamic Art,” in The Image and the Word, pp. 63–72. 4 See Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead (The Schocken Books, New York, 1991), pp. 15–55; idem, “Die Ringen zwischen dem biblischen Gott und dem Gott Plotins in der alten Kabbala,” Eranos Jahrbuch, vol. 33 (1964), pp. 9–50. 5 On this topic see M. Idel, ‟Panim: Faces and Re-Presentations in Jewish Thought,” pp. 71–101, below in this volume. torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 33 related to a partial graphic isomorphism of the book and its author, as both have been conceived mainly in anthropomorphic terms. Let me first attempt to explicate the problems and their solutions as I believe were envisioned by the Jewish mystics. One of the hermeneutical problems that faced some of the Jewish mystics were the daunting quandaries created by a double heritage: the biblical one, concerned with the display of the will of God as operating in and visible on the scene of history and in the details of the revealed way of life, the commandments on the one hand; and the growing importance of the fixed form of these two in a book that become canonical, on the other. Or, to formulate this issue differently: the Jewish mystics had to solve the emerging quandary of what is more important: the author or the author’s book. In modern, and more conspicuously in postmodern literary criticism, the author has been gradually demoted, not to say killed, in order to safe- guard the integrality and the integrity of the book, and sometime also the importance of the reader. It was relatively a simple enterprise as most of the authors did not live longer than their books. However, in a religious scriptural system it is easier to eliminate the book, important as it may be, than its divine Author. Easier, but not easy if the book become the founding text of the religious tradition. This is the case in Rabbinic Judaism, where the canonical text was established as the most important source of authority, paramount subject of study, and that main object of interpretation. In fact, the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism is connected to a process of re-nomadization reminiscent of an earlier type of worship centered on a portable sacred object, once the tabernacle, now it being a book. In such a religious tradition both author and book are incumbent to coexist, and a modus vivendi for this coexistence was ensured in order not to trivialize the book, or to relegate it to the status of one of the many possible literary products of the eternal author and, at the same time, not to minimize the importance of the author, which ensures the importance of the Book. This quandary becomes more acute in a minority culture, as the Jewish one was for most of its history, where other books competed for the status of the final and perfect revelation, like the New Testament and then the Qur’an. Thus, the battle over the nature of the Book is much more central for a culture gravitating around books, attempting to validate its canonical books, but has to allow a significant role for the author. I would say that the nature of the quandary as formulated above contributed to the search of solutions. This means that by attempting to imagine the nature of the affinities between the Author and the sacred book, the graphic nature of the latter had sometimes an impact on the specific understandings of 34 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM the former, just as the spiritualization of the author contributed in other cases to the mentalistic understanding of the ultimate message of the book. One of the regular solutions for the tension between two values is a sub- ordination of one factor to another, so establishing an hierarchy between the two or, to resort to a phrase coined by a scholar of Islamic mysticism— ‘une distinction hierarchisee.’ According to such a view the book is conceived of as dependent upon the author though this approach minimizes a little bit the dominant role of an omnipresent author.6 This is the classical Rabbinic stand that contends that the Torah is not found in heaven, but is in full possession and in the legitimate responsibility of the Rabbinic masters.7 They were apparently more contented to deal with the divine will as embodied in the specific literary expression they possess, without allowing a further interference of the author. When his will had been codified into a text, this text became a closed representation of the divine will and, by extension, of God himself. Rabbinic masters, and even less their mystical descendants, would not subscribe to Paul Ricoeur’s theory about the eclipse of the author,8 but postulate an ongoing process of reading and elaboration upon the book in the imagined presence of the living author, without however, totally subscribing to His free will as inscribed in the canon. What may be the precise difference between an eclipse of the author in Ricoeur and the presence of a living author in the consciousness of the religious reader, but an author who is not more allowed to intervene in the act of reading, though He may be the ultimate goal of this act of reading or interpretation as it is the case of the Rabbinic attitude, is an issue that I cannot dwell upon here. Indeed, the phenomenology of a religious reading is less dictated by modern assumptions about the actual death of the author, and more by the awareness and imagination of the reader, who may imagine the author as alive and attempt to enter a certain type of intellectual or spiritual dialogue with him, even over centuries since the composition of the canonical text. Even more so when the reader believes that the author is

6 See David Weiss-Ha-Livni, Midrash, Mishnah and Gemara, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1986), p. 16. 7 See Deuteronomy Rabbah, 8; W. B. Davies, Torah in the Messianic Age and/or the Age to Come, (Philadelphia, Penn., 1952), p. 87. 8 See Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, John B. Thompson, ed. and tr. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, London, Paris, 1982), pp. 146–147. The single instance I am acquainted with where Ricoeur addressed the referential value of the Sacred Scripture as pointing to God is Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, tr. David Pellauer, ed., Mark I. Wallace, (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1995), p. 221, which is a rather short and far from clear statement. torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 35 both eternal and omniscient, and available within the book he assiduously and continuously studies.9 The Torah when identified as the image of God, could not be conceived of as a forbidden image, to use Alain Besancon’s formulation, and as such it remained part of the center of some forms of Judaism while maintaining an iconic character.10 From this point of view, at least as some forms of Kabbalistic schools are concerned, the struggle between the Jewish iconodols and iconoclasts was never resolved, and it remained not only part of the dynamics of different forms of Judaism, but also part of the inner development of Kabbalah. Though for a Rabbinic master the ‘world of the text’ and a certain distan- ciation between the author and the text, to use Ricoeur’s terms, are plausible concepts, with the Jewish mystics the situation became much more complex. Those medieval mystics were part and parcel of a religion and culture which, at least in its elite forms, inherited a fascination with the Sacred Book and its study, but they were, at the same time, also pursuing the search for a more direct contact with God, either as an author, or as an entity before the very act of writing of the book. These two forms of spiritual concerns were primary purposes of their mystical life. The distinction between the Rabbinic and the mystical attitudes should not be seen as a neat differentiation between totally different aspects of a certain personality; in fact, some of the mystical aspects of the Torah have been exposed in writings of Rabbinic figures. Modern scholarly attempts to offer too neat a distinction between mystical and Rabbinic elites, seem to be, sometimes, an exaggeration. Apparently the Jewish mystics were in pursuit of a more vibrant relation with the supreme author, a direct contact with Him, but could not, or, perhaps refused to, circumvent the book as the canonical expression of the divine will, as the centre of their culture, and as a divine entity which may mediate between them and the divine. However, a full fledged mediation by assuming an hypostasis status of the book, is only one of the solutions they accepted. The other one was to conflate the book and the author. As we shall see below, some Jewish mystics created forms of ontological continua between the author and the book, some of them based upon the principle of isomorphism, others on the belief in a substantial presence. As we are going to survey, various uses of the term tzurah, form, as related to the divine, were applied also to the shape of the Torah,

9 For the significance of this assumption see below, par. 6. 10 L’image interdite, Une histoire intellectuelle de l’iconoclasme (A. Fayard, Paris, 1994). 36 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM and the process of reading was conceived sometimes much more as a matter of contemplating the divine form rather than conveying His intention. The emergence of the main school of Kabbalah, the theosophical- theurgical one, contributed a new angle to the above issue. Dealing as it is with the details of theogenesis, namely the emanation-system of the ten sefirot conceived of as divine powers and the processes that take place between them, this school evinces a great concern with the authorial persona much more than the Rabbinic fascination which dealt with the book rather than its author. This is the case also in ecstatic Kabbalah, where the intellectual nature of the deity, impacted directly the understanding of the Torah in this school, as it is the case with the emergence of the astro- magical Kabbalah and its Hasidic ramifications. In other words, each Kabbalistic model produced its own vision of the Torah, as representing the divine nature of this book in its specific manner.11

2. The Author between the Lines of His Book

As pointed out above, anthropomorphic visions and concepts of the divine are part of the ancient and late antiquity forms of Judaism. These views reverberated in some conceptualizations of Torah as either a manifestation of a certain part of God, an issue to be dealt immediately below in this paragraph, or by a complete identification between the two, an issue to be surveyed in the next paragraph. The focus of some of the following discussions is the question of the converging between the nature or the anthropomorphic shape of the author and the canonical text, and much less the view, discussed in detail by Scholem, according to which the Torah is an organism.12 Neither will the rich female and sexual aspects of the imagery of the Torah concern us in the following discussions.13 A late Midrash, perhaps written as late as the 10th century, formulates this question in a rather complex manner. Dealing with the preexistence of the Torah, this Midrashist, who is not quite an exceptional Rabbinic

11 For a presentation of the three models in Kabbalah, the theosophical-theurgical, the ecstatic and the magical-mystical, see Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1995), pp. 45–102. 12 See Scholem, On the Kabbalah, pp. 44–50. 13 See Moshe Idel, “The Concept of the Torah in Heikhalot Literature and Its Metamor- phoses in Kabbalah,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, vol. I,1 (1981), pp. 40–41, 61–62 (Hebrew), and Elliot R. Wolfson, Circle in the Square, Studies in the Use of Gender in Kab- balistic Symbolism, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1995), pp. 1–28; idem, Along the Path, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1995), pp. 104–105. torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 37 thinker, addresses the question of the substratum upon which the Torah has been written: Before the creation of the world, skins for parchments were not in existence, so that the Torah will be written on them, because the animals did not yet exist. So upon what was the Torah written? On the arm of the Holy One, blessed be He, by a black fire on [the surface of] a white fire.14 According to another late Midrashic text, the Torah has been written on the divine forehead.15 This concept of the Torah as a mythical and pre- existing being constitute as an inscription on divine limbs emphasizes the visual dimension of the text and of the author at the same time. The text is a divine manifestation, at the extent Torah is the black fire, and we may assume that the contemplation of our Torah is reminiscent of its status in illo tempore, before the act of creation, or possibly even its status today. Contemplating the Torah will, accordingly, involve more than a study of certain sacred contents, more than the disclosure of an ideal modus vivendi; it will include, at least in part, a divine self-revelation. Accordingly the white fire will stand for the divine substance of the Torah whereas the black one, for the letters. The Torah is expressly viewed by R. Eleazar of Worms, an early 13th century Ashkenazi master, as tantamount to the face of the Shekhinah.16 The same author also presents a view which I could not find in earlier traditions to the effect that the Torah, written on white fire, resting upon the divine knee.17 Though not dealing with an inscription on a divine limb, the anthropomorphic vision of God is presented in the context of the primordial Torah. This convergence between an image, the face of the divine presence, and a canonical text is quite interesting and we shall follow some of its later developments in Kabbalah immediately below. However, it should be mentioned, that those developments attenuate the distinction proposed in the interesting statement of Gerhard von Rad, (which I quote from Barasch’s book on Icon,) according to whom “In its relationship to God Israel, unlike

14 ʾAseret ha-Dibberot in ʿOtzar ha-Midrashim, ed. Yehudah Eisenstein, (New York, 1927), p. 450. More on this issue see Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections: On Kabbalah and Interpre- tation, (Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 2001), pp. 45-79. 15 Idel, ibidem. 16 See his Commentary on Liturgy, Ms. Paris BN 772, fol. 84a, adduced by Elliot Wolfson, “The Mystical Significance of Torah Study in German Pietism,” Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. LXXXIV (1993), p. 61 note 70. 17 Perushei Siddur ha-Tefillah ed., M. and Y. A. Herschler, (Jerusalem, 1992), p. 94. 38 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM other peoples, is not dependent on ritual image, only on God’s words.”18 Indeed, as Barasch remarked, the importance of the sacred words does not demote the possible resort to cultic images. Moreover, I would say, following Barasch, that in some forms of Kabbalah the words constituting Scriptures become a cultic image. After all the graphics of a text is as graphical an image as any other image, and there can be no doubt that the scroll of the Torah become a cultic object. In other words, while biblical Judaism, which was the topic of van Rad’s observation, was dependent more on a verbal revelation, since the canonization of the Bible, its graphics started to play an important role both in Rabbinic literature and in some forms of Kabbalah. Some discussions in Rabbinic literature deal with the minutiae of the writing of the scroll of the Torah, namely the size of some letters and the manner in which pericopes are composed on the page, but it seems that never had those details been organized in a comprehensive structure, anthropomorphic or not.19 This development seems to have some sources in Heikhalot literature or Midrash, for example, the identification of the Torah as the daughter of God, but explicit discussions are occurring only since the beginning of theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah. Since the 13th century, iconicity is no more a matter of an anthropomorphic and independent icon as it is the case of the Christian approaches, but of a text which was imagined to have anthropomorphic dimensions. In fact, the above passages and some of the texts to be quoted in this paragraph and in the next one, close dramatically the gap between conventional, linguistic signs and natural representation by means of isomorphism.20 In the middle of the thirteenth century in Castile, R. Jacob, the son of R. Jacob ha-Cohen, exposed an interesting theory on the relationship between the white and the black configurations of the Hebrew letters. When discussing the shape of the letter ‘aleph he wrote: The inner [form] stands for the Holy One, blessed be He, as He is hidden from the eye of any creature and His innermost [aspect] cannot be reached. The external form stands for the [external] world, which depends on the arm of the Holy One, blessed be He, as an amulet does on the arm of a

18 Icon, Studies in the History of an Idea, (New York University Press, New York and Lon- don, 1992), p. 19. 19 See the material collected by Moses Gaster, in his rather ignored study The Titled Bible, (Maggs Bros., London, 1929). 20 For a survey of the different scholarly analyses of the relationship between textuality and iconology see W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, (Chicago University Press, Chicago, London, 1986). torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 39

powerful man.21 And just as the inner form is the locus of the external form, so [also] is God the locus of the world, and the world is not the locus of God.”22 What I have mentioned to you that the white form in the ‘Aleph stands for the level of Holy One, blessed be He, but not the black one, [which is] external. I did tell you this by the way of a [great] principle, and as a great secret because the white form stands for the white garment, and our sages, blessed be their memory, said:23 ‘Whence was the light created? It teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, was clothed Himself with a white garment, and the splendor of it [the garment] shone from one end of the world to another as it is said24 ‘Who covers himself with light as with a garment’ and25 ‘and the light dwells with him’.26 The inner form, which represents the invisible aspect of the divine, consists of the white spaces that was imagined as the locus of the black configuration of the letter. It is the inner form that is the most important one, just as the soul sustains the body. This last type of imagery is expressly used in the context of our passage and it reflects the Neopla- tonic view of the soul as sustaining the body by the very fact that she surrounds it. Moreover, the white light is conspicuously identified with the divine light, which was described as the divine garment. All this is related to the divine arm, albeit the anthropomorphic aspect was somewhat attenuated in this passage. Crucial for our discussion is the fact that the amorphous component of the letter, the white space, is conceived of as the paramount element, and identical with a divine manifestation. According to R. Jacob, all the forms of the Hebrew letters are included within the form of ʿaleph, and this inclusion designates the various revelations of the divine to the prophets, when taking in different forms.27 Moreover, this letter in its black manifestation is described as a figural image, possessing as it is a form of a man, tzurat ʿAdam.28 The white forms are therefore not gaps without significance, disjunctive aspects of a text,

21 Cf. BT, Sanhedrin, fol. 21b; Idel, “The Concept of the Torah,” pp. 43–44 note 59. 22 Sefer Yetzirah, ed. Ithamar Gruenwald, in “A Preliminary Critical Edition of Sefer Yezira,” Israel Oriental Studies vol. I (1971), p. 157, par. 38. 23 Genesis Rabba, III:4, eds. Theodor-Albeck, p. 19. An analysis of this Midrash and its impact is found in Alexander Altmann, “A Note on the Rabbinic Doctrine of Creation,” Journal of Jewish Studies, vol. 6/7 (1955–1956), pp. 195–206. 24 Psalms 104:2. 25 Daniel 2:22. 26 The Rationales of the Letters, edited by Gershom Scholem, Madda‍ʾei ha-Yahadut (Jeru- salem, 1927), vol. II pp. 201–202, idem, On the Kabbalah, p. 30 note 2 and p. 50 and note 1. 27 Ibid., p. 202. 28 Ibid., p. 203. 40 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM but the unifying background which is, mystically speaking, more sublime than the black aspects. The text is continuous despite the white aspects, and it assumes the quality of a picture. Subsequently, the Kabbalists were less prone to draw a strong demarcation line between picture and text, as it has been proposed by Nelson Goodman.29 Obviously the above discussion does not refer, as in the earlier literature, to the entire Torah and to its role in the cosmogonical process. The white spaces are now described in terms reminiscent of negative theology. Intertwined as the white and black letters are they point to theosophical layers which sharply differ from each other. The human-oriented aspect, the semantic one, is constituted by the black letters while the divine dimension consists in the white spaces, and is parasemantic. The meaning created by the black letters defines, at the same time, the shape of the divine, which embraces the semantic message. However, this passage includes an even more striking factor: not only is the primordially written version of the Torah pregnant with a divine dimension but also the individual Hebrew letters in general, independently of their role in the cosmogonical process. To a certain extent, the separate letters are fraught with their own meaning, independent of their specific context in the biblical text. In other words, in the moment when the move from the semantic to the morphic aspects of the linguistic material took place, the auctorial intention disappeared, opening the path to speculations about and the contemplation of the divine morphe. It should be mentioned that neither in the above paragraph neither in the following one, I do not address the rich symbolism which relates the different types of Torah: the primordial, the written and the oral one, with different sefirotic manifestations. This symbolic approach, emphasizing as it does some semantic aspects, only rarely has a manifest anthropomorphic dimension, deserves a separate discussion.30

3. The Graphics of the Book and the Shape of the Author

Already at the beginning of the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah in Gerona, there are some descriptions of the Torah as a divine edifice.31

29 See Mitchell, Iconology, pp. 67–68. 30 More on this issue see Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 116–119. 31 See Scholem, On the Kabbalah, pp. 39–41; Idel, “The Concept of the Torah,” pp. 49–52. See also R. Jacob ben Sheshet, Meshiv Devarim Nekhohim, ed. G. Vajda, (Israeli Academy of Science and Humanities, Jerusalem, 1967), p. 141. torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 41

However, the Geronese Kabbalists did not elaborate upon the details of the correspondences between the divine system and the Torah. It is only in the Castilian Kabbalah that the most important developments which explicate the various possibilities included in this identification. This is clear in the most influential Kabbalistic book written in Castile, the book of the Zohar.32 So, for example, we read that the Written Torah is identical to the “likeness of man” found on the throne according to Ezekiel.33 The term demut, likeness, occurs also in a somewhat similar context in an younger contemporary of the Zohar, Sefer Maʾarekhet‍ ha-ʾElohut.34 Else- where in the same book, a much more detailed comparison between the human body and its limbs and the Torah is offered, a comparison which had a profound impact on many Kabbalists.35 One of the most important and influential examples for the stand that the Torah has an anthropomorphic shape, is a lengthy discussion found in R. Joseph Gikatilla’s classical Sha‍ʾarei ʿOrah. This Kabbalist presents a parable explaining the understanding of the innermost aspects of the Torah, as the gradual stripping of the garments of the king, who divests himself of his arms and clothes, remaining naked with his wife. This parable is to be understood also as pointing to the relationship between God and the Assembly of Israel, and on the theosophical level, as the relationship between the male and female divine attributes, Tiferet and Malkhut.36 It is in this context that the Kabbalist resorts to the term Tzurato, ‘his form’, namely the form of the naked king, which is supposed to point to the esoteric meaning of the Torah, which is the divine name, the Tetragrammaton.37 It should be mentioned that according to many Kabbalists, including Gikatilla, the plene spelling of the consonants of the Tetragrammaton are numerically equivalent to 45 which is the equivalent of the consonants of

32 For a comprehensive discussion of the concept of the Torah in the Zohar see Isaiah Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, An Anthology of Texts, tr. David Goldstein, (The Littman Library, London, Washington, 1991), III, pp. 1077–1121. See also Wolfson, Through a Speculum, pp. 375–377. 33 Zohar, I, fol. 71b. 34 (Mantua, 1558), fol. 95a. R. Yehudah Hayyat describes the Torah as the image of God, while elaborating on hints already found in the text he interpreted. See his Minhat Yehudah, ibid. 35 See Zohar, I, fol. 134b; Scholem, On the Kabbalah, p. 46; Boaz Huss, Sockets of Fine Gold, The Kabbalah of Rabbi Shimʾon Ibn Lavi, (The Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2000), p. 172 and note 158 (Hebrew). 36 Ed. Joseph ben Shlomo, (Mossad Bialik, Jerusalem, 1970), pp. 206, 208–209. More on this parable see Idel, “The Concept of the Torah,” pp. 60–62. 37 See also below note 69. 42 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM

‘Adam.38 Thus, the anthropomorphic aspect of the divinity had been projected within the most essential aspect of the Torah, the divine name. One of the most fascinating cases of a straightforward identification of the graphic shapes of the Torah with the divine realm is found in a circle of Kabbalists active at the end of the 13th century in Castile, to which both Gikatilla and the book of the Zohar have been close. In the anonymous Sefer ha-Yihud, (attributed in some manuscripts to a certain R. Shem Tov ben Jacob of Faro, in others to other Kabbalists), it is said that: God gave us the entire perfect Torah from the [word] Bereshit to the [words] Le-ʾEinei kol Israel.39 Behold, how all the letters of the Torah, by their shapes, combined and separated, swaddled letters, curved ones and crooked ones, superfluous and elliptic ones, minute and large ones, and inverted, the calligraphy of the letters, the open and closed pericopes and the ordered ones, all of them are the shape of God, Blessed be He. It is similar to, though incomparable with, the thing someone paints using [several] kinds of colors; likewise the Torah, beginning with the first pericope until the last one is the shape of God, the Great and Formidable, Blessed be He, since if one letter be missing from the Scroll of Torah, or one is superfluous, or a [closed] pericope was [written] in an open fashion or an [open] pericope was [written] in a closed fashion, that Scroll of Torah is disquali- fied, since it has not in itself the shape of God, blessed be He the Great and Formidable, because of the change the shape caused. And you should understand it! And because it is incumbent on each and every one of Israel to say that the world has been created for him40 God obliged41 each and every one of them to write a scroll of the Torah for himself, and the concealed secret is [that he] made God, blessed be He.42 The precise form of the authorized writing of the Bible is, therefore, equivalent to the shape of God. In its ideal form, the Bible constitutes an absolute book including in itself the supreme revelation of God, which is offered anthropomorphicly and sometimes symbolically, limb by limb,

38 See, e.g., Qetzat Beʾurei ha-Moreh, (Venice, 1575), fol. 24cd. 39 Those are the first and the last Hebrew words of the Pentateuch. 40 See Tanna de-Bei ʿEliyahu, ch. 25. 41 In fact ‘commanded’. 42 Sefer ha-Yihud, Ms. Milano-Ambrosiana 62, fol. 113b, printed and discussed in Idel, “Concept of the Torah,” pp. 62–64; On the problem of authorship see Moshe Idel, “The Commentary on Ten Sefirot and Fragments from the Writings of R. Joseph of Hamadam,” ʾAlei Sefer, vol. 6/7 (1979), pp. 82–84 (Hebrew). See also Scholem, On the Kabbalah, pp. 43–44; Charles Mopsik, Les Grands textes de la Kabbale, (Verdier, Lagrasse, 1993), pp. 278– 287, 560–565; Michael Fishbane, The Garments of the Torah, Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics, (Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianopolis, 1989), p. 43; Barbara A. Holdrege, Veda and Torah, Transcending the Textuality of Scripture, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1996), p. 361. torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 43 within the various parts of the text. However, what is more important for the understanding of the status of the canonical text is the identification between the scroll of the Torah, which was incumbent to be written for, or by each and every Jew, and the concept of making, or reproducing the image of God. There is no doubt that the scroll of the Bible is conceived in iconic terms, as a faithful representation of the divine shape. It seems that beyond the emphasis on the isomorphism, the view of the anonymous Kabbalist is that the iconic Torah represents the divine hypostasis of the ten sefirot, conceived in this book as possessing a divine essence. Though not consubstantial with the divine, the Torah is faithfully reproducing the form of the hypostasis, in a manner reminiscent the concept of icon found in Nicephorus of Constantinopol.43 The emergence of this important and influential passage may be explained as the result of the conflation between two somewhat different attitudes to the Torah found among Catalan Kabbalists: Nahmanides’ emphasis on the importance of the minutiae of the writing of the scroll, as found in his introduction to the Commentary on the Pentateuch, with Geronese Kabbalistic discussions, especially R. Azriel of Gerona, about the Torah as a human-like edifice. Let me introduce another passage from a book of R. Joseph of Hamadan, a late 13th century Kabbalist writing in Castile who was, conceptually and historically speaking, close to Sefer ha-Yihud.44 In a passage dealing with a complex isomorphism, he declared that: This is the red attribute of judgement,45 and from those five fingers were created five lower sefirot and corresponding to them has David, blessed be his memory, composed the five books of Psalms, and corresponding to the

43 See Barasch, Icon, pp. 278, 281–282; Christoph Schoenborn, L’icone du Christ, Fonde- ments theologiques, (Le Cerf, Paris, 1986), pp. 206–214. 44 On this Kabbalist see Gershom Scholem, Einige Kabbalistische Handschriften im Britischen Museum, (Jerusalem, 1931), pp. 19–21; Alexander Altmann, “An Allegorical Midrash on Genesis 24 According to the ‘Inner Kabbalah’,” Sefer Ha-Yovel Tifereth Yisra‍ʾel Likhevod Yisra‍ʾel Brodie, eds. S. Y. Zimmels, Y. Rabinovitz, Y. S. Feinstein, (London, 5727), pp. 57–65 (Hebrew Part); Jeremy Zweling, Joseph of Hamadan’s Sefer Tashak, (Ph. D. The- sis, Brandeis University, 1975); Shlomo Pines, “A Parallel between Two Iranian and Jewish Themes,” Irano-Judaica, vol. II (1990), pp. 49–51; Yehuda Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, trs. A. Schwartz, S. Nakache, P. Peli, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1993), pp. 103–126; Charles Mopsik, “Un manuscript inconnu du Sefer Tashak de R. Joseph de Hamadan suivi d’un fragment inedit,” Kabbalah, vol. 2 (1997), pp. 167–205; idem, Joseph de Hamadan, Fragment d’un commentaire sur la Genese, (Verdier, Lagrasse, 1998); Idel, “Commentary on Ten Sefirot,” pp. 74–84 and “Additional Fragments from the Writings of R. Joseph of Hamadan,” Daat, vol. 21 (1988), pp. 47–55 (Hebrew). 45 Namely the sefirah of Gevurah, which is symbolizes by the left hand. 44 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM

three joints of each and every finger there are three topics in each of the [five] books. Genesis corresponds to the thumb, and is divided in three topics: the creation of heaven and earth, the events related to the forefathers, and the matter of exile. And the second finger corresponds to Exodus, and just as there are three joints in a finger, so is the book divided in three topics. The book of Exodus reports events related to Moses, our master, blessed be his memory, who took out the people of Israel from Egypt as a mission of God, blessed be He, and tells the laws and rules, and tells the matter of the Tabernacle. Behold they are three things. And the book of Leviticus, which corresponds to the third finger, so is this book the middle of the Pentateuch, and it is divided in three topics corresponding to three joints of the middle finger. They are the law of the sacrifices, and the law of the leprosy, and the blessings and the curses. The book of Numbers corresponds to the fourth finger and is divided in three topics: The numbers, the issue of the priest- hood and the issue of the spies. The fifth book corresponds to the fifth finger and is called Deuteronomy, which explicates the issue of the wonders and the miracles done by God to Israel, and the issue of the commandments, and Moses’s death. Behold the five fingers of the right hand corresponding to the five books of the Pentateuch. But the five books in the book of Psalms correspond to the five fingers of the left hand, and each of these books too is divided in three topics corresponding to three joints of the finger.46 Though there is a certain correlation between the anthropomorphic details involved in the correspondences found in the two last quotes, the main intention of the Kabbalist is rather clear: the shape of the human body is the common denominator for both the Torah and the divine realm. Moreover, it seems that the mode of expression dominant in this passage does not assume the fathoming of an inexpressible realm by contemplating the human body qua shadow. I would rather stress that the precise correspondences presuppose a strict isomorphism. In order to understand these topics, and the correspondences between them, the Kabbalist must resort to his anatomical knowledge for an insight in the literary and divine structures. Those literary parts are conceived of as figural images representing both a semantic content, on both the plain and symbolic level, and the shape of a certain limb, on a parasemantic level. In the Commentary on the Rationales of the Commandments the term ‘supernal form’ recurs:

46 Sefer ha-Malkhut, ed. J. Toledano, (Casablanca, 1930), fol. 93ab. For establishing the authorship of this part of the book see Efrayyim Gottlieb, Studies in Kabbalah Literature, ed. J. Hacker, (Tel Aviv, 1976), pp. 251–253 (Hebrew). torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 45

Happy is the man who knows how to relate a limb47 to another and a form to another, which are found in the Holy and Pure Chain, blessed be His Name, because the Torah is His form,48 blessed be He. He commanded us to study Torah in order to know the likeness of the Supernal Form, as some few Kabbalists said49 ‘Cursed is whomever will not keep this Torah up.’ Can the Torah fall? This [verse should be understood as] a warning for the cantor to show the written form of the Torah scroll to the community in order that they will see the likeness of the Supernal Form. Moreover, the study of the Torah brings someone about to see supernal secrets and to see the glory of the Holy One, blessed be He, indeed.50 The gist of the passage is the knowledge of the structural affinity between the human limbs and forms and the divine ones. The cognitive movement is expressly upward. The form of the letters in the Torah is assumed to play the same role like the shapes of human body: the later is an icon, and a shadow, enabling the contemplation of the supernal form.51 This quality explains, according to the last quote, the custom of showing the open scroll of the Torah to the members of the community after the reading of the weekly portion. However, it seems that the formal correspondences between the lower and higher limbs should be understood in a broader sense. The Hebrew expression ‘ever ke-neged ‘ever which means ‘a limb versus a[nother] limb’ is reminiscent of another recurrent phrase in R. Joseph of Hamadan’s nomenclature: ‘ever mahaziq ‘ever which means that the lower limb is sustaining the supernal one. This Kabbalist contends that the performance of the commandments by a certain limb strength- ens the corresponding limb found on high, which is a sefirah.52 Thus, the contemplation of the higher realm, namely divine Glory, starting from the lower is not the single, and may be even not the most important sort of relationship between the privileged shapes here below, the human body

47 Namely a human limb to a divine limb. 48 Tzurato. For this term see above, in the discussion of Gikatilla. See also the view that the Torah is the form of the supernal world, found in Gikatilla’s book Sha‍ʾarei Tzedeq, in the important fragment printed by Gottlieb, Studies, p. 155. 49 Deut. 27:26. I translated the verse in the literal way in which R. Joseph understood it. 50 Ms. Jerusalem JNUL 80 3925, fol. 110b. On this book see Alexander Altmann, “Con- cerning the Question of the Authorship of Sefer Ta‍ʾamei ha-Mitzwot Attributed to R. Isaac ibn Farhi,” Qiriat Sefer, vol. XL (1964–1965), pp. 256–276, 405–412 (Hebrew). See also Idel, “The Concept of the Torah,” p. 65. For an additional analysis of aspects of this passage see Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 298. 51 For relations between icons and shadows in Origen see Schoenborn, L’icone du Christ, p. 79. 52 See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, (Yale University Press, New Haven, London 1988), pp. 184–190; Huss, Sockets of Fine Gold, pp. 192–211. 46 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM and the Torah on the one hand, and the supernal sefirotic structure on high, on the other. Knowing God becomes now no more knowing only the divine will, neither only His nature, but also intuiting His form by means of studying the Torah, which means now the understanding the anthropomorphic correspondence. The lower not only knows the higher, but also contributes to its making—like in the case of the above quote from Sefer ha-Yihud—or maintains it, as it is the case in R. Joseph of Hamadan’s books. This theurgical influence is possible only by the dint of the affinities existing between three isomorphic structures: the Torah, the human body, and the ten sefirot conceived of as possessing a divine essence. The same Kabbalist contends again in his Commentary on the Rationales of the Commandments: Why is it called Torah and it has an open and a closed pericope, referring to the image of the building and the form of man, who is like the supernal, holy, and pure form. And just as there are in man joints connected to each other, just as in the Torah there are closed pericopes like in the case of the structure of the pericope Va-Yhi Be-Shalah Pharaoh53 and the secret of the song ʿAz Yashir Moshe54 are the secret of the joints of the Holy One, blessed be His hands. And the song of ha-ʾazinu55 is the secret of the ear of the Holy One, blessed be He, and the secret of ʿAz Yashir Yisrael56 is the secret of the divine circumcision57 . . . and the positive commandments correspond to the secret of the male and the negative commandments correspond to the secret of the female and to the secret of the Shekhinah and to the secret of Malkhut.58 This is the reason why the Torah is called so, because it refers to the likeness of the Holy One, blessed be He.59 R. Joseph of Hamadam offers an interesting interpretation to the word Torah: while the noun point to instruction, the medieval Kabbalist interprets it as meaning ‘refer,’ morah. However, while the ancient use of the

53 Exodus 13:17–17:16. 54 Exodus 15:1. 55 Deuteronomy 32:1–43. 56 Number 21:17. 57 Berit, namely the phallus. Though R. Joseph of Hamadan was one of the Kabbalists who indulged in sexual symbols more than many other Jewish authors, at least in this case the phallus does not play an outstanding role in his symbolism. 58 I wonder whether the various designations to the feminine manifastation reflect different aspects of the last sefirah. 59 Ms. Jerusalem, JNUL 80 3925, fol. 110b. For the affinities between this text and Geronese Kabbalists see the introduction of M. Meier, ed., A Critical Edition of the Sefer Ta‍ʾamei ha-Mitzwoth Attributed to Isaac ibn Farhi (Ph. D. Dissertation, Brandeis University, 1974), pp. 32–33, and Idel, “The Concept of the Torah,” pp. 49–56. Compare also to a similar discussion in R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid, Sefer ʿOr Zarua‍ʾ, Ms. Oxford-Bodleiana 1624, fol. 10a. torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 47 term Torah points to the instruction stemming from the supernal realm and intended to man here below, the Kabbalist assumes the inverse direction: the lower entity, the Torah, reflects a higher one, and thus it opens one more way to the understanding the divine by fathoming the structure and the meaning of the text. This understanding is based upon a type of isomorphism shared by certain portions of the Torah and by the limbs of the divine anthropos. However, this symbolic function does not work here on the narrative level, by introducting a divine myth as paralleled by, and reflected in the mundane events reported in the Torah, as it is the case in many types of theosophical Kabbalah, especially in the book of the Zohar. According to R. Joseph of Hamadan, it is the graphic shape of the portion of the canonical text that counts, not its semantic content. Like in the case of Sefer ha-Yihud, a book very close to this Kabbalist, the assumption is that God, the human shape and the Bible are somehow identical or at least isomorphic. However, what I find fascinating in the last quote is not the very disclosure of this isomorphism but the attempt to flesh it out in some detail, by correlating specific sections of the biblical text to specific limbs of the supernal anthropos. I would say that while Sefer ha-Yihud refers to a pictorial correspondence, the views of R. Joseph of Hamadan may be described as discussing a skeletic type of correspondence. Else- where in the same book, it is said that Woe to whoever believes that there is no more than the plain sense of the Torah, because the Torah is the name of the Holy One blessed be He, in its entirety . . . because the Torah in its entirety is the name of the Holy One, and it consists in inner [namely spiritual] things . . . that any creature cannot comprehend the greatness of its rank, but God, blessed be He, the supreme and the wonderful that created it, and the Holy One, blessed be he, His Torah is within Him and in Him there is the Torah, and this is the reason why Kabbalists said that ‘He is in His name and the Name is in Him’,60 He is His Torah and the Torah is made out of the holy and pure chain, in [the image of the] supernal form, and it is the shadow of the Holy One, blessed be He, indeed.61 The depths of the Torah as text cannot be penetrated by the mortals. I assume, therefore, that the Torah does not serve as the telescope by means of which it is possible to attain a vision of the divine. Rather, being

60 On this dictum and its sources in the ancient Sefer Shiʾur Qomah and in early Kab- balah see Idel, “The Concept of the Torah,” p. 52. 61 Commentary on the Rationales of the Commandments, Ms. Jerusalem, JNUL 80 3925, fol. 116b; Ms. Vatican 177, fol. 24a. See also Idel, “The Concept of the Torah,” pp. 66–67. 48 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM identical to God, it is fraught with the nature of the divine realm, designated by the terms ‘the pure and holy chain’ and the ‘supernal form’, namely anthropomorphism. Thus, it is the nontransparent nature of the Torah, that is emphasized, and I assume that any effort of achieving its spiritual essence consists in finding out the correspondence between the different aspects of the text and the divine structure.62 The transparency achieved by the theosophical-symbolic exegesis consists in the imposition of the theosophical scheme upon the Torah, which in itself is conceived to be incomprehensible but by God. The paradigmatic supernal form, an anthropomorphic one, is reflected by its shadow, the Torah. Since the two parallel anthropomorphic systems are known, what remains to the Kab- balist to do in the context of the Torah is to find the precise correspondences between them and the various parts of the sacred text. According to direct continuation of the last passage, the respect toward the Torah is connected to the respect for the old persons, assuming a common denominator between them, the external form. The Kabbalist expressly identifies the Pentateuch to an old person, because in both the paradigm of the Holy One is found. This is the reason why a feeling of the tremendum is related to the appearance of the Torah.63 This affinity between the Torah and a human being occurs in a rather explicit manner also in a treatise of R. Joseph Angelet, Sefer Livenat ha-Sappir, written in 1325, presumably under the impact of R. Joseph of Hamadan.64 Important in this context is the vision of a mid-14th century influential Kabbalistic book, entitled Sefer ha-Temunah and composed apparently in the Byzantine Empire. There the assumption is that the divine picture, ha- temunah, consists of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which means in fact the letters of the Torah. Like R. Joseph of Hamadan, the anonymous Kabbalist too relates parts of the Bible to human limbs.65 However, unlike

62 See Absorbing Perfections, pp. 69–74. 63 See ibidem, Ms. Vatican 177, fol. 24a. The Kabbalist uses the term dugmato shel ha- Qabah, which may be translated as the paradigm of the Holy One, Blessed be He. For the earlier connections between the respect for the old persons and the reverence to the Torah see already in the Aramaic translation named Onqelos on Leviticus 19:32; See also BT, Qiddushin, fol. 33b. 64 See the commentary on Leviticus, Ms. British Library 767, fols. 359b, 363ab. 65 See the passages and the discussion related to this book in Idel, “The Concept of the Torah,” pp. 70–74. On this book and theories see Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah tr. Allan Arkush, ed. R. J. Zwi Werblowski, (JPS and Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 460–475; Elias Lipiner, The Metaphysics of the Hebrew Alphabet, (The Magnes Press, Jeru- salem, 1989), pp. 216–265 (Hebrew). torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 49

R. Jacob ben Jacob ha-Cohen, according to Sefer ha-Temunah it is the black aspects of the biblical text, not the white parts, which represent the divine. In any case, it is interesting that this book used this title, understood as a matter of external shape. The identity between the Torah and the essence of God occurs in quite explicit terms in the late 15th century Sefer ha-Meshiv, a book which is a Kab balistic commentary on the Pentateuch dictated by the Author himself.66 The relation between contemplation of the Torah, cultic actions and anthropomorphism has been expressed by R. Meir ibn Gabbai’s ʾAvodat ha- Qodesh, a classic book composed in 1531 in the Ottoman Empire: The Torah is, therefore, the wholeness67 of the grand and supernal Anthro- pos, and this is the reason why it comprises the 248 positive commandments and 365 negative commandments which are tantamount to the number of the limbs and sinews of the lower and supernal man . . . and since the Torah has the shape of man it is fitting to be given to man, and man is man by its virtue, and at the end he will cleave to Man.68 Elsewhere this Kabbalist describes the Torah again by the term tzurat ha- ’Adam, the form of man.69 This kind of iconization of the Torah serves its transformation into an intermediary man, a mesoanthropos,70 as it is “the intermediary which stirs the supernal image towards the lower [one]”71 or, according to another sentence of the same Kabbalist “the Torah and the commandments are the intermediary which links the lower image with the supernal one, by the affinity they have with both.”72 Or, to invoke Stephane Mallarmé, the Torah is “Le Livre, Instrument Spirituel.”73 How- ever, the instrumental nature of the Torah, and the isomorphism of the three factors God, man and Torah, is part of a strong theurgical presuppo- sition: the lower is capable of impacting the higher by means of the Torah. Thus, we may conclude that some of the most important theosophical- theurgical Kabbalists developed an anthropomorphic concept of the Torah since they envisioned the ritualistic activity as the most important

66 Cf. the passage printed by Gershom Scholem, “The Maggid of R. Joseph Taitachek and the Revelations Attributed to Him,” Sefunot, vol. XI (1971–1978), p. 100 (Hebrew). 67 Kelal. 68 (Jerusalem, 1963), fol. 20c. See also Idel, “The Concept of the Torah,” pp. 74–75. 69 Ibidem, fol. 86cd. 70 See Idel, ibidem, p. 75. 71 ʾAvodat ha-Qodesh, fol. 36d. 72 Ibidem. 73 Stephane Mallarmé, Oeuvres Completes, (Gallimard, Paris, 1970), p. 378. 50 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM form of ritual activity, and those acts involve limbs which were conceived of as both representing and impacting higher entities described in anthropomorphic-dynamic terms. It should be mentioned that the theosophical- theurgical Kabbalists, though assuming the perfection of the human body, were not interested so much in its external beauty, as in their capacity to perform rituals. Thus, the dynamic vision of religious life as replete with ritualistic performances is to be seen as the main reason for the detailed anthropomorphic theosophies.74 Though in late antiquity is possible to find some Jewish texts where the drive to see the divine beauty was part of the mystical effort,75 this seems not to be the case in medieval texts. It should be mentioned that at the end of the 16th century, an interesting development took place in the circle of R. Isaac Luria. In the version of Lurianism as formulated in R. Israel Saruq’s Kabbalah, following some earlier Ashkenazi and early 16th century traditions, the first divine manifestation are the combinations of all the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which is designated as Malbush, garment, and the primordial Torah. The second manifestation is the ʿAdam Qadmon, the primordial man, who emerges within a lower part of the primordial Torah. Thus, it seems that an anthropomorphic structure is found within the space occu- pied by the primordial Torah.76 Also in this case, the semantic aspects of the Torah are not involved in the type of relationship between the supernal anthropos and the text. The above quotes are far from exhausting the Kabbalistic treatments of the Torah as the image or icon of God. More can be found in the later Kabbalistic sources, and some of them have been analyzed elsewhere.77 However, it would be wise to distinguish between these notions and the Christian icon, which is supposed to represent a very specific persona, the Christ, either as suffering or in an apotheotic state; the perception of the Torah as anthropomorphic is related to the very structure of the human, basically male, body. It represents everyman’s image, rather than the body of the savior.

74 See Moshe Idel, “From Structure to Action,” Mishqafayyim, vol. 32 (1998), pp. 39–41 (Hebrew). 75 Pines, “Points of Similarity,” pp. 102–105, 107; Aaron, “Shedding Light,” pp. 309–310. 76 On the entire issue see Moshe Idel, Golem, Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1990), pp. 148–154; For a more elaborate exposition of this theory see idem, “Between The Kabbalah of Jerusalem and the Kabbalah of R. Israel Saruq, Sources for R. Israel Saruq’s Doctrine of Malbush,” Shalem, ed. J. Hacker, vol. 6 (1992), pp. 165–173 (Hebrew). 77 See Idel, “The Concept of the Torah,” pp. 76–83. torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 51

It should be mentioned that the anthropomorphic vision of the Torah had elicited an interesting reaction by R. Shimeon ibn Lavi, a mid-16th century Kabbalist who, though a commentator of the Zohar, suggested that the resort to the shape of man in connection to the Torah is but a metaphor for its perfection.78 In the same vein, also R. Dov Baer of Miedzirech, known as the Great Maggid, interprets the Zoharic theory dealing with the Torah as possessing human limbs in a metaphorical manner.79 Before leaving the iconic attitude to the Torah, it would be pertinent to address the question of the ascent of the anthropomorphic imagery in relation to the Torah. As pointed out, there can be little doubt that there were earlier traditions which could be exploited in order to offer the more explicit anthropomorphic views adduced above. Though this seems to me to be the case, the floruit of this type of discussion in Catalan and Castilian schools of Kabbalah may point to an effort to offer a Jewish counterpart for the anthropomorphic icons, by emphasizing the textual anthropomorphism. Hard as this question is to be answered in a significant manner, it seems fascinating that in was in Catholic provinces that the interest in this type of imagery for the Torah, has been elaborated in detail.

4. Torah as the Agent Intellect

Like in many other important issues, Kabbalists had different views. In the following two paragraphs I would like to describe the impact of the appro- priation of models of thinking from the medieval Arabic thought by Kabbal- ists and Hasidic masters. The first, which will constitute the topic of this paragraph, deals with the revolution created by the introduction of the intellectual vision of the divinity and the entities that mediate between it and the celestial world: the separate intellects. Likewise, human perfection had been described in terms of intellectual achievements. Adopting these intellectualistic attitudes, the formal aspects of the deity and of the scroll of the Bible were relegated to the margin or totally obliterated. Instead the Torah, like God, was conceived of as identical with the Agent Intel- lect, a spiritual entity which is the last of the ten separate intellects, whose

78 See his Ketem Paz, (ed. Djerba, 1940), fol. 159d. 79 See Maggid Devarav le-Yaʾaqov‍ , ed. R. Schatz-Uffenheimer, (The Magnes Press, Jeru- salem, 1976), p. 17. 52 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM nature is similar to that of God.80 This enterprise involved not only the indifference toward the graphic of the book but also toward the anthropomorphic significance of the many biblical expressions, like image or face. This iconoclastic attitude represents a deep restructuration of the more dominant understandings the Bible, and of Jewish culture in general up to the 12th century which were much more ‘iconodolic’. Fascinatingly enough, when Maimonides, the main power beyond this comprehensive rationalization of Judaism, attacked the most important anthropomorphic theological treatise, Shiʾur Qomah, he attributes it to some ‘Greek homilists’ apparently a reference to the Byzantine iconodols who emerged victorious from the fierce debate with the iconoclasts.81 Indeed, the first chapters of his Guide of the Perplexed are devoted to the non-corporeal understanding of terms like tzelem, temunah, and panim.82 It goes without saying that Midrashic discussions dealing with the Torah as written on the divine body did not play any role in Maimonides’ conceptualization of the Torah. Such an anti-anthropomorphic attitude, sometimes related to an apo- phatic theology, is found among many followers of Maimonides, who is one of the primary though implicit source for this view. Also R. Abraham ibn Ezra and his followers contributed to this cosmic understanding of the Torah.83 The central status of the Agent Intellect in the realm of ontology and psychology has been adopted in a substantial manner by the founder of ecstatic Kabbalah, R. Abraham Abulafia, though some older figures, like R. Isaac ibn Latif, expressed similar views. In Abulafia’s writings there are various formulations dealing with the identity between an intellectualistic concept of Torah and the Agent Intellect. Some discussions on this issue from Abulafia’s writings and his immediate sources, especially the view of R. Barukh Togarmi, were dealt with elsewhere.84 One more passage to this

80 Herbert Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect (Oxford University Press, New York, 1992). 81 On Maimonides’ theology as utterly incorporeal see Warren Z. Harvey, “The Incor- poreality of God in Maimonides, Rabad, and Spinoza,” in eds. S.O. Heller Wilensky & M. Idel, Studies in Jewish Thought, (The Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1989), pp. 63–78 (Hebrew). 82 I,chs. 1,2,3,54. 83 Shlomo Sela, Astrology and Biblical Exegesis in Abraham ibn Ezra’s Thought, (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 19999), pp. 198–199 (Hebrew). 84 Moshe Idel, Language, Torah and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia, tr. Menahem Kalus, (SUNY Press, New York, 1989), pp. 29–46. torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 53 effect, found in an untitled manuscript of Abulafia’s, is pertinent for our context here. When interpreting the verse, ‘U-vaharta ba-Hayyim’,85 thou shall chose life’ he asserts that “There is a great secret pointing to that upon which the life of people depend, whose secret is the tenth angel, and it is the secret of the Torah because the [word] “And thou should choose” [u-vaharta] amounts to [the numerical value of] ha-Torah. And ba-hayyim is a secret, and is the knowledge of the Tetragrammaton, Yod He’ Vav He’. Behold, the secret of the Torah is life which depends always upon the Torah.86 There can be no doubt that the tenth angel stands for the tenth cosmic intellect, which is identical in Abulafia’s system also to the archangel Metatron. The real life, which is to be understood in the context of Abu- lafia’s writings as the life of the human intellect which depends upon the Agent Intellect, namely the supernal Torah. This spiritual dependence of the human upon a supernal angel is reminiscent of Muslim spirituality, which resorts to an angelology, especially as expounded in ibn ʾArabi.87 However, immersed as Abulafia was in numerical exegesis he founded his passage on the identity between ‘life’ namely the sublime attainment of the intellect and the union with the divine name, as be-hayyim and the numerical value of the consonants of the Tetragrammaton plus their plene spelling, amount to the same sum 70 or 71. In his major work, Hayyei ha-ʾOlam ha-Baʾ‍, the ecstatic Kabbalist describes the tenth sphere, a term which stands sometimes for the Agent Intellect, as follows: But the excellency of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it; and the secret of this excellency is the entirety of the Torah; and the secret of the Torah, the tenth sphere, will preserve the life of him who has it, the masters of resurrection.88 Life, as seen above, is an allegory for the act of intellection which ensures the immortality of the soul, is related to the Agent Intellect in many medieval sources, but here it is explicitly related to the Torah. Indeed,

85 Deuter. 30:19. 86 Ms. Firenze-Laurentiana II.48, fol. 32a. 87 On mystical potentials of this concept in medieval philosophy see Moshe Idel, Mes- sianic Mystics, (Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 1998), p. 349 notes 26, 27. For the mystical overtones of this concept in Islamic mysticism see in the various studies of Henry Corbin, especially his Alone with the Alone, (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1998), pp. 10–11, 17–18, 80, idem, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis, (Kegan Paul International, London, 1983), p. 76. 88 Ms. Oxford-Bodleiana 1582, fol. 80a; Idel, Language, Torah and Hermeneutics, p. 39. 54 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM according to another text, the Torah exists within the human intellectual apparatus,89 thus creating an intellectual continuum between God, the agent and the human intellects, the latter two being understood as Torah. In one of his commentaries on the Guide of the Perplexed, he declared that The soul is a portion of the Divinity and within it there are 231 gates, [Yesh R’al] and it is called ‘the congregation of Israel’ that collects and gathers into herself the entire community, under its power of intellect, which is called the ‘supernal congregation of Israel’ the mother of providence, being the cause of the providence, the intermediary90 between us and God. This is the Torah, the result of the effluence of the twenty-two letters.91 Let me start with the remark that this is a rather uncharacteristic passage: Abulafia was concerned with the intellect not with the soul, and the concept of the divinity of the soul is quite weird in an Aristotelian or Maimonidean systems which Abulafia shared to a very great extent. I assume that here, like in some other cases, there is a vestige of an earlier tradition that was not sufficiently adapted to his way of thought. In any case, the soul is conceived to be a portion of divinity in a way reminiscent of Neoplatonism and theosophical Kabbalah. This divine soul harbors also the 231 gates which point to the primordial Torah and Abulafia mentions Torah explicitly at the end of the passage. Moreover, we may assume that either Abulafia, or his source, did not intend human souls in general but the souls of the people of Israel for two reasons: the term Knesset Yisrael occurs twice in the passage, and the 231 gates, in Hebrew RL’ whose consonants are part of the word Yisrael, as Abulafia and the young Gikatilla repeated so many times in their writings. It is quite reasonable to assume that the two occurrences of the term Knesset Yisrael stand for the human intellect and the supernal one, which is identical with the Agent and the human Intellect.92 The feminine terminology used by Abulafia in order to

89 Ibidem, p. 49 the quote from ʿOtzar ʾEden Ganuz. 90 ha-ʾemtza‍ʾit. See Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. 165 note 47; idem, Absorbing Perfections, p. 446 and n. 41. 91 Sitrei Torah, Ms. Paris BN 774, fol. 155b, translated in Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. 38. Compare also R. Dov Baer of Mezeritch, ʿOr Torah, (Jerusalem, 1968), pp. 58–59, and to the early 19th century R. Menahem Mendel of Shklov, Menahem Tzion, (Jerusalem, 1987), p. 18, in a text reminiscent of R. Abraham Abulafia’s thought. See also ibidem, p. 21. 92 On the term Knesset Yisrael as a metaphor for the the supernal intellect, as well as for the human spiritual power in ecstatic Kabbalah see more in M. Idel, The Mystical Experi- ence in Abraham Abulafia tr. J. Chipman, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1987), pp. 211–212 note 36. torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 55 designate the Agent Intellect is also strange in Abulafia’s mystical axiol- ogy, where the source of knowledge is conceived, metaphorically, to be masculine. Perhaps, the resort to such a reference has to do with an earlier theosophical Kabbalistic source, which stems from a way of thinking different from Abulafia’s. This quote may be understood as pointing to a triunity of God, soul of Israel, and the Torah, in the vein of the famous but much later formula, Qudesha’ Berikh Hu’, ‘Orayyta’ vi-Ysrael—had Hu’.93 Also here, the importance of the activity of the Kabbalist in order to actualize this potential triunity is conspicuous. Let me point out the median role of the Torah for the process of union between the human and the divine intellect: And human love cannot share in the divine save after much study of Torah and much attainment of wisdom, and after having received prophecy, and this is the secret of Hatan [bridegroom]: Torah, [the letter] tav, between Hen94—Wisdom [Hokhmah] on its right and Prophecy [Nevu’ah] on its left.95 Here another triunity is described: the divine and the human love, (which are to be understood as the human and divine intellects) are connected to each other by the study of the Torah, by wisdom and prophecy, which are acts of intellection. Now the Aristotelian noetics dealing with the identity of the intellect, the intelligible and the act of intellection is adduced in order to conceptualize the union between the human and the divine. It is fascinating to see the sequel created by Abulafia: Torah, namely its study, is the second among three stages which culminates in prophecy. Thus, it seems to be a low stage in the process of intellection, whose peak is a direct contact with the divine.

93 On the emergence of this triunity see Abraham J. Heschel, “God, Torah, and Israel,” Theology and Church in Times of Change: Essays in Honor of John C. Bennett, ed. E. LeRoy and A. Hundry (Westminster, 1970), pp. 81, 89 note 60; On the identity between these three elements see Isaiah Tishby, Studies in Kabbalah and Its Branches (The Magnes Press, Jerusa- lem, 1993), vol. III pp. 941–960 (Hebrew). See also the recurrent resort to this formula in the early 19th century Lituanian R. Hayyim of Volozhin in his Nefesh ha-Hayyim. Meanwhile, more material which includes the triple identification surfaced: see Bracha Sack, Be-Sha‍ʾarei ha-Qabbalah shel Moshe Cordovero, (University of Be’er Sheva‍ʾ Press, Beʾer Sheva‍ʾ, 1995), pp. 103–109 (Hebrew), who pointed out several discussions, including Cordoverian evidence that anticipated the 18th century formula; and Moshe Idel, “Two Remarks on R. Yair ben Sabbatai’s Sefer Herev Piffiyot,” Qiriat Sefer, vol. 53 (1979), pp. 213–214 (Hebrew). 94 Grace. This word emerges as the acronym of the first letters of the two Hebrew words Hokhmah and Nevuʾah. 95 Sefer Gan Naʾul‍ , Ms. München 58, fol. 323a. 56 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM

The above passages, like many other topics, demonstrate the deep phenomenological difference between the theosophical-theurgical Kab- balah and the ecstatic one. While for the latter the graphical issues were so important, for the former the esoteric meaning, which is conceived of as basically pointing to an intellectual comprehension, a mystical intuition, or a prophetic revelation, conceived of to be the ultimate goal of the study. In general I would say that according to some other texts, for Abu- lafia the lowest form of obtaining knowledge is by studying written books.

5. God within the Letters of the Book

Unlike the assumption of an identification between the forms of the letters and of the pericopes, and the divine form, or the intellectual vision of the Torah, another assumption which draws its inspiration from astro- magical sources, informed a plenty of Kabbalistic and Hasidic texts.96 According to such a view, the Hebrew characters stand for containers of the divine light, or spirituality, which descends from above within the biblical text, and thus the divine light may be encountered by fathoming not the semantic meaning of the text, or by contemplating its graphic forms, but by penetrating a zone found within the letters. Unlike the passage of R. Jacob ben Jacob ha-Cohen which was quoted above, where the divine light is found outside the black letters, many of the Hasidic authors are concerned with the divine light within the black letters. Let me start with one of the Kabbalistic formulations of this view. It is found in R. Shlomo ha-Levi Alqabetz, a leading Safedian Kabbalist active in the second third of the 16th century: All the letters of our holy Torah . . . possess by themselves an extreme holiness, since they are like bodies and palaces to the spiritual forces which are in them, coming from above, like the body into which the soul was infused, part of God from above, and this is the reason why the scribe who copies the Torah [scroll] or tefillin, [phylacteries] says: ‘I write for the sake of holiness etc,’ since by this intention he infuses spiritual force into the bodies of the letters from above.97

96 For an history of the Greek, Arabic and some Jews sources of this theory see Shlomo Pines, “Shiʾite Terms and Conceptions in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam vol. II (1980), pp. 165–251, idem, “On the Term Ruhaniyyut and its Sources and on Judah Halevi’s Doctrine,” Tarbiz vol. 57 (1988), pp. 511–540 (Hebrew); Dov Schwartz, Astral Magic in Medieval Jewish Thought, (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 1999), (Hebrew); Idel, Hasidism, pp. 65–81. 97 Ms. Oxford-Bodleiana 1663, fol. 169b. torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 57

This theory had an impact of one of the most influential Kabbalist in Safed, his brother-in-law R. Moses Cordovero, under whose seminal impact it become part and parcel of Kabbalah and Hasidism. According to one of the many pertinent discussions of Cordovero: When someone pronounces and causes one of the letters [or sounds] to move, then the spiritual force of that [letter] will necessarily be stirred . . . so also regarding their [i.e. the letters’] existence, namely even in their written form their spiritual force dwells upon those letters. And this is the reason behind the holiness of the scroll of the Torah.98 It have no doubt that the above passages draw from another type of speculations, the astro-magical views, basically because of the emphasis on the possibility to draw down spiritual forces. The two Kabbalists were well acquainted with the theosophical literature, especially that of the Zohar, as well as with ecstatic Kabbalah, in both of which it is possible to find the view that the numerical value of the consonants of light, ‘or, is tantamount to raz, secret, and this meant, in some cases, especially in the Zohar, that light is found within the canonical text.99 Following those theories, many Kabbalists and Hasidic masters assumed that there is a divine immanence within the letters of the holy book, a concept that I designate as ‘linguistic immanence’. Seen from this point of view the book is holy because of its serving as the dwelling locus of the divine presence, and it is possible to manipulate this power, which may also be experienced as part of what may be described as a mystical encounter. This is a major contribution of the astro-magic model of Kabbalah to Hasidism, and the vision of letters as palaces and containers of divine light is widespread since the very beginning of Hasidism.100 This emphasis on the

98 Pardes Rimmonim, (Muncakz, rpr. Jerusalem, 1962), XXVII, ch. 2; II, fol. 59c. Com- pare also the reverberations of this text in R. Abraham Azulai’s important treatise Hesed le-ʾAvraham, (Lvov, 1863), fol. 10a. On Cordovero see Sack, Be-Sha‍ʾarei ha-Kabbalah. 99 See Wolfson, Through the Speculum, p. 377. 100 See R. Dov Baer of Miedzyrecz, Maggid Devarav le-Yaʾaqov‍ , ed. Rivka Schatz-Uffen- heimer, (The Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1976), p. 71. Compare to the statement adduced in the name of the Besht by R. Aharon ha-Cohen of Apta, ʿOr ha-Ganuz la-Tzaddiqim, (Lemberg, 1850), fol. 18a that “the letters of the Torah are vessels and chambers of God, and by means of the kavvanah, man draws down within them the emanation of the supernal light,” and idem, Ner Mitzwah, (Pietrow, 1881), fol. 6a. See also in the book of a student of the Besht, R. Moshe of Dolina’s Divrei Moshe, (Zolkiew, 1865), fol. 46d, where a similar interpretation of the word chamber is offered. Cf. R. Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl in Meʾor ʾEynayim, (Jerusalem, 1975), p. 121. On God’s immanence within the letters of Torah see ibidem, pp. 112, 122 and R. Zeʿev Wolf of Zhitomir, ʿOr ha-Meir, (Perizek, 1815), fol. 14cd, where the Hebrew letters are conceived as houses and boxes. See also R. Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, Peri ha-ʾAretz, fol. 10b. 58 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM divine as an infinite light, found already in Cordovero and Luria, attracted also anti-iconic expressions among Hasidic thinkers.101 Let me adduce a late 18th century passage, written by R. Aharon ha- Cohen of Apta, a compilator deeply influenced by the Lubavitch version of Hasidism: The name ʿEheyeh shows His divinity which emanated and caused the emergence of everything, in order to announce His divinity which is announced by ʿEheyeh. This is similar to someone who sees the form of the king which is inscribed on a paper, and he enjoys very much from seeing the form and its beauty. And whoever is [found in the state of] qatnut ha-sekhel, enjoys and delights in the inscribed form. But whoever has a wise heart says that because there is such a great joy which is deriving from the inscribed form, I shall be more glad and I shall delight [more] from the light of the face of the king,102 namely when seeing the form of the king himself. And he is making an effort to enter the palace of the king.103 Thus whoever is in [the state of] qatnut ha-sekhel is enjoying the study of the Torah or the prayer whose letters are the inscribed form of the king of the world . . . But whoever is [in the state of] gadlut [ha-sekhel] says that it is good to enjoy the light of the face of the king, namely he causes the adherence of his thought to the light of ‘Ein Sof which is found within the letters, by directing [his thought] that in each letter there are three hundreds and ten worlds, souls and divinity,104 and man has to integrate his soul in each and every of the aspects etc.105 What is characteristically Hasidic in this passage is the strong emphasis on experiences connected to individual letters. Unlike the more semantically oriented representation of the divine will by letters which form words, which is characteristic to theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah, both ecstatic Kabbalah and Hasidism were concerned more with the representation of the divine by individual letters. Here, the individual letters are conceived of as palaces, namely as having two aspects: the external one, represented by the written letters which stand for the inscribed form of the king, and the inner aspect of those letters, or palaces, which stand for the form of the king himself, and consists of the light of the face of the king. While the external is related to study and the smallness of mind, the latter is related to a mystical attitude, the adherence, which

101 See, e.g., R. Zeʾev Wolf of Zhitomir, ʿOr ha-Meʾir, fol. 238c. 102 On this expression see Proverbs 16:15, and R. Eleasar of Worms, Sefer Hokhmat ha- Nefesh, ed., N. E. Weiss, (Benei Beraq, 1987), p. 22. See also ibidem, pp. 64, 67. 103 heikhal ha-melekh. 104 On this triad see below the Besht’s Epistle of the Ascent. 105 R. Aharon ha-Cohen of Apta, ʿOr ha-Ganuz la-Tzaddiqim, col. 8, fol. 3ab. On this book see, e.g., Hayyim Lieberman, ʿOhel RaHeL, (New York, 1980), pp. 8–11 (Hebrew). torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 59 represents the greatness of mind.106 Going within the letters is therefore an expansion of the consciousness which means also the transition from the limited form to the infinite light. Though it is not explicit in the above passage we may assume that the external forms of the letters represent the black aspects while the inner forms the white or luminous aspects. We may also assume that studying the Torah stands here for a more distant attitude toward the subject of the study, while the second stage assumes an entrance within the divine light, namely an integration which obliterates the distance. Indeed, according to several quite interesting statements in R. Aharon’s book, the adherence to the divine light is to be understood as the disintegration of the drop of water within the ocean.107 The amorphous nature of the light of the Infinite, without the emphasis on the mediation of a supernal Anthropos, ʿAdam ʾElyon or Qadmon, characteristic of the theosophical Kabbalists, seems to point to an effort to sublate one of the most important aspects of those Kabbalists. In fact, the transcendence of the black forms of letters in order to encounter the divine light within them, represents a shift from the iconic toward an an-iconic vision of the essence of the Torah. I assume that this passage reflects not only the personal view of R. Aharon but an earlier Hasidic stand, perhaps stemming from the Besht himself. Indeed, already the founder of Hasidism recommended that: during your prayer and your study [of the Torah] you shall comprehend and unify each and every speech and utterance of your lips, because in each and every [pronounced] letter there are worlds and souls and divinity and they ascend and combine and unify with each other and with the Godhead and afterwards they [the sounds] combine and unify in a perfect union with the Godhead, and the soul108 will be integrated [into the Godhead] with them.109 The Besht is also reported to have said that: “a person who reads the Torah, and sees the lights of the letters [or of the sounds] which are in the Torah, even if he does not properly know the cantillations [of the Biblical text], because of his reading with great love and with enthusiasm, God does not

106 See Yehuda Liebes, “‘Two Young Roes of a Doe’: The Secret Sermon of Isaac Luria before his Death,” and Mordekhai Pachter, “Katnut (‘Smallness’) and Gadlut (‘Greatness’) in Lurianic Kabbalah,” in Lurianic Kabbalah, eds. R. Elior and Y. Liebes (Jerusalem, 1992), pp. 113–170 and 171–210 respectively (Hebrew). 107 See col. 4, fol. 4a; col. 12 1a. On this image for an experience of unio mystica see also Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 67–70. 108 I.e. your soul. 109 Epistle on the Ascent of the Soul, in ed. Y. Mondshein, Shivehei Ha-Baal Shem Tov, A Facsimile of a Unique Manuscript (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 235–236. 60 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM deal with him strictly, even if he does not properly pronounce them [i.e. the cantillations].”110 According to this text, the divinity is present already within the letters, and what remains for the mystic, or the simple man is to contemplate it. To return to R. Aharon’s passage: the distinction between the study of the external form, the inscribed one, and the inner light of the infinity, which is that between the small and great mind, may point also to the controversy between the Hasidic camp and their opponents, the mitnaggedim. The latter’s emphasis on the value of study is well known and it is possible that in the period of the great conflict between the camps, the above distinction attempts to elevate the mystical approach over the regular attitude. Elsewhere in R. Aharon of Apta’s book he emphasizes the creation of the world by divine speech, and writes that man has, likewise, before speaking a speech of the Torah or prayer, to direct [their thought] to the fact that the Holy One, Blessed be He, and the Torah are [both] one. Thus, in those words that he speaks the light of the divinity is stored there and it is the soul of the entire world, because the Torah and its letters is the soul of the entire world, because by means of the letters of the Torah and its names and their combinations, all the parts of the world had been created, by a speech performed in holiness in matters of Torah he awakens the amendment and the union of all the parts of the worlds and the souls, so that they are united to divinity111 and this is what is written112 ‘and you shall take me as an offering’, the commentary of Rashi is ‘to my name’ whose meaning is that people should study Torah for [the sake of] its name, in order to draw Me to My name, which is the Torah, which is in its entirety the names of the Holy One, blessed be He . . . and this is why the reader of the Torah is called a reader, because he calls the Holy One, blessed be he, like a man who calls his father by his name. This is similar to the son of the king that is in pain and he calls to his father by many cognomens: ‘My father,’ ‘My Lord,’ ‘My King,’ ‘My Master,’ etc., until the mercy of the father for his son arose. So too insofar as the reader of the Torah by an immense kavvanah, that all the words of the Torah are the cognomens of God, in addition to those cognomens that are known . . . and by the greatness of the awe and cleaving, he draws down Him, blessed be He, to His names, which are the words and the expressions of the Torah and of prayer, the mercy of

110 Liqqutim Yeqarim, (Jerusalem, 1981), fol. 1a; idem, ʿOr ha-ʾEmmet, (Zhitomir, rpr. Benei Beraq, 1967), fol. 83d. See Joseph Weiss, “Talmud-Torah le-Shitat R. Israel Besht,” Essays Presented to the Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie Israel, (London, 1967), p. 161 (Hebrew part). 111 I assume that we have here the triad ʿElohut, ʾolamot, nefashot, which was discussed above. 112 Exodus 25:2. torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 61

God is arisen on him, and this is the meaning of ‘and they should take Me’ to My name, namely to draw Me down to My name.113 The reader of the Torah is therefore someone who supplicates, perhaps even coerce. These loud readers are reminiscent of the ancient ‘callers’ who cause the descent of the supernal pneuma by means of ‘enchanting songs’ and ‘ineffable words’ according to the Chaldaean Oracles.114 Loud reading of the Torah and prayer are actually becoming almost the same activity, a tendency very prominent in Hasidism. There can be no doubt that R. Aharon was influenced by Gikatilla’s view of the relationship between the Tetragrammaton and the cognomens. The talismanic view of the letters of the Torah, when activated by the reader’s voice, is conspicuous in another student of the Great Maggid, R. Zeʾev Wolf of Zhitomir: The Holy One, Blessed be He, has concentrated the strength of His luminosity within the letters of the Torah and within the combinations of names and within the attributes of the cognomens, in order [to enable us] to size Him, and to call Him by names, in order to draw down His providence onto the creatures by means of the combinations of names.115 The process of contraction of the divine infinite light within the letters of the Torah, creating thereby a special cultic object that is capable of attracting the divine downward. According to another passage of the same master, the divine light is vivifying the letters conceived of as palaces.116 From this point of view the Torah serves as a statue which is animated by the divine power dwelling within it.117 Moreover, it should be emphasized that though adopting Lurianic terms like contraction this Hasidic master, like many others, also emplys ways of thought stemming from other types of Kabbalah, like the combination of letters, in order to shape a vision which differs from the Lurianic theosophy: the possibility to adhere to the divine within the linguistic material.118 The mystical aspects of the union with the divine light which is the hidden essence of letters is found in an early 19th century book, written in

113 Col. 6, fol. 4b–col. 7 fol. 1a. 114 See Hans Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy, ed. M. Tardieu, (Paris, 1978), p. 47. 115 ʿOr ha-Meʾir, fol. 240c and see also ibidem, fol. 247cd. 116 Ibidem, fol. 219d. 117 See Barasch, Icon, pp. 40–43. 118 See Moshe Idel, “On Talismatic Language in Jewish Mysticism,” Diogenes, vol. 43/2 (1995), pp. 23–41. 62 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM

Chernovitz. R. Hayyim Tirer explains the meaning of the name of the second century Rabbinic figure, R. Meʾir, as follows: Each and every halakhah he was studying with his disciples, he was disclosing to them the light which is found within it, and the secrets and the yihudim so that they reached the possibility to receive the great light stored within the Torah, and they were uniting themselves to the supernal light in a wondrous union. They were drawing the great light until the lower world, and the celestial fire was burning around them, so that they were seeing indeed with their eyes the apparition of the great Lord, which he has done.119 Therefore, not only the Bible, but also the Halakhic discussion is able to cause the descent of the divine light which can be experienced. How- ever, it is interesting to point out the fact that according to this author the vision of light within the oral Torah is inferior to the fathoming of the secrets and the Yihudim.120 However, secrets and Yihudim are understood as a path to attaining the ‘great light’ found in the Written Torah. Another well known figure, the Hasidic master R. Levi Isaac of Berditchev contends at the end of the 18th century, that It is known that there is an image of the letters as it appears in a book. And there is the language of the speaker, who speaks what is written in the book. And the image of the letters as written in the book is [tantamount] to the world of making, the world of nature since they have a limit and an image whereas the language of the speaker who speaks what it is written in the book, his very speech is spiritual, something that has no limit and it corresponds to the world of Thought.121 The axiological principle inherent in this description is clear to anyone cognizant of the Kabbalistic and Hasidic ontologies; the world of making is the lowest one in the hierarchy of the four worlds, whereas the world of thought is the highest one. Indetermination is the central character- ization of the human speech in comparison to the limited nature of the written expression. Speech is spiritual in comparison to the natural, namely the material world. In the vein of the passage of R. Aharon ha- Cohen, the written is the lower, restricted, image, and the development moves from the limited to the less limited. However, this move is dependent on the activation of the letters by the reader, and from this point of

119 Sidduro shel Shabbat, (Jerusalem, 1960), fol. 80c. See also fol. 81cd–82a. 120 Ibidem, fol. 80bc. 121 Qedushat Levi, (Jerusalem, 1972), fol. 117ab. See also R. Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk’s Peri ha-ʾAretz, (rpr. Jerusalem, 1969), fol. 9a. torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 63 view, the iconic stage is a lower phase in comparison to the more active approach to the letters. What seems to me fascinating in the Hasidic discussions is the fact that the formal aspect of the Torah become less important in itself, becoming the locus for the divine presence, which is the ultimate aim of the mystical enterprise. The letters are not symbols, neither forms which represent the divine, but containers whose content is infinitely more important than the vessels. While the written letters are the representation, their content presents the divine substance itself.

6. Divine Presence and Human Experience of Plenitude

The texts translated and analyzed above evince different approaches which have nevertheless something in common: the assumption that the divine is mediated or manifested within the Torah as found in the possession of the mystic. He imagined that he has direct access to the divine in the present, and the attainment of an experience of the divine was conceived of as possible and plausible. To a great extent, both meaning and external shape related to the Torah were relegated to the margin, while the emotional attitude to the text was conceived of as the most efficacious manner to penetrate the divine content. Thus, some of the main forms of Jewish mysticism, at least since the Middle Ages, did not live a religious ‘life in deferment’122 or strictly depending upon a process of mediation between a present mystical experience and a primordial revelation.123 For a Hasidic master, the assumption is that the ‘key of the Torah’ Mafteah ha-Torah, is always available, at least to one of the righteous of the generation.124 This is the case, for example, in the late collection of legends entitled Gedolim Maʾasei‍ Tzaddiqim, where the R. Abraham Yehoshuʾa Heschel of Apta has reported that the Maggid of Zlo- tchov was that righteous.125 They believed that they have direct access to the divine while studying and contemplating the book which was one

122 See Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, (The Schocken Books, New York, 1972), p. 35. 123 See ibidem, pp. 293–303. 124 Compare also to Scholem’s discussion of the lost keys to the understanding of the Torah in his On the Kabbalah, pp. 12–13. On ‘inner and external keys’ related to the divine names see the Introduction to Tiqqunei Zohar, fol. 5a. 125 See also the quote from R. Nahman of Braslav, translated and discussed in Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 195–196. 64 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM of the main topics of their studies. Moreover, rituals related to the Torah were understood as reflecting its continuous revelation. So, for example, we learn in the early 17th century influential book Shenei Luhot ha-Berit, authored by R. Isaiah Hurwitz, that The reason for our blessing of the Torah by [the formula] ‘He gives the Torah’ is to show that the Holy One blessed be He, is still revealing the Torah as He did then, in antiquity, at the holy assembly, at Mt. Sinai.126 According to another passage which makes a similar point, there is an isomorphic structure that unifies God, Torah and the created universe. Because of this descending structure which is gradually becoming material, the mystic is able to elevate himself by ascending from one degree to another. So, for example, we learn from R. Zeʾev Wolf of Zhitomir, again following a terminology found in R. Isaiah Hurwitz, that a Platonic process of ascent to the supernal source, is possible by the means of the Torah: The Torah is the impression of the divinity, and the world is the impression of the Torah. When an illuminatus concentrates his heart, spirit and soul to divest everything in the world from the form of the materiality, and cause the embodiment of the spiritual form . . . By his comprehension of the embodiment of the divinity, which dwells there, namely within the letters of the Torah, which are embodied also in the entirety of the world, which has been created with the Torah, and they animate everything. And this is the power of the illuminatus that he can divest the material form and cause the clothing by the spiritual form.127 The Torah is therefore a median entity which serves as an intermediary between the creator and the human creature, and in fact the letters of the Torah represent what I called above, the linguistic immanence of the divine within the created world.128 The Hasidic mystic may limit his contemplation to the letters of the Torah and thus arrive to the divine source. Therefore, the divine immanence or its extension within the Torah and then into the world is presented in a substantial, non-symbolic manner, and serves as a ladder of ascent to the divine. The descent via the letters

126 (Jerusalem, 1960), II, fol. 108b; R. Zeʾev Wolf of Zhitomir, ʿOr ha-Meʾir, fol. 4a. See also ibidem, fols. 5a, 17b, 216d–217a; See also the earlier texts adduced and discussed by David Weiss-Halivni, Revelation Restored, Divine Writ and Critical Response (West- view Press, Colorado, 1997), pp. 87–89, and the Kabbalistic passages quoted in Yochanan D. Silman, The Voice Heard at Sinai, Once or Ongoing? (The Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1999), pp. 98–100 (Hebrew) and Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, pp. 298–303. 127 ʿOr ha-Meʾir, fol. 239b. 128 See also ibidem, fol. 17b and R. Hayyim Tirer of Chernovitz, Beʾer Mayyim Hayyim, (Israel, ND), I, fol. 7d, etc. More on this issue see Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 131–134 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 65 of the Torah is an interesting kind of divine accomodation, thought not a regular one, which means attuning the message to the intellectual or moral level of the recipient, but an ontic accomodation which involves the divine presence in the mundane sphere, not only its symbolic representation there. The term used by the Hasidic author in order to convey the affinities between God, Torah and the world, is roshem, translated above as impression.129 What may be the import of the resort to this term instead of the more widespread tzurah, which occurs in the above passage? In my opinion, impression is more vague and attempts to convey less the precise form than the divine emanation found within the lower worlds. Hasidism was less concerned with emphases on external divine forms than with divine presence. The creation of the substantial continuum between world and God by means of Torah conferred a unique status to its study and contemplation, one which was imagined to bridge the gap between man and God. So, for example we learn from an early Hasidic thinker R. Meshullam Phoebus of Zbaraz, who wrote in the second half of the 18th century in Galitia, as follows: The quintessence of the intention to study [Torah] is identical to that of the intention of prayer: The soul cleaves to, and comes nearer to God, Blessed be He, by [means of] the letters of the Torah. Then the letters ascend, and likewise the vapors, up to God, Blessed be He, and He has a great pleasure in it.130 Here the ascending aspect is emphasized: the vapors emerging from the pronunciation of the letters of the Torah and of prayer bridge the gap between the human and the divine. The specific quality of each of the let ters, or sounds, gives shape to the human spirit, ultimately of divine origin, that pronounce them. By elevating this aspect of the human nature the Torah serves as a vehicle, and thus it is imagined to share both the human nature and the divine one. In the vein we learn from an early 18th century Hasidic author, R. Moses Eliyaqum Beriʾah, that by the adherence of the thought of the student to divine presence found within the letters of the Torah, the mystic is able to elevate the Torah up to the supernal

129 For the sources of this view see, e.g., Zohar III, fol. 73b; R. Meʾir ibn Gabbai, Sefer Derekh ʿEmunah, (Berlin, 1850), fols. 12b–13a; R. Shimeon ibn Lavi, Ketem Paz, fol. 181a; ha- Shelah, I, vol. 9a; II, fol. 98ab, 112b; R. Hayyim Yosef David Azulai, Penei David, (Jerusalem, 1965), fol. 181b; R. Zeʾev Wolf of Zhitomir, ʿOr ha-Meʾir, fols. 165b, 239b; see also the additional material adduced by Huss, Sockets of Fine Gold, pp. 195–196. 130 Yosher Divrei ʿEmmet par. 39, printed together with Liqqutim Yeqarim, fol. 133a. See also ʿOr ha-Meʾir, fol. 239b. 66 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM divine eye, and then the divine grace descends upon this world.131 It is as if the human study creates the condition for the divine study of the Torah. Let me turn to a statement stemming from an early 19th century figure, which displays another synthesis between a mystical, unitive model and the talismanic-magical one. According to R. Moses Hayyim Efrayyim of Sudilkov, the Besht’s grandson, and seemingly under his grandfather’s direct influence: the Torah and God and Israel—all are one unity132 only when they [namely Israel] study the Torah for its own sake [or name]. Then there is in it133 the power of God and it becomes the secret of emanation, [and becomes able] to vivify and heal.134 The act of study, which includes vocal performance, is described as a process of actualizing potencies inherent in the Torah. R. Moses Hayyim assumed that the activation of the written letters by human voice, or more precisely the voice of the people of Israel, involves a moment of inspiration, namely of inserting the divine or the spiritual element inherent within the student into the studied text. It is at the level of the vocal performance, therefore, not at that of its visual form that the canonical text assumes its highest efficacy: it reflects the divine structure—this is the way I understand the phrase ‘the secret of emanation’—and is able to heal. This understanding of the process of Torah-study can be compared with the performance related to a magical recipe. In many cases, the latter operates because the formula is recited. The recitation activates the formula but the main purpose of the operation lays beyond the formula: the act of incantation or recitation strives to affect a third entity, the main subject of the magical operation. This is the case also with the Torah: its recitation activates something outside it. Like in many other cases of linguistic immanence, the substantial continuum serves not only as a ladder for contemplation, but also as means for theurgical and the magical purposes. The Torah was, therefore, imagined by many Jewish mystics as embracing a

131 Beʾer Moshe, (repr. Tel Aviv, ND), fol. 72a. For the resort to ‘supernal’ limbs, perhaps under the impact of Gikatilla, in this book see the discussion on the supernal ear, see ibidem, fol. 182c. 132 On this issue see above, note 93. 133 I.e. in the Torah. 134 Degel Mahaneh ʿEfrayyim, (Jerusalem, 1963), p. 103. torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 67 divine presence which may be experienced by its study, thus problematiz- ing Scholem’s vision of ‘life in deferment.’135

7. Some General Observations

Let me attempt to summarize some of the proposals in the above lines. The biblical situation, and to a great extent of the Rabbinic one, assumes that human behavior is to be shaped by a certain type of instruction, divine imperatives imposed from a transcendental authority. Jewish medieval conceptualizations of the affinities between the three factors, author, book and reader, strive to reduce the gaps between the three, creating different continua that mediate in a much more substantial manner the relationship between them. It is this propensity toward unifying the planes of existence that is characteristic of the types of medieval Jew- ish ontologies surveyed above. This unitive proclivity was performed by introducing modes of thought, mostly of Greek philosophical extraction, that were phenomenologically different from the earlier layers of Jewish thought, where the anthropomorphic elements were obvious, and nevertheless had to be integrated into the new schemes adopted by Jewish authors, as we shall suggest below. Two major observations are pertinent at the end of this discussion: one regarding the nature and role of anthropomorphism, the other dealing with its insertion in broader speculative schemes. As seen above, even when dealing with the nature of a scroll, the Kabbalists resorted to anthropomorphic imagery, which means words whose meaning point to aspects of human shape. This abundant type of imagery notwithstanding it should be emphasized that I am not acquainted with any attempt to compile graphic designs of the Torah. In general, even in other instances, when dealing with the nature of the ten sefirot, Jewish Kabbalists were not eager to resort to graphic representation, but restricted their discussions to anthropomorphic terminology, or to more geometrical designs. It is only much later, since the second part of the 16th century, that more clear anthropomorphic designs may be found also in Jewish treatises, presumably under the influence of Christian Kabbalah.

135 On this topic see also Idel, Messianic Mystics, pp. 283–289; idem, Absorbing Perfec- tions, pp. 423–427. 68 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM

Nevertheless, the emphasis on the anthropomorphic-iconic aspects, especially evident in Lurianic Kabbalah, had been transcended in Hasidism, with the emphasis on the amorphous light found within the letters. Some of the Hasidic passages dealt with above represent implicitly a marginalization of the Lurianic iconism in favor of a Cordoverian non-iconism, as the ultimate form of divine presence with the letters of the Torah is concerned. This shift, which is evident also in some other treatments like sacred language, prayer, and the study of the Holy Scriptures, profoundly problematize the vision of Hasidism as deeply related to one single form of Kabbalah, the Lurianic one, as expressed by Scholem’s understanding of the emergence of Hasidism and that of his followers. Indeed, the strict necessity of the study of Cordovero’s views in order to prevent an anthropomorphic ‘misunderstanding’ of Luria was clearly expressed by an important disciple of the Great Maggid. In the introduction to his Dibrat Shlomo, R. Shlomo of Lutzck declared that Lurianic teachings are focused upon anthropomorphic subjects, only because they were intended for Luria’s immediate disciples who have already studied the Cordoverian Kabbalah, “wherein the real spiritual significance of anthropomorphism was exposed.”136 This means that when armed with the true understanding of Kabbalah as found in Cordovero, there was no danger in misunderstanding Luria. According to R. Shlomo, because of the deterioration of the generations the simplistic understanding of Lurianic Kabbalah prevailed. In his view the role of Hasidism is to restore the real spiritual perception of Kabbalah.137 This Hasidic author tacitly implies that such a reversal means, inter alia, the resort to Cordovero’s works or concepts, which were indeed of utmost importance for Hasidic thought.138 However, what is also revealing is the fact that this shift took place in Christian provinces where cults of icons were paramount. Either in its Catholic forms in the Polish provinces, or in the Orthodox provinces: Russian, Ukrainian and Northern Rumanian, iconodolic views and praxis were dominant. Nevertheless, the aniconic structure stemming from the astro-magical model, become prevalent among the Hasidic masters. Just as

136 Cf. the first introduction to R. Shlomo of Lutzck, Dibrat Shlomo (Zolkiew, 1848), fol. 1c and Maggid Devarav le-Ya‍ʾaqov, pp. 2–3. 137 R. Shlomo of Lutzck, Dibrat Shlomo, fol. 1c and Maggid Devarav le-Ya‍ʾaqov, p. 2. 138 See Immanuel Schochet, The Great Maggid, (New York, 1978), vol. I, pp. 70–71. See also R. Moshe of Sambur’s haskkamah to R. Barukh of Kossov’s ʾAmud ha-ʾAvodah, (Cher- novitz, 1863), fol. 1b–2a, where he regards the study of Cordoverian writings and that of Gikatilla’s Sha‍ʾarei ʿOrah as helpful in avoiding an anthropomorphic understanding of Luria’s writings. Implicitly, this is the content of the haskamah of R. Menahem ben Eliezer of Premislany, ibidem, fol. 1b. torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM 69

Abraham Abulafia rejected the iconic attitude of the Catalan and Castilian Kabbalists, adopting an aniconic approach while writing most of his books in Catholic Italy, and some of them even in iconodolic Byzantium, Hasidic masters were moved by a logic that is not consistent with an historicistic approach. Let me address now the integration of the anthropomorphic nomenclature, of ancient Jewish origins, within the wider schemes which were mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph. The establishment of the strong ontological links between the author, the text and the reader created new forms of religious activities, which joined to the more Rabbinic oriented forms of study. The structural correspondences and the substantial affinities transformed the student not only in the consumer of ancient, though for him relevant messages, which he is demanded to absorb, clarify, expand and disseminate, but also modes of mystical ascent to the source and impact on the extra-human entities and processes. The understanding of the different kinds of mediation discussed above will contribute to the better description of the new modes of approaching the Torah. If the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah accepted Neoplatonic theories of emanation, and some form of ancient Jewish intradivine emanation, Abraham Abulafia adopted the Neoaristotelian theory, while some Kabbalists combined Neoplatonic and astro-magical theories, as it is the case especially since the middle 16th century Safed, and then Hasidism. Concepts of Torah were forged as part of those explanations of ontic mediation and the divine was sometimes represented, other times present by resorting to the general conceptualizations of those larger schemes. The Torah became, therefore, not only the representation of the divine will but also a mode of presence of the divine within the world. However, it should be emphasized that despite the significant impact of those different models on the Jewish mystical literatures, the anthropomorphic imagery is oftentimes informing much of the manners in which Torah is mediating the divine nature and its presence. Most of Rabbinic thought was much less interested in closing the gap between the author and the Torah. Medieval and premodern Jewish mystics attracted, however, their visions of divinity, oftentimes anthropomorphic, within theological schemes that embraced God, Torah and man within more comprehensive frameworks, which can be described as informed by a Gestalt-contexture.139

139 Aron Gurwitsch, “Phenomenology of Perception: Perceptual Implications,” in ed. James M. Edie, An Invitation to Phenomenology (Quandrangle Books, Chicago, 1965), p. 21; Idel, Hasidism, pp. 49–50. 70 torah IN JEWISH MYSTICISM

Such a central issue for Jewish religious life as the Torah and its study was could not but be integrated within the comprehensive conceptual schemes which informed the medieval conceptual superstructures. The various ontological continua stem, as pointed out above, from different speculative systems; they, as well as the descending and the ascending ladders, enchained the archaic imageries about God and His instructions by means of verbal and written instructions, into forms of explanation which transformed the Torah into a direct presentation of the divine essence, not only a representation of the semantic aspects of His will. Panim: Faces and Re-Presentations in Jewish Thought

Moshe Idel

1. The Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible, the subject of so many theological discussions, is itself not a book of theology. Testimonies for this contention abound: the complex theological writings, first Christian and then Jewish, which attempted, sometimes despairingly, to introduce order in the chaos of diverging biblical expressions. God’s revelations and interventions in history were understood by the ancient Israelite authors as intended not so much to manifest His specific nature or form, but to educate the people He chose. The divine will, rather than the divine morphe inspired the general gist of the various biblical reflections upon the nature of God. This does not, obviously, mean that there were not beliefs in the existence of a divine form, or forms, in biblical thought. However, I would say that the gist of the discussions about those forms—though not all those discussions—is to enforce the content of a religious behavior, or attitude. Thus, cases of biblical anthropomorphism and anthropopathism are part of a larger and more complex picture that assumes the importance of modes of religious behavior, and not solely theological treatments intended to elucidate the nature of a manifested divine entity. Thus, the implication of the human and divine isomorphism, which is so obvious in Genesis I, should be better understood as related to another central topic: the dynamic nature of both the divine and the human and the relationship between them. Divine guidance as well as religious actions entail acts of organs, which collectively are envisioned as a body, divine or human. To resort to a terminology current in Christian thought, manifestations point, ultimately, to proclamations. Representation of the divine morphe should be conceived, therefore, as less related to an ultimate perfect shape than to some form of deeper religious structure: the divine intention expressed by them, and the dromenon, human or divine, that is manifested by the anthropomorphic shape. The rationale of the anthropomorphic structure would be not only the drive to elevate the status of human shape but also, and perhaps eminently, to anchor divine expressions and human deeds in more concrete entities. This concatenation of divine and human morphes with divine and human dromena seems to be important for the understanding of biblical 72 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought thought. However, post-biblical trends in Jewish thought adopted a variety of attitudes to this affinity. While Philo, the apocalyptic literature, early Christianity and the Heikhalot literature ignored it, it remained significant for some important aspects of Rabbinic thought. I would like to point out below the existence of some correlational forms of Jewish theologies, namely theologies that do not portray the divine realm as part of a static knowledge important for its own sake, but as part of a larger scheme, which points to a mode of action inspired by, and thus related to the specific nature of deity. Though I contend, as it will become more clear below, that such a view is found in some important forms of Jewish thought, it is not my contention that this is the only representative form of Jewish theological thinking. In the following I would like to examine the importance of some concepts of face, human and divine, as part of a correlational type of religiosity.1 The face is the most expressive aspect of human body, and the significant resort to facial imaginary reflects the correlational propensity of biblical thought. The theme of the divine face is recurrent in the biblical literature, and several scholars have already dealt it with.2 That God has a face is not only a matter of an anthropomorphic theology; it is sometimes part of a more mystical attitude: Moses is, according to one epi- sode, requesting the vision of the divine face, which is denied, he being allowed only the vision of the back.3 According to another verse Moses is described as speaking with God face to face,4 a statement that may be related to another verse where Moses is described as having seen the

1 For other discussions on the concept of face see my two earlier studies: “Metatron: Remarks on the Evolution of Myth in Judaism,” ed., Haviva Pedaya, Myth in Jewish Thought, Eshel Beer Sheva, vol. 4 (1996), pp. 29–44 (Hebrew), and “Gazing at the Head in Ashkenazi Hasidism,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, vol. 6 (1997), pp. 265–300. Here I add other aspects of the theme dealt with in those studies only in a marginal manner. 2 See, e.g., Samuel E. Balentine, The Hidden God, The Hiding of the Face of God in the Old Testament, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1983); Walter Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, tr. A. J. Baker (SCM Press, Bloomsbury Street, London, 1972), vol. II pp. 35–40; Yohanan Muffs, Love & Joy, Law, Language and Religion in Ancient Israel, (Jewish Theological Seminary, New York and Jerusalem, 1992), pp. 104–105, 113, 124, 146, 178, 190; Edouard P. Dhorme, “L’emploi metaphorique des noms de parties du corps en Hebrew et en Akkadien,” Revue Biblique, vol. 30 (1921), pp. 374–399; Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, (Claredon Press, Oxford, 1983), pp. 329–334. For the understandings of divine face in Islam see Henry Corbin, Face de Dieu, Face de l’Homme, Hermeneutique et Soufisme, (Flammarion, Paris, 1983), pp. 237–310. For views found in Orthodox Christianity see Vassily Rozanov, La Face sombre du Christ, tr. N. Reznikoff, (Gallimard, Paris, 1964). 3 Exodus, 33:23. 4 Ibidem 33:11. The reverberation of this verse in I Corinthians 13:12 is well known. panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 73

‘image of God.’5 It should be emphasized the expression ‘face to face’ is an adverbial phrase, which strives to convey the direct manner of the communication between God and man, rather than reporting the existence or nature of the face of God. Diverging from each other as these two main stands are, they cor- roborate the view, which again is opposed in other instances, as to the iconicity of God. There are several biblical verses where the light of the divine face is understood as a sign for redemption.6 Whether there was in the biblical literature a significant link between the radiance of Moses’ face and the radiance of the divine face (a nexus which could clarify some later developments, few of them to be mentioned below), is not clear. In any case, even if not related, those two radiant faces reflect some forms of attitudes: the divine radiance point to a benevolent attitude toward the Israelites, the radiance of Moses’ face reflects the contact with the divine realm. Thus, a theology of the divine face has a certain reverberation on the human plane, even if there is no explicit relation between them. In the following the theological aspects of the divine face, or faces on the one hand, and the mystical understanding of radiance of the human face on the other hand, will be addressed. While the latter can be understood, as we shall see in some cases below, as certain assimilation to the divine realm, it is the projection of the human face on high that explains what produced this imagery. Last but not least: some of the discussions of the radiant divine face, found in Numbers, become part of an important ritual, the blessing of the priest, and had a huge impact on post-biblical Judaism, an issue that cannot be discussed in this context.

2. On Faces in Rabbinic Literature

The specific mixture of personalistic, anthropopathic and anthropomorphic expressions concerning God found in the Bible did not survive in post-biblical Jewish literatures. One of those literatures was inclined to emphasize the anthropomorphic-static conception of God, as it is the case in Sefer Shiʿur Qomah.7 A variety of discussions on the divine face

5 Numbers 12:8. 6 See e.g. Psalms 80:4, 8, 17, 20. 7 On ancient Jewish anthropomorphic theology see Martin S. Cohen, The Shiʿur Qomah: Texts and Recensions (Mohr, Tuebingen, 1985); idem, The Shiʿur Qomah: Liturgy and Theurgy in Pre-Kabbalistic Jewish Mysticism (Lanham – New York – London, 1983). 74 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought are found in early Christianity and Gnostic literatures, which drew from the biblical imagery.8 For our discussions below let me adduce two quotes from late antiquity, one dealing with a double-face theory of Adam, another with multiple faces on high. According to the Slavonic book of Enoch, The Lord God with His own two hands created mankind; and in a facsimile of his own face, small and great the Lord created. Whoever insults a person’s face insults the face of the Lord9 . . . Whoever treats with contempt the face of any person treats the face of the Lord with contempt.10 There are several important points that should be emphasized: the biblical ‘image’ tzelem is understood as ‘face’. This shift is also visible in some Rabbinic texts and, in a different manner, in Hasidei Ashkenaz and in some Kabbalistic sources. However, what seems to be much more pregnant for later developments is the description of the two faces as great and small. It is obvious that those two sorts of faces describe both the first human creature and the divine creator. Thus, we may assume that there was an assumption that God has not only a form or image that reflects the male/female complexion, but also small/great faces. Moreover, assuming that Adam is meant in this passage, it is plausible to infer that the two faces correspond to the male and female aspects of the first creature. If the two faces are both divine and reflect the polarity of male and female, which is a plausible reading of the Slavonic Enoch, then the later Kabbalistic theory of the ʿArikh ʿAnppin and Zeʿir ʿAnppin as expressed by R. Joseph of Hamadan, by R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid, and in a passage printed in the book of the Zohar, reflect much earlier speculations on the two faces within the divine realm.11

8 For the reverberations of this concept see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S. J., “Glory reflected on the Face of Christ (2 Cor 3:7–4:6) and a Palestinian Jewish Motif,” Theological Studies, vol. 42,4 (1981), pp. 630–644, who adduced also Qumran literature instances dealing with the illumination of the divine face. See also Alan F. Segal, Paul, the Convert, (Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 1992), pp. 152, 154; Nathaniel Deutsch, The Gnostic Imagination: Gnosticism, Mandaeism, and Merkabah Mysticism, (Brill, Leiden, 1995), pp. 99–111, a very important study which surveyed the main issues related to ‘face’ in biblical and intertestamental literature, as well as in the Heikhalot literature and Gnosis. See also an important passage on the divine face found in a context replete with Jewish motifs in ed., Charlotte A. Baynes, A Coptic Gnostic Treatise, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1933), p. 38. 9 The expression ‘the face of God’ is quite recurring in this book. 10 2 Enoch 44,1–3; Le Livre des secrets d’Henoch, ed. & tr. A. Vaillant, (Institute des Etudes slaves, Paris, 1976), pp. 46–47; See Deutsch, The Gnostic Imagination, p. 102. 11 See Moshe Idel, “The Figure of Man above the Sefirot,” Daat, vol. 4 (1980), p. 46 note 37 (Hebrew); idem Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 119, 134–136; Liebes, Studies in panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 75

In this context let me remind that in some Rabbinic discussions Adam is described as possessing two faces, du-partzufin.12 Thus, the resort to the term partzuf, a Hebrew form for the Greek prosopon, points to a Rab- binic understanding of tzelem as face.13 The duality of the faces is related to a sexual polarity, and thus to a correlative vision of the two elements as both different and unified at the same time. It should be emphasized that, as pointed out by Deutsch, that the term Great Face was found in Mandaean texts,14 just as it is found in a Talmudic discussion.15 More- over, according to Deutsch analysis of a passage from the treatise Shiʿur Qomah, it is possible to assume that God had two faces, an invisible and a visible one.16 In a passage adduced in Hippolytus in the name of Monoimos the Arab, it is said: “one indivisible tittle is . . . one tittle of the [letter] iota, with many faces, and innumerable eyes, and countless names, and this [tittle] is an image of that perfect invisible man.”17 The revealed Anthropos, identified with the Christ, has many faces, and it reflects an even higher Anthro- pos, which possesses, likewise, those many faces. Thus, unlike the biblical assumption about the one single face of God, the Gnostic author knows about many faces, and this development may stem from a tradition that is well represented, as we shall be immediately below, also in the rabbinic literature. This type of literature was less inclined to sharp anthropomorphism, emphasizing more the dynamic aspects of the divinity,18 opting for the Zohar, pp. 104–114, 211–212 note 178. See also Idel, “The World of Angels in Human Shape,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, eds., J. Dan & J. Hacker, Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy and Ethical Literature Presented to Isaiah Tishby, (Jerusalem, 1986), pp. 26–34, (Hebrew) and Elliot R. Wolfson who has more recently claimed the influence of a discussion of R. Eleasar of Worms, where two faces, a smaller and a greater one are mentioned, on Kabbalistic masculine and feminine hypostases. See his Along the Path, p. 175 note 329, discussing a text of that Hasidic master translated previously on p. 33. 12 Wayne A. Meeks, “The Image of the Androgyne; Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity,” History of Religions, vol. 13 (1974), p. 186 note 90. 13 Interestingly enough, we learn from an ancient Christian Aramean treatise written in Edessa entitled Testamentum Domini that “For every soul the Image (salma) or type is standing before the face of God, even before the foundation of the world.” Quoted by Gilles Quispel, “Genius and Spirit,” Essays on Nag Hammadi Texts, ed., M. Krause, (Brill, Leiden, 1975), p. 159. This passage is indeed reminiscent of later Jewish views found among Hasidei Ashkenaz, to be discussed below. 14 The Gnostic Imagination, pp. 110–111. 15 BT, Sukkah, fol. 5b; Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, p. 107; Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 134. 16 The Gnostic Imagination, pp. 108–109. 17 Refutation of All Heresies VIII, 5 (tr. J. H. Macmahon), in Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. VI (Edinburgh, 1968), p. 320. 18 See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 157–160; Absorbing Perfections, pp. 8, 29, 51, 55, 91–92. Shama Friedman, “Graven Images,” in Graven Images, A Journal of Culture, Law, 76 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought a variety of divine faces, each expressing what is conceived of as a real, namely not an imagined, aspect of the divine being. So, for example, we learn in several Rabbinic sources in the name of R. Levi, a third century Palestinian master, that The Holy One, blessed be He, has shown Himself to them like this icon that is showing its faces in all the directions. Thousand people are looking at it and it looks to each of them. So does the Holy One, blessed be He, when He was speaking each and every one of Israel was saying the speech was with me. ‘I am God, your Lord’ is not written, but I am God, your Lord.19 Rabbi Yossei bar Hanina said: according to the strength of each and every one, the (divine) speech was speaking.20 This is a very dense and rich passage whose implications cannot be exhausted in this context. Here I would like to ponder upon the role of the anthropomorphic imagery: God is able to speak to each and every participant in the Sinaitic event in accordance to their specific strength, lefi koham, just as He is able to reveal Himself visually to each of them in a different form. God’s visibility is taken for granted as it is the concreteness of His revealing voice. The major theological concern is the diversity inherent in a compact divine revelation, as each person hears the divine voice differently. In order to exemplify this point the Midrashic author resorts to a property attributed to an icon: it looks to different people as if each of them is the specific subject of the look of the icon. What we can learn from the two sorts of revelation, the visual and the auditory is the reality and concreteness of numerous aspects of the divine appearance and of the divine voice. Each of them is real despite their vast plurality. Thus, there is no docetist theory of the visual revelation here just as there is no relative, or imaginary auditory voices heard by each Jew: each claimed to have heard a concrete message that is accommodated to his spiritual power.21 The divine face is, just as an icon as described above, not a totally determined entity. Just as the voice is open to a variety of auditory experi- and the Sacred, vol. I (1994), pp. 233–238; Michael Fishbane, “Some Forms of Divine Appearance in Ancient Jewish Thought,” From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism, Intellect in Quest of Understanding, Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox, eds. J. Neusner, E. S. Frerichs, N. M. Sarna, (Atlanta, Georgia, 1989), vol. II pp. 263–264. 19 The first form is in plural, while the second one is in the singular, like in the Bible. 20 Pesiqta⁠ʾ de-Rav Kahana⁠ʾ ed. Bernard Mandelbaum, (JTS of America, New York, Jerusalem, 1962), vol. I p. 224; Yalqut Shimeoni, Exodus, par. 286, p. 172; Stephen D. Benin, The Footprints of God, Divine Accommodation in Jewish and Christian Thought, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1993), pp. 131–132. 21 According to the original meaning of docetism, it points not to an imaginary phantasmic entity, but to a real appearance of the divine. See Corbin, Face de Dieu, p. 280. panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 77 ences each conceived of as real. It is the richness of human nature that is paralleled by the diversity inherent in the divine nature. The variety of the aspects of the divine face, just as those of the men does not attenuate the concreteness of each of them. Important for some other Midrashic discussions is the reference in this passage to many divine faces. Though the above text does not express this multiplicity in an explicit manner, such a multiplicity is conveyed by the term panim in the context of the icon, which is the parable for the manner in which the divine face operates. In Hebrew the very term for face, panim, has a plural form, but there can be no doubt that it is not the grammatical plural form, but it is the concept of multiplicity of faces that transpires in this passage. The God as the other is not the objective One experienced by the human diversity. He is not the stable common denominator of the human diverse experiences, but a flexible entity, which both unifies and diversifies human experiences. In Levinas’ terms, though not exactly in the way he thought, I would say that each Israelite experienced another Other. R. Levi, the author to whom the above passage was attributed, is reported elsewhere to have described the same event is a similar manner. According to Midrash Pesiqta’ Rabbati, he said that The Holy One, Blessed be he, revealed Himself to them with many faces: with an angry face, with a downcast face, with a dour face, with a joyful face, with a smiling face, and with a radiant face. How? When he showed them the punishment (awaiting) the wicked, he did so with an angry, downcast, dour face. But when He showed them the reward (awaiting) the just in the World to come, it was with a happy, (smiling), radiant face.22 If the first quote of R. Levi deals with concomitant revelations that are diversified by the various human capacities, in the last quote the different countenances of the divine face, or the faces, reflect different parts of the divine revelation, or different verses in the Bible; some dealing with retribution and some with punishment. When pronouncing those different verses, the divine face changes accordingly, or accommodates itself. It is as if the divine face uses different masks attuned to the content of the text recited. In a manner similar to the last quote, another Midrashic discussion found just before the first passage adduced above, but attributing this time this view to another Rabbinic figure, argues that

22 Ed. M. Friedmann, (Kaiser, Vienna, 1880), p. 101, par. 21; cf. the translation of Muffs, Love & Joy, p. 146; see in general, ibidem, pp. 146–147. See also the similar version in Pesiqta⁠ʾ de-Rav Kahana⁠ʾ, I, p. 223–224, and Benin, The Footprints of God, pp. 131–132. 78 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought

‘I am your Lord’23—Rabbi Hanina bar Papa said: the Holy One, blessed be He, has shown to them a face of anger, a face of welcoming, a moderate face, and a laughing face. A face of anger—(corresponds to) the Bible, because when a person teaches the Bible to his son, he has to teach him with awe. A moderate face—to the Mishnah. A face of welcoming—to the Talmud. A laughing face, for ʿAggadah. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to them: despite you have seen all these appearances,24 ‘I am your Lord’.25 Unlike the prior quote, which deals with biblical situations, where the divine appearance is independent on human actions, but is accommodated to the kind of occasions, in the second part the human actions, the study of the different parts of the Jewish canon, are related to the divine appearances. Just as the face of the teacher is changing according to the different topics, so also the divine faces are changing. God is therefore not flowing down as a type of order sometimes responding to human action by an appropriate facial revelation. Moreover, the Midrashist is anxious to stress the unity that underlies the various revelations in order to maintain an unmistakably monotheistic attitude. There can be no doubt that the emphasis on the different faces reduces the role of a strong, static anthropomorphic theology, allowing a much more dynamic attitude, related to an elastic divine face. The problematics emerging from the last passage is interesting since it is reminiscent of some of the theosophical- Kabbalistic claims to the effect that despite the variety of the divine powers, one dynamic unit is underlying their multiplicity and diversity. This attitude is more evident in the Kabbalistic schools that adhere to the view that the sefirot are the divine essence, a view found especially in Nahman- ides and his schools and in parts of the book of the Zohar, literary corpora composed by either Rabbinic figures who were also Kabbalists, or by a book which was attributed to a central Rabbinic figure. Here the divine faces do not correspond to the human faces, but to the literary corpora. However, since those corpora are intended to be studied by people, ultimately this is another form of correlation theology. Those passages are part of a broader Midrashic theory of multiple revelations based on the assumption that God accommodates Himself to the specific

23 Malakhi 3:6. 24 Demuyyiot. On demut and tzelem understood as face see above paragraph 2. 25 Pesiqta⁠ʾ de-Rav Kahana⁠ʾ, I, pp. 223–224; Yalqut Shimoni on Exodus, par. 286, p. 172; Benin, The Footprints of God, p. 131. panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 79 situation in which the revelation is taking place, and in some cases R. Levi is mentioned in those contexts.26 Anyone acquainted with the Rabbinic literature would not indulge in the assumption that one basic view would inform the variety of treatments of the topic of divine revelations. Thus, though I consider the above passages as representative of an important approach in Rabbinic literature, there is no reason to assume that this is the single attitude found there. On the contrary, quite a different approach is extant in a relatively late Midrash, apparently written in early Middle Ages; we read that The Holy One blessed be He, said to Moses: Moses, tell to the children of Israel: ‘my name is ʿEhyeh ʿasher ʿEhyeh, as you are present with me, so I am present with you. I have given to you two good attributes law and justice.27 If they mete the law, should I not mete the law and emanate good things upon them. But if they do not mete the law, I shall mete the law and destroy the world. Likewise in the case of Tzedaqah: if they open their hands and give (alms) I shall also open for them . . . this is why the Holy One said: ʿEhyeh ʿasher ʿEhyeh, as you are present with me, I am present with you. So said David: ‘God is your guardian, God is your shade on your right hand’.28 As your shade: Just as your shade, if you are laughing to it, it is laughing to you, if you weep to it, it is weeping to you, if you show to it an angry face, it reflects to you likewise, and if your face is welcoming, it also is so, just so the Holy One said, ‘as you are present with me, so I am present with you. This is why Israel must do justice.29 A similar correlational theory is recurring in a quote from another Midrash, known as Midrash Hashkem, reserved in a Kabbalistic source: In the Midrash, (we learn) that ‘the Holy One, Blessed be He, said to Moses: ‘Go, tell Israel that my name is ʿEhyeh ʿasher ʿEhyeh.’ What is the meaning of ʿEhyeh ʿasher ʿEhyeh? Just as you are present with me, so am I present with

26 See Benin, The Footprints of God, pp. 131–133, 136, Wolfson, Through a Speculum, pp. 33–41. 27 Tzedeq. However, it seems, on the basis of both the preceding and the following discussions that the meaning is charity, Tzedaqah; see Jeremiah 9:24. See Bernard S. Jackson, “‘Law’ and ‘Justice’ in the Bible,” Journal of Jewish Studies, vol. XLIX, 2 (1998), pp. 218–229. 28 Psalm 121:5. 29 Midrash Ve-Hizhir, ed. Y. M. Freimann, (1873), vol. I, fol. 43a; this text is one more example of the affinity between Midrash Ve-Hizhir and Midrash Hashkem—to be adduced immediately below—about which see the preface of the editor Israel Meir Friedmann, pp. VII–VIII. See also Nahmanides’ quotation from Midrash ʿAggadah in his Commentary on the Pentateuch to Exodus 3:14, and the significant remark of Menahem Kasher, Torah Shelemah, (New York, 1944), vol. 8, p. 153 note 188 (Hebrew). 80 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought

you. Likewise David said: ‘The Lord is thy shadow upon thy right hand.’30 What does ‘the Lord is thy shadow’ mean? Like thy shadow: just as thy shadow laughs back when you laugh:31 to it, and weeps if you weep to it, and if you show it an angry face or a pleasant face, so it returns; so is the Lord, the Holy One, Blessed be He, thy shadow. Just as you are present with Him, so is He present with you. End of quotation.32 Both sources draw upon earlier type of imagery, which resorts to the theme of shadow. According to some Assyrian views, God is the source whose shade is the king, described as the great man, while ordinary men are understood to be the latter’s shadows.33 However, while the Babylo- nian traditions assume a strong hierarchical series of sources and shades, with the higher as the paradigmatic and the lower the much less significant reproduction, in the two Midrashic sources discussed above there is clearly a reversal of order: the lower, human deeds induce a change in the specific status of the higher face. This form of thought had a huge impact on the concept of theurgy in Kabbalah especially in the case of R. Meir ibn Gabbai, one of the most influential Kabbalists.34 Though the imagery is that of an entire body and its shade, the more specific manner in which the interaction is expressed is that of the changing faces. While in the earlier Midrashim the divine face depends on human nature, and less on human actions, in the later passages, it is more the human deeds that count. This latter type of correlational theology consists in a more complex divine picture, which can be described as theosophy, and the possibility to affect it, that can be called theurgy, and the entire approach may be designated as theosophical theurgy.35 The first type can be described as accommodational theosophy. Both forms of theosophy take in the consideration the flexibility of the divine world, and its shaping itself in relation with the human one, this being the reason why the imagery used is that of the icon and the mirror.

30 Psalms 121:5. 31 Compare to Yalqut Shimeoni, Exodus, par. 286. 32 R. Meir ibn Gabbai, Sefer Tolaʿat Yaʿaqov, (Constantinopol, 1560), fol. 4a. On the Kabbalistic and Hasidic reverberations of this Midrash see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 173–179. 33 See Leo Oppenheim, “The Shadow of the King,” Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research, vol. 107 (1947), pp. 7–11; Idel, ibidem, pp. 180–181. 34 See also his widespread Sefer ʿAvodat ha-Qodesh, II, ch. 16. 35 See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 156–199. On other important examples of theurgy in Rabbinic literature see Lorberboim, Imago Dei: Rabbinic Literature, Maimonides and Nahmanides, (Ph.D. Thesis, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1997) (Hebrew). panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 81

Let me address now some other examples of the human face in relation to the divine: the transformation of the human face as the result of an encounter with the divine. According to some Midrashic statements, which capitalize on biblical episodes, describe the faces of the persons who come in direct contact with the divine realm, as transfigured. So, for example, we learn that “at the time that the Holy Spirit was upon him (i.e., the High Priest), his face burned like torches.”36 In a similar manner it is said that an historical figure who was described as a high priest underwent the same transformation; Simeon the Righteous described his entering the Holy of the Holiest in the company of a ‘man’, and in the year when this man did not go out with him he understood that he will die. In this context it is said that Rabbi Abbahu, a mystically oriented Palestinian Amora, said: ‘And who would say that he was a man? But God Himself,37 has entered with him and exited with him. And Rabbi Abbahu said: this can only be construed in consonance with R. Shimeon’s statement: ‘When the Holy Spirit rested on Phineas, his face flamed like torches about him. Hence it is written:38 ‘For the priest’s lips should preserve knowledge . . . for he is the angel of the Lord of hosts’.39 I understand the statement as pointing to the transformation of the priest into an angel, apparently in connection to the divine presence in the Tem- ple. This transformation is expressly related to a facial illumination. While earlier it was the divine face that changed its countenance, it is now the human one that is assimilated to the divine radiance that may be connected to the divine facial radiance. It may be that in this context the following statement found in the Heikhalot literature makes a certain sense: R. Ishmael said: Once I heard this teaching from R. Nehunyah ben ha-Kanah, I stood upon my feet and asked him all the names of the angels of wisdom, and from the question which I asked I saw a light in my heart like the days of heaven. R. Ishmael said: Once I stood on my feet and I saw my face

36 Leviticus Rabbaʾ⁠ 21:11. See also below beside note 127. 37 Bi-khevodo. 38 Malachi 2:7. 39 Leviticus Rabbaʾ⁠ 21:22. I used, in general, the translation of Joshua Finkel, who has also analyzed the passage in some details, and I shall refer to his analysis in the following footnotes. See his “The Guises and Vicissitudes of a Universal Folk-Belief in Jewish and Greek Tradition,” Harry Austyn Wolfson Jubilee Volume English Section, vol. I (Jerusalem, 1965), p. 236. 82 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought

enlightened by my wisdom,40 and I started to interpret41 each and every angel in every palace.42 What seems to be interesting is the fact that in those passages the divine face is not mentioned while the main topic is the change of the human face by acquiring the radiance reminiscent of Moses’ radiant face. On the other hand, we should be aware of the great importance in Rabbinic literature of the concept of the ‘face of Shekhinah’ which occurs in contexts regarding some forms of revelation.

3. Hypostatic Faces in Hasidei Ashkenaz

Jewish medieval thought has lost much of the personalistic and the anthropomorphic visions of God, sometimes strong cases of anthropomorphic expressions are found in R. Yehudah he-Hasid’s and R. Eleasar of Worms’ books.43 So, for example, he uses the phrase ‘Rosh ha-Bore’ namely the head of the Creator.44 On the other hand, there are plenty of passages in his writings, where anthropomorphic expressions are strongly denied insofar as God is concerned. So, for example, R. Eleasar’s reduces the terms Tzelem and Demut to ways of pointing out similarities between two beings, rather than anthropomorphic expressions.45 How- ever, elsewhere, Tzelem is expressly understood as ‘partzuf panim’ namely the countenance of the faces of the angels.46 From this point of view, the 13th century author is following a much earlier tradition described above, which interprets the biblical tzelem as face. The hierarchy of faces to be described below in some details, which is an interesting example of a chain of being that unites God’s and man’s faces by the intermediary of the Glory and the angelic powers, reflects much earlier traditions,

40 Cf. Ecclesiastes 8:1. 41 Or to recite. 42 Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, p. 112, par. 22–23; Sodei Razayya⁠ʾ, ed. Shalom Weiss, (Jerusalem, 1991), pp. 113–114. 43 On the importance of the anthropomorphic theology in Hasidei Ashkenaz see e.g. Scholem, Major Trends, pp. 86–87; Wolfson, Through a Speculum, pp. 192–195, 219, 230–232. 44 See the text printed in Joseph Dan, The Esoteric Theology of Ashkenazi Hasidism, (Mossad Bialik, Jerusalem, 1968), p. 120 (Hebrew). 45 See the passage printed by Joseph Dan, Studies in Ashkenazi-Hasidic Literature, (Massadah, Ramat Gan, 1975), p. 86. On the issue of demut in Hasidei Ashkenaz see Haym Soloveitchik, “Topics in the Hokhmat ha-Nefesh,” Journal of Jewish Studies, vol. 18 (1967), pp. 75–78; Dan, The Esoteric Theology, pp. 224–225. 46 See Siddur Rabbenu Shelomo mi-Germaiza, ed., M. Hershler, (Jerusalem, 1971), p. 287. panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 83 which have received due attention more recently; in an important study of Elliot Wolfson,47 Michael Fishbane,48 Shama Friedman49 as well as a study of mine,50 reevaluated the importance of the images of the Face whose origins are, as seen above, biblical. In my study I emphasized the anthropomorphic significance of the expression Sar ha-Panim, or Mal’akh ha-Panim, namely “angel of Face” related to Metatron. According to this proposal, Metatron is to be understood, at least in some cases, as appointed upon, or depending upon the divine face, just as other angels are in relation to other divine organs. Insofar as the topic of faces is concerned the Hasidei Ashkenaz are, therefore, inheritors of some older way of thought which might have been elaborated and sometime changed because of the encounter with the philosophical ways of thought. In the doctrines of Hasidei Ashkenaz, we can find approaches to the concept of face, which can be described as the theurgical and the ecstatic. The first one may be exemplified by a text of R. Eleasar of Worms, which interprets a liturgical passage dealing with the supplication that the divine glory should listen to the prayer, as follows: [the glory] should enlighten its face vis-a-vis our prayer . . . because when [the people of] Israel do not perform the will of God, blessed be He, it is as if it creates a smoke51 vis-a-vis the prayer . . . but when Israel are performing the divine will, the Glory illumines a light around the prayer.52 The passage may be better understood in the context of another discussion dealing with prayer by the same author. In his well-known Sefer Hokhmat ha-Nefesh, R. Eleasar contends that when God listens to the prayer, He causes the eyes of the Glory to illumine the prayer, “by the light of the face of the Living King.”53 Thus, the human prayer, apparently an ascending entity, is received positively by the light emanated from some divine faces, the divine one or that of the Glory. There can be no doubt that

47 “The Image of Jacob Engraved upon the Throne: Further Reflection on the Esoteric Doctrine of the German Pietists,” in his Along the Path, pp. 1–62. 48 “Some Forms of Divine Appearance in Ancient Jewish Thought,” in eds., J. Neusner, E. S. Frerichs, N. Sarna, From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism, Intellect in Quest of Understanding: Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox, (Scholars Press, Atlanta, Georgia, 1990), vol. II pp. 261–270. 49 “Graven Images,” in Graven Images, A Journal of Culture, Law, and the Sacred, vol. 1 (1994), pp. 233–238. 50 “Metatron: Remarks.” 51 See below notes 66, 79. 52 Perushei Siddur ha-Tefillah ed., M. and Y. A. Herschler, (Jerusalem, 1992), p. 414. 53 See R. Eleasar, Hokhmat ha-Nefesh, ed., N. E. Weiss, (Benei Beraq, 1987), p. 22. See also ibidem, pp. 64, 67. 84 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought

R. Eleasar elaborated upon earlier traditions, which can be documented in his master’s Sefer Hasidim: In the very moment when the death of someone has been determined, in that same night or day his [personal] astral [angel] is darkened,54 and its eyes and mouth are closed when the verdict was promulgated, as if it is dead . . . This is also the case when the verdict is positive, when it is determined that he will have life, (then) the light from the face of God55 shines over him several times, as it is written56 ‘The light of their faces (is) glory’.57 Though a literal translation of the expression ‘Or mi-lifnei ha-Qadosh Barukh Hu’ would read ‘the light from before the Holy One, blessed be He,’ in this particular context, where the face is mentioned in the context of light, the proposed translation makes better sense than a literal one.58 In any case, the description of the relationship between the two faces has a radiant component is quite evident.59 Elsewhere in Sefer Hasidim we read: And because the soul is on high he has made a body in the likeness of ʿElohim and created it in the image of ʿElohim. As long as someone does not trans- gress, and does not enjoy whatever his eyes see, on high the angels of mercy and angels of peace are similar to the righteous; and if someone does not embellish his face so that people would desire him, and is careful not to ruminate [sexually] in the thought of his heart then He causes the brilliance to fall60 on the face of that [entity] who has been made on high in their likeness. And so long as those faces are luminous, no demonic power is able to harm him. And it is said61 ‘He was similar to an animal, became like (them).’ And our sages have said that ‘No beast or demonic power can

54 Nehshakh. See also the description of R. Eleasar in Hilkhot Kavod printed in Daniel Abrams, “Sod kol ha-Sodot, The Concept of the Divine Glory and the Intention of Prayer in the Writings of R. Eleasar of Worms,” Daat vol. 34 (1995), p. 80 line 69 (Hebrew), where the dimness of the face, ʿofel ʿal panai, is mentioned in the context of the prophetic mantics. See also notes 51, 66, 79, where the motif of smoke is found. 55 ‘Or mi-lifnei ha-Qadosh Barukh Hu’. 56 I did not find the biblical verse which includes the locution ʿor penei kavod. 57 Sefer Hasidim, ed. R. Margoliot, (Mossad ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem, 1964), pars. 547– 548, p. 363; ed. Wistinetzki-Friemann, (Verhman, Frankfurt am Main, 1924), p. 370 par. 1556. 58 Compare also the text of the Targum on the Song of Songs analyzed by Raphael Loewe, “The Divine Garment and Shiʿur Qomah,” Harvard Theological Review vol. 58 (1965), pp. 153–160, especially p. 156, on the radiance of the glory, kavod, of the face of God; see also idem, “Apologetic Motifs in the Targum to the Song of Songs,” Biblical Motifs, Origins and Transformations, ed. A. Altmann, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1966), pp. 159–196. 59 See also Perushei Siddur, p. 708. 60 Mazriah. 61 Psalm 49:13. panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 85

have a power over man, until he becomes like an animal’,62 namely an animal like it is. And this is (the meaning of) what has been said63 ‘The image64 has been removed from them’. However, when someone sins and is enjoying his transgressions, then the faces of the pernicious angels are delighted65 because of them [the sins] and the faces of anger are in front of them and smoke66 is [dwelling] on them. And the faces that are in the likeness of the righteous are like the faces [found] in the front of the faces standing before the Glory, as the gladness is there.67 The verb mazriah, translated as ‘causes brilliance to fall’, stands here for the relationship between two entities on high, and this relation depends upon the deeds on below. This verb occurs, in a very similar context, in a book of R. Eleasar of Worms.68 From this point of view, the last text represents a view very close to the phenomena that were designated in the scholarship of Kabbalah as theurgy. In any case, other discussions of R. Eleasar are even closer to Kabbalistic theurgy.69 According to another passage, there is a radiance which is emanated upon the prayer, and accordance to the nature of this radiance, designated as zohar, the angels are taking the prayer to a certain place around the divine face.70 The reification of the faces on high is quite conspicuous: indeed it is quite plausible to assume that the Hebrew phrase ke-fanim she-li-fnei ha-Kavod points, in an elliptic manner, to those faces which exist in the presence of the Glory, a theory which is quite explicit in R. Eleasar of Worms. He describes a variety of faces that represent hypostatic readings of the descriptions of the divine faces in Midrashic literature as discussed above.71 God is described as choosing a certain face from the store of faces, in order to reveal His will. However, also the Glory has a face, and

62 BT, Sabbath, fol. 151b. 63 Numbers 14:9. 64 Tzelem. In fact, the original significance of tzilam is ‘their shadow’. 65 ʿultzu. 66 See notes 51, 79. 67 Sefer Hasidism, ibidem, pp. 566–567. no. 1136. 68 Sefer Hokhmat ha-Nefesh, p. 134. 69 See e.g. Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 160–161, 192–196 and the additional cases adduced by Wolfson, Along the Path, pp. 170–171 note 307. A different opinion was expressed by Dan in his Esoteric Theology, p. 129, and in his “A Re-evaluation of the ‘Ashkenazi Kabbalah’,” in ed., J. Dan, The Beginnings of the Jewish Mysticism in Medieval Europe, (Jerusalem, 1987), pp. 138–139 (Hebrew). 70 See Sodei Razayya⁠ʾ, p. 134. See additional texts about the concept of zohar in my “Gazing at the Head,” pp. 269–270. 71 See Perushei Siddur, pp. 388, 713. 86 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought

God uses this face in order to convey his will.72 No more the elastic face of the Midrashic passages which changes its countenance, but a divinity that transcends the multitude of lower faces. So, for example, we read in Sefer ha-Kavod: When God wants to determine something, for good or bad, the angels gather . . . and then God has faces which are special for the gathering 73 for either good or bad . . . And when He wants, and they see the appearance of the face, if they turn toward the zodiac signs—since everyone has a zodiac sign on high in his appearance. And if someone prays here below because of a misfortune, and God does not want to listen to his prayer, then He hides the face, the eyes and ears of that glory which is visible to the angels and prophet . . . and when He wants to show to the pernicious angels how He desires to revenge His revenge then He looks with the angry face on the zodiac sign of that man on whom He is angry . . . and when He wants to listen He shows to the angels the vision74 of His lips,75 He shows the vision of His face to turn toward the zodiac-sign that is like the person who prays . . . and [they] see how the laughing face is turning.76 Here, like in other instances in this literature, the various faces, which represent the divine intentions, preexist the moment of decision and the decision is described as reflecting the divine will by means of the pertinent face. But the Creator, His Unity will not vary, neither will change or had changed but in accordance to the topic (that God would like to teach) he displays His Glory. He shows everything by means of the radiance of His great fire. If He is angry, He shows as an angry face [ke-fanim zoʿafot]. Everything is in the cloud of His Glory, which is vis-a-vis of Him.77 The supernal store of faces consists not only of configurations that serve divine revelations but also an archetypal world. According to another statement of the same author, the meaning of the verse “God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him,”78 is that there are “two

72 On the concept of the ‘face of Glory’ see also R. Eleasar’s Hilkehot Kavod, in Abrams, “Sod kol ha-Sodot,” pp. 79, 80; Dan, The Esoteric Theology, pp. 134–136; Wolfson, Along the Path, pp. 51, 174 note 323. 73 This gathering is an important event in religious life according to the Ashkenazi author. See also ibidem, fol. 151ab. 74 Mareʾh. On this term in Ashkenazi Hasidism see Idel, “Gazing at the Head,” p. 283 note 60. 75 See below note 83. 76 Ms. Oxford-Bodleiana 1566, fol. 150ab. 77 Sodei Razayya⁠ʾ, Hilekhot Kavod, p. 37, Dan, The Esoteric Theology, p. 84. 78 Genesis 1:27. panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 87 images, because the faces of everyone are on high, the righteous according to his likeness [is represented by] the angels of peace and mercy, while the wicked, according to his likeness [is represented by] pernicious angels and faces of anger and smoke.”79,80 The affinity between face and image, tzelem is here obvious, and reminiscent of the discussions adduced above from the Slavonic book of Enoch. It seems, therefore, that R. Eleasar had access to an ancient theory that emphasized the theory of a supernal world, consisting of archetypes, which were existing in the front of the divine face. Therefore, according to R. Eleasar, on high both the faces used by God and the archetypal faces representing everyone are found together. I would like to emphasize the parallelism between Glory and Face, as found especially in the passage from Sefer ha-Kavod. Like the glory that is a modicum of revelation, so also the supernal face reflects the divine intention. Both Glory and Face externalize the divine intention, which can be seen by the prophet, who can extrapolate from the nature of this vision the hidden message. The phrase panim zoʿafot is reminiscent of Midrashic discussions adduced in the previous paragraph dealing with the reciprocal relationship between God and man, by using the same expression, as we had already seen above. Some of the most interesting examples of the discussion of faces is found in the context of the mantic possibilities related to the facial expressions. According to R. Eleasar of Worms ‘The expression of their faces was betraying them’81 because the face accords to the thought and wisdom. And the sages who are experts in matters of the faces of man82 knew what are the matters of his thoughts, because the Cre- ator wanted that (the faces of) the good men will be improved while those of the wicked will be bad, since men are known by their faces . . . And the

79 On smoke see also above notes 51, 66. 80 Hokhmat ha-Nefesh, p. 39 mentioned by Dan, The Esoteric Theology, p. 229. In more general terms see Wolfson’s discussion on archetypal entities in Hasidei Ashkenaz, Through a Speculum, pp. 205–206. 81 Isaiah 3:9. 82 Beqiʾim bi-fnei ʿadam. This is the correct version, while the older edition, as well as the newer one, read here be-dinei ha-ʾadam, which is conspicuously an erroneous version. See also Gershom Scholem, “Hakarat Panim ve-Sidrei Sirtutin,” in Sefer Assaf, (Jerusalem, 1953), p. 466 note 27 (Hebrew). In Hasidei Ashkenaz metoposcopy is understood as a technique for achieving knowledge of the thought of man, just as prophecy attains the knowledge of the divine mind and decrees. See also Assi Farber-Ginat, The Concept of the Merkabah in the Thirteenth-Century Jewish Esotericism—ʿSod Ha-ʾEgoz and its Development, (Ph.D. Thesis, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1986), p. 417 (Hebrew). 88 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought

Glory, in accordance to the matters of the decrees, ‘His lips are full of anger, and His tongue as a consuming fire.’83 . . . and in accordance with the visions of the Glory, the angels and the prophets know the ‘supernal knowledge.’84, 85 The comparison of those experts in physiognomy, who are able to fathom the thoughts of men from the expressions on their faces, to angels and prophets, who are able to read the divine decree on the visions of the Glory, points to the possibility that the Glory manifests the inner contents of divine thought by means of a supernal face. Let me point now to the other theme that is characteristic of the face: its radiance here below. In his Commentary on the Torah R. Eleasar writes as follows: The [study of] the Talmud causes an ornament to man, and the ‘countenance of his face’86 is bright like the splendor of the radiance of the great light, as it is said by the sages ‘Whoever studies the Torah, a thread of mercy is drawn onto him’.87 Elsewhere the same author writes that whoever darkens himself, day and night, in the light of the Torah, (He) will enlighten his face, and he will have a splendor and ornament of the Glory, ‘the crown of the Beloved’ . . . as it is said88 ‘The wisdom of man will enlighten his face’.89 R. Eleasar expressly views the Torah as tantamount to the face of the Shekhinah.90 The assumption is that the study of the Torah means the

83 Isaiah 30:27. On lips see above the quote from Sefer ha-Kavod. 84 daʿat ʿelyon. See Abrams, ibidem, p. 80. 85 Hokhmat ha-Nefesh, p. 130, corrected according to Ms. Parma, de Rossi 1390, fols. 70b-71a. On the similarity between prophets and angels see also Sodei Razayya⁠ʾ p. 122. See also the similar passage from Sefer ha-Shem, Ms. British Library 737, fol. 378a translated by Wolfson, Through a Speculum, p. 217; idem, Along the Path, p. 174 note 323. 86 qelaster panav. 87 Perush ha-Torah, I, pp. 45–46; See also the text from Ms. Oxford Bodeliana 1567, fol. 71b, in the name of Sefer ha-Kavod, printed by Dan, The Esoteric Theology, p. 90; Idel, “Gazing at the Head,” p. 285. It should be mentioned that the study and the recitation of the Torah was conceived of as inducing experiences of light also in other Ashkenazi texts. See, e.g., R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo ha-Navi’s Commentary on the Seventy Names of Metatron, printed as Sefer ha-Hesheq, (Lemberg, 1865), fol. 196b; see also Ignaz Goldziher, “La notion de la Sakina chez les Mahometans,” Revue de l’histoire des religions, vol. XIV (1893), pp. 7–8. 88 Ecclesiastes 8:1. 89 Printed in R. Eleasar’s Perush ha-Torah, I pp. 31–32. See also Arthur Green, Keter, The Crown of God in Early Jewish Mysticism (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997), pp. 106–120. 90 See his Commentary on Liturgy, Ms. Paris BN 772, fol. 84a, adduced by Elliot Wolfson, “The Mystical Significance of Torah Study in German Pietism,” Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. LXXXIV (1993), p. 61 note 70. panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 89 absorption of the luminosity of the divine presence, or of the face of the Shekhinah, a process that generates the facial radiance of the student.

4. Divine Faces in the Theosophical-Theurgical Kabbalah

The various uses of the imagery of faces in the Bible and other literatures referred above reverberated abundantly in the various sorts of Kabbalis- tic literature. It should be noticed that despite the biblical resort to both facial descriptions and metaphors, the more concrete aspects of the biblical expressions have been appropriated by the Ashkenazi sources, as seen above, rather than by the Sephardi ones. However, more than those literatures, each of the main Kabbalistic schools was more focused upon a certain main topic creating more systematic types of discourses, when compared to the pre-Kabbalistic writings. I propose to distinguish between two main emphases related to the resort to faces. The theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah, concerned with the construction of elaborate supernal systems, was much more concerned with complex discussions of multiple faces, while the ecstatic Kabbalah was much more concerned with the human face as part of a mystical experience in the present. Let me adduce some few examples that exemplify the different distribution of the two approaches in the two main Kab- balistic schools. While the ecstatic Kabbalah operates, as we shall see in the next paragraph, with the biblical and rabbinic material dealing with issues related to revelation, the main Kabbalistic schools, which can be described as theosophical-theurgical, capitalize on other type of Jewish material, more characteristic of rabbinic thought and Hasidei Ashkenaz. The emphasis on multiple divine faces on the one hand, and on the theurgical elements on the other hand, demonstrate the strong affinities between those sorts of Kabbalah and rabbinic literature. In this limited framework it is impossible to survey all the main kinds of uses of the noun Panim in theosophical Kabbalah; some of the interesting topics related to those understandings will have to wait for another opportunity.91 It should be pointed out that both the theosophical Kabbalah and the Ashkenazi Hasidic literature, two important bodies of literature committed to writing since the beginning of the 13th century, worked with

91 See, e.g., the view conceiving the righteous as the face of God, which is reminiscent of the Muslim view of the divine face as constituted by the Imams. See Corbin, Face de Dieu, pp. 276; 237–259; Wolfson, Through the Speculum, pp. 368–377. 90 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought hypostatical understanding of the divine face, dramatically more than all the earlier bodies of Jewish literature. From some of the earliest Kabbal- istic sources, the concept of du-partzufin has been connected to divine attributes. According to R. Abraham ben David, those two attributes are the sefirot of Hesed and Gevurah, and this seems to be the case also in R. Azriel of Gerona and R. Jacob ben Sheshet.92 Another theosophical understanding of the term du-partzufin, especially in Nahmanides’ school, identifies these two faces with the sefirot of Tiferet and Malkhut, which stand sometimes for the radiant and non-radiant faces.93 As I suggested elsewhere, there are interesting parallels between the discussion of R. Abraham ben David and a passage of Philo and it is plausible, as it is the case of Hasidei Ashkenaz, that also the first Kabbalists inherited earlier traditions.94 However, in addition to the theosophical interpretation of the Rabbinic description of Adam as double-faced, there are many discussions where the divine creation as described in Genesis was understood, symbolically, as pointing to the supernal worlds. So, for example, we read in two of R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid’s books: You already know that the countenance95 mentioned by our Rabbis of blessed memory, is the Countenance of the Supernal Man. He is the world of ten levels that is called Son of Man.96 Accordingly, man is called the micro- cosm in relation to the supernal world. This is the secret that the Rabbis of blessed memory alluded to [by saying] Du-partzufin.97 The Supernal Form

92 See respectively Commentary on the Talmudic Aggadot, ed. Isaiah Tishby, (Mekitzei Nirdamim, Jerusalem, 1945), p. 86. Tishby’s footnote ibidem, note 4 reflects the more general vision pointed out by Scholem, that du-partzufin is a symbol of Tiferet and Malkhut. R. Azriel’s view however is far from clear and my conjecture is that he may be understood better as pointing to Hesed and Gevurah. See also Meshiv Devarim Nekhohim, ed. Georges Vajda, (Israeli Academy of Science and Humanities, Jerusalem, 1969), pp. 126, 151 (Hebrew). 93 See, e.g., R. Shem Tov ibn Gaon, Keter Shem Tov, Ms. Paris BN 774, fols. 76b, 85ab, 89b, 90a, 91ab, 107a, 112a; R. Isaac of Acre, Meirat ʿEinayyim, A Critical Edition, ed. Amos Goldreich, (Ph. D Thesis, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1981), p. 253 [Hebrew]; the anonymous Sefer ha-Yihud, Ms. Milano-Ambrosiana 62, fol. 114a. More on Nahmanides’ secret of the face, which is related to the divine dwelling on angels see Lorberboim, Imago Dei, pp. 313–316. 94 See Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 131–133; idem, Kabbalah and Eros (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2005), pp. 31–32. 95 Partzuf. 96 Ben ʿAdam. 97 On a vision of du-partzufin as pointing to higher levels within the divine world see the rather cryptic responsum of R. David printed in M. Idel, “Kabbalistic Material from the Circle of R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, vol. II, 2 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 91

is called Countenance, and this Countenance is called the Supernal Man as it is written:98 ‘But whilst I am still in my flesh, though it be after my skin is torn from my body, I would see God’.99 Partzuf stands here for the supernal form, namely the entire range of ten sefirot, which have accumulatively an anthropomorphic shape. What is therefore the meaning of the two faces, du-partzufin? In my opinion, R. David refers to the divine shape and the human one: from the contemplation of the latter the former can be grasped. This interpretation is indeed a rare approach to the concept of du-partzufin, though the way in which the verse from Job is understood has some earlier Kabbalistic and non-Kabbalis- tic parallels.100 Indeed, according to another theosophical discussion, found in an anonymous Sefer ha-Yihud, the concept of the du-partzufin represents the divine sefirot, whose emergence created, like the shade projected from an archetype, the human form.101 What is the dominant intention of these discussions is the structure of the higher anthropomorphic realm, while the human is conceived to be a replique. In any case, and this is an important point, it is not the human face and its illumination, or the mystical experience which is involved here, but a structural affinity between two structures called ‘face.’ Such an affinity recurs elsewhere in R. David’s book, where he argues that the divine name is inscribed on the human face in order to generate the affinity to the supernal form. In this case, the term panim, not partzuf is used.102 While the above quote is concerned with a generic vision of the sefirotic world as ‘face’ elsewhere R. David offers, apparently following other Kabbalistic sources, a more detailed reference to the symbolism of ‘face’:

(1982/83), pp. 194–197 (Hebrew), and the further analysis of Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, pp. 132–133. 98 Job 19:26. 99 Sefer Marʾot ha-Zovʾot, ed. Daniel Ch. Matt, (Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1982), p. 202. See also the parallel passage found in his commentary on liturgy ‘Or Zarua’, Ms. Oxford- Bodleiana 1624, fol. 10b. For a somewhat similar stand see R. Joseph of Hamadan’s passage translated and discussed in Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, p. 104. 100 See Alexander Altmann, Von der mittelalterlichen zur modernen Aufklarung, (Mohr, Tuebingen, 1987), pp. 1–33. 101 Ms. Milano-Ambrosiana 62, fols. 112ab. See also the late 13th century compilation from different sources printed by Gershom Scholem, in Catalogus Codicum Hebraicorum, (Hierosolymis, 1930), p. 207. 102 Marʾot ha-Zovʾot, pp. 246–247. For the view that the divine name represents the divine presence upon man, see Idel, “Gazing at the Head,” p. 273. The vision of the divine name on the face of a person is known from the later examples of R. Isaac Luria and R. Nahman of Kossov. 92 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought

‘The wisdom of man will enlighten his face’103 because the supernal wisdom which belongs to the supernal anthropos, enlightens his face, namely [the sefirah of] Tiferet, which is called the face of [the sefirah of] Hokhmah, which is enlightening a primordial light to the face of Man. Another interpretation: ‘[It] will enlighten his face’ namely it will enlighten the face of ʿAtarah, which is called Face . . . because she is receiving from all the faces, and is called Metatron, the Prince of the Face.104 According to this passage, Tiferet and ʿAtarah are called ‘face’, and in fact all the higher sefirot as designated by this name. Indeed, according to a text that precedes the quote, also the sefirot of Hesed and Gevurah are called ‘faces.’ According to this discussion the changing of face mentioned in the verse of Ecclesiastes 8:1 ‘the boldness of his face changed’ was interpreted as the transition from the attribute of stern judgement to that of mercy.105 Panim became, therefore, a polysemic symbol that points, to take the two passages of R. David in consideration, to both the entire sefirotic realm as a whole and to each of the divine powers that constitute it. At the end of this paragraph I would like to point out one of the most interesting meanings of Panim in theosophical Kabbalah. In the framework of the relational theosophy that the present study attempts to illustrate, face may serve as a fascinating example. As ‘face’ means also ‘front’ and the dichotomy between front and back occurs already in the Bible in a theological context, some Kabbalist resorted to the concept of face in order to point to the higher aspect of a divine manifestation, while the back stands for the lower aspect of the same divine attribute. This resort to the term ‘face’ is part of a structural discourse, which attenuates or obliterates the anthropomorphic theology. So, for example, we learn from a discussion of R. Joseph Gikatilla: The [sefirah of] Binah is linked to the [sefirah of] Hokhmah, and behold Hokhmah is called face and the Binah is called in relation to it back. And despite the fact that Binah is, in relation to all the sefirot that follow it, called face, since there are several faces to faces, and several backs to backs. And behold I hint at the supernal Keter, be it blessed, is the secret of the face which has no face higher than it, and the tenth sefirah is called Malkhut which is the back, which has no other back among the sefirot, it is the face in relation to all the creatures that are beneath it.106

103 Ecclesiastes 8:1. 104 Marʾot ha-Zovʾot, p. 205. 105 Ibidem, p. 204. 106 Sod ha-Keruvim, Ms. Parma—de Rossi 1230, fol. 108b; Ms. Paris BN 823, fol. 51a. See also his Shaʿarei ʿOrah, ch. 5, ed. Joseph ben Shlomo, (Mossad Bialik, Jerusalem, 1970), panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 93

Thus, the same sefirah may be understood as both the face to the lower sefirot and the back of the higher sefirot. In my opinion, there is a strong distinction between the anthropomorphic understanding of the face, and the structural resort to this term. In the first case we may designate the semiotic use of ‘face’ as symbolic, while in the second as figurative. In fact Gikatilla’s, and some other theosophical Kabbalists’ resort to this type of expression, adopted a Neoplatonic vision of the sefirotic realm, according to which all the sefirot are conceived of as part of a straight chain, different from the anthropomorphic picture of the ten sefirot. This sort of representing the sefirot is sometimes found in Kabbalistic designs. It is an interesting question, which cannot be dealt here; to what extent some passages read in an anthropomorphic manner do not reflect, in fact, a structural approach that is, from the anthropomorphic point of view, figurative.107 This figurative approach differs from the philosophical insistence that there is no face or back on high, even when the classical sources, the Bible and the references to Sefer Shiʿur Qomah, are using such an imagery.108

5. Divine and Human Faces in Ecstatic Kabbalah

The emergence of the Maimonidean theology generated a totally aniconic perception of the divinity. Within the framework of such a stand the expressions related to divine faces were interpreted metaphorically, and non-anthropomorphically.109 Following his lead, also some few Kab- balists interpreted the expressions related to the divine face as pointing metaphorically to intellectual entities. This is eminently the case in the ecstatic Kabbalah, especially in Abraham Abulafia’s commentaries on the Guide of the Perplexed. However, I would like to present here the more mystical aspects of the issue of face. In one of the main handbooks

I, pp. 237–239, where the succession of sefirot conceived of as both faces and backs is conceptualized in terms of emanator and recipient, on the one hand, and by resorting to the concept of androgynos, on the other. 107 See e.g. the material referred by Wolfson, Through a Speculum, p. 368 note 148. 108 For this issue see Warren Z. Harvey, “The Incorporeality of God in Maimonides, Rabad, and Spinoza,” in eds. S. O. Heller Wilensky & M. Idel, Studies in Jewish Thought, (The Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1989), pp. 63–78, especially pp. 72–73 (Hebrew). 109 See Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed I:2, 54. See Warren Z. Harvey, “Maimonides on Job 14:20 and the Story of the Paradise,” in Between History and Literature, Studies in Honor of Isaac Barzilay, ed. Stanley Nash, (HaKibbutz ha-Meʾuhad, Tel Aviv, 1997), pp. 143–148 (Hebrew). 94 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought composed by R. Abraham Abulafia in order to teach his techniques to reach mystical experiences, he recommends the following device: Hold your head evenly, as if it were on the balance-pans of a scale, in the manner in which you would speak with a man who was as tall as yourself, evenly, face to face.110 Intended to chart the road to a prophetic experience, this passage resorts to an expression related to Moses’ encounter with the divine, panim ‘el panim. Unlike Maimonides, who was not confronted with an imminent possibility of experiencing a prophetic experience in the present, Abu- lafia believed that he achieved mystical experiences and he wanted to disseminate a path to achieve it. A similar recommendation is included in another handbook, dealing with a version of Abulafia’s mystical technique Direct your face towards the Name, which is mentioned, and sit as though a man is standing before you and waiting for you to speak with Him, and He is ready to answer you concerning whatever you may ask him, and you say ‘speak’ and he answers . . . recite first ‘the head of the head’,111 drawing out the breath and at great ease; and afterwards go back as if the one standing opposite you is answering you, and you yourself answer, changing your voice, so that the answer not be similar to the question.112 What seems to be crucial in Abulafia’s thought and perhaps also his experience is the fact that he was aware that an encounter with the divine does not mean the descent of a divine face in order to converse with the mystic. It is he who creates the other face by means of his imagination and it is his voice that reveals to him the prophetic message. Thus, while the theosophical Kabbalists multiply divine faces within the supernal world, the ecstatic Kabbalist understands the revealing face as part of a self-revelation. Elsewhere Abulafia resorts again to the same simile when describing the mystical experience: The letters are without any doubt the root of all wisdom and knowledge, and they are themselves the contents of prophecy, and they appear in the prophetic vision as though [they are] opaque bodies speaking to man face to face [saying] most of the intellective comprehensions, [which are] thought in the heart of the one speaking them.113

110 Hayyei ha-ʿOlam ha-Ba⁠ʾ, Ms. Oxford-Bodleiana 1582, fol. 54a. 111 I.e., the first combination of letters. 112 Sefer ha-Hesheq, Ms. New York-JTS 1801, fol. 9a, corrected according to Ms. British Library 749, fol. 12ab. 113 Hayyei ha-ʿOlam ha-Ba’, Ms. Oxford-Bodleiana 1582, fol. 59ab. panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 95

It seems that the above technical recommendations and description of a mystical experience, are not theoretical issues. In one of his prophetic books, Abulafia describes what seems to have been an experience he had: I was shown a new vision by God, with a new name upon a renewed spirit . . . I saw a man coming from the west with a great army, the number of the warriors of his camp being twenty-two thousand men114 . . . And when I saw his face in the sight, I was astonished, and my heart trembled within me, and I left my place and I longed for it to call upon the name of God to help me, but that thing evaded my spirit. And when the Man has seen my great fear and my strong awe, he opened his mouth and he spoke, and he opened my mouth to speak, and I answered him according to his words, and in my words I was strengthened and I became another man.115, 116 The earlier discussions treat the human face on the concrete level, and the face of the revealing entity as a figurative term, since that face is generated by human imagination. In another book the same Kabbalist interprets the divine face as light emanated upon the human intellect, creating an identity between the attribute of radiance related to face, and the face itself: the meaning of that which they said117 ‘May God shine his face upon you,’ is that there is light before Him, by which every person can see what he sees, and this is the beginning of the light which the sun receives from it, just as the moon receives light from the light of the sun; and all this is a metaphor from light to light, because the bright inner light which shines is a thing without a body, and it comes from this, for it is hidden away for the righteous. And as the righteous see it with many aspects, that light is itself called ‘faces’ and its immediate cause is the abundance from the Divine influx, and it is called by the name ‘the Prince of the Face’.118 This intellectualistic understanding of revelation, stemming from the agent intellect, or the prince of the face, sublates the visual and the auditory revelations. In the vein of Maimonides’ understanding of prophecy as a phenomenon related to inner spiritual events Abulafia spiritualizes the facial expresses related to the divine real, and to a certain extent

114 This number alludes to the parallel between the 22 letters and the people; see also Sefer ha-ʾOt, p. 83. 115 Cf. I Sam. 10:6. 116 Ed. A. Jellinek, “ʿSefer Ha-Ot’. Apokalypse des Pseudo-Propheten und Pseudo-Messias Abraham Abulafia,” in Jubelschrift zum siebzigstenGeburtstage des Prof. Dr. H. Graetz, (Breslau 1887), pp. 81–82. 117 Numbers 6:25. 118 Shomer Mitzwah, Ms. Paris BN 853, fols. 56b–57a. 96 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought envisions even details related to the biography of prophets are metaphors for spiritual developments. Let me adduce such an example from R. Nathan ben Saʿadya Harar’s Sefer Shaʿarei Tzedeq. When dealing with Moses’ revelation when his generation119 was completed after forty days, the skin of his face shone120 . . . When he was weaned, it shone. [All this] to indicate to you the purity of his matter and the negation of its darkness, until it became, by way of analogy, like the heavenly sapphire-like material. And our rabbis of blessed memory expounded, ‘for the skin of his face shone’—do not read ‘or [skin] but ‘or [light], for the letters ʿa[leph] h[et] [he] ʿa[in] r[eish] interchange; that is, the enlightened intellect which dwells in the light which is in the innermost part of the true, perfect intellect.121 I read this passage as pointing to a double reading of the event related to Moses. On the plain level, the radiance of the face is connected to the skin. However, given the assumption that the consonant ʿain is inter- changeable, according to this author, with other consonants, more specifically ʿaleph, the esoteric meaning is that light, which means an intellectual experience is hinted at in the Bible. In the vein of both ancient Jewish texts and Neoplatonic thought, some passages of R. Isaac of Acre, presumably a student of R. Nathan Harar, wrote: When R. Eliezer was exposing a certain issue122 the face of R. Eliezer was bright as the brightness of the firmament, because of the light of the Shekhi- nah which was dwelling on his face, and so [also] was the face of R. Kahana when he came to Babylonia from the land of Israel, out of the plenty of Torah he has learned. And [in the case of] Ben Azzai fire was consuming [everything] around him when he was preoccupied with [issues of] Torah.123 So also in the case of Yonathan ben Uzziel, when he was discussing the issue of the Account of Merkavah, any bird that was hovering in the air vis a vis him, was burned.124 Likewise today, if someone will look at the faces of the conscientious students, who are worshipping out of love [for God] and for the sake of the Torah, who are very modest, pursuing piety and fleeing from honor, you will see on them the radiance of the Divine Presence, so that

119 Namely the formation of his fetus. 120 Exodus 34:29. 121 Ed. Y. E. Porush, (Jerusalem, 1989), p. 11. 122 Literally: delivering a sermon. 123 Leviticus Rabba⁠ʾ 16:4, ed. M. Margaliot, (JTS, New York, Jerusalem, 1993), p. 354. 124 BT, Sukkah, fol. 28a. panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 97

those who see them will be afraid. Each of them will have the radiance of the Divine Presence in accordance to his degree.125 Though the discussion of matters about Merkavah is mentioned here in the case of Yonathan ben Uzziel, the general tone of the passage is related to the medieval nomian technique of achieving a paranormal experience: the study of the Torah. The dwelling of the Shekhinah as the result of this study is not new; it has numerous precedents in ancient Jewish literature and, as seen above, in Ashkenazi Hasidism. However, the radiance is mentioned here as a compensation for the dedication to the Torah in a manner that is reminiscent of the previous discussions. According to R. Isaac’s interpretation, the fire surrounding the students of the various important matters is understood not as a power merely descending from above around the students but as a light, which is refracted on the faces of the students. Moreover, and this is a very important point, the medieval Kabbalist emphasizes the fact that he is discussing not merely an issue of the past but also something that has continuous relevance, as the radiance can be perceived even in his days. Since the writings of R. Isaac are replete with occurrences of the term Ziv, another term for radiance, we may conclude that indeed the ancient texts were conceived not only as subjects of exegesis but also as models to be imitated in the present. This more general term mitigates the anthropomorphic aspects of Penei ha-Shekhinah, leaving the human face as the single face relevant for his discussion. Let me adduce another example, pointing to the same phenomenon. In the abovementioned Sefer Shushan Sodot, which preserved also otherwise unknown passages from ecstatic Kabbalah, we read as part of an explanation of the radiance of Moses’ face: We have found in the legends of our sages in the case of some sages who said about R. Pinhas126 that in the moment the Holy Spirit was dwelling on him, his face was enflamed like a torch,127 and likewise when R. Eliezer the Great, when he was dealing with the Account of Creation, his face was radiating like the radiance of Moses and no one was able to distinguish

125 Meirat ʿEinayim, ed. Goldreich, p. 224, Georges Vajda, Recherches sur la philosophie et la Kabbale dans la pensee juive du Moyen Age (Mouton, Paris, 1962), p. 384. It should be mentioned that the Kabbalist brought, shortly before our passage, also the radiance of the face of Moses and Joshua; see also Vajda, ibidem, p. 376. 126 Pinhas, not R. Pinhas. 127 See above note 36. 98 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought

between day and night. See from all this it becomes clear that to you that the radiance of Moses’ face was a divine matter, on its plain sense . . . and some righteous and men of deeds we have seen in the day of their fast, when they were isolated,128 that their faces were red, as if they ate and drank. And this is the way of the dwelling of the light. Blessed be He who exercises his providence on those who fear Him, to show them their [place in the next] world while alive.129 Though the passage is anonymous, it is reasonable to assume that the text stems from a lost writing of R. Isaac of Acre; this conclusion is based on some few terminological affinities and I guess that the fact that on the next page R. Moses of Kiev quoted, again anonymously, from books of R. Nathan and R. Isaac is not a mere coincidence.130 Here again the Kab- balist testifies as to an actual phenomenon of facial luminosity, which is understood as the anticipation of the next world and it is connected, at least in the case of R. Eliezer, to a discussion of esoteric issues, the Account of Creation. On the other hand, this achievement of the mystics can also be understood as an anticipation of the state of the righteous in the World to Come; there also the perfecti will be nourished by the radiance of the Shekhinah.131 The ability to anticipate the direct relationship with the radiance is tantamount in some sources with the Paradisiac state, namely immortality. The return to the Adamic situation by being involved in contemplation of, and eventually enwrapped by a supernal light is, at the same time, the anticipation of the future retribution of the righteous. Unlike the widespread understanding of du-partzufin as pointing to two divine attributes in the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah, Abulafia and R. Nathan were much less interested in this topic. This evident quantitative discrepancy is quite obvious and it points to the divergence in the selection of the components that were chosen to constitute the fabric of ecstatic Kabbalah. In fact I am acquainted with solely two short treatments of this topic in the vast literature of ecstatic Kabbalah, unlike the many hundreds or thousands of discussions in the theosophical-theurgical schools. However, a qualitative one couples the quantitative difference. Let me survey the succinct references to this image in ecstatic Kabbalah.

128 Be-hitbodedutam; this can be translated also as ‘while they were concentrating.’ Cf. Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 112–119. 129 Shushan Sodot, fol. 69a. 130 See my introduction to Natan ben Sa‘adyah Har’ar, Le porte della Giustizia, ed. M. Idel, tr. M. Mottolese (Adelphi, Milano, 2001), pp. 230–245. 131 See the sources brought by and the elaborated analysis of Ira Chernus, Mysticism and Rabbinic Judaism, (de Gruyter, Berlin, New York, 1982), pp. 76–86. panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 99

In one of Abulafia’s untitled fragments, the back and front aspects of the du-partzufim stand for the two human instincts, Yetzer tov and yetzer raʿ.132 According to another discussion Abulafia describes those two instincts as du-partzufim, which are emanated from the Agent Intellect.133 It is no more the physical structure of the primordial man that interests Abulafia, as it is the case in the midrashic thought, in Hasidei Ashkenaz and in the theosophical Kabbalists, but of everyman. The anthropocentric propensity of the ecstatic Kabbalah is obvious especially when compared to the theocentric understanding that is dominant in the theosophical- theurgical Kabbalah. His student, R. Nathan Harar, was aware of the Nah- manidean theory, which refers to the sefirot of Yesod and Malkhut as the du-partzufim, as we learn from one quite explicit passage.134 However, he formulates his view while resorting to this imagery in quite a different manner. According to one passage, this image points to two different forms of cognition: the present one, which is weak, and the future one which is strong or, to use his more widespread imagery, the former is the face, while the latter is the back.135 R. Nathan adduces this stand as that of Kabbalists but for the time being I am not aware of any such antecedent. Thus, the concept of du-partzufin represents in this book alternative forms of cognition that never coexist, but neutralizes each other. Or, to formulate it differently: two different divine powers or manifestations are related to different aeons in history and they are exclusive, as the different form of human cognition exclude each other. These two forms correspond to two different types of letters, which are also weak and strong, which exclude each other.136 Unlike the theosophical approaches that strove to induce a form of union between the two complementary forces, in Shaʿarei Tzedeq the obvious tendency is to obliterate the present form of manifestation of divine names or forms of letters, or acts of a negative divine attribute, in order to experience the different higher manifestation, or hidden letters, or another, positive divine attribute. It is this contention that is formative for the conceptual basis of Shaʿarei Tzedeq, unlike the theosophical passage which was known to and even quoted by R. Nathan. The hermeneutical grid of the pair concepts of face-back, which point to strong cognition and weak one, attribute of mercy and of

132 Ms. Florence-Laurentiana II.48, fol. 18b. 133 Ibidem, fols. 19b–20a. 134 Shaʿarei Tzedeq, p. 18. 135 pp. 28–29. 136 p. 29. 100 panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought judgment, Tetragrammaton and the cognomen, intellect and imagination, control the conceptual centre of gravitation in this book. It is possible that a hint at du-partzufim may be detected in R. Nathan’s discussion of the structure of Yod, as constituted by Y and WD, which is interpreted as follows: the WD point to DW, which is reminiscent of du. In this context R. Nathan writes that man is half a sphere, like the form of the Yod, which needs the second part.137 On high, however, the sphere is complete. As mentioned above, the concept of ‘half a sphere’ is reminiscent of the separation between the male and the female today, according to Plato’s Symposium. Let me address the occurrence of du-partzufim in a passage found in R. Nathan Harar’s Collectanea. There he makes efforts to coordinate between the sefirotic theosophy and a Sufi Neoplatonically oriented scheme of the cosmic stages of emanation. According to one version of this synthesis, the world of the intellect is identified with the supernal three sefirot, while the seven lower sefirot are identified with the world of the souls, du- partzufim, basically in the manner Nahmanides hinted at the two lower sefirot which comprise the entire structure of seven lower sefirot.138 Thus, though I assume that the theosophical scheme is the source of R. Nathan’s identification of the du-partzufim with these two sefirot, what seems to me interesting in R. Nathan’s effort is the attempt to coordinate between the Sufi cosmic scheme and the ten sefirot, which does not exist in the theosophical Kabbalah from which he drew his view of du-partzufim. It should be mentioned that in addition to the cognitive understanding of the double faced man, the term ‘face’ recurs in this book in order to designate the entire sefirotic realm which cannot be seen because of the intense light that is emanated from there.139 Therefore, the Aristotelian hermeneutical grid, concerned as it is with forms of cognition and behavior, informs the ecstatic Kabbalists who are less interested in supernal structures, which should be impacted by human activity, but in manners of human activity and existence. Likewise, the Neo- platonic emphasis on extreme luminosity of the phase prevents anthropomorphic speculations so crucial for the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah.

137 pp. 11–12. For a somewhat similar discussion see Abulafia’s ʿOr ha-Sekhel, Ms. Vatican 233, fol. 28b. 138 See Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 74, 83–84 note 6. 139 Shaʿarei Tzedeq, pp. 11, 21. panim: faces and re-presentations in jewish thought 101

Conclusions

The different concepts of Face are but interesting examples, indeed a surface upon which the different developments of Jewish thought are reflected. The different types of semiosis related to the Kabbalistic understanding of this important biblical term demonstrate once more that the emphasis on the symbolic for semiosis as the sole mode of understanding Kabbalistic hermeneutics may be a simplistic approach.140 Kabbalists can use biblical terminology in order to express their experience and not only in order to discover the inner life of the divine. The concreteness of the human face in some of the examples adduced in ecstatic Kabbalah point to the possibility that a mystical understanding of the biblical experiences, like those of Jacob and Moses, could induce types of search and expressions which are not symbolic in the manner the supernal faces in the divine realm are. Historically speaking, the above survey is a limited one. Much could be said about the Polish Hasidism and its relation to the divine face in the framework of a manner of behavior, a self-effacement that induces the divine presence.141 Insofar as the modern philosophy of Face, as represented by Emmanuel Levinas’ thought is concerned, it is still an open question to what extent it also continues medieval tendencies or draws solely from the biblical accent on the experience of the Divine Face.142 However, it is quite evident that some of the theological stands found in Arthur Green’s Seek My Face, Speak My Name,143 are indebted to mystical sources. It seems that the ancient mythologoumenon of the divine face did not lose its relevance, to judge by the immense success of Levinas’ thought.

140 See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 200–210. 141 See the passage printed in R. Shimeon Menahem Mendel Vodnik of Gavardshaw, Baʿal Shem Tov (Lodge, 1938), II, fol. 75 (Hebrew), in the name of R. Israel Baʿal Shem Tov. 142 See, e.g., Susan A. Handelman, Fragments of Redemption, (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1991), pp. 208–214. 143 (Jason Aronson, Northdale, New Jersey, London, 1992).

The Changing Faces of God and Human Dignity in Judaism

Moshe Idel

1. From Adam to Moses: Radiant Face as the Highest Dignity

The impact of the succinct biblical statements dealing with the creation of man, or man and woman, in the Image of God, be-tzelem, on the anthropology of the Jewish and Christian religions is paramount and generated a variety of interpretations. Even if we limit our discussion to some forms of Judaism alone, the range of the various understandings of the meaning of those discussions is daunting.1 The divergences between the different ideals in theology and anthropology, which appeared in Judaism and changed over time, is the cause of the different interpretations of the term tzelem, the image: some were dealing with the shape of the body, some with the form of the intellect.2 The anthropomorphic and the nous- morphic visions of God in Jewish thought impacted on the corresponding anthropologies and vice-versa. The two conceptual poles were understood to be strongly related to each other. Here an attempt will be made to point out some changes that took place in Jewish literatures, regarding an important detail related to the divine Image, the Face of God, when compared to some biblical statements. My assumption is that a better way of understanding the meaning of the Divine Image, the Tzelem ʾElohim, should pay attention also to two other terms, which are salient for understanding it: I refer to the concept of Panim, or divine face, and to the concept of Tzel, related to the defense of some men, especially the king, by God as a shield,3 which was then misunderstood as referring to God as the shadow of man. The shift from the original meaning of the term shadow, Tzel, when referring to God, as

1 The literature on the topic is immense. See e.g., Andreas Schüle, “Made in the ‘Image of God’: The Concepts of Divine Images in Gen 1–3,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 117 (2005), pp. 1–20, and Yair Lorberbaum, Image of God, Halakhah and Aggadah, (Schocken, Tel Aviv 2004) (Hebrew). 2 See, e.g., Philo of Alexandria, Origen, Maimonides and many others. 3 See Leo Oppenheim, “The Shadow of the King,” Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research, vol. 107 (1947), pp. 7–11. 104 the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism the area which serves as the safe place protected by God, to the assumption that shadow is just the imitation of a body by the shade, will concern us much below. When discussed together—and indeed they were consumed as a whole by the traditional readers of the Hebrew Bible who read the Hebrew Bible as a whole and coherent document—they may tell us an even more complex story than the term Tzelem does when analyzed alone.4 Since I am concerned with the manner in which the later Jewish literature treated earlier views, and not with just the biblical approaches in themselves, I attempt below to take in consideration also the harmonistic approach that someone may apply to the Hebrew Bible. In the vast economy of discussions regarding the Image of God, the topics related to the divine Face have a privileged status.5 It is natural that the topic that represents the most particular and visible aspect of the human body, the face, will also attract the greatest attention when dealing with the divine persona. However, it is here that some questions eventually emerge: if there is a divine face, we all resemble it, but at the same time we all also differ from it. The tension between similitude and difference is intrinsic in discussions of the relationship between the human and the divine, and the issue of face is just one of the many examples. Analogies between the two planes of existence do not go too far since too great a similitude, or a total isomorphism, would blur the distinction that makes the nature of the divine being, religiously meaningful. Total dissimilitude will render the concept of humans in the image of God void. Aware as I am of this type of dialectics, I shall try below to concentrate on the positive aspect of this similitude. In the Hebrew Bible, Moses speaks with God face-to-face, and after his return from this conversation, his face turned radiant. This is no wonder

4 See M. Idel, “Gazing at the Head in Ashkenazi Hasidism,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy vol. 6 (1997), pp. 265–300, idem, “Panim—On Facial Re-Presentations in Jewish Thought: Some Correlational Instances,” in ed., Nurit Yaari, On Interpretation in the Arts, (Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 2000), pp. 21–56, and Michael Schneider, The Appearance of the High Priest: Theophany, Apotheosis and Binitarian Theology From Priestly Tradition of the Second Temple Period through Ancient Jewish Mysticism (Ph.D. Thesis, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 2007), pp. 137–141 (Hebrew). 5 See Samuel E. Balentine, The Hidden God, The Hiding of the Face of God in the Old Testament, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1983) and Shmuel Ahituv, “The Countenance of YHWV,” Tehillah le-Moshe, Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg, eds. M. Cogan, B. L. Eichler, J. H. Tigay, (Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana, 1997), pp. 1–11 (Hebrew). the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism 105 since the divine face itself is radiant is obvious in the Hebrew Bible.6 Thus, we may speak not only of the morphic similitude between the human face and the divine one, but also about the difference between the two, reflected in the lack of radiance of the ordinary human faces. Even in the other cases that an encounter face to face took place, it is the fact that someone survived this dangerous experience that counts, not the radiance of the face afterwards. Moses’s face is, therefore, the exception among what is the rule of the humans: his face has been contaminated by the divine radiance and thus transformed into a special type of face, which should be hidden in order to continue the involvement in the course of historical events as a leader of the Israelites. The divine face, that is sometimes tantamount to the divine Glory, the kavod, being very radiant, can only hardly be seen by the mortals.7 It is this quality of the divine face that constitutes the divine specific nature and thus, derivatively, the highest human dignity. Thus, Moses’s request to see the divine face, which is denied, as well as the imperative found elsewhere in the Bible to seek for the face of God,8 constitute not the given image as the tzelem is but the divine hidden face. If the Tzelem treatment of the resemblance of man to

6 See Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1985), pp. 329 334; See also the Targum on the Song of Songs analyzed Raphael Loewe, “The Divine Garment and Shiʿur Qomah,” Harvard Theological Review, vol. 58 (1965), pp. 153–160, especially p. 156, about the radiance of the glory, kavod of the face of God and compare it to the book of Wisdom of Solomon 7:26 where the preexistent Sophia is described as follows: “For she is an effulgence from everlasting light/ and an unspotted mirror of God’s working and an image eikon of his goodness.” tr. Martin Hengel, in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Messiah, Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity, (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1992), p. 436, compares it to Jesus as ‘reflection of His glory’ and gives light to creatures. For earlier sources see A. L. Oppenheim, “Akkadian puluhtu and melammu,” Journal of the American Society of Oriental Studies, vol. 63 (1943), pp. 31–34; Erwin Goodenough, By Light, Light, (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1935), Seth L. Sanders, “Old Light on Moses’s Shining Face,” Vetus Testamentum, vol. LII,3 (2002), pp. 400– 405, Walter Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, tr. A. J. Baker (SCM Press, Bloomsbury Street, London, 1972), vol. II, pp. 35–40; Yohanan Muffs, Love & Joy, Law, Language and Religion in Ancient Israel, (Jewish Theological Seminary, New York and Jerusalem, 1992), pp. 104–105, 113, 124, 146, 178, 190; Edouard P. Dhorme, “L’emploi metaphorique des noms de parties du corps en Hebrew et en Akkadien,” Revue Biblique, vol. 30 (1921), pp. 374–399; Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, (Claredon Press, Oxford, 1983), pp. 329–334. For the understandings of divine face in Islam see Henry Corbin, Face de Dieu, Face de l’Homme, Hermeneutique et Soufisme, (Flammarion, Paris, 1983), pp. 237–310. For views found in Orthodox Christianity see Vassily Rozanov, La Face sombre du Christ, tr. N. Reznikoff, (Gallimard, Paris, 1964). 7 Exodus, 33:20. 8 Psalm 27:8. 106 the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism

God is part of a democratization of the image of God, the radiant face of Moses constitutes an effort to restrict the highest attainment to just one person. Both however, are predicated on the anthropomorphic approach.9 In its morphic and radiant aspects, no special dynamic aspects are explicitly involved. Though speech is mentioned in this context I assume that the facial aspects of the act of speech are not significant in this context. In other words, if Moses is the perfect man in the Hebrew Bible, at the extent that a perfect man is important in this collection of different religious treatises, his encounter with the divine consists not only in the oral revelation of specific contents of supreme religious importance, the Torah or the commandments, but also some form of assimilation of his face to the divine conversant’s one, afterwards. In these two aspects of the encounter, the vocal and the facial, Moses is obviously the passive factor or a consumer of an experience that has been initiated by the divine, which stands for a higher pole, the divine face. We may therefore speak about three types of faces: first the divine one radiant by nature, the second being the face of Moses, radiant by contamination, and finally the normal human faces, that are non-radiant by nature. I would say that the Tzelem should, hierarchically speaking, should be considered as lower than even the normal face, as the less similar resemblance to God.10 This does not mean that I reduce the concept of God in the Hebrew Bible to the face, but that other parts of the body are substantially less significant. According to the proposed gradation Moses’s attainment of the radiant face reflects the closest experience of the divine in the Hebrew Bible, and constitutes the highest instance of imitatio Dei or theosis in this literary corpus and in the later literature,11 and it had an impact on the manner in which other topics related to luminosity have been depicted

9 Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature,” Harvard Theological Review, vol. 87 (1994), pp. 171–195; David H. Aaron, “Shedding Light on God’s Body in Rabbinic Midrashim: Reflections on the Theory of a Luminous Adam,” Harvard Theological Review, vol. 30,3 (1997), pp. 299–314; especially the bibliographical references adduced on p. 300 note 5; Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism, (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1994), pp. 16–51. 10 A somewhat similar hierarchy between tzelem and panim is found in the late 16th century famous R. Yehudah Loew of Prague, the Maharal in his Derekh Hayyim, ch. 3 par. 14. 11 See Wayne A. Meeks, “Moses as King and God,” in ed., Jacob Neusner, Religions in Antiquity; Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough (Brill, Leiden, 1968), pp. 354–371. the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism 107 later on, like Adam’s radiance, or alternatively, was impacted by probably earlier Adamic or Enochic literatures.12 In our context, another crucial aspect of the divine face is mentioned rather emphatically. Moses insists that the face of God will lead the Isra- elites out of Egypt in the desert: “And he said, My face shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest,13 And he said unto him, If thy face go not with me, carry us not up hence.”14 The divine face, like Moses, is a leader of the Israelite tribes in the wilderness. They are alternative forms of leading entities: when the face does lead, Moses may rest. Going in front of the Israelite camp, this face cannot be seen, just as Moses is not allowed to see but the back, not the front of the divine head. This type of radiant leadership reflects the uniqueness of the Israelite, among the people “on the face of the earth.” Such a reading is collaborated by another verse “Happy is the nation that knows the Teruʿah—They will walk in the light of thy face.”15 It is hard to be confident as to what this verse means: that all the Israelites walk in the light of the face, namely that they all see the face, or they walk after the face, illumined by its light, as the Israelites according to the Exodus discussions. Though it is not quite obvious, it may well be that a sort of angel is identical to the face of the Lord that is supposed to go before the Israel- ites according to Exodus 23:20–23. In a way the angel walking in the front of the tribes in Exodus 23, and the divine face in Exodus 33, are fulfilling parallel functions. To follow this reading, the angel serves as a form of mask for the divine that speaks through it. Such a reading appears to be confirmed by the expression malʾakh panav, the angel of His face, in Isa- iah 63:9: “the angel of his face will redeem you.”16 Thus, facial theophany

12 See Andrei A. Orlov, “Vested with Adam’s Glory: Moses as the Luminous Counterpart of Adam in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Macarian Homilies,” Mémorial Annie Jaubert (1912–1980), Xristianskij Vostok, 4.10 (2002), pp. 740–755 and Silviu Bunta, “The Likeness of the Image: Adamic Motifs and Anthropology in Rabbinic Traditions about Jacob’s Image Enthroned in Heaven,” Journal for the Study of Judaism vol. 37 (2006), pp. 55–84. 13 Compare Deuteronomy 3:20, 25:19, Ahituv, “The Countenance of YHWH,” p. 5. 14 Exodus 33:14–15. 15 Psalm 89:6. 16 On this verse see James C. VanderKam, “The Angel of the Presence in the Book of Jubilees,” Dead Sea Discoveries, vol. 7,3, (Brill, Leiden, 2000), pp. 382–383. More on face and Metatron see M. Idel, The Angelic World—Apotheosis and Theophany (Yediyʿot Aharonot, Tel Aviv, 2008), pp. 78–92 (Hebrew),and in more general terms in Idel, “Panim,” Nathaniel Deutsch, The Gnostic Imagination, Gnosticism, Mandaeism, and Merkabah Mysticism, (Brill, Leiden, 1995), pp. 99–105. Andrei A. Orlov, “Ex 33 on God’s Face: A Lesson from the Enochic Tradition,” Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting 2000 (Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, 2000), pp. 130–147. 108 the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism and radiant facial leadership represent in some parts of the Hebrew Bible, a more specific and significant version of the more general topic of the image of God. We may assume that unlike the Genesis 1:26 discussion of man created in the image of God, in Exodus and in Psalms, the luminous face of God constitutes His unique feature, which is shared only by Moses after his encounter with Him. Thus while in Genesis the image, the Tzelem, is a democratic feature shared by all men, women and God,17 the face is quite a different issue. This may be the reason why the Sinaitic revelation, a quintessential public one, comprises a vision of the sounds of the divine words, but not of God’s face. To what extent such a radiance confers, according to the Hebrew Bible, some form of divine status on Moses, namely reflects some form of coronation, is a question that cannot be answered in a final manner, and there are different approaches among scholars. However, this is indubitably the case in some forms of post-Biblical literature.18 The religious significance of the reading presented above should be compared to some discussions of the man as shadow, found in two different sources in antiquity. According to an Assyrian proverb: “Man is the shadow of the god, and men are the shadow of Man; Man is the King, who is like the mirror of the god.”19 The regular man is, therefore, the shadow of a shadow or, interpreted otherwise, the protected of another protected. A parallel to this proverb appears in the Coptic Three Steles of Seth, a Gnostic treatise found at Nag Hammadi. Praising Barbelo, a feminine hypostatic figure, the aeons exclaim: “We are [each] a shadow of thee, as thou art a shadow [of that] first preexistent one.”20 The Assyrian man-as-shadow can spend his life in a complete, but non-creative, obedi- ence; his experience ends with “a keen realization of one’s own insignifi- cance, of unbridgeable remoteness.” Although according to T. Jacobsen there was “a strong element of sympathy,” the ancient still felt that he was confronted by a power that “commands allegiance by its very presence;

17 Maryanne Cline Horowitz, “The Image of God in Man—Is Woman Included?” Harvard Theological Review, vol. 72 (1979), pp. 190–204. 18 See Rimmon Kasher, “The Mythological Figure of Moses in Light of Some Unpublished Midrashic Fragments,” Jewish Quarterly Review 88 (1997), pp. 19–42, C. R. A. Morray-Jones, “Transformational Mysticism in the Apocalyptic-Merkabah Tradition,” Journal of Jewish Studies 43 (1992), pp. 1–31, and “The Temple Within: The Embodied Divine Image and its Worship in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish and Christian Sources,” SBL Seminar Papers 1998 (Atlanta, 1998), pp. 400–431. 19 Cf. Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, (Beacon Press, Boston, 1969), p. 194. 20 James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English (Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1981), p. 365. the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism 109 the onlooker obeys freely.”21 For the Gnostic, the real existence surpasses this world, which is no more than a shadow of a shadow. The perfection and/or transcendence of the Supreme Being is so obvious that man can play no significant role in its further perfection. Let me point out that the similarity between the divine and the human consists in two overlapping though distinct factors: the morphic one, namely the shape of the face, on the one hand, and the radiance which appears on that face, on the other. The first aspect is a given to every human person, the quintessential part of the divine image reflected on the human, while the second one is an achievement, a becoming of a being. In the Hebrew Bible, this becoming is the result of the divine call to Moses to come to the mountain for an encounter, and of his ascent to and contamination with the divine. The dignity of a certain man is the result of a heterogeneous source, whose superior form of existence may be reflected on a human face. As formulate in the Exodus passages, it is an event that Moses did not strive to, neither was he aware of it, after it happened. It is part of the messenger being vested with the divine quality as part of a project of the divine intervention in history and the need of leadership in a moment of crisis. However, the radiance of the face was portrayed in the Hebrew Bible also as an inner development, as we learn from the following verse: “The wisdom of man will enlighten his face.”22 In addition to the morphic and the radiant facial similitudes, there is a third form of resemblance of man with God that is hinted at in the other parts of the Bible; a moral one: “This alone, I have found, that God when he made man, made him straightforward [Yashar], but man invented end- less subtleties of his one.”23 This verse should be compared to what we learn from another one: “Eager to declare that the Lord is just (Yashar), My rock, in whom there is no righteousness.”24

2. Three Developments related to the Divine Face in Early Post-Biblical Literatures

In the post-biblical literatures, we may discern three major developments in comparison to the views we have seen above. We may speak a] about

21 Thorkild Jacobsen, in H. A. Frankfort, H. Frankfort et al., (eds.), The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Chicago – London, 1977), p. 138. 22 Ecclesiastes 8:1. 23 Ecclesiastes 7:29. 24 Psalm 92:15. 110 the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism a full hypostatic vision of the divine face, in early Christianity, in Gnostic literature, in the Slavonic Enoch and in the Heikhalot literature, b] about the multiplication of the divine face into many facets, part of a process of democratization, in Rabbinic literature, c] and, finally, the activation of the divine faces by man, according to late Midrashic literature, namely the possibility to have some form of impact on those faces. It is superfluous to say that the biblical views as described above remained important also in the later period, when the new developments took already place, but resorted to the canonized texts as proof-texts. In general, we may speak about an attempt to allow some form of restricted democratization of the special features attributed to Moses in the Bible, to the mystics. The first development is more continuous with the biblical views as discussed above, and has been studied by several scholars. For the possible existence of two divine faces on high, we learn from the Slavonic book of Enoch, an issue that has been analyzed more recently in studies of Andrei A. Orlov about the Slavonic Book of Enoch and in the Ladder of Jacob.25 Insofar as early Christianity is concerned, it has been treated numerous times, in the context of the depiction of Jesus as the face of God.26 The hypostatic vision assumes the importance of mediation, which means that in the literatures we mentioned there is a more transcendental vision of God that required the role of a divine face which though not separated from God in an absolute manner, which acts on a lower metaphysical level in one form or another as mediator. Later, the biblical angel of the Face has became Metatron in the Hekhalot literature,27 as was the likeness or icon of Jacob,28 and issues related to God’s and Enoch’s faces. The second development is evident in a variety of ancient sources, but it is found more eminently in the emerging of Rabbinic literature, where

25 Andrei Α. Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition (Mohr, Tuebingen, 2004), pp. 254–291 and “The Face as the Heavenly Counterpart of the Visionary in the Slavonic Ladder of Jacob,” Of Scribes and Sages: Early Jewish Interpretation and Transmission of Scripture, ed. C. A. Evans, Studies in Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity, (T&T Clark, London, 2004, vol. 9, pp. 259–276. 26 On Paul’s discussion of Christ’s face as reflecting the glory or splendor of God to the faithful see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., “Glory reflected on the Face of Christ 2 Cor 3:7–4:6 and a Palestinian Jewish Motif,” Theological Studies, vol. 42,4 1981, pp. 630–644, who also quotes Qumran literature dealing with the illumination of the divine face. Compare also to J. Dupont, “Le Chretien, miroir de la gloire divine d’après 2 Cor 3, 18,” Revue Biblique, vol. 56 (1949), pp. 392–411, Alan F. Segal, Paul, the Convert, (Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 1992), pp. 152, 154. 27 See above note 13. 28 On face in late antiquity sources see also Wolfson, Along the Path, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1995), p. 116 note 34. the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism 111 the status of the individual, especially of the scholar become more prominent, though it did not obliterate the centrality of the what the scholars of Bible call “corporate community”. God in the Sinaitic revelation was imagined in some Rabbinic sources are directed to each and every one of the individual Israelites, and took different forms in accordance with his/ her capacities:29 ‘I am your Lord’—Rabbi Hanina bar Papa said: the Holy One, blessed be He, has shown to them a face of anger, a face of welcoming, a moderate face, and a laughing face. A face of anger—[corresponds to] the Bible, because when a person teaches the Bible to his son, he has to teach him with awe. A moderate face—to the Mishnah. A face of welcoming—to the Talmud. A laughing face—for ʾAggadah. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to them: despite you have seen all these appearances: ‘I am your Lord’.30 The multiple faces of God correspond to the multiple canonical books someone should study. Thus, the face of awe is related to the Bible, but also to the son. It seems that we have here an evolutive description from the youth beginnings to the more mature studies, and with the time the face becomes well-coming. Though it should be understood in a metaphorical way this passage assumes a facial correlation. Instead of the numinous and dangerous radiance of the face, we have here another quality that is sharply emphasized: the changeability of the face, or the coexistence of multiple facets, all attributed to the same divine entity. Moreover, there is a clear progression from the awe to laugh. The dignity here is not the radiant addition over the face, which transfigured the biblical Moses, but the accumulation of knowledge by means of studying Jewish canonical books. God is no more the ancient awful leader, but in fact a Talmudic teacher, who knows how to approach the material to be studied. Unlike Moses, who has to hide his radiance, the Rabbinic student is acculturated to the Rabbinic culture and the society amindst which he is studying. He is no more the exceptional being, as Moses was, but a normal student. On the other hand, it is not the noetic function that defines the dignity of a

29 God has been portrayed as having many faces; see Schneider, The Appearance of the High Priest, pp. 133–14, 147–168, Muffs, Love & Joy, pp. 146–147, and Marc Hirshman, A Rivalry of Genius, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1996), pp. 90–93. On the idea that each of the embryos received the Sinaitic revelation and has seen the divine glory according to its own capacity see Zohar, vol. II, fol. 94a; Barbara Holdrege, Veda and Torah, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1996), p. 324 and also the important collection of texts in A. Y. Heschel, Theology of Ancient Judaism, (Soncino Press, London, 1962), vol. II pp. 267–271 (Hebrew). 30 Pesiqta⁠ʾ de-Rav Kahana⁠ʾ, ed. B. Mandelbaum (Jewish TheologicalSeminary, New York, Jerusalem, 1962), I, pp. 223–224. 112 the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism rabbinic figure, like the Platonically-oriented definition of man as essen- tially soul or intellect, but the accumulation of the content of the canonical texts, thus a non-philosophical form of knowledge.31 A seminal passage exemplifying the complexity of the divine face is preserved in the 13th century compilation of earlier Rabbinic traditions, Yalqut Shimoni: Rabbi Levi said: The Holy One, blessed be He, has shown Himself to them as this icon [yiqonin] that is showing its faces in all directions.32 Thousands people are looking at it, and it looks to each of them. So does the Holy One, blessed be He, when He was speaking to each and every one of Israel was saying ‘the speech was with me.’ I am God, your Lord’ is not written,33 but I am God, your Lord. Rabbi Yossei bar Hanina said: according to the strength [lefi koho] of each and every one, the [divine] speech was speaking.34 This is a strong example for the theory of what may be called the syn- aesthetic accommodation. God respects the capacity of man and reveals himself in accordance with it either visually or verbally. Rather then leaving His imprint on man, God is accommodating Himself, respecting his capacities. Let me turn to the third and I assume later development found in Midrashic sources: the activation of the divine faces. Hypostatization and multiplicity facilitated some form of dynamics, which was combined with Rabbinic views regarding the meaning of the Jewish rituals. However, while these two developments are expressed in quite explicit manner in texts that belong to Rabbinic literature, the third one is much more elu- sive. In the remnants of a late Midrashic composition, Midrash Hashkem, we read: “God said to Moses: Go, say to Israel that my name is ʾEhyeh ʾasher ʾEhyeh—that is, just as you are present with Me, so am I present with you.”35 The precise significance of the text is easily understood from

31 See also M. Idel, “Memento Dei—Remarks on Remembering in Judaism,” in Il Senso della Memoria, (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma, 2003), pp. 163–164. 32 Moshe Barasch, “The Frontal Icon: A Genre in Christian Art,” Visible Religion, vol. VII (1988), pp. 41–42. 33 Namely not in the singular, but in the plural as in the second occurrence of the expression later in this passage. 34 On Exodus, par. 286, p. 172. See also in this Midrashic collection on Job, par. 916, Barbara A. Holdrege, Veda and Torah, Transcending the Textuality of Scripture, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1996), pp. 272, 282–284, 309–310; Marc Hirshman, A Rivalry of Genius, Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1996), pp. 90–93. 35 H. G. Enelow, “Midrash Hashkem Quotations in Alnaqua’s Menorat ha-Maor,” Hebrew Union College Annual vol. 4 (1927), p. 319. See also Midrash-Hizhir (ed. Freimann, 1873), fol. 43, where a similar formulation is to be found; the quotation of Nahmanides from Midrash ʾAggadah in his Commentary on the Pentateuch to Exodus 3:14; and the significant remark of Menachem Kasher, Torah Shelemah (New York, 1944), vol. 8, p. 153, n. 188. On the early Kabbalistic discussions on the significance of ʾEhyeh ʾasher ʾEhyeh in general, see Nicolas the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism 113 its context: Israel is commanded to behave in accordance with two divine attributes—righteousness and justice—and will accordingly be rewarded by these two attributes. The behavior under discussion is conspicuously a moral one, and the Midrashic passage serves to elucidate the strong affinity between punishments and retribution. In other sources, however, this passage is cited in a rather different version. An anonymous Kabbalist, associated with the school of the ecstatic Kabbalah, wrote, I presume in the late 13th century or early 14th century, as follows: The sages thusly interpreted the secret of name ʾEhyeh ʾasher ʾEhyeh: that the Holy One, Blessed be He, said to Moses: ‘Moses, be with Me and I shall be with you.’ And they adduced as proof [for this interpretation] the verse:36 ‘The Lord is thy shadow upon thy right hand,’ as it is expounded in Midrash Hashkem.37 Just as man will cleave to God in an intellectual manner, so will He cleave to man.38 According to the context in which the Midrash was quoted the reciprocity is regarded as automatic; no longer the response of a higher personality to the deeds of man, as in the Midrash, but a spiritual mechanism, exemplified by the verse in Psalms, when the shield is mis- interpreted as a shadow. There is nothing personalistic about the divine response, since the Divine intellect is with the human one as soon as man is—mentally—with God, and immediately after this discussion the author depicts some form of mystical intellectual union.39 In the later quotation of the Midrash, the occurrence of the motif of “shadow” puts the recur- rence of the name ʾEhyeh into sharp relief: the hand and its shadow correspond to the two occurrences of the word ʾEhyeh, as well as to the human and the divine. Surprisingly enough, in the logic of the text, the human is the hand, whose movement is automatically reflected by the shadow— i.e., the Divine. We can now indeed fathom the specific direction of this interpretation of ʾEhyeh: “I shall be whatever I shall be,” as, according to this version of the Midrash, the peculiar nature of Divinity seems to be a reflection of human activity.

Sed, “L’interpretation Kabbalistique d’Exode 3,14 selon les documents du XIIIe siecle,” in Alain de Libra—Emilie Zum Brunn, eds., Celui qui est: Interpretations juives et chretiennes d’Exode 3,14 (Le Cerf, Paris, 1986), pp. 25–46. 36 Psalms 121:5. 37 Anonymous, Sefer ha-Malmad, Ms. Oxford-Bodleiana 1649, fol. 205b. 38 On ecstatic Kabbalah see more in section 3. 39 See M. Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1988), pp. 11–12. 114 the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism

3. Moses’s Face as a Divine Hypostasis in Ecstatic Kabbalah

As seen in a number of studies mentioned, above, there is some form of hypostatization of the divine face in ancient Judaism and there were some reverberations later on in literatures extant in several languages. However, what characterized the rabbinic approach is less the hypostatic approach as the study of the classical texts as encountering in some way the divine faces. In the Middle Ages, with the ascent of Jewish philosophy, additional ideals have been adopted by some Jewish elites. One of the most important of them was the Greek philosophical ideal of the perfect man as someone who actualized his intellect. The development of the speculative faculty was a way to become closer to God, which has been conceived as an intellect too, and the image of God, the tzelem has been interpreted as the intellect, shared by some persons and God. This approach was characteristic of Moshe ben Maimon’s—Maimonides— thought. After interpreting the Tzelem as the intellect in his Guide of the Perplexed I:1, Maimonides interprets the term Panim, when related to God in the Guide I:2, as dealing not with an anthropomorphic dimension but with the direction someone turns. These allegorical interpretations were intended to eradicate the allegedly mistaken understanding of the Hebrew Bible as evincing some form of mistaken theology. Maimonides’s regarded Moses as the quintessence of the human perfection, someone whose intellectual acumen can be described as the possibility of intellection without the help of the imaginative faculty, which was conceived of as a lower form of activity.40 Beginning with the seventies of the 13th century, Maimonides’s thought has been combined with linguistic speculations that were dominant in some circles in Ashkenazi circles in the two generations beforehand in a Kabbalistic school founded by R. Abraham Abulafia.41 In his writings he pointed out that the Hebrew consonants of the name Moses, namely

40 On the Maimonidean texts concerning this issue see Zeev Harvey, “The Heresy of the Prophetess Miriam in Maimonides’s Seventh Principle,” in eds. U. Ehrlich, Ch. Kreisel, D. Y. Lasker, By the Well. Studies in Jewish Philosophy and Halakhic Thought Presented to Gerald J. Blidstein (Ben Gurion University Press, Beer Sheva, 2008), pp. 183–194 (Hebrew). 41 On this school as a separate type of Kabbalah see e.g., Moshe Idel, “Defining Kabbalah: The Kabbalah of the Divine Names,” Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics, & Typology, ed. R. A. Herrera (Peter Lang, New York, 1993), pp. 97–122, “The Contribution of Abraham Abulafia’s Kabbalah to the Understanding of Jewish Mysticism” in eds. P. Schaefer – J. Dan, Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 50 Years After (J. C. B. Mohr, Tuebingen, 1993), pp. 117–143, and “On the Meanings of the Term “Kabbalah”: Between the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism 115

MoSheH, when anagrammated, are the same as the consonants of ha- SheM, which means either God or the name, namely the name of God. This pun is found in two of the writings of Abraham Abulafia, a major figure in ecstatic Kabbalah.42 In the context of one of these discussions Abulafia computes the numerical valence of the plene writing of the name ʾEl: ʾAlef Lamed, as 185, like ha-panim, namely the face.43 Abulafia hints at the rank of Moses as the angel Metatron, or the Agent Intellect, a cosmic intellect.44 Thus, there is a series of themes that are relevant for our discussion: Moses is related to the face, to the name and to the intellectual achievement. I would like to draw attention to the occurrence of two Kabbalistic texts written, in my opinion, in the eighties of the thirteenth century, stemming in one way or another from the same Kabbalistic school, the ecstatic Kabbalah, which was gravitating around the fundamental role the divine names play, more than in other forms of Kabbalah. In both texts there is a connection between the face of Moses and a divine name. In a passage found in a book by R. Shemaʿyah ben Isaac ha-Levi, a late 13th century Castilian Kabbalist, Mosheh is described as being numerically equal to ʾEl Shadday, namely 345. He writes that: One of the great secrets of the secrets of our Torah is that when Mosheh was born the Name [ha-Shem] was revealed and became widespread in the world by MoSheh . . . Since Mosheh was seen [in the world] the name ’El Shadday was concealed, and was not so much in use. And [then] the Glory of YHWH was revealed, and behold that since he was called Mosheh and since it was concealed until Mosheh came, then the proof was revealed by him . . . and the face of Mosheh was like the face of the name of God, blessed be He, and understand that before the birth of Mosheh the essence of the name YHWH was not known . . . and God said that since I have become

Prophetic Kabbalah and the Kabbalah of Sefirot in the 13th century,” Peamim, vol. 93 (2003), pp. 39–76 (Hebrew). 42 See Abraham Abulafia, Shevaʿ Netivot ha-Torah, ed. Adolph Jellinek, in Philosophie und Kabbala, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1853), p. 18, and in one of his commentaries on his own prophetic writings. On this issue see more M. Idel, Enchanted Chains, Techniques and Rituals in Jewish Mysticism, (Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 2005), pp. 81–88. 43 Shevaʿ Netivot ha-Torah, p. 18. 44 For the connection between the name of Moses and the acronym of Metatron, Sar ha-Panim namely the angel of the face in Abulafia, see M. Idel, “Definitions of Prophecy— Maimonides and Abulafia,” in eds. A. Elqayam – D. Schwartz, Maimonides and Mysticism, Presented to Moshe Hallamish, (Bar Ilan University Press, Ramat Gan, 2009), pp. 14–15 (Hebrew). 116 the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism

revealed by you, the name ʾEl Shadday is concealed [now] and the Glory of YHWH is revealed.45 The emergence of the face of Moses when he was born is therefore the cause of the hiding of the name ʾEl Shadday, and since then the Tetra- grammaton is connected to the face of Moses. In a way, Moses’s face is a theophany, of God or of his Glory, in a manner reminiscent of the biblical radiance of the face. A contemporary of R. Shemaʿyah, whose book is found in the very same manuscript in Leiden, R. Nathan ben Saʿadyah Har’ar of Messina,46 discusses the emergence of the name YHWH as a fundamental event related to Moses: and this is the name by which he will be called ‘YHWH our righteous one’.47 And this is the matter of [the verse]48 ‘Behold an angel will walk before you’. And he said to him ‘Do not betray him because My Name is within him’.49 But Moses, blessed be his memory, did not want to be under his dominion, namely to change himself, and become the attribute of mercy under [the dominion of] the attribute of judgment.50 This is why he said: ‘If your Face does not walk, do not send us up from here’.51 And this is a very sublime matter; many quandaries of the Torah will be solved when this is understood.52 In another context in the same book, the present unredeemed time is dominated by the name ’Adonai, while its hiding will open the gate for redemption, symbolized by the knowledge of the Tetragrammaton.53 In these two Kabbalistic books divine names, faces of God and Moses are mentioned. I assume that this is not a matter of coincidence but this con- stellation of themes reflects a common source. In both cases it is not the radiance which counts in the context of Moses’s face but the connection between the face and the divine name. Moreover, in the two books there is an alternation between the rules of two divine names.

45 Sefer Tzeror Hayyim, Ms. Leiden, Or. 4762, Warner 24, fol. 199ab. See the edition of Raphael Cohen, (Jerusalem, 2000), p. 57. See also ibidem, p. 59. For the pun Mosheh— Shemah, in Samaritan sources see Jarl E. Fossum, The Name of God and the Angel of God, (Mohr, Tuebingen, 1985), p. 88. 46 About this figure see M. Idel, Natan ben Saʿadyah Harʾar, Le Porte della Giustizia, tr. Maurizio Motolese, (Adelphi, Milano, 2001). Out of the five manuscripts that include the text of Shaʿarei Tzedeq, one is the Leiden manuscript mentioned in the prior footnote. 47 Jeremiah 23:5. 48 Exodus 32:34. 49 Exodus 23:21. 50 I assume that the two attributes stand for the two divine names respectively. 51 Exodus 33:15. 52 Sha⁠ʾarei Tzedeqed., Y. E. Porush, (Jerusalem, 1989), p. 20. 53 Ibidem, pp. 17, 28–29, 39. See also Idel, “Memento Dei,” pp. 174–187. the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism 117

As to the meaning of the two attributes in the last quote, we may speculate that they refer to the two human faculties, of imagination and of intellect, namely the intellect as overcoming the imagination and by its obliteration the transformation of the mystic into a pure intellect.54 This would mean that Moses’s face represents the intellectual faculty, conceived of as the attribute of mercy, which refuses to submit to the imaginative faculty. Such an interpretation that regards the most secret aspects of the Torah as teaching the importance of the intellect, would bring the gist of this passage, and perhaps also the first one, to the Maimonidean thought, which assumes that Maimonides’s prophecy did not include the imaginative faculty. In any case, I assume that though the two discussions in this section deal with Moses, and someone may claim that this is an unattainable ideal, the allegorical meaning transcends time and history, which means that someone that will achieve the pure intellectual experiences, will be like Moses. Abraham Abulafia, the teacher of R. Nathan, as well as of R. Joseph Gikatilla that inspired many of the discussions of R. Shemaʿyah, conceived himself to be a Messiah, who will be even higher than Moses.55

4. Theosophical Kabbalah and Supernal Faces

Since its beginnings, theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah adopted one or more of three developments mentioned above in the context of the post-biblical literatures.56 The faces have been hypostatized as angel of face that appears since the earliest documents of Kabbalah at the end of the 12th century.57 The term panim recurs in numerous instances in this

54 See, for the time being, what I wrote in “Milhemet ha-Yetzarim: Psychomachia in Abraham Abulafia’s Ecstatic Kabbalah,” in ed. A. Bar Levav, Peace and War in Jewish Culture (Merkaz Shazar, Jerusalem, 2006), pp. 99–143 (Hebrew) and for a shorter English version see “Inner Peace through Inner Struggle in Abraham Abulafia’s Ecstatic Kabbalah,” The Journal for the Study of Sephardic & Mizrahi Jewry, March, 2009, pp. 63–97. 55 See Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 50–51. 56 On the theurgical aspect of this type of Kabbalah and its sources see, e.g., M. Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1988), pp. 156–199, Charles Mopsik, Les Grands texts de la Cabale, Les Rites qui Font Dieu, (Verdier, Lagrasse, 1993), Lorberbaum, Image of God, Halakhah and Aggada, and Jonathan Garb, Manifestations of Power in Jewish Mysticism from Rabbinic Literature to Safedian Kabbalah, (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2004) (Hebrew) as well as note 68 below. 57 See Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah tr. A. Arkush, ed. R. Z. J. Werblowsky, (JPS, Philadelphia, and Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 212–215. 118 the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism literature as referring to various sefirotic powers.58 However, here I would like to elaborate upon the more active aspect of the relationship between the human and the divine realms in the context of the Midrashic passage discussed above. A longer version of the Midrash, albeit one which does not mention the title Hashkem, is extant in the 16th century Kabbalist R. Meir ibn Gabbai’s book Tolaʿat Yaʿaqov.59 Ibn Gabbai was indubitably one of the Kabbalists who emphasized the theurgical effect of the rituals, and he resorts to the Midrash in order to make this point clear. However, though he explicated this issue in a manner which is hardly found before him, he draws on a long series of theosophical-theurgical Kabbalists, none of whom copied the salient Midrash: In the Midrash, [we learn] that the Holy One, Blessed be He, said to Moses: “Go, tell Israel that my name is ʾEhyeh ʾasher ʾEhyeh.” What is the meaning of ʾEhyeh ʾasher ʾEhyeh? Just as you are present with me, so am I present with you. Likewise David said: ‘The Lord is thy shadow upon thy right hand’.60 What does ‘the Lord is thy shadow’ mean? Like thy shadow: just as thy shadow laughs back when you laugh to it,61 and weeps if you weep to it, and if you show it an angry face or a pleasant face, so it returns, so is the Lord, the Holy One, Blessed be He, thy shadow. Just as you are present with Him, so is He present with you. End of quotation.62 Ibn Gabbai, who explicitly quotes the whole passage from a “Midrash,” had seen the longer and presumably original version of Midrash Hashkem, which was only quoted in a fragmentary fashion in the previously discussed texts. Thus we may speak about an instance in which a Kabbalist preserved a late Midrashic statement and elaborated on it in a manner that introduces the Kabbalistic theosophy. What is the theological outlook of this presumably more original version? There are two differing, but nevertheless complementary conceptual components: God is envisioned as a shadow present with the human “hand,” that stands here for the substance, versus the supernal shadow. In addition to this static onto-

58 See e.g., Idel, “Panim,” pp. 36–40 (pp. 89–93, above in this volume). The term panim in the context of various divine powers is widespread. 59 On this Kabbalist see Roland Goetschel, R. Meir Ibn Gabbai; Le Discours de la Kabbale espagnole (Leuven, 1981). 60 Psalms 121:5. 61 Compare to Yalqut Shimeoni, Exodus, par. 286: See also Yochanan Muffs, “Joy and Love as Metaphorical Expressions of Willingness and Spontaneity in Cuneiform, Ancient Hebrew and Related Literatures,” in ed., Jacob Neusner, Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults; Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty (Brill, Leiden, 1975), vol. 3, pp. 10–11, n. 21. 62 (Constantinopol, 1560), fol. 4a. the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism 119 logical relationship, the “substance” and its “accident” exist in a functional dynamic relationship—i.e., the hand compels its shadow to move, or to react, in accordance with its movements. The shadow precisely reflects the changes in the shape of the hand. On the basis of the first quotation from Midrash Hashkem, adduced in section 2 above, we may assume that the original meaning of the longer version used by ibn Gabbai was mor- alistic as well: God responds to human activity in an appropriate fashion, and His nature reflects the profound interrelationship between merits and retribution. Nonetheless, the metaphor chosen to illuminate this religious truth is indeed striking. Shortly prior to quoting the Midrash, the Kabbalist indicates that “the supernal entities to the lower entities are comparable to the shadow [compared] to the form; just as the form stirs, thus the shadow stirs.”63 Man, being the basic pattern of the higher structure, is able to influence their state by his activity: ontological resemblance serves the theurgical goal. This far-reaching presentation of man as the archetype of the revealed aspect of the Deity is a highly significant departure from the opposite metaphor which has been discussed above, in which man is the shadow of the supernal. This reversal is noteworthy for more than one reason; theologically, or theosophically, this projection of the human shape onto the pleromatic realm is explicitly articulated by an important Jewish the- osophist. No longer is “the image of God” understood as the basic archetype; now, the “human image” is regarded as the original, reflected by the Divine structure. The theurgical approach conceives man as the fulcrum of important characteristics: he is, at least to a certain extent, the paradigm by his isomorphism, and he is also the source of power that is generated during the performance; the symbolic relationship must therefore be inverted if the theurgical operation is to be efficient. The symbolical process now serves, not contemplation, but action; it can explain why a certain type of activity is influential on a particular object, the epis- temological goal of the symbols being evidently attenuated. As “form,” man possesses in his own being the archetypal structure of the Divine, while the importance of the “shadow” from the cognitive point of view is diminished. Man and the “divine Glory”—ha-Kavod which means the theosophical structure of ten sefirot—share the anthropomorphic image, a fact which renders man, again envisaged as “form” by comparison with the shadow, capable of influencing the divine structure. This is an

63 Tolaʿat Yaʿaqov, fol. 4a. 120 the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism example of an empowerment of the religious man by construing a theosophical superstructure that explains the meaning of his rituals and their impact. In his later work and more elaborated work, Sefer ʿAvodat ha-Qodesh, ibn Gabbai quotes again the Midrash64 and introduces now two important additions: The human image is able to influence the higher image, Demut ʿElyon, as there is also an intermediary image which connects between them: the “Torah.” It is “the intermediary which stirs the supernal image towards the lower [one]”65 or “the Torah and the commandments are the intermediary which links the lower image with the supernal one, by the affinity they have with both.”66 As a result of this double affinity of the Torah—on the one hand with its divine source and with the persons who perform the commandments on the other hand—it is able to function as a bridge between the two realms. Its singular nature stems from its capacity to change human acts into theurgical influence. In some cases, the effect of theurgy is described as tiqqun, amendment,67 a concept that will become central in Lurianic Kabbalah. The second theme introduced in the discussion concerning the lost Midrash in ʿAvodat ha-Qodesh is highly relevant for the explanation of theurgic action. Ibn Gabbai elaborates upon the experience of acoustical resonance between two string musical instruments.68 When someone plays on one string, the corresponding string of the other instrument—in ibn Gabbai’s case, a violin—will resonate, even though no visible intermediary between these strings is to be found. The same theme of resonance occurs, continues the Kabbalist, when the human image, functioning as the played violin, activates the divine image, which is referred by as the second violin. In both cases, the manner of transmission of the impact from instrument to instrument is incomprehensible, even though the fact of its occurrence is undeniable. Thus, the possibility of acting theurgically is proven by a concrete, well-known physical experience. The mechanistic nature of acoustical resonance is no doubt appropriate to the Midrashic picture of hand and shadow; the gist of these types of descriptions of the

64 (Jerusalem, 1963), fol. 35d. 65 Ibidem, fol. 36d. 66 Ibidem. 67 Ibidem, fol. 43c. 68 On the history of the metaphor of the two violins in Jewish theology and theosophy, see M. Idel, “The Magical and Theurgical Interpretation of Music in Jewish Texts: Renaissance to Hasidism” Yuval vol. 4 (1982), pp. 33–63 (Hebrew). the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism 121 human-divine relationship is conspicuous: the human initiative is the most important factor for this relationship, as it is the dominant element which shapes the higher structures. An elaborate hierarchy which suffered the impact of human activity provided the opportunity to “reveal” the comprehensive mechanism of the Divine and a more complex understanding of the significance of performance of the commandments. The Kabbalistic theurgical anthropology assumes the need of the Divin- ity for human help, or human power, in order to restore the lost sefirotic harmony. The focus of this sort of theurgy is God, not man; the latter is given unimaginable powers, to be used in order to repair the divine Glory or the divine image. Only his initiative can improve Divinity. In fact we have here a mythical understanding of the significance of the rituals. The theurgical Kabbalist does not need external help or grace; his way of operating, namely the Torah, enables him to act independently; he does not so much look for redemption by the intervention of God, but rather to His amendment by means of the human intervention. The theurgical Kab- balah articulates a basic feature of Jewish religion in general: concentrated more upon action than upon thought, as it was the case in Maimonidean philosophy and to a great extent in ecstatic Kabbalah, the Jew is conceived by many Kabbalists as responsible for everything, including God, since his activity is crucial for the welfare of the cosmos in general. No speculation or faith can change the exterior reality which is to be rescued from its inferior state only by the ritual performance. The metaphor of the shadow points to the reinforcement of the theurgical trend precisely by its strong delineation of the human and divine; only by retaining his own individuality can the theurgical Kabbalist retain his cosmic influence. This is the dignity of man: not to be impressed by the divine structure alone, in our case the Kavod, theosophical anthropomorphic realm, but much more to impress the divine realm.

5. Some Conclusions

The interpretation of the face of Moses in section 3, and of the changing faces in section 4, show how different is the approach of the ecstatic Kabbalists from the theurgical ones. The former follow the Platonic/Aris- totelian road of intellection, the later the Rabbinic one, which emphasizes the ritual dromenon. In fact the two forms of Kabbalah represent two different ideals that reflect to different cultural worldviews. While the Tzelem theory of resemblance is strongly related in the first chapter 122 the changing faces of god and human dignity in judaism of Genesis to the dominion of the earth and procreation, the theurgical Kabbalah was more concerned with the latter, but relegated the former to the margin, and introduced a vision in which the Kabbalist dominates the processes within the divine realm. By resorting to the Mosaic—versus the Adamic—emphasis on the face as the place of the change, which can be affected theurgically, theurgical Kabbalah enriched the biblical approach to the face of God by a sort of restricted democratization.69 The Kabbalists became some sort of substitutes for Moses but now it is less the passive role that the founder of the Israelite religion that is important but using the commandments he revealed in order to affect the divine face. The most representative and flexible aspect of the human appearance became also one of the most subjects of the activity of the ritual. Either when speaking about the reproduction of the divine image, the tzelem by procreation, or when affecting the divine faces, the activity of man is a manner of assimilation to God, more important than the morphic similitudes. The imitation of God in Jewish thought turns to be less and less a matter of simple isomorphism and much more of modes of action, and this is the case also when the face is involved.70 From this point of view both the theosophical-theurgical and the ecstatic Kabbal- ists would agree: the image of God, morphic, facial or mental, is a quality that develops in man and it necessitates his active participation. It is not just a divine image imprinted on the body. However, let us remind the reader, the commandments correspond to the human limbs on the one hand, and according to the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalist to the divine anthropos on the other hand. Not so the ecstatic Kabbalist, who is concerned with the actualization of his intellect rather than with the acts of the limbs of his body. While the ecstatic following Maimonides took the vague biblical and Midrashic discourses on the dignity of man in the direction of the logos, the other Kabbalists were much more concerned with a version of myth-and-ritual approach.

69 See e.g., the discussions of the radiance of the faces of the Talmudic sages according to Nahmanides’ Commentary on the Pentateuch, and following him of R. Isaac of Acre’s Sefer Meʾirat ʿEinayyim. Cf. M. Idel, “From ‘ʿOr Ganuz’ to ʿOr Torah’: A Chapter in the Phenomenology of Jewish Mysticism,” in Migvvan Deʿot be-Yisrael, vol. 11 (2002), pp. 45–46 (Hebrew). 70 See M. Idel, “From Structure to Performance: On the Divine Body and Human Action in the Kabbalah,” Mishqafayim vol. 32 (1998), pp. 3–6 [Hebrew] and “On the Performing Body in Theosophical-Theurgical Kabbalah: Some Preliminary Remarks,” in eds. M. Diemling – G. Veltri, The Jewish Body, Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period, (Leiden, Brill, 2009), pp. 251–271. Johannes Reuchlin: Kabbalah, Pythagorean Philosophy and Modern Scholarship

Moshe Idel

1. Johannes Reuchlin as a Reborn Pythagoras

Various philosophies left their imprint on the different forms of Kabbalah. The impact of Neoplatonism1 and Neoaristotelianism2 is best known, though some traces of the impact of Stoicism3 and Atomism4 can also be discerned in the vast Kabbalistic literature. Pythagorean philosophy is perhaps the third in its importance, from the point of view of the themes it impacted on Kabbalah.5 Though there are some examples of mentioning Pythagoras in medieval Jewish literature, this is a rare phenomenon.6

1 This is a point that recurs in Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, tr. A. Arkush, ed. R. Z. J. Werblowsky, (JPS, Philadelphia, and Princeton University Press, Princeton 1987). See also M. Idel, “Jewish Kabbalah and Platonism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance,” in ed. Lenn E. Goodman, Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought (SUNY Press, Albany, 1992), pp. 319–352. 2 M. Idel, “Abulafia’s Secrets of the Guide; a Linguistic Turn,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, vol. 4 (1998) 495–528, “Maimonides’ ‘Guide of the Perplexed’ and the Kabbalah,” Jewish History 18,2–3 (2004), pp. 197–226, and Elliot R. Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia: Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy (Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 2000). 3 See M. Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah (SUNY Press, Albany, 1988), p. 113. 4 Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 259, and M. Idel, “Differing Conceptions of Kabbalah in Early 17th Century,” Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, eds. Isadore Twersky & Bernard D. Septimus, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1987), pp. 137–200. 5 For the relatively limited availability of Pythagorean themes in Arabic in the High Middle Ages see Franz Rosenthal, “Some Pythagorean Documents Transmitted in Arabic,” Orientalia (NS) 10 (1941), pp. 104–115, 383–95; F. Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam (Routledge, London, 1975), p. 40; and D. J. O’Meara, Pythagoras Revived (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989), pp. 230–232. On Nemesius of Emessa, John of Damascus and Shahrastani, who mentioned Pythagoras, see Harry A. Wolfson, Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, eds., Isadore Twersky & George H. Williams (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1973), vol. 1, p. 357 and also Saʿid al-Andalusi, Tabaqat al-umam, tr. G. Blachere (Paris, 1935), pp. 57–62. On the Pythagorean Golden Verses translated from Arabic in Hebrew see Martin Plessner, “The Translation in Arabic and Hebrew of the Golden Verses of Pythagoras,” Eshkoloth vol. 4 (1962), p. 58 (Hebrew). 6 On Pythagoreanism and Kabbalah see M. Idel, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism, (Continuum, London, New York, 2007), pp. 315–318, and my introduction to Johann Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, De Arte Cabalistica, trs. M & S. Goodman, (The Nebraska University Press, Lincoln and London, 1993), pp. XI–XV. On Pythagoras in 124 kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship

However, in the ambiance of the Renaissance impulse to restore ancient forms of knowledge that was so strong, this attitude was nothing especially bizarre. This is what happened in the case of Reuchlin, who proposed to bring back to the Italian soil the oldest of its autochthon philosophy: Pythagoreanism. This sort of philosophy which indeed flourished in Southern Italy in antiquity but disappeared afterwards was not only one of the oldest, since this is the case, according to some Vitae of Pythagoras, also of Thales. Unlike most of the other philosophies Pythagoras enjoyed a special character: he studied in the Orient, with Phoenitians, Egyptians and Babylonians, and brought their knowledge to Greece and then to Italy. However, already according to some late antiquity testimonies, the Phoenitians included also the Jews, and we know from Iamblichus’ Vita that he was imagined to have visited the mount Carmel before leaving for his long sojourn in Egypt.7 This type of testimonies, known to the Renais- sance authors since the printing of Eusebius of Caesarea and Clements of Alexandria, who capitalized on the lost histories of Alexander Polyhistor, who drew from the lost history of the Alexandrine Jewish historian Arta- panus, and of Marsilio Ficino’s translations, were backed by older views, some mentioned above, who contended direct contact between the philosopher from Samos and the Jews. Thus, Pythagoras was not only the divine man, adored by some many ancient Greeks and Italians, but in fact the first who proposed a synthesis between the Greek philosophy he knew so well before his journey to the East—taken because of the alleged advice of Thales—and the variety of Eastern sorts of wisdom. In short, Pythagoras was the first who brought to the Greeks and Italians the East- ern knowledge, religious wisdom and science altogether. However, after the destruction of the Pythagorean school in Italy this knowledge was relatively forgotten. So, at least we learn from one of the most important biographers of Pythagoras, Iamblichus of Chalcis, himself a Syrian figure like Pythagoras

Renaissance Jewish sources see the conception that Pythagoras discovered music in Yehudah Moscato’s Nefuzot Yehudah, Sermon I, [cf. Israel Adler, Hebrew Annotated Manuscript Sources up to circa 1840, Repertoire International de Sources Musicales, (G. Henle Verlag, 1989), p. 224] and Samuel Archevolti’s ʿArugat ha-Bosem, fol. 118a, [cf. Adler, RISM, p. 97], Abraham Portaleone, Shiltei Gibborim, [cf. Adler, RISM, p. 256], Joseph Solomon del Medigo, Sefer ʾElim, [cf. Adler, RISM, pp. 119–120]. See also R. Shelomo ibn Verga, Sefer Shevet Yehudah, ed. I. Baer, (Jerusalem, 1957), p. 158. 7 Pars. 13–15, pp. 41–43. kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship 125

invoking the gods as leaders, and enthrusting ourselves and our discourse to them, let us follow wherever they lead, in no way discouraged by the long time this philosophical school has been neglected, concealed by outlandish teachings and secret codes [symbola.] obscured by numerous false and spu- rious treatises, and entangled in many other similar difficulties.8 Iamblichus wrote his book as an introduction to a large multivolumi- nous treatise on Pythagoreanism, which he apparently never finished in its entirety. As we know such a Pythagorean reform never took place in a pure manner because Neoplatonism, though inspired from time to time by Pythagorean themes, succeeded and Iamblichus was in fact one of those who had a share in this success. However, his attempt to bring back Pythagoras’s philosophy is of a certain importance for our subsequent discussions. This may be also the case with the other figure that drew from Neo-Pythagorean sources, and even saved some pieces of Iam- blichus’s book on Pythagoreanism from oblivion, the Byzantine 11th century scholar Michael Psellus.9 We may summarize the different surges of Pythagoreanism in antiquity and Middle Ages, as strongly connected to an earlier floruit of some forms of Platonism. This is also the case in the Renaissance. After Ficino’s introduction of the various forms of Platonism and Neoplatonism, the Pythagorean elements that were components of these literatures gelled as a theory that contends to stand for itself, as Reuchlin would assume. However, it is only at the beginning of the 16th century that a more explicit approach to this Greek philosopher as a student of the Kabbalists emerged in a writing of a Christian author Johann Reuchlin. Already in his first Kabbalistic writing, De verbo mirifico, printed in 1494, two main Kab- balistic topics had been presented as similar to two Pythagorean topics: the Tetragrammaton which corresponds, according to him to Pythagoras’ tetraktys,10 and the ten sefirot, which correspond to the holy decad.11 He is mentioning ‘symbol’ in relation to Kabbalah also sporadically before De Arte Cabalistica.12 However, a dramatic turn of Reuchlin in relation to

8 Iamblichus, On the Pythagorean Life, tr. Gillian Clark, (Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 1989), p. 31. 9 See O’Meara, Pythagoras Revived, pp. 53–85. 10 See also On the Art of the Kabbalah, p. 251. 11 De Verbo Mirifico, p. 941. 12 To be sure: I am aware of the existence of the term “symbol” in Christian theology long beforehand, under the impact of Pseudo-Dionysius, who probably wrote a book on “Symbolic Theology”, now lost. On his theory of symbolism see Moshe Barash, Icon, Studies in the History of an Idea, (New York University Press, New York, 1992), pp. 165–179. A resort to symbolic theology is found also in the 12th century. See M. D. Chenu, La Théologie au 126 kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship

Pythagoras is evident De Arte Cabalistica. In this book Pythagoras is mentioned together with all the other figures constituting the main sources of the prisca theologia according to Marsilio Ficino.13 He presents himself as a Pythagoras redivivus, and describes his enterprise when composing De Arte cabalistica, to the Pope, Leo X, as follows: For Italy’s part, Marsilio Ficino has published Plato, Jacob Faber of Estaples has brought out Aristotle for France. I shall complete the pattern and for Germany I, Capnion, shall bring out the reborn Pythagoras with your name at its head. His philosophy, however, I have only been able to glean from the Hebrew Kabbalah, since it derives in origin from the teachers of Kab- balah, and then was lost to our ancestors, disappearing from Southern Italy into the Kabbalistic writings. For this reason, it was almost all destined for destruction and I have therefore written of the symbolic Philosophy [Sym- bolica philosophia] of the art of Kabbalah so as to make Pythagorean doctrine better known to scholars.14 Reuchlin argument as to the affinities between Pythagoreanism and Kab- balah has a double edge: the former stems from the latter, but when it disappeared, it was absorbed into the latter. In one way or another, the scant knowledge of Pythagoreanism can be supplied by returning to the source from which it ‘originally‘ stemmed. Moreover, the entire project is dedicated to the Pope, Leo X, a Florentine figure belonging to the De Medici family, whose father and grandfather were encouraging the renewal of the Platonic and Neoplatonic literary corpora. Thus, it is not only the restoration of an Italian tradition, but also the completion of an enterprise initiated by the Pope’s family.15 Thus a combination of Italian patriotism with some form of adhering to what has been presented as a

douzieme siécle, (Paris, 1957), pp. 191–209, and his Nature, Man and Society in the Twelve Century, tr. J. Taylor & L. K. Little, (Chicago University Press, 1968), pp. 126–127, and Paul Ricoeur, Conflict of Interpretations, (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1974), pp. 58–59. In any case, Reuchlin refers in many cases to Pythagoras as the source of his resort to the term symbol. The existence of the earlier uses of symbol in Christian thought indubitably facilitated the adoption of the Pythagorean terminology. See Robert Murray, S. J. “Recent Studies in Early Symbolic Theology,” The Heythrop Journal 6 (4), (1965), pp. 412– 433. Reuchlin was, obviously, influenced by Pseudo-Dionysius. See Idel, Enchanted Chains, Techniques and Rituals in Jewish Mysticism (Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 2005), pp. 192–193. 13 De Verbo Mirifico, pp. 903, 949. 14 See Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, p. 39. See also S. K. Heninger Jr, Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics, (San Marino, 1974), p. 245. 15 Ficino has translated to Greek and Hellenistic corpora because of the invitation of de Medici family. kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship 127 project advanced by the de Medici family in Florence a generation beforehand, and an attempt to have an influence on the culture of Germany in the manner Ficino has in Italy and Jacques d’Etaples had in France, produced the most influential enterprise of Reuchlin. Written and printed at the peak of the dispute about the Jewish books in which Reuchlin has been so deeply involved, this vision of Kabbalah as the ancient ground of the Italian philosophy, and the modicum to restore it, could serve as an additional argument in the necessity to be involved in Jewish learning in general, and of Kabbalah in particular. It is highly interesting that Reuchlin ignores here the whole series of prisci theologi and selects only the classical figures, Plato and Aristotle, as paragons of learning, to whom Pythagoras is to be compared. The other pagan philosophers or magicians, like Zoroaster, Orpheus or Hermes, did not play, unlike De Verbo Mirifico, any decisive role in Reuchlin’s De Arte Cabalistica, when compared to the central status as the ancient theologians he attributes to Pythagoras. However, what is new with Reuchlin is the fact that for the first time in the work of a Christian thinker, Kabbalah was presented as the source of a major type of philosophy to be revived for the benefit of Europe; Reuchlin indicates that the affinity between Kabbalah and Pythagoreanism is not a matter of different corpora which share similar theological views but that the Pythagorean philosophy has been extracted, historically speaking, from the Hebrew sources. By doing so he did not propose something that was totally new; the Jewish source for Pythagoras’s philosophy, and even, according to some sources, his Jew- ish extraction were already somehow “documented” long before Reuchlin, as we had seen above. The introduction of the Kabbalah as the source for Pythagoras represents a decisive and influential turn in the status of Kab- balah, after Pico’s eulogies to the address of this lore. It is part of a wave of interest in Pythagoreanism in the Renaissance, a phenomenon pointed by Heninger, which capitalized on the renewed interest in Pythagorean- ism among some Middle and Neoplatonists, like Numenius, Iamblichus and Porphyrius. By advocating the paramount impact of the ancient Jews on Pythago- ras, Reuchlin adopts explicitly the view of Eusebius of Caesaraea,16 thus returning to a late antiquity attitude. Following the above sources, he con- cludes that “all the Jewish traditions and discoveries had been popularized

16 On the Art of the Kabbalah, p. 129. 128 kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship by non-Jewish plagiarists, first in Greek and then in Latin; there is nothing in our philosophy that was not first by the Jews, though by this time they do not get the recognition they deserve.”17

2. Kabbalah as Symbolic Theology in Reuchlin

Though Pico resorted to the term symbol both as a verb and a noun in his presentation of Pythagoras in his Theses on the Mathemathics of Pythago- ras, he did not resort to Kabbalistic topics in those Theses.18 It seems that only once in his Heptaplus, is Pico referring by the term symbol to an issue that can be understood as Kabbalistic: the allegory of the patriarchs.19 Even less plausible would be a contention of the Jewish Kabbalists that in order to understand Pythagoras better one should first study Kabbalah. For them the study of this Jewish existing lore was not conceived to be a tool for restoring another, Greek lost lore, even if the latter was deemed to stem from the former. However we are concerned here not with Pythagoras redivivus in the Renaissance, neither with Kabbalah in the Renaissance. Even the more modest topic of Pythagoreanism and Kabbalah in general in Reuchlin, transcends the specific concern of this paper. Reuchlin was interested in Pythagoreanism and its symbolic valence when still young, long before he ever heard about Kabbalah. However, in his De Verbo Mirifico, the role of this mode of expression is minimal, even in the cases where he discusses Pythagoras esotericism.20 I would like to focus on a topic that seems to me crucial for the relationship between the two kinds of lore in Reuch- lin: his emphasis on their common symbolic nature. This topic had been addressed recently in a very general manner, in an otherwise important Italian translation of De arte Cabalistica.21 Reuchlin’s main contention in his late and most famous book on Kab- balah is rather simple though radical enough in comparison to the earlier authors who subscribed to prisca theologia. He put in the mouth of Philo- laus, the representative of Pythagoreanism, the following statement:

17 Ibidem, p. 131. 18 S. A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486) (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, Tempe, Arizona, 1998), pp. 334–337. 19 Heptaplus, 2th proem, Opera, pp. 6–7; Farmer, Synchretism in the West, p. 81. 20 De Verbo Mirifico, p. 944. 21 See G. Busi in Johannes Reuchlin, L’arte cabbalistica, a cura di Giulio Busi e Saverio Campanini, (Opus Libri, Firenze, 1995), “La Qabbalah come opzione simbolica,” pp. VII–XXI. kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship 129

Kabbalah is nothing else but (to speak Pythagorically) symbolic theology, where [not only] letters and names are signs for things, but such things are themselves [signs] for other things. This drew our attention to the fact that almost all Pythagoras’s system is derived from the Kabbalists, and that similarly he brought to Greece the symbolic mode as a means of communication.22 Let me start with an analysis of this short but compact statement. “Cabala aliud nihil esse nisi (ut Pythagorice loquar), symbolicam theologiam.” Despite the historical claims as to the origin of Pythagoreanism in ancient Kabbalah, as adduced above, the phenomenological description of the Jewish literature stems from Pythagoreanism. Only when resorting to the Pythagorean language he is able to understand what the nature of Kab- balah is, and he opts for a general description of it as theologia symbolica. Thus, this is quintessential—nothing else but—a theology. Indeed a special one, which operates by means of symbols but nevertheless a theology. This is the reason why he is concerned so much with Kabbalistic theosophy, namely the structure of the ten sefirot, basically under the influence of the quite recently printed Porta Lucis Gikatilla’s book translated by Paulus Riccius, and the same Kabbalist’s Shaʿarei Tzedeq, Porta Justiciae. He explicitly refers to Riccius’ book immediately after the above passage. However, this kind of theology is a peculiar one: it resorts to symbols, and the meaning of this term is defined immediately. Here occurs Reuchlin’s major innovation in comparison to his predecessor Pico. While the latter never used the term symbol in order to describe the nature of Kabbalah, Reuchlin resorts to it tens of times, sometimes even in order to describe the proper manner for understanding the Koran.23 In the statement that addresses the symbolic mode Reuchlin points to two broad forms of semiosis: one of linguistic elements point to other things, and are there signs for those referents, but also the things themselves point to other things. Thus there is a linguistic and a ‘substantial’ mode of reference, which means that symbols are, at least potentially, everywhere, beyond the symbolic nature of language. Or, to put it in a more concise manner, words and world altogether have symbolic dimensions. Let me designate this broader attitude to symbolism as pansymbolism. To return to Reuch- lin’s starting point, Kabbalah is a theology which operates not only by reading in a special manner a literary corpus, the Bible for example, but also the world, or at least things. The occurrence of the two terms together,

22 On the Art of the Kabbalah, p. 241. On this text see Andreas Kilcher, Die Sprachtheorie der Kabbala als Aestetisches Paradigma (J. M. Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar, 1998), p. 107. 23 On the Art of Kabbalah, p. 203. 130 kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship theologia and symbolica, compels a reading of the referents, symbols, and their signifiés as strongly related: symbols point not to some human secrets, like political ones, or to natural secrets for example, but for divine matters. In other words, the supernal theology can be understood by resorting to the symbolic dimension of both words and things, because words and things altogether point to divine, or at least to theological topics. Indeed, already in De Verbo Mirifico he resorts to the syntagm divinitatis symbola, ‘the symbols of divinity’,24 in one of the very few instances where he uses the term ‘symbol’ in this book. Symbols are therefore understood as all those entities which possess otherworldly forms of referen- tiality but at the same time point the way to achieve an experience of the spiritual worlds referred by them. How did Philolaus, the Pythagorean persona in Reuchlin’s imaginary dialogue, reach his conclusion: not by comparing the theology of the Kab- balists with Pythagoras but by understanding the affinities between what he called their symbolic modes: his attention has been drawn by understanding the modalities of reference used by Kabbalists. Again, in another context Philolaus, reminds his interlocutors that: you should know and not forget that nearly all Pythagorean philosophy is full of signs for words, and cloaks for things, a form of communication that he, so it is believed, was the first to take to the Greeks from the Hebrews, as I have said, and the Egyptians.25 Though the wisdom of the Jews is not the only source from which Pythag- oras allegedly borrowed, the Egyptian contribution—much more eminent than the Syrian one, according to the Vitae—was very poorly highlighted by Reuchlin, and is represented basically by the reference to hieroglyphs.26 Elsewhere he speaks about “the symbolic philosophy of Pythagoras and the wisdom of the Kabbalah.”27 Indeed, Reuchlin was never tired to repeat his vision of Pythagorean symbolism as mostly stemming from or at the very least similar to Kabbalah. In another passage he links, again, his concept of history of knowledge with its phenomenology. He puts in the mouth of the other non-Jewish participant in the imaginary dialogue, the Mus- lim Marranus, the following confession:

24 p. 947. See also Elliot Wolfson, “Language, Secrecy, and the Mysteries of Law: Theurgy and the Christian Kabbalah of Johannes Reuchlin,” Kabbalah, vol. 13 (2005), pp. 20–21. 25 On the Art of Kabbalah, p. 225. 26 See M. Idel, “Kabbalah, Hieroglyphicity and Hieroglyphs,” Kabbalah vol. 11 (2004), pp. 11–47. 27 On the Art of Kabbalah, p. 357. kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship 131

Pythagoras drew his stream of learning from the boundless sea28 of Kab- balah, [and] has led his stream into Greek pastures29 from which we, last in the line, can irrigate our studies. What Simon30 says and thinks about the Kabbalists and what you say and think about the Pythagoreans seems to me to be exactly the same. What other intention has either Pythagoras or a Kabbalist, if not to bring men’s mind to the gods,31 that is, to lead them to perfect blessedness? Another way in which they are similar lies in their means of passing on information, the equal interest they have in symbols, signs, adages, proverbs, numbers and figures, letters, syllables and words. Thus for Pythagoras the letter upsilon is a symbol of youth.32 Just as in the case of Philolaus, also the other interlocutor starts with the historical transmission of Kabbalah from the ancient Jews to Pythagoras to Greece and then Italy, only in order to make the second statement that the Jewish mystical lore and Pythagoreanism share the same religious goal; to bring the mind of the contemplator to the supernal world by means of symbols. Here the theological aspect is not mentioned explicitly, but a rather mystical discipline is described. Common to Philolaus’ passage and that of Marranus, is their resort to symbols and their effects. We had adduced in the previous passages the manner in which Reuch- lin described participants. Let me turn to the testimony of Simon, the Kabbalist himself: how did he understand the nature of Kabbalah? After all according to the dialogue, he is the source of the information about this lore from which the other two participants drew. Simon describes Kabbalah twice in rather a clear manner. In the first book he refers to Kab- balah as follows: “Kabbalah is a matter of divine revelation handed down to [further] the contemplation of God and the separated forms, contem- plations bringing salvation. [Kabbalah] is a symbolic reception.”33 The Latin phrase symbolica receptio, assumes that the tradition that is received by the true Kabbalist consists of symbols, which facilitate contemplation, which at its turn, brings about salvation. The emphasis on the salvific nature of Kabbalah seems to reflect Reuchlin’s interest in the topic. However, the hermeneutical aspect of the perception of Kabbalah

28 On oceanic metaphors see also De verbo mirifico, p. 942. 29 On pasture see also ibidem, p. 243. 30 This is the name of a fictional Spanish Kabbalist, one of the interlocutors in Reuchlin’s book. 31 See also ibidem, pp. 99, 239, 243. De verbo mirifico, p. 944. 32 Ibidem, p. 233. 33 P. 63. “Est enim Cabala divinae revelationis, ad salutiferam Dei et formarum separatarum contemplationem traditae, symbolica receptio“. Ed., Pistorius, (Basel, 1587), p. 620. 132 kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship as interpretation seems to reflect the impact of Paulus Riccius' description of Kabbalah. Riccius, describes this lore as follows: That faculty is called cabala which imparts knowledge of human and divine affairs through the allegorical sense of the law of Moses; it is well-named cabal, which means reception, because it is revealed not in writing, but orally; not by argument, but by faith.34 However, while Riccius emphasizes the allegorical nature of Kabbalistic interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, Reuchlin inserts the term symbolic because of his Pythagorean bias. Elsewhere, he offers another definition: I prefer to talk about and review whatever I read in Kabbalah that I think would not displease you. I will begin with the end for which they strive. All their drive, all their efforts are carefully directed toward this single purpose: that they may attain happiness in this life, the perpetual bliss of the age (insofar as it can be understood) to come . . . To possess this is a belief to those who achieve it and their rest is perfect.35 Simon presents therefore quite a regular religious philosophical approach to the nature of Kabbalah: peace of mind here, bliss in the afterworld. This description of the ultimate goal of Kabbalah corroborates that of Simon’s first definition and of Marranus: Kabbalah is striving to induce a certain mode of spiritual experience. It is a philosophical discipline, though it surpasses philosophy, being a salvific form of knowledge. In all the important descriptions of Kabbalah we find therefore a common denominator: symbolism: symbola divinitates, theologia symbolica, symbolica philosophia, or receptio symbolica. A perusal of his influential book shows that Reuchlin is fond of the term symbolon. In fact he adopted a concept crucial for Pythagoreanism in order to describe Kabbalah.36

34 De Coelesti agricultura, Pistorius, p. 120: “Cabala ea facultas dicitur, quae divinarum humanatumque rerum arcana, per Mosaicae Lei typum Allegorico sensu insinuat, quwm quidem insinuandi modum; quia nullo rationis discursu nec calamo, sed auditu et fide tantum recipitur: cabalam (id est, receptionem) apellare libut.” tr. Blau, The Christian Cabala, p. 67. For another description of Kabbalah—again resorting to the term allegory, but basically under the impact of Abulafia, see ibidem, De Coelesti agricultura, pp. 115–116. 35 p. 243. 36 For the Pythagorean understanding of symbola see Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, tr. Edwin Minar, Jr. (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1972), pp. 166–192. On symbols in Neoplatonism, probably under the impact of Pythagoras see Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus, (Penn State University Press, University Park, Pennsylvania, 1995), pp. 48, 84, 85, 110, 162. kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship 133

Even Simon the Kabbalist, who first contended that he does not know what Pythagoreanism is, is slowly taught to use the term ‘symbol’ in his subsequent expositions of Kabbalah. For Reuchlin, symbols are bringing the Kabbalist’s mind to the gods and induce as state of blissfulness. There- fore, in addition to the information imparted by symbols, they are capable of elevating the mind to the divine, in a way very similar to some forms of philosophy.37 This is why symbolism is not different from philosophy, and Pythagoras is described as a symbolic philosopher. How does symbol work according to Reuchlin? He once describes the ultimate achievement of the Kabbalists as follows It is a life of absolute, unimpeded blessedness; by means of symbols, all earthy things are thrown away, and the stuff of matter is cast off; we strip form from form, until we reach the primal form, that is both the form of all things, and yet without form.38 We may assume that by being able to find out the more spiritual reference to which a symbol points, the symbol himself allows the elevation of the mind toward the spiritual realm. According to another passage, Reuchlin claims, again resorting to shedding the corporeality, that The elements are named in turn: fire is seraph, air is cherub, water thar- sis, earth—Ariel39 and whatever is in the lower world is very much better named in the upper. Things in the lower world can be grouped together and called copies of truths, shadows40 of things above, pictures, signs, marks or symbols, by which we are moved to consider heavenly angelic essences, virtues and works, by using a process of abstraction or some other method, so far as we can while still embodied.41 Here, the Pythagorean and Neoplatonic understandings of the lower elements as copies and shadows are obvious. Symbolism is therefore part of the valorization of the supernal and the understanding of the lower world as important only insofar as it is capable to elevate the mind toward the spiritual sources. By and large, this is the application of a most important Pythagorean vision of the ideal life, as expressed at the end of the Golden Verses and adduced by Reuchlin in De Arte Cabalistica:

37 See On the Art of the Kabbalah, e.g., pp. 45, 99, 231. 38 p. 45. 39 It should be ʾErelim. 40 See also On the Art of the Kabbalah, p. 123. 41 Ibidem, p. 103. On abstraction see also later on, pp. 123, 231. 134 kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship

When you cast aside the body you come to the free aether, you will be a god and immortal. When the things of this life are overcome you will know the dwelling together (which he elegantly termed sustasis,42 because the "stand together”) of immortal gods and mortal man.43 Reuchlin’s vision of Pythagoreanism as stemming from an ancient Kab- balah is not totally new, as we may learn from several Jewish sources adduced above. However, his resort to phrases like ‘a symbolic philosophy of the art of Kabbalah’ found in one of the quotes adduced above, and the ‘symbolic theology’ found in another, in my opinion, are novel additions and they are quite relevant for many of the subsequent understandings of Kabbalah, and perhaps also of the essence of symbols in Europe. Before addressing the details of Reuchlin’s understandings of Kabbalah as symbolism let me survey succinctly what was conceived to be a symbol in the sources which might have informed Reuchlin’s views on this term. I propose to group these meanings into five major ones. a] the most ancient of the meanings of symbol in Pythagoreanism seems to be ‘password’, namely a secret code that helped men or gods to recognize an initiated. In the mystery religion it was an initiated in the respective sort of ritual.44 b] The symbola, or the acousmata, the Pythagorean sayings, are originally “ancient magical-ritual commandments.” Therefore, they are statements related to deeds, and not meanings extracted from some statements.45 c] The symbola took, in the literatures subsequent to Pythagoras, the exegetical significance, namely the speculative interpretation offered to the enigmatic Pythagorean sayings, revealing some form of spiritual discipline.46 d] the most important case of symbolon in Pythagoreanism is the tetrac- tys, the sacred tetrad that stands at the core of this type of philosophy.47

42 On this term see Johan C. Thom, The Pythagorean Golden Verses, (Brill, Leiden, 1995), pp. 182, 184–18. 43 On the Art of the Kabbalah, p. 197. See also ibidem, pp. 173, 201, 205, 231. On these verses and their background see Thom, ibidem, pp. 181, 223. Reuchlin brought together verses which are not a sequel in the Golden Verses. 44 Burkert, Lore and Science, pp. 177, 179. See Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, p. 187. 45 Burkert, ibidem, pp. 176–177. 46 See above note 12. 47 Burkert, Lore and Science, pp. 187–189 and Thom, The Pythagorean Golden Verses, pp. 174–176. kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship 135 e] symbols are understood, at least in Iamblichus, as modes of revealing the scientific meaning of some images and similitudes formulated in order to first convey those meanings for a wider audience.48

Let me be more specific as to the manner in which Reuchlin uses the term symbol insofar as Kabbalistic material is concerned. I propose to distinguish between two main forms of symbols that permeate De Arte cabalistica: the vertical and the horizontal. By vertical symbolism I propose to see the semiotic process that transforms the given linguistic material into hints at higher worlds, and this covers exactly the vision of Kabbalah as a “symbolic theology.” By doing so, Reuchlin follows the steps of the theosophical aspect of Kabbalah, especially R. Joseph Gikatilla’s Gate of Light, a book translated by Paulus Riccius and printed one year before his own book.49 The assumption is that symbols, by referring to the sublime realm inspire a certain form of elevation of the soul or intellect to these realms. This is therefore less a way to acquire information but a technique to disclosing a new realm that is not perceptible by the regular intellectual acts of cognition. According to such a stand, the word, or sometime the individual letters, stand alone and are not understood in accordance to other worlds or letters. The horizontal symbolism, however, is part of Reuchlin’s acquaintance with another body of Kabbalistic literature, mainly represented by another book of Gikatilla’s The Garden of the Nut, which apparently he read in a manuscript, which is found in the British Library, Margolioth Catalogue 740.50 Though written by the same Kabbalist this book represents an early and quite different stage of Gikatilla’s Kabbalistic thought, when Gika- tilla was under the spell of linguistic Kabbalah. When writing in this vein Gikatilla did not yet accept the theosophical vision of the divinity, and did not attribute to the term sefirah the meaning of a divine attribute. For the young Gikatilla, Kabbalah was basically a set of rules for manipulat- ing language, informed by three main methods, Gematria, Notaricon and Temurah. These methods had been described by Reuchlin and, following him, by a host of Christian Kabbalists, time and again as the main thrust of Kabbalah. According to the young Gikatilla and Reuchlin, one word

48 See O’Meara, Pythagoras Revived, p. 99; Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, p. 207. 49 See Bernd Roling, Aristotelische Naturphilosophie und christliche Kabbalah im Werk des Paulus Riccius, (Tuebingen, 2007), pp. 358–362. 50 This manuscript was sent in 1495 to a friend of Reuchlin’s. It is written in an Ashkenazi rabbinic script. 136 kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship or set of words is related to another by the virtue of some parasemantic qualities, basically related to the structure of the word and the numerical values of its consonants. Thus, one word symbolizes another word, and so on. Thus, in lieu of pointing upward to the divine sphere, Kabbalistic symbols are understood by Reuchlin as pointing to other words. Or, to put it in post-modern terminology: while the vertical symbolism is logocentric, as it assumes the presence of a metaphysics that is the source of meaning, the second type of using the term symbol in Reuchlin is much closer to Derrida’s general understanding of dissemination. Horizontal symbolism can work, in principle, even without resorting to theosophy or even metaphysics, because meaning is created by establishing a relationship between two words. This double meaning of the term symbolon as either mystical or exegetical stems from ancient Pythagoreanism, as we have seen above. However, according to many Pythagorean authors, symbols were part of Pythagoras’ strategy to keep his theory from been understood by the uninitiated. It is the need for secrecy that compelled the Pythagoreans to resort to modes of expression that are esoteric.51 Esotericism was, as we know part and parcel of Kabbalah. However, it is extremely rare that Kabbalists resorted to idiosyncratic terminology in order not to be understood by others.52 The Pythagorean symbola had the nature of incomprehensible messages that need a clue known only by the members of the sect. They were invented by Pythagoras himself. In Hebrew all the three meanings of Pythagorean symbolon were deemed to be represented in Kabbalistic texts by the same word: sod. It implies from the very beginning the concept of secrecy, and it was used by the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalists in order to point to vertical symbolism, and it was used by the young Gikatilla in order to designate the numerical equivalence between two words. Thus, the polyvalent Pythagorean symbolon has been used by Reuchlin in a manner reminiscent of the different Kabbalistic resorts to the term sod. However, I would like to emphasize that Reuchlin never translated the term sod as symbol, but always as mysterium. He was apparently aware that he is introducing the Greek term into the discourse, and approximating as its meanings are those of sod, he did not conflate between them by translating one by the other. If Reuchlin understood sod as the Hebrew term for symbolon, as I shall try to

51 See Iamblichus, On the Pythagorean Life, par. 104, pp. 127–129; par, 227 p. 223. 52 Nevertheless such an approach is found in the writings of R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid or Nahmanides' circle. kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship 137 show below, there was no reason for him not to see Kabbalah as a whole as being a ‘symbolic’ lore. However, let me clarify, this understanding is a misunderstanding. The semantic field of the medieval term sod is multifaceted, and it incorporates as diverse forms of secrecy as R. Abraham ibn Ezra’s astral secrets, Maimonides’ Aristotelian understanding of the Bible, the Hasidei Ashkenaz numerical equivalences and, later on, also the vertical symbolism. Even the medieval Kabbalists were far from being able to clearly distinguish between these different meanings. So, for example, while Abraham Abulafia accepted by and large the Maimonidean type of secrecy, he rejected symbolic theosophy.53 Let me exemplify the above observations in a more detailed manner.

3. Categories of Symbols in Reuchlin a. Symbol stands for Gematria. The numerical use of symbol appears when pointing to the numerical equivalence of the consonants YHW conceived to be a divine name, or seal, in Sefer Yetzirah, to those of the consonants of the name ’eHeYeH: both amount to 21. This is a simple exercise in gematria. However, Reuchlin designates this form of numerical relationship by the name symbolism: “. . . quod est symbolum ipsius Ehieh hoc est entis, que equalitatem numeris.”54 This is the case also elsewhere, when Reuchlin points out that the consonants of MaKaBY amount to seventy-two, thus this name is a symbol of the name of seventy-two.55 He resorts to a gematria found in Hebrew sources ‘etz = 160 = tzelem.56 He reads this equation as the two words symbolizing the figure 150, (actually 160).57 This is a rather peculiar attitude since the normal Kabbalistic stand is looking for relations between words on the basis of gematria, without assuming that a certain number in itself has an independent value which is symbolized by the words. From this point of view Reuchlin imposes a Pythagorean theory of numbers as pointing to principles, a certain type of numerology, on the Kabbalistic computation devices.

53 See Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1988), p. 202. On secrecy in the Middle Ages see Moshe Halbertal, Esotericism in Jewish Thought and its Philosophical Implications, tr. Jackie Feldman, (Princeton Univeristy Press, Princeton, 2007). 54 On the Art of the Kabbalah, p. 198. 55 Ibidem, p. 313. 56 See e.g. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Sitrei Torah, Ms. Paris, Biblioteque Nationale 774, fol. 153a. 57 On the Art of the Kabbalah, pp. 353–355. 138 kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship b. Symbolism is related, according to Reuchlin, also to the permutation of letters, and he exemplifies this method, the Temurah or the metathesis by simple examples like Ysmah may become Mashiah, and malʾakhi becomes Michael.58 c. The substitution of letters for other, in accordance to some specific laws, has also been called symbolism. So, for example the consonants of the Tetragrammaton had been substituted by MZPZ, according to a specific system.59 In general it should be mentioned that Reuchlin calls all the three numerical techniques of interpretation ‘symbolic paths.’60 These three exegetical techniques may be described as horizontal symbolism, or what we had approximated by Derrida’s term dissemination, since one word is substituted by another according to different rules. The following usages of the term symbolism belong to what I called logocentric symbolism. d. Symbol stands for a Magically Functioning Name. When dealing with the name of seventy-two letters Reuchlin writes These hallowed signs are in the present days stored in memories and by these symbols the angels are summoned and bring help to men to the praise and glory of the ineffable God, according to Gerundensis in his introduction to Genesis, who quotes what rabbi Solomon wrote in his exposition of the Talmud. These are the letters that compose those symbols which I trace for you with my finger.61 Then he adduces, in Hebrew characters, all the combinations of letters constituting the name of seventy-two letters. Thus there are symbols that stand for some form of talismans or amulets. Though they may be connected to an angelic or sefirotic power, they consist in linguistic units that are not functioning in a semantic manner, even according to the Hebrew language. Though Reuchlin gives the impression that Nahmanides is the source of his second mentioning of the term “symbol”, nothing like that is found in the Introduction to the Commentary on the Pentateuch or in Rashi, whom Nahmanides quotes. The “symbolic” description of the entire topic is purely an addition of Reuchlin’s. We can describe this type of symbolism as a descending one, because it aims to have an effect on the lower entities by summoning the higher ones.

58 Ibidem, pp. 295–297. 59 Ibidem, p. 297. 60 Ibidem, p. 297. 61 Ibidem, p. 261. See also p. 265. kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship 139 e. Symbol as a Representation of the Supernal World Let us turn to another type of symbol, closer to the more widespread Kab- balistic symbolism: The Sabbath is a mystery62 of the living God.63 The Sabbath stands out as a symbol of the supernal world, the eternal Jubilee, where all works ceases . . . this is to be interpreted as referring for the joining of the powers of the soul to the mind, to achieve direction of contemplation towards the world to come.64 In this passage the term “symbol” stands for the relationship between a lower entity, process or ritual, and a supernal one belonging to the divine realm. The symbol is here the Sabbath, a mode of behavior in a certain moment, which teaches, as a pars pro toto, for the joy and delight which are constant in the personal eschaton. This view is found already in Rab- binic literature.65 However, what the theosophical Kabbalah added to this stand is the identification of the term ‘world to come’ with a specific divine attribute or divine hypostasis: the third sefirah, that of Binah, which is identical also with the eternal Jubilee. This stand differs from the first statement in the passage, which sees in the ninth sefirah, yesod, the divine hypostasis that is symbolized by Sabbath.66 We should not be puzzled by this ambiguity, since it is part of a certain development in the semiotic processes characteristic of the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah in Castile at the end of the 13th century, a process that can be called a transition from a symbolic univalence to a symbolic polyvalence. This means that the same word was conceived of as having more than one symbolic meaning, thus referring to more than one sefirah. However, the main gist of Reuchlin’s view is not so much the cognitive aspect of the referential relationship but the mystical one: following some Kabbalistic stands Sab- bath is understood by him as representing the cessation of mundane work and concentration of the spiritual faculties of man in order to reach the supernal spiritual world.67 As we had seen in earlier quotes, Kabbalah

62 Mysterium, translating the Hebrew sod. See also ibidem, p. 308. 63 Gate of Light, ch. 2, ed. Ben Shlomo, I, pp. 106, 111–112. 64 On the Art of the Kabbalah, pp. 237–239. 65 See BT. Berakhot. fol. 57b. 66 On the various symbolism of Sabbath in the schools of Kabbalah see Elliot Ginsburg, The Sabbath in the Classical Kabbalah, (SUNY Press, Albany, 1989), and Moshe Idel, “Sabbath: On Concepts of Time in Jewish Mysticism,” in Sabbath, Idea, History, Reality, ed. Gerald Blidstein, (Ben Gurion University Press, Beer Sheva, 2004), pp. 57–93. 67 See Idel, ibidem, pp. 66–67. The ascent of the mind on high is found indeed in Reuchlin in several instances. Let me point out that the disagreements that Wolfson mentioned between my description of Reuchlin and his own are based on a terminological 140 kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship is understood by Reuchlin as predominantly a contemplative discipline: Symbols guide therefore the soul to higher spheres and thus to individual salvation.68 By attributing such a role to symbolism Reuchlin is following again Pythagoreanism.69 This is another type of vertical symbolism, but it is an ascending one. f. Symbol as Cognitive Referent In several instances, especially when dealing with the secret meanings of the Hebrew letters, Reuchlin designates the referential function as evok- ing not only the divine realm but also other supernal levels, like the celestial. Capitalizing on a commentary on the Hebrew alphabet found in Ms. New York JTS 1887 (Halberstamm 444), fols. 39b–43b, Reuchlin inserts the term “symbol” in his renderings of the Hebrew original in order to point to the cognitive relation between a letter and a planetary body. So, for example, he resorts to the term symbol when dealing with the letter daleth, in order to point to the Hashmalim, understood as some form of angels,70 or lamed which stands for the planet Sabbatai, namely Saturn,71 or mem as a symbol of Mars.72 In other cases, letters described as symbols point to lower entities. Tzadeh symbolizes the heavenly and lower matter,73 the inanimate things, while Thau is a symbol of the human nature.74 fallacy. I indeed deny the theurgical aspects of Christian Kabbalah including Reuchlin, as I define in my writings, and Wolfson himself followed this understanding of theurgy, in many cases in his studies, as the effect of commandments have on the inner structure of the divine realm. However, in his article on Reuchlin he switched—without pointing out this shift—to another understanding of theurgy—to be sure legitimate too in Neplatonic sources—as the operations causing the ascent of the soul to the supernal realm, and in this sense Reuchlin is indeed a theurgian thinker. Thus, the divergences he “put in relief” between my different stand—as implicit in Wolfson, and his views disappears. See Wolfson, “Language, Secrecy, and the Mysteries of Law,” pp. 8–9 especially note 4. Without being aware of these two diverging meanings of theurgy, and without defining first how someone uses the term—a definition that is absent in Wolfson’s article—it is hard to appreciate the differences between the Jewish and the Christian Kabbalah. Indeed Wolfson is inclined to blur the difference between the two forms of Kabbalah in many cases, an issue that I cannot address here in detail. 68 On the Art of Kabbalah, pp. 99, 133, 147. For a more messianic reading of Kabbalah see his first part of the book in general, especially p. 87. On Sabbath in Reuchlin see Wolfson, “Language, Secrecy, and the Mysteries of Law,” pp. 30–32. 69 See Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, pp. 85, 110. It should be pointed out that the ascent on high in the context of symbols is found also in Pseudo-Dionysius. See Barash, Icon, pp. 172–179. 70 On the Art of the Kabbalah, p. 321. 71 Ibidem, p. 323. 72 Ibidem. 73 p. 325. 74 p. 325. kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship 141

4. The Tetraktys and the Tetragrammaton as Symbol

One of the most important usages of the term symbol in Reuchlin stems already from his earlier De Verbo Mirifico, where he compared the Tetra- grammaton to Pythagoras’ tetraktys, and described them as the symbol of everything.75 In De arte cabalistica, this relationship is described as follows. Marranus tells Philolaus that It seems to me that Pythagoras took from the Jews’ Tetragrammaton, or rather the four letters which go to make up the name of the savior, and changed it into the Greek Tetraktys symbol.76 As we know, the tetraktys, what the Pythagorean called the holy quaternity, and the Tetragrammaton, are quintessential issues in Pythagorean- ism and in Kabbalah, respectively. Here there is an important comparison proposed by Reuchlin, which though historically incorrect, touches important points in the phenomenology of the two religious phenomena. What is new in this contention? The first to have started with such an emphasis on the quaternity in the context of the Hebrews seems to be Marsilio Ficino: Why does everybody call God by four letters? The Hebrews by the four vow- els “he ho ha hi”; the Egyptians by “Theuth”; the Persians by “Syre”; the Magi by “Orsi” whence “Oromasis”;77 the Greeks by “Theos”; ourselves by “Deus”; the Arab by “Alla”; Mahomed by “Abgdi”. Again, we accepted “Jesu” from Gabriel, . . . Surely such diverse races would not otherwise have agreed on the one name of the unknown God, unless they were divinely inspired? And if they received it from Adam, it was by divine inspiration they received that name rather than others.78 Two theoretically different explanations were proposed for the "univer- sally” use of the fourfold divine names: Either all these nations received the various names separately or they have received these names from Adam. However, even according to the second explanation, each nation selected the characteristic divine name by the means of inspiration. Thus, a special revelation was bestowed on each and every nation; moreover,

75 Pistorius, p. 941. 76 On the Art of the Kabbalah, p. 157. 77 Plausibly it is Ormuzd. 78 Commentary on Philebus, Marsilio Ficino: The Philebus Commentary, critical edition and translation by Michael J. B. Allen, (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1975), pp. 142–144. See also ibidem, pp. 270–272. See my “Prisca Theologia in Marsilio Ficino and in Some Jewish Treatments”, in eds. M. J. B. Allen, Valery Rees, Marsilio Ficino, His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, (Brill, Leiden, 2001), pp. 137–158. 142 kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship even if we accept the second explanation, the Jews have no priority as they also would be conceived as having received their revelation later on. Thus, the basic structural similarity between the divine names, on whose source we shall have something to say immediately, does not reflect the influence of the Mosaic tradition, but a common denominator which transcends the peculiar forms of the names in each and every nation. The very idea that the divine name constituted the content of an Adamic tradition was already known among the Jews;79 I am not aware of a similar Chris- tian view before Ficino. Hence it is possible that Ficino was influenced by a Jewish, or more exactly, a Kabbalistic tradition, though he was also acquainted with the Pythagorean tetraktys as discussed in Jamblicus’ De Vitae Pythagoraca80 where the divinity of the tetrade is expressed in an explicit manner, and it is possible that the Pythagorean concept of the tetrad was the leading idea for the whole discussion of the Florentine thinker. However, Ficino does not mention Pythagoras in this context. Moreover, Reuchlin contradicts everything we may learn from the Pythagorean literature, by assuming the Pythagoras was not the thinker who first discovered the core of his philosophy, the tetraktys, but he just adopted a Jewish view. According to ancient Pythagoreanism, Pythagoreans were swearing by the oath which included the formula describing Pythagoras as the person “who brought the tetraktys to our generation.”81 Last but not least in this context: The Cross is conceived to be a symbol of the Savior, just as the Tetragrammaton is the symbol of God.82

5. The Totalizing Quandary: From Reuchlin to Modern Scholarship

I took pain in order to survey the variety of usages of the term ‘symbol’ because it is a central concept which was featured in an important book and we shall see later its reverberations in a variety of influential authors. However, before turning to the reception of the symbolic description of

79 On this issue see Idel, “Transmission in the Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah,” in eds. Y. Elman & I. Gershoni, Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Difussion, (Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 2000), pp. 138–164. 80 The Pythagorean Life, par. 150, p. 167, par. 162 p. 177. On the tetrade as divine in late antiquity and Renaissance sources related to Pythagoras see Henninger, Touches of Sweet Harmony, pp. 152, 195, and Burkert, Lore and Science, pp. 72ff. 81 Burkert, Lore and Science, pp. 72, 186–188. 82 On the Art of the Kabbalah, p. 353. kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship 143

Kabbalah, let me address the problems involve in Reuchlin’s adopting such a broad spectrum of meanings for this term. By applying the term ‘symbol’ to so many different forms of Kabbalah, which operate according to different sorts of semiosis, Reuchlin acted perhaps as a good Pythago- rean thinker. He apparently did not dream that he is imposing a totalizing attitude upon diverging semiotic strategies characteristic of Kabbalistic corpora which differ from each other. How could he assume something like that if the same Kabbalist, namely Gikatilla, one of the chief sources for his understanding and exposition of Kabbalah, had changed his mind from his early linguistic Kabbalah and adopted in his latter books another Kabbalistic vision, the theosophical one? Reuchlin fell prey to a common misunderstanding, which regards all the books that claim that are Kabbal- istic, as conceptually homogenous. This tendency is well-known among the Kabbalists themselves since the 13th century and emerges from the adoption of the same term, Kabbalah, by a diversity of schools. The term Kabbalah as an esoteric doctrine stems from sources that precede what we call Kabbalah by two centuries at least, and is connected to a practice of secret transmission of the divine name. This is quite explicit in the Gaonic period, and in this sense the view is adopted by Hasidei Ashke- naz and by linguistic Kabbalists, like R. Barukh Togarmi and the young Joseph Gikatilla, and by the ecstatic version of linguistic Kabbalah: Abra- ham Abulafia’s writings.83 However, since the 13th century, Kabbalists were concerned not so much with the divine name, or names, as with the theory of ten sefirot, the theosophical Kabbalah, adopted this term in order to describe their doctrine. Those two main meanings of the term Kabbalah are represented by distinct bodies of literature, which entered, from time to time, even in sharp conflicts. However, the state of conflict was not always overt. Two major representatives of the theosophical Kabbalah, the young Gika- tilla and the young Moses de Leon, for example, embraced the linguistic understanding of Kabbalah, but later on changed their mind and adopted the theosophical Kabbalah. This is not a developmental change, which is natural and understandable in any dynamic thinker, but a dramatic turn which ignores the earlier phases. So, for example, none of the earlier writings of Gikatilla or de Leon had been mentioned in their later writings.

83 See Moshe Idel, “Defining Kabbalah: The Kabbalah of the Divine Names,” Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics, & Typology, ed. R. A. Herrera (Peter Lang, New York, 1993), pp. 97–122, and “Ashkenazi Esotericism and Kabbalah in Barcelona,” Hispania Judaica vol. 5 (2007), pp. 69–114. 144 kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship

However, they did not criticize their earlier views, but they simply ignored them, and adopted other forms of making sense of the religious and speculative material at their disposition. De Leon’s earlier writings which are quite close to those of the young Gikatilla did not come to the attention of Christian Kabbalists. They had to wait for the detailed philological analyses in our century in order to be identified at all. However, this is not the case of Gikatilla’s book Garden of the Nut, Ginnat ʾEgoz, which not only became a classic of Kabbalistic literature, but was known and influential on the later Kabbalistic book of Reuchlin. Shortly before composing De arte cabalistica, he became acquainted with the late Gikatilla’s Shaʿarei ʾOrah in the Latin version of Paulus Riccius.84 Together with another book of the late Gikatilla, Shaʿarei Tzedeq, quoted as Porta Justiciae, Gikatilla’s three books constitute the most important cluster of sources for many of Reuchlin’s discussions in De arte cabalistica. If we add to these books most of the Kabbalistic material known by Reuchlin from a manuscript similar to Ms. New York JTS 1887, Halberstam 444,85 we may come to the conclusion that something significant happened in the history of Christian Kab- balah. This shift is important since it involves the different nature of the Hebrew sources that nourished the second phase of Christian Kabbalah. Unlike’s Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s basic reliance on Flavius Mith- ridates’ Latin translations, which drew heavily on Italian Kabbalah, basically the writings of Abraham Abulafia and Menahem Recanati, Reuchlin is acquainted mainly with works of Spanish Kabbalists, in addition to the Italian ones. He certainly knew some of the works of the Italian Kabbal- ists as he quotes them by name.86 However, in De arte Cabalistica they moved to the backfront, allowing the forefront to Spanish material, especially to R. Azriel of Gerona, to Nahmanides and the towering Kabbalist higher than anyone, R. Joseph Gikatilla. I assume that this change, which is a dramatic one for the entire physiognomy of Christian Kabbalah, is related, among other reasons, also with the arrival of Spanish Kabbalistic material due to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. It may also have something to do with the presence of Reuchlin in Germany, remote from the Kabbalistic library translated from Hebrew to Latin by Flavius

84 Roling, Aristotelische Naturphilosophie und christliche Kabbalah im Werk des Paulus Riccius, especially pp. 362–365. 85 See my introduction to On the Art of the Kabbalah, pp. XVI–XIX. More on the Jewish sources of Reuchlin see Wolfgang von Abel und Reimund Leicht, Verzeichnis der Hebraica in der Bibliothek Johannes Reuchlins (Thorbecke, Osfildern, 2005). 86 See, On the Art of the Kabbalah, pp. 93, 355. kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship 145

Mithridates, which remained in Italy to this very day. In any case, whatever the reasons for this shift may be, the dominance of the Spanish Kabbalah in De arte cabalistica is paramount. This means that Gikatilla, indeed a Kabbalist who had an incredible gift for organizing Kabbalistic material in all his books, becomes directly and via the Latin translation of Riccius, his main source, and Reuchlin become acquainted, in a relative short period of time, with the two different kinds of Kabbalah in books composed by the same Kabbalist. Thus, we may draw a substantial dividing line between the first stage of Christian Kabbalah as represented by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who adopted or at least repeated, R. Abraham Abulafia’s distinction between the ecstatic and the theosophical Kabbalah, or between the Kabbalah of names versus that of sefirot, and Reuchlin’s unified vision of this lore in his De Arte Cabalistica.87 For a harmonistic set of mind characteristic of later Kabbalists, the two forms of Kabbalah must, however, agree if not coincide, and Kabbal- ists used different strategies of mediating between the different forms of thought. Very rarely would they resort to a hierarchical distinction, like Reuchlin’s strategy of mediation between the different positions. For him, Kabbalah was symbolic in both the vertical sense, and horizontal one. In other words, by operating with a term that was used in at least two main but different ways Reuchlin believed, bona fide, that he was doing justice when describing Kabbalah in general as a symbolic theology. Or, to put it differently: by resorting to the term “symbol” as a homonym, Reuchlin was confident that he touched the very core of Kabbalah, either in its Abulafian or its theosophical forms. This comprehensive symbolic move has generated what I would call a strong homogenization of the much more variegated literature of Kabbalah, namely created a reading of conceptually different corpora, as if they constitute a conceptually unified field. There is nothing bad about introducing new terms in order to describe an older phenomenon. That is part and parcel of the positive and creative aspects of academic activity, but also part of its danger. The danger consists in introducing connotations of later phenomena—anach- ronism—or different phenomena, designated already by the new term, into the phenomenon that is referred by it. Danger of simple explanations

87 See Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., Jerusalem, 1989), p. 63, Farmer, Synchretism in the West, pp. 518–521. 146 kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship plague more those who attempt to offer unifying terms than those who attempt to introduce a variety of terms intended to distinguish between phenomena that seem to be close. Reuchlin chose the first avenue, and offered a unified vision by resorting to the concept of symbol as an organizing principle. Being the first to have opened this avenue, he becomes also the most important phenomenology of Kabbalah as we are going to see below. However, he united all the forms of Kabbalah by resorting to the term symbol only in order to link Pythagoreanism with this Jewish literature and so to overtly judaize Pythagoreanism. De facto he Pythago- rized—perhaps inadvertently—Kabbalah. However, the Judaization of Pythagoreanism was just one step toward his final destination, its Chris- tianization, as we learn from the transformation of the Tetragrammaton (and implicitly also the tetraktys) into a Pentagrammaton, conceived of as the secret name of Jesus, as proposed in De Verbo Mirifico, and corresponding, according to Reuchlin, to what the Pythagoreans called the symbol of the pentagram.88 Let me summarize this part of the discussion: In my opinion Reuchlin was basically wrong on the two main points we addressed above: historically it is hard to believe that Pythagoras or his school could be influenced by ancient Jewish mystical speculations and if there is an affinity between the two distinct forms of lore it may stem either from the impact of Pythagoreanism on Kabbalah. Again, in my opinion Reuchlin was, at least in part, problematic as a phenomenologist, as he conceived the Kab- balistic literature as a unified conceptual field, and because he attributed so great an importance to the mystical-informative symbol. How such a mixing together of different types of Kabbalah has taken place? This is part of what I would call the Italian situation of some forms of Kabbalah in the second half of the 15th century. Kabbalah became much less a tradition, studied in a group that was continuing a certain school, with its own ideals and practical aspects: nomian or anomian techniques. Kabbalah became a literature, which was circulating among intellectuals as books arriving from other centers of Jewish culture, sometimes from other centuries, and from contexts that were unknown to the young Jewish scholars who consumed them, understanding them in different manners. It was an intellectual lore, qabbalah sikhlit or muskkelet, something that can be

88 See Burkert, Lore and Science, p. 176, Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, p. 353, Wirszubski, ibidem, p. 218, Idel, “Introduction”, pp. XV–XVI, and see also Wolfson, “Language, Secrecy, and the Mysteries of Law,” pp. 11–15. kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship 147 understood by a non-instructed individual, only by his own studies.89 This is the situation in the group of younger intellectuals active mainly in Italy like R. Yohanan Alemanno, David Messer Leon or Abraham de Balmes, the first two of the three studied Kabbalah against the negative attitude to this lore of their teacher, and for David even of his father, R. Yehudah Messer Leon. This process started sometimes in the seventies of the 15th century. In this milieu, Kabbalah qua philosophy, or as a philosophically oriented lore Reuchlin could offer his version of a profound conceptual agreement between Kabbalah and Pythagoreanism. In itself, Reuchlin’s view is a simplification of the much broader spectrum of Kabbalistic phenomena, which consist of a diversity of factors like the mythological, Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, Hermetical or magical elements, which are hardly reducible to the principles of Pythagoreanism. However, his reduction of the content of Kabbalah in its entirety to some aspect of Pythagoreanism can be easily understood as part of his rhetoric, intended to create for his book a special field of contribution, different from that of Ficino’s and D’Ètaples’s. Moreover, this vision of Kabbalah as a kind of occult philosophy possessing a symbolic mode, is reminiscent of the more modern visions of myth and Kabbalah as a certain type of ‘narrative philosophy’, according to Schelling and Scholem.90 The Renaissance philosophical understandings of Kabbalah, both of Jewish and Christian thinkers, have been reverberated in modern scholarship.91 I believe that this is major clue for Scholem’s pansymbolic attitude.92 He once remarked that would he believe in metempsychosis, he would perhaps see Reuchlin’s soul as having transmigrated in himself.93 This may well be merely a metaphor, although it may nevertheless disclose something more profound about Scholem’s self-perception as a scholar. It may disclose his understanding that the line of research in modern Jew- ish Studies does not only start with Reuchlin as a founding father, “der erster Erforscher des Judentums” as the first of the systematic exponents

89 ʾOtzar ʿEden Ganuz, Ms. Oxford-Bodleiana 1580, fol. 90a. See also ibidem, fol. 136a: “We have Kabbalistic ways which are bringing us to the intelligibilia in an easy manner [be-qalut], without their [the philosophers’] ways.” 90 See Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, tr. R. Manheim, (Schocken Books, New York, 1969), p. 87. 91 On this phenomenon in general see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 5–6. 92 Gershom Scholem, On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time & Other Essays, ed., A, Shapira, tr. Jonathan Chipman, (JPS, Philadelphia, Jerusalem, 1997), p. 140. See also his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1967), p. 27. 93 Die Erforschung der Kabbala von Reuchlin bis zur Gegenwart, (Pforzheim, 1969), p. 7. 148 kabbalah, pythagorean philosophy and modern scholarship of Kabbalah, but also that the late scholars still follows his conceptual vision, at least insofar as Kabbalah is concerned. Reuchlin’s decisive influence is conspicuous in Scholem’s and his followers’ overemphasis on the paramount importance of the symbolic language and thought, as representative of and essential to the entire Kabbalah.94 Moreover, at least once, shortly before his death, Scholem mentioned explicitly Reuch- lin’s view of Kabbalah as receptio symbolica.95 From the first scholar of Judaism in the Renaissance to the greatest scholar of Jewish mysticism in our times, the symbolic mode in Kabbalah is attributed a fundamental role.96 Without always knowing it, modern scholarship of Kabbalah speaks, following Reuchlin, Pythagoreanism, when symbolism is attributed the decisive role in the structure of Kabbalah.97 However, this Pythagore- anism has been put in the service of Christianity, and the two trends of thought, have been used as an important grid for interpreting Kabbalah in a unified manner. This is one of the reasons why symbolism, as understood by Scholem and some of his followers, often involves a cognitive approach, emphasizing less the impact of human deeds on the divinity.98

94 See ibidem, pp. 23–24; idem, Major Trends p. 26. To be sure Scholem had also other sources for his view on symbolism. See my article mentioned in the following footnote. 95 “Die Stellung der Kabbala in Europaeischen Geistgeschichte,” Berlin Jahrbuch, (1981/1982), pp. 283–284. See the Hebrew translation in Gershom Scholem, ‘Od Davar, Explications and Implications, (ʿAm ʿOved, Tel Aviv, 1989), p. 323. The pertinent passage in Reuchlin has been quoted above note 33. See also a more complex description of Scholem’s understanding of symbolism in M. Idel, “The Function of Symbols in G. G. Scholem,” Jewish Studies, vol. 38 (1998), pp. 43–72 (Hebrew). 96 On the reticence of attributing a seminal role to symbolism in Judaism see Abraham J. Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, Essays, ed., Susannah Heschel, (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York, 1996), pp. 83–84. More on Heschel and symbolism see Edward K. Kaplan, Holiness in Words, Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Poetics of Piety (SUNY Press, Albany, 1996), pp. 75–89. For my reservations concerning the exaggeration of the status of the symbols in Kabbalah see my detailed discussion in Absorbing Perfections, pp. 272–294. 97 On symbolism and Kabbalah see more recently Boaz Huss, “Rabbi Joseph Gikatilia’s Definition of Symbolism and Its Influence on Kabbalistic Literature,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, vol. 12 (1996), pp. 157–176. 98 For a more diversified vision of Kabbalistic symbolism see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 200–234, and Abraham Elkayam, “Between Referentialism and Performativism: Two Approaches in Understanding the Kabbalistic Symbol,” Daat vol. 24 (1990), pp. 5–40 (Hebrew). INTERVIEW WITH MOSHE IDEL JUNE 4, 2012

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson

Professor Idel, you were born in Romania in 1947 and settled in Israel in 1963. I would like to begin this interview by exploring your intellectual biography. What was it like to grow up as a Jew in Communist Romania during the postwar years? How did you experience the early years in Israel as a “newcomer” (oleh hadash)? How did you find your way to the study of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism?

I was born into a traditional Jewish family and I grew up in a small shtetl where some Jews survived the war. Like other boys in traditional Jew- ish families, I started my schooling at the age of three in the traditional heder. Romania was now under the Communist government and one could not remain in a Jewish school for long. I had to enroll in a secular grammar school when I was about six. This meant a very sharp move from a Yiddish-speaking environment of Jews only to Romanian-speaking secular school with non-Jews, who were totally different people from the Jews I knew as a young child. The shift entailed broadening my linguistic and cultural horizons and exposing me to Communist ideology and propaganda. So, in a Communist society, I was like everyone else: I believed in all the mythology of the Communists, including the cult of Stalin. I remember even now the moment I learned that Stalin died; I experienced it as a catastrophe. But after a while, it changed because I began to be skeptical and could no longer plug into the propaganda. So, I had a period, let’s say, between roughly speaking, the age of twelve to the age of sixteen when I left Romania, during which I was reading a lot but not exactly what I was supposed to read, including material of religion which was not, shall we say, the cup of tea of the Communists. I started to read philosophy and also got interested in Hinduism, which was a big discovery for me. Until the age of fifteen I didn’t know anything about it. Externally, at least, I continued to be a part of the high school, because it was impossible not to be there, but I experienced the school like a prison. I attempted to establish my intellectual independence by reading, and it was up to me to decide what I would like to read and whether or not to read what 150 interview with moshe idel

I was supposed to. How to seem to be reading official literature while reading something else actually was a big intellectual effort because I had to escape the watchful eyes of the authorities. Growing up I knew that my family wanted all the time to come to Israel. When I say “all the time” I really mean it; from the moment I was born my parents and the rest of the family wanted to leave Romania, but the Communist comrades didn’t allow us. Half of the family did manage to leave in 1949–1950, but the other half had to wait for another fourteen years or so before it could depart. So, growing up meant a life in suspense, I think. We knew that we were going to leave, but the problem is, when? Obviously such a stance is not conducive to integration from many points of view. Not only because I was thinking about this Israel, even though I had no idea what was there, and I did not know the Zionistic story at all. Yet, as a young person I knew that part of the family was in Israel and that I would like to be with the family. Needless to say, that created a certain tension with the Romanian environment. Even more so because everyone in school knew that we wanted to leave, which was taken as an insult by the Communists. As a result, I could not receive various prizes or awards in school, simply because it was known that my family wanted to leave Romania. This was not a secret conspiracy against Jews, but simply the rule of the game. I did not experience a crisis as a result of this awareness, but there was a certain form of alienation. In postwar Romania, even though we were Jews, we were very much part of the culture. We had to study Russian and I knew Russian well enough, despite the fact I didn’t want to know it at all. The pressure to conform was great. During my adolescent years, when I started to read material that was not part of the curriculum while attempting to graduate like everyone else, I experienced a kind of alienation from the surrounding culture. Remember that we were traditional Jews, in fact, Orthodox Jews, even though Orthodoxy in Roma- nia at that time was something totally different from Orthodoxy in Israel today. I must confess, though, that while I was a traditional Jew, personally, I was not religious; I didn’t believe in almost anything, you know.

Even as a child?

As a child I assumed that I was like everyone else, but when I became a teenager, it was over. I did not espouse the traditional beliefs of Judaism and I assume that the Communist propaganda had an influence on me, even if I did not believe the propaganda either. interview with moshe idel 151

The one certainty I had was that the family wanted to leave Roma- nia for Israel. For that reason I consumed a lot of foreign literature about another kind of life. Even though I grew up in a small town, which was quite pedestrian, there were a lot of books. These books were the major reason for my feeling of alienation as a Jew, but also as a Romanian. Com- munist Romania was no longer the old Romania which I imagined as a rather glorious life. Maybe it was really glorious in Bucharest, but I was not in Bucharest, only my dreams were there. Now, let me make it clear: I did not suffer and I did not encounter anti-Semites who rejected me because I was a Jew. It was nothing like that; we were rejected because we wanted to leave. So what I experienced was not suffering, it was alienation, a mild alienation. I did not have a sense of living in exile, and no feeling of being an exile; I just knew that I lived in a place where I knew I didn’t want to be. But then when I turned sixteen, my life was radically transformed one day when we were given permission to leave. My world changed in one second and from then on I could not imagine what I was going to do next year. The life I knew was over; it disappeared in a moment, all because we were given permission to leave for Israel. In truth I knew nothing about Israel. To the extent that I had some notion about Israel it was simply imaginary, as I would later discover. But from the moment we were allowed to leave Romania the world changed and we were no more part of Romania; we already belonged to another country, another place. So the change was very dramatic, precisely because I was very much part of Romania. I knew Romanian very well and I understood its culture, including its Eastern Orthodox heritage, but now that I was leaving for Israel I wanted to belong to a place that existed only in my imagination.

How did you imagine Israel? Was it an ideal place, a Shangri-la of sorts?

No, no, not at all. No. I imagined it as a desert. I believed we were going to be in a farm, in order to receive some training to work in the desert. And my major worry was how am I going to have books. Indeed, when I met the Israeli ambassador in Bucharest as we were ready to fly to Israel, the only question I had for him was whether there are libraries in Israel. His answer was very calm as he reassured me, “Yeah, sure there are,” but he didn’t convince me nor did he allay my anxiety. I was sure that he responded to me as a joke, making light of my concern. So when I arrived in Israel I had a cultural shock. First, the shock was linguistic: I did not possess the 152 interview with moshe idel means for communication with other people in Israel. I knew how to read Hebrew, but I could not speak the language. And English, another dominant language in Israel, I did not know at all. So, in a moment, I became an analphabet, a person without a language and without capacity for verbal communication. Keep in mind that there were no books in Romanian, or at least I did not know where I could find such books. So, like all newcomers in Israel, I enrolled in Ulpan [Hebrew language school] in Kefar Masarik and there I started to study Hebrew. I may have known a little bit more Hebrew than all the other students, who didn’t know anything, but still I did not know too much. The experience of being without a language compelled me to study very intensively; I really studied very, very, very intensely in order to master Hebrew. So after two or three months, I decided it was not right for me; because it was in a kibbutz, the style of teaching reminded me too much of the Bolshevik methods of inculcating certain teaching through simple stories. By contrast, I was putting all my energy into mastering Hebrew grammar from Gesenius’s book of Hebrew grammar. In other words, I studied Hebrew as one would study Latin: I was asking my teacher about all kinds of grammatical exceptions, but he had no idea what I was talking about. It was so bizarre for him to listen to some of my questions that, you know, he didn’t dismiss me as if I was someone crazy, but only as someone who is asking questions which have no relevance to the actual use of the Hebrew language. So, after three months, I decided to enroll in my junior year in high school, that is, eleventh grade, along with native speakers of Hebrew. My family settled in Kiryat Ata so I enrolled in the local high school and there I encountered what serious learning is all about. I did nothing but study and study, and I was exposed to an entirely new curriculum. I had to learn Hebrew grammar, Bible, Hebrew literature, Jewish history, and many other topics that were totally brand new for me. And on top of that I had to learn English. Of course, I was fluent in Russian and French, not to mention Romanian and Yiddish, but no one in high school either knew these languages or if they knew any of them they did not want to speak to me in these languages. If I were to matriculate from an Israeli high school and be like everyone else, I had to study English. To get to the appropriate level in English within such a short time, I had to study English basically alone in order to catch up and reach the level required for matriculation. That junior year in high school was the only period of my life that I really studied, from morning to the evening, all the time. Part of the required topics for matriculation was Bible, which for me meant basically interview with moshe idel 153 learning another language. So I made a lot of mistakes as I tried to master biblical Hebrew alongside modern Hebrew. I availed myself to the commentary of Tur-Sinai because it was the biggest commentary on the book of Job, and I ploughed through it with a small Hebrew-Romanian dictionary. You can imagine that this was a frustrating experience because a lot of words in the Bible were not in my Romanian dictionary. In retrospect, of course, it was really a big mistake to do something like that, but I was utterly determined to be able to master the language of the Bible. Obvi- ously, I made many mistakes in my translations and my comprehension of the text. In short, the year and a half in high school was a real difficult period, partly because I didn’t consult people and partly because I had to re- create for myself a new identity in a new language. As I was studying day and night to prepare for the national matriculation examinations and did all of them with one exception, history, I received a note from the Israeli army, exempting me from the draft. Apparently, I passed the exams with distinction and was eligible to enter the university without being drafted first, which meant I was admitted to what is known in Israel as atudah academait. But now I had a real quandary: All my new friends were born Israelis who were going to do compulsory army service, and I would avoid the army and enter higher education. For about a month and a half I enjoyed feeling proud of my intellectual prowess, but eventually there was a change in the rules and I was indeed drafted into the Israeli army, like all the others, and my experience in the army was quite difficult.

Why was basic training in the army so challenging?

Basic training was difficult for me because I could not devote myself to study, which was my mission at the time. Instead, my life was reduced to focusing on basic, shall we say, “dirty necessities.” Furthermore, I knew I had to master the English language in order to pass the entrance exams to the university, so I studied English on my own by memorizing diction- aries and I did so on the bus while traveling back and forth between my home and the army base. I was drafted to the IDF’s Combat Engineering unit and I had to acquire a lot of technical knowledge about engineering, which is not a simple topic at all. Although engineering is a challenging topic, intellectually it was not satisfying for me, so I started to study Japanese. 154 interview with moshe idel

As a survival tactic that turned out to be quite good because all the people were looking to me and saw that I was learning Japanese, which they couldn’t understand, so their reaction was this guy must be nuts, so it is better to leave him alone. This was the best thing for me because it discouraged them from challenging me, or making my life difficult in any way. And so during my army service I started to study subjects that had no relation to a profession or a career. While other soldiers were asleep, I was studying Aramaic, by translating the Aramaic sections of the Bible. It was in the army that I started to read the books of Mircea Eliade in English in order to improve my English. Interestingly, I got into reading Eliade not because he’s Romanian, and not because of his theories of religion, or his own religious proclivities, but because his English was adequate to my level. So, it was during my army service that my English improved greatly through reading, for which I had plenty of time. My work in the IDF Com- bat Engineering unit was physically very, very hard and very dangerous, but we had plenty of free time, which I devoted to reading theories of religion (mainly Eliade), poetry, and philosophy. I still did not know what I would study after my compulsory service, but I began to have an inkling that it would be either philosophy or religion. These were not obvious topics for a new immigrant in Israel in those years. You must remember that after the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel was in a period of economic crisis and my family was rather poor; to be blunt, we didn’t have anything. So I had to think in very, very practical terms and I decided to study English and Hebrew literature in order to become a high school teacher. A teaching post would at least guarantee my liveli- hood. I enrolled at the University of Haifa majoring in English and Hebrew Literature, and I do not regard this choice as a mistake. The first two years in the University of Haifa (1967, 1968) were difficult times because Israel was in the midst of an economic crisis and there were no jobs at all. But then something changed and the government began to give out stipends and fellowships for newcomers to Israel. Out of the blue, without expecting anything, I received a scholarship which made my third year at the university free with some additional income. Finally I did not have to work so hard for a living, although I continued to work very hard because of a deep sense of economic insecurity; one never knew what was going to happen next year. I also worked very hard because I wanted to be sure that no mistake would happen. In 1969 I graduated from the Univer- sity of Haifa with a BA and a teaching certificate that enabled me to be a high school teacher. In 1970 I decided to focus on literature as the topic of interview with moshe idel 155 my graduate training, but then a friend of mine, the late Professor Arieh Motzkin, who was my teacher at Haifa, convinced me to go to Jerusalem and check out the people at the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah. By then Professor Shlomo Pines was the most senior scholar in the department (Gershom Scholem already retired), but I did not imagine myself doing graduate work at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In fact, I was pretty sure it was going to be the first and last time I went to Jeru- salem. But again something totally different started for me; it was a sort of a break. As a newcomer to Israel, I had a sort of inferiority complex, which was exacerbated by the difference between the two universities. The Uni- versity of Haifa at the time did not match the history and reputation of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Now I met intellectual giants, such as Professor Eliezer Schweid and Professor Shlomo Pines, and studying with them seemed to me beyond my wildest imagination. So I started to take graduate courses with some professors and getting to know this august faculty. And once again something surprising happened: Profes- sor Ephraim Gottlieb, one of the scholars of Kabbalah who taught at the department, invited me to be his research assistant. Financially this was terrific because it saved me money, since traveling between Haifa and Jerusalem was quite expensive. But the more surprising development was that Professor Pines admitted me to the Direct Ph.D. Program at the Hebrew University. So again, out of the blue, I was accepted as a Ph.D. student at the Hebrew University, which was beyond my wildest dream. As a graduate student in the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah I was not only exposed to new topics, but also to new research methods. Initially I sought to write my Ph.D. on Jewish philosophy with Professor Shlomo Pines rather than on Kabbalah, but since I was the research assistant of Professor Gottlieb, I was also introduced to Hebrew manuscripts. I started to read manuscripts under the supervision of Professor Gottlieb, and that’s the way my career as a scholar of Kabbalah was launched. I left the study of literature (be it English or Hebrew) as well as the study of Hebrew language; these subjects became passé basically, as I focused my time and interest on reading kabbalistic manuscripts. In the early 1970s the economic situation improved dramatically in Israel, in general, as well as for me personally. So I could now actually read whatever I would like, including a lot of manuscripts. Being admitted to the Ph.D. candidate program at the Hebrew University was a source of incredible pride; and it was all before I even launched my academic career. So that’s what happened. 156 interview with moshe idel

You were enrolled in the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Kab- balah. How did you understand the relationship between these two dimensions of Jewish thought?

Initially I was interested in philosophy, not in Kabbalah; that’s why I knew I would write my Ph.D. thesis with Professor Pines. As you know, I wrote about Abraham Abulafia, but it took a while for me to arrive at that decision. In fact, it was Professor Gottlieb who challenged me to define my intellectual interests. I knew that Abraham Abulafia wrote commentaries on Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed and I thought that Professor Pines, whose expertise was Maimonides, could agree to my study of Abulafia. So I started to read the relevant manuscripts and found them quite interesting, but when I spoke with Pines he was not keen on the idea because he did not feel himself competent to direct a dissertation on Abraham Abu- lafia. Pines insisted that Professor Gottlieb would be the other supervisor of the dissertation and that is how I started to think about Kabbalah.

In other words, you became a scholar of Kabbalah almost by accident.

I did not know that Kabbalah would become the focus of my career. Even though I wanted to know about Kabbalah, and I took a course with Pro- fessor Gottlieb, my main instructor was Professor Pines and I was mostly interested in the history of philosophy.

Given the fact that you launched into the study of Kabbalah almost by accident, your intellectual trajectory is quite amazing. Today, you are the leading historian of Kabbalah, but your work is not limited to the study of Kabbalah. You are an intellectual historian, a cultural theorist, a literary critic, and a commentator on contemporary Judaism. In fact, I see you also as a public intellectual who has much to say about West- ern contemporary culture. How do you integrate all of these perspectives? How do you understand the place of Kabbalah scholarship in the broader context of your intellectual activities? More specifically, how do you understand the relationship between Kabbalah (or Jewish mysticism more broadly) and Jewish philosophy?

Like any other student, I started with a very limited topic, but the research was based on manuscripts, and as you know, manuscripts are not pure. When I started to read the primary sources I realized that the material interview with moshe idel 157 could not be classified simply as “Kabbalah” or as “philosophy”; the manuscripts contained a complex set of ideas that required me to explore a variety of directions simultaneously. This was not a matter of my choice, but rather something dictated by the manuscripts. Thus I noticed that the manuscripts contained a lot of material that could be classified as “magic,” and I noticed that no other scholar wrote much about this. So I began to find ways to cope with the material in the manuscripts. Keep in mind that I was already exposed to the writings of Eliade, who had some ideas about the nature of religion from the dawn of humanity to the present. Eliade thought he knew something about the essence of religion, or what is “real religion.” But then I encountered the writings of Gershom Scholem, one of the founders of the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah at the Hebrew University, and the most important scholar of Kabbalah in the twentieth century. And when I started to read Scholem, I encountered a totally different worldview, meaning a secular thinker who believes in the progression of the human spirit through stages, obviously a totally different outlook than Eliade’s. To my amazement, as I delved into the manuscripts, I realized that neither of the two approaches to religion were working. Meaning, the manuscripts resisted the theories. In the early 1970s I also became more familiar with Carl Jung’s theories and while I was still in Haifa, I introduced Kab- balah to a group of Jungian psychiatrists. I was quite surprised to see how the Jungians approached the kabbalistic texts; they knew in advance what the texts presumably were supposed to say, before they even read them. It was a very powerful experience for me because they were so certain about the meaning of the texts; they were even laughing as we were trying to fathom what the texts were saying. Whereas they thought they understood the texts, I told them, “Wait a second, the texts may be saying something else.” Of course, they summarily dismissed my caution. So, when I started to read the kabbalistic texts extant exclusively in manuscripts, I had in my disposal theories about religion which did not help me at all to understand the texts. While it is true that we never enter the interpretation of texts without some preconceived notions about the text, when you truly attempt to fathom the text, you are lost and you are alone. Meaning, the text does not help you and does not tell you what it says or what it means. The encounter between the interpreter and the text is direct and unmediated. So the kabbalistic texts were a kind of an enigma to me, and neither Eliade’s ideas nor Jungian ideas helped me to make sense of them. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t use existing theories of religion, but even when I thought I knew something, the question still 158 interview with moshe idel remained: How do I apply what I think I know to these kabbalistic texts? The application was rather, how to put it, almost impossible. So I attempted to find different ways to unpack the meaning of the kabbalistic texts. For example, I started to read the research produced by the scholars of the Warburg school, dealing with myths and symbols and astronomy, astrology, and magic, and these studies brought a little bit of clarity to the manuscripts. But I didn’t have too much time to really delve deeper into these cultural domains, because my task was to make sense of the material that was in fact impenetrable. I had at my disposal some tools (e.g., the ideas of Eliade and Scholem, both of whom seemed right to me) but I sensed that the tools did not work. So why did they not work? I began to think that perhaps I was the problem; perhaps I needed to know more and expand my intellectual horizons in order to make sense of the kabbalistic texts. I slowly understood that maybe if I had different lenses, I would be able to see other things. So on my own, without formal academic training, I started to read very broadly and encountered other scholars of religion and other intellectual historians, such as Frances Yates and others who were connected to the Warburg school. Her work was a sort of revelation for me, because it was closer to the Kabbalah and it shed light on various historical and cultural issues related to the Italian Renais- sance. Finally, I felt that scholarship in other fields is helpful to interpret the kabbalistic texts. So from 1971 to 1986 I focused mainly on reading manuscripts and I learned an important lesson: The theories we have don’t work; they simply don’t work. The experience of facing the manuscripts and fathoming what they tell me was a crucial experience; the manuscript resisted any attempt to impose a ready-made theory or explanation. In retrospect I think this can be said about any text, not only manuscripts or specifically kabbalistic manuscripts. My encounter with the texts made it very clear to me that you cannot subscribe to some existing theory or approach because the minute you try to apply it to the text, you are going to do vio- lence to the text. This is especially true if you subscribe to these theories seriously. This seriousness is going to cost you. While it is necessary to pose questions to the text you see to understand, you must remain free to listen to the text. To put it differently, you must have the questions because the text is not giving you any answer if you don’t ask. But if you’re going to ask all the time the same question, and you believe that that is the answer, you actually don’t understand the text. That was not at the beginning, but with time, I started to understand that in fact that’s something beyond Kabbalah or philosophy. I believe this now about textuality. interview with moshe idel 159

If I hear you correctly you are saying that the text poses a mystery and you have to open up, or unpack that mystery, that secret.

Let’s take a moment to ponder what is a text? Any text, not just kabbalistic texts, is something very, very complex. More complex than the author can imagine. And in order to unfold what’s going on in a text, we can resort to all sorts of literary theories articulated by Harold Bloom, for example, who spoke about understanding, misunderstanding, strong interpretations, syntheses, tension, and the like. All these theories are very nice, but we need to leave them at the entrance if we are really trying to understand texts. So, that’s why I became fascinated with the kabbalistic texts themselves and not with literary theories that presumably should help us understand these texts. Keep in mind that I was quite an outsider to the study of Kabbalah and that I did not have either a B.A. or an M.A. in the study of Kabbalah.

When you encounter a text, does the text have a certain claim on you? That’s what you seem to be saying.

Not really. Keep in mind that in the beginning of my encounter with Kab- balah, I simply read manuscripts, without any preconceived plan. I would just read all the manuscripts in a given library; for example, the Vatican Library. Reading the manuscripts was my job, for which I was paid, and I had no idea what I would find in the texts. I also didn’t have anything in mind, in terms of what to look for or what I was supposed to find in the texts. As a matter of fact, it was a very nice experience to be paid to read the manuscripts, but it was also problematic because I didn’t write. As I discovered, reading manuscripts is not demanding, and it is much easier than writing. So, in retrospect, I can say that I fell in love with reading texts, because it was nicer to read than to write.

While reading is easier than writing, reading texts is not a passive activity; it is a creative or constructive activity that demands a lot intellectually, because reading requires interpretation. Is this not the case?

Yes, but at that point I was not busy interpreting texts. My main challenge was to organize the huge amount of material I found in the manuscripts. What do I do with those texts? How do I determine what to copy and what not to copy, and why do I copy this manuscript and not another? 160 interview with moshe idel

Did not this selection process manifest some preconceived ideas about importance, relevance, or significance of the texts you read?

In truth, I didn’t have any criterion for selection; no criterion at all. But I can tell you that the experience itself of reading manuscripts in this fashion for so many years has shaped me deeply. That is maybe the most important lesson I have in my life and I reached it long before I became acquainted with Umberto Eco and with Harold Bloom and their complex literary theories. The experience of reading manuscripts made me realize that the text is a very complex entity, even if the author was a very modest guy. Even with a very modest author, the text is another story. Meaning, the text is always different from the author and different from the sources that were at the disposal of the author. Whether the author borrowed from here or from there, it doesn’t matter, since the text is something different. It is a new creation.

I understand your deep respect for the integrity of the texts, but in your own scholarship you’re very keen on identifying the original intent of the author and you link that intent to the way the author uses various sources in his disposal. In other words, you trace the story of the text by showing how one text influenced another text. Why are you so insis- tent on establishing the origins of the text? Does not that methodology stand in conflict with your avowed desire to protect the mystery of the text and its inherent integrity?

One reason for my methodology is the impact of Shlomo Pines, my teacher. If you read Shlomo Pines, you see the same form of interest in the origin, influence, and development of ideas. So I believe that, you know, I, in a way, I internalized it, despite the fact that Pines didn’t deal with Kabbalah.

That makes perfect sense to me, since I too am a student of Professor Pines.

A second person who shaped my methodology is Gershom Scholem, though he was less interested in the text and more in the ideas of the text.

That’s right. interview with moshe idel 161

Now, my interest in textuality, however, does not make me a postmodern thinker; I am not a postmodern thinker. I still believe, whether naively or not, that we can capture something more from the past. The past (including the meaning of past texts and the intent of past authors) is not just our invention, or our projection, even though in our approach to the past there is always a degree of invention, projection, and misunderstanding. Our understanding of the past can always improve; it can always get better.

Who is the “we” you have in mind? Do you mean human beings?

No, I mean the scholars.

Why do you limit yourself only to scholars? Are they the only ones who seek to understand the past or stand in relationship with past texts?

I am interested in the scholar because I don’t buy the vision of perfect objectivity, which was at the foundation of modern academic scholarship, especially since the nineteenth century. The scholar, for sure, is biased. The scholar is not a machine that can remain uninvolved or that has no prior beliefs. I believe that we are indeed biased and that we have many prejudices, but nevertheless, with an effort, we can have a real dialogue with texts. In the context of that dialogical relationship one learns something from the text that one cannot learn from Freud or Jung or Eliade or Scholem or any other modern interpreter of the text.

In other words, the text speaks directly to us in some way. Right?

Yes. The text has something to tell you, and that is true even in regard to mediocre texts. The text as text is a detective story. How shall I put it? Maybe if I were not a scholar, I would have been a detective. The task of the detective is to reconstruct something before he or she actually knows what is being reconstructed, and more importantly, the task is to understand.

In your most recent book, Old World, New Mirrors, I read a very strong postmodern stance because you talk about anti-essentialism, diversity, and multivocality, all of which are themes that negate the assumption that the reader of text simply discovers the meaning of what is already 162 interview with moshe idel there. The work of the detective presupposes only one right solution to the mystery, whereas in that book you seem to endorse multiplicity of “right solutions.”

True.

Other themes of postmodern discourse, such as discontinuity, rupture, and internal contradictions are also very prominent in the book, and that seems to stand in conflict with the posture of the detective.

That is totally true, but there is a difference between these attitudes or themes and postmodernism; I can draw a line nevertheless. It is true that I believe that complexity and multivocality are quintessential for most texts. But that doesn’t mean that in principle we cannot understand texts or that we cannot prefer one reading over another. When I seek to understand texts I do identify the variety of voices in them; I do not have to deny such diversity or multivocality because they are precisely what give complexity to the text. The challenge to the scholar is to understand how complexity emerges; it is not enough to state that there is a complexity and leave it at that. The challenge is to see the emergence of the specific complexity.

So texts are like riddles for you. The text offers you a riddle, but you believe that you can decode or solve the riddle. Is that correct?

It is correct to a certain extent. Note that I don’t say I solve all the problems that are in the text or that the text poses to the reader. In fact, I am not so concerned about all the problems of the text. I am not preoccupied with the desire to encompass all the aspects of the text, or to see everything with clarity and precision. No, no, that’s not me. Rather, I am fascinated by the encounter with another voice, another world, which is not me. That’s what is fascinating.

Is it fair to say that you experience the text as the Other?

I want to understand the mind that generated the text, for example, the mind of Abraham Abulafia as manifested in his texts. So, for me, it’s an achievement to be able to say, “Look, I’m reading Abulafia and I know interview with moshe idel 163 what he’s going to say now.” And indeed, when I turn the page, he actually says it. It doesn’t matter if I’m always correct or not, what matters is the feeling I have about what the text is going to say, or could say.

The way you describe your interaction with text seems to be quite similar to a psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic encounter. You are the analyst and the text is your analysand. Is this a fair comparison?

Yes and no. It is like psychoanalysis because the text fascinates me more than anything else. In that regard, I am like an analyst who listens to the patient. I want to understand the text on its own terms, rather than to come out with answers to a perceived problem. What is most important to me is what the text is going to tell me, not what is relevant for me or important to me; my own subjectivity is not relevant. So my approach to texts is not identical to psychoanalytic encounter. For example, unlike psychoanalysis, I do not come to the text with a preconceived theory. The theory is less important to me than listening to the text and trying to understand it.

The emphasis on understanding resonates with the textual approach of Wilhelm Dilthey. Do you consider the attempt to understand a text a philosophical activity? If so, would you say that understanding texts as you just explained is what Jewish philosophy is all about?

To tell you the truth, I don’t know what philosophy is, because philosophy has many, many meanings. In fact, the more popular the philosopher, the more complex and the more laden with meaning is the philosophy. Is Freud’s psychoanalysis a philosophy, or not a philosophy? That is still debated.

I would say probably not.

But there are people who maintain that psychoanalysis is a philosophy and that Freud was a philosopher. So what is philosophy? As a teenager in Romania I read more philosophy as a protest against the Communists and all the theories of materialists which we studied at school. For example, I studied Schopenhauer to resist Communism because for me philosophy is basically one more type of imagination. No more. It’s quite obvious that, you know, every philosopher is telling you that all the others before him were wrong, true? 164 interview with moshe idel

Yes.

No one is right. In principle, philosophy is only a quest for wisdom or a pursuit of truth; it is not a set of truths that can be known in advance. So, where does meaning come from? It’s the imagination that provides meaning.

If indeed philosophical claims are only products of human imagination, what’s the relationship between philosophy and truth?

Imagination is a part of our understanding the universe. It’s not nothing. Imagination is not, how to put it, identical with irrationality. Actually, I don’t know what is the difference between imagination and thinking, for example. For me, philosophy is another form of imagining the world. If this is so, what’s the difference between a kabbalist and a philosopher? For sure, they are different, but how are they different?

Are you saying that Kabbalah and philosophy are two kind of philosophical imaginings?

Yes. Both the kabbalist and the philosopher imagine but they do it on the basis of different premises, and they use different logic. I admit that Kabbalah and philosophy have different logics, but I also see how they can and do influence each other, but that’s not the point for our current discussion. I believe that philosophy is a part of science. In fact, even what we consider the “hard sciences.” But the “hard sciences” are also no more than ways to imagine the world. Thus we get scientific theories that are fundamentally different from each other and even contradictory to each other. For example, Newton was sure that he was totally right and Ein- stein was sure that he was totally right.

Analytical philosophers, by the way, will not accept your claim that philosophy is no more than a form of imagining the world. They do claim that philosophy provides us with certain knowledge about the world as it truly is.

I know, but that is why analytic philosophers don’t develop. And what about the quarrels between them? These intellectual disputes are based on the assumption that someone’s wrong and someone is right. interview with moshe idel 165

Yes, your point is well taken.

Okay, so I believe all of them are right, and all of them are wrong as far the meaning is concerned. For sure, I believe that what I write is correct, but it doesn’t mean that for another scholar it’s the same. So, the notion that we need to look to philosophy as the objective standard of truth, while all the others are crazy, is simply not so. The limits of philosophy are very evident in the simple fact that there has never been a philosopher who built even a small society. The people who call themselves philosophers, you know, are basically speaking to themselves telling you that all the others are wrong, while they are right. Needless to say, whatever a philosopher says, within five years, it becomes obsolete.

In other words, you are saying that the philosopher has no social relevance whatsoever.

Indeed. A given philosopher may have relevance for a while, perhaps for a small circle of people, but no philosopher has ever built a society. This is to say, philosophers didn’t have an impact on the life of people as a group. Of course, there can be a situation in which a philosopher has a circle of people who admire him. This is why we talk about the neo-Kantians who admired Kant or the neo-Hegelians, who admired Hegel. But these admir- ers don’t live together and don’t do anything together, except maybe in some academic conferences, you know. These academic circles do not constitute a society, even if you call them “a society of fellows.”

I understand your point that philosophers don’t build societies and that the social relevance of philosophers is very limited. What about the critical stance of the philosophers? Does it not have a social function?

Yes, for me, a philosopher is someone who is more critical than others, and definitely more reflective than others. Critique is the strong part of philosophy, because people start with certain premises and develop them in a certain direction, thereby building a system that presumably could not be destroyed. But in truth, the philosophic endeavor is based on the capacity to destroy or demolish existing systems. As Solomon Maimon, who was surely a great genius, said in his autobiography, “Every year, I’m starting one system and after a year, I destroy it.” He clearly knew what he was talking about. Any philosophical system, after we digest it for a while, 166 interview with moshe idel is going to pass. In other words, philosophy is part of our intellectual game and should be known to us more or less, but I don’t see that there are philosophers who should serve as the arbiters of truth. For me, it is better to listen to what the philosopher is saying, because he or she may be right, but there are also many philosophers who did not know anything and said many stupidities, for example, about Kabbalah. Philosophers may have ideas, but these ideas may be mistaken or wrong. In short, I do not privi- lege philosophy nor do I give priorities to philosophers.

What, then, is Jewish philosophy in your view, and what is the relationship between Jewish philosophy and philosophy in general? Given your insistence on social relevance, is Jewish philosophy important to Jewish social life?

As a minority group, Jews were thrown in impossible situations in different places and different times. In some cases where philosophy flourished, there was Jewish philosophy; and in others when philosophy was absent, there was no Jewish philosophy.

Are you saying that Judaism could do quite well without philosophy?

I don’t know if Judaism could do quite well or not, because I cannot assess it, or give it a certain grade, but I’m saying that actually Jewish life was defined not by principles, tenets, and abstract issues. To treat Judaism in such manner is an academic invention or a Christian invention. The ultra-Orthodox Jews of the Meah Shearim neighborhood in Jerusalem don’t know anything about all the great philosophers of Judaism, and yet they live well enough without philosophy, at least from their point of view. They have other problems, but lack of interest in or knowledge of philosophy is not their problem. Now, let me be clear: the Jews of Meah Shearim don’t represent, for me, Judaism.

Why not?

They don’t because there is no one representative of Judaism. Ultra- Orthodox Jews are only a form of Judaism, although in terms of longevity, they are probably going to survive more than other forms of Judaism. interview with moshe idel 167

Are you saying that the ultra-Orthodox in particular will survive or more generally that the traditional forms of Judaism have longer survivability.

Yes, I mean the traditional form is very strong and it’s going to survive after other forms of Judaism which are fascinating will be forgotten. Judaism is multifaceted, and there is a wide range of Judaisms today. For example, I consider the ideas of George Steiner a form of Judaism and I do not have any problem with diversity and multivocality of Judaism today. But my question is what’s going to happen to the grandchildren of George Steiner? If George Steiner’s form of Judaism cannot be practiced in a second and third generation, it means that it is an ephemeral form of Judaism.

On the one hand, you endorse pluralism within Judaism, but, on the other hand, you seem to suggest that certain forms will last and others will not. Do you imply that Judaism has an essence that enables us to predict that some forms of Judaism will last and others will not?

I attempt not to be essentialist because I recognize that all forms of Juda- ism are continuously changing. Even the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox, who see themselves as representing an unchanging essence of Judaism, even they are changing, you know, every year. So what is at stake here is not to identify that which is presumably authentic, original, and everlasting. All forms of Judaism are changing all the time, including those that speak against change. So I do not look for the unchanging essence. And I don’t attempt to define the essence. What I am saying is that we have forms of Judaism that survived without a reflective moment of philosophy, which was to a very great extent imposed on the Jews. Phi- losophy entered Judaism in certain times and in places where the Jew- ish elite wanted to enter into a dialogue with another intellectual and social elite. The Jews who sought integration had to learn the cultural language of the wider society and also, too, its philosophy. Historically speaking the production of Jewish philosophy was a regional experience for sure. And from this point of view, Moses Maimonides is as Jewish as any other Jew in the world, but he also created more perplexity than any other Jew when he composed the Guide of the Perplexed as an attempt to remove Jewish perplexity because of the encounter with philosophy. And the acrimonious debate about Maimonides suggests that Jews saw Mai- monides’ thought as a perplexity. Isn’t that what happened? The cultural 168 interview with moshe idel process that generated Jewish philosophy in the middle ages is happening all the time: Jews arrive in a certain place and it takes them one generation to understand the new place and to adapt themselves to it. One way or form of adaption is to learn the language, namely, learn the way of thinking, and then apply it to Judaism. We see it in America today but it has happened many times before throughout Jewish history. In order to adapt into the larger society we like to showcase Judaism for everyone, and to do so we use the dominant philosophical currency. Frankly, I am not sure why we have such a strong need to do so; it seems to be the name of the game.

Do you see Jews as necessarily adaptive people? Do Jews always adapt by entering a conversation with the dominant culture?

Adaptation seems to be a constant feature of Jewish history. From time to time, this adaptation has been very creative. Adaptation does not mean simply copying or duplicating the dominant culture. Take for example Franz Rosenzweig: He was not someone who simply copied the philosophical culture of his day; rather he adapted it to Judaism in order to resist the philosophy of Hegel. Rosenzweig is an example of a Jew who lived the confrontation between Judaism and the dominant philosophy. Another example of that confrontation can be seen in Hermann Cohen, but Rosenzweig more than Cohen was defined by his big enemy, Hegel. In the confrontation with Hegel, it doesn’t matter if Rosenzweig copied or didn’t copy from his source.

Is there a specific methodology to creating Jewish philosophy? Does Jewish philosophy necessarily mean a response to an external challenge, the intellectual enemy of sorts?

I would not say that there must always be an “enemy” to which the Jew- ish thinker has to respond. There were moments in history when Jews were accepted easily, and the Jewish thinkers that emerged out of these moments were not creative. Hermann Cohen is one such example.

Are you saying that Hermann Cohen was not creative?

Yes. People who remained outside the social structure were freer to create. What can you say about Herman Cohen? That he was a neo-Kantian? interview with moshe idel 169

That means that Cohen’s thought is framed and shaped by Kant; Cohen did not resist Kant because he wanted to become part of culture. Let’s talk about Emanuel Levinas. His philosophy of the Other explains the creative tension between the Self and the Other: You become part of the Other and play the game of the Other. We can also think about Leo Strauss, for whom philosophy was a subversive activity. Could he maintain this view of philosophy and remain in Germany? So there are examples of Jewish philosophers whose thought responded to the experience of social exclusion.

So, being the Other, especially being the excluded Other, is actually intellectually creative?

The word “excluded” is too strong.

How about “marginalized”?

I do not think that the crucial issue here is marginalization or exclusion. I am talking about Jews who held academic degrees and yet they were on the verge of being socially accepted.

You mean that they felt they were “almost there”?

Yes, they experienced the sense of being “almost there.” So, they were not ostracized, and they had contact with the dominant culture, and they had prospects of making it.

And yet, these people experienced a certain frustration. Right?

I prefer to speak not about frustration, but about discontent. Today we don’t have such discontent, and therefore we do not have creative Jewish philosophy. Today I do not see that Jews look at the surrounding culture as something to be attracted to. We have it perhaps a little bit in Europe, and that’s all.

What about science and technology? Don’t you see them as culturally seductive forces? 170 interview with moshe idel

Yes, but science and technology offer us another type of creativity. The fact that a recent winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was an Israeli professor, Dan Schechtman, indicates that today science does offer a venue for creativity. Schechtman is an example of a person whose ideas about the structure of crystals were rejected by the scientific establishment, but he persisted to do his research going against the scientific conventions of his profession, until his creativity was recognized.

In retrospect, your work with kabbalistic manuscripts is somewhat analogous to the work of Dan Schechtman with crystals. As much as he let the crystals tell him their secrets, so to speak, so did you allow the kabbalistic manuscripts to tell you their secrets, without imposing on them any academic convention or prevailing theory.

This is interesting point. I didn’t think about it, but thank you for the very generous comparison. I believe that actually, when you become part of the culture, you are part of a culture; you are no longer better than others but also no less than others, and, most importantly, you are not very original.

So, in a way, when we, Jews, seek cultural integration, we have a high price to pay. When we become part of the culture, we lose our other- ness, our marginality, and with it our creativity. Is that so?

Oh, sure; take Einstein, for example. As he himself put it jokingly, to the extent that I am right, the Germans see me as a German and the French regarded me as a cosmopolitan. But when I am wrong, the Germans say I’m a Jew and the French would say I’m a German. Here is the real theory of relativity for you. So, Einstein understood very deeply that in fact if he’s going to fail, he’s going to remain a Jew and a German. Einstein, who is much more intelligent than me, is telling you the same story.

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that Jewish philosophy (or perhaps Jewish creativity more generally) is born out of some social frustration and some sense of almost making it. Would you say that there is a specific or a distinctive way of doing Jewish philosophy? Is there a way to determine that a certain type of philosophy is truly Jew- ish philosophy, while another is not, even if it’s written by a Jew? interview with moshe idel 171

Look, Jewish philosophy is not our general story. It does not encompass the Jewish historical or cultural experience. Even if you look at individual thinkers, you cannot generalize from them about Jewish culture or Jewish history. Jewish philosophy has been written in a variety of literary forms. For example, there are Jewish philosophical commentaries on the Bible written alongside commentaries on Aristotle’s Ethics. When Jews wrote commentaries on Aristotle’s Ethics, the commentary is much more philosophy than Judaism. Conversely, there are forms of Jewish philosophical literature that are more Jewish and less philosophical, despite the fact that the thinkers are defined as “philosophers.” In other words, there is no one clear profile of Jewish philosophical texts. It is very difficult to define who is a Jewish philosopher and what makes one thinker more philosophical than another.

Is there a canon of Jewish philosophy? If so, who should be included in it?

I would include all the Jewish philosophers in the “canon” because I don’t attempt to determine who is more original and who is less original. These are matters of intellectual fashion and convention, and they vary over time. I’ll give you an anecdote to illustrate my point. In 1986 I was in Jerusalem and bumped into Levinas in the corridors of the Hebrew University and I asked him, “What do you do here?” He answered, “I am teaching in your department, but no one knows it.” Today, Levinas is very, very well-known and before he died he reached a celebrity status among continental philosophers. However, for a long time even scholars who wrote about Levi- nas did not know that he’s Jewish. Personally, Levinas was very Jewish: He spoke Hebrew, he studied Jewish traditional sources, and he observed the Sabbath. Levinas and I used to talk regularly and I think there were things he told me and to no one else. For example, in 1979 Levinas told me that the greatest Jewish philosopher is Rashi! Yet Levinas characterized himself as a Greek philosopher, because as a philosopher, he was speaking the language of the Greeks. So clearly, what is at stake here is not only the Jewishness of Levinas (a topic which is highly debated among scholars of Levinas) but also what it means to be a Jewish philosopher, or to do Jewish philosophy.

Since Levinas considers Rashi, the greatest medieval Bible commentator, to be a philosopher, would you say that the Bible is a philosophical text? 172 interview with moshe idel

No, I don’t consider the Bible to be a book of philosophy. The strength of the ancient Greeks was in philosophy, meaning systematic thinking. They had limited interest in myth, or ritual, or even in society (even though Aristotle did write the Politics). The ancient Greeks had a distinctive approach to the world, and that is why they, and not the Jews, gave rise to Western philosophy. But the ancient Greeks disappeared from history. Where are the Greeks today?

And yet, Greek philosophy didn’t disappear. The Greeks created the philosophical search, identified all the important questions of philosophy, and shaped the way we think philosophically.

True, Greek philosophy has lasted, but Greek society vanished. The ancient Greeks did not create a society, even though they had several philosophical schools, which functioned like clubs. Aristotle in the fourth century B.C.E. was the peak of Greek philosophy, but within one generation after Aristotle, the classical forms of Greek societies practically disappeared. By contrast, the Rabbis were not philosophers, but they attempted to create a society and in so doing they succeeded. If you’d like, you could talk about rabbinic Judaism in terms of social philosophy or political philosophy, but it is inherently different from the writings of Aristotle, the acme of Greek philosophy.

How do you characterize rabbinic thinking? Is it philosophical, anti- philosophical, or a-philosophical?

Rabbinic thinking is an attempt to instruct people to do together at the same time the same thing. Rabbinic thinking is based on the notion of authority, whether the authority is deemed to be God, Moses, or the rabbi. The rabbinic enterprise is very, very clear. You cannot miss it. You don’t have in the Talmud systematic theology. So, why is that the case? Here and there you could find some influence of philosophical thinking, but rabbinic mode of thought is not philosophical.

Not every scholar will endorse what you just said. For example, according to Eliezer Schweid, the siddur, the Jewish prayer book, is a philosophical text; it expresses the philosophy of Judaism as well as the view that philosophy is a way of life. The same can be said about many other interview with moshe idel 173 rabbinic texts and indeed the notion that philosophy is a way of life dominated the ancient world.

Okay, sure, I don’t object if you like to call a way of life a philosophy. But for me, a philosophical way of life is exemplified by Pyrrho, the first skeptic philosopher, who didn’t care about anything and he was going straight ahead, you know, despite of the danger of falling and dying. That’s a philosophical way of life.

Are you saying that philosophy is ultimately a march toward death?

Yes. That’s true. Philosophers have been writing very interesting, but highly speculative ideas about the nature of reality (whether it is Matter, or the Intellect). The intensity of systematic philosophy is very alluring, because you have a feeling that you master it.

And that presumably gives you a sense of security?

If you know it, yes. Philosophy leads you to believe that you can go further because it is possible to talk about philosophy. It can presumably help you to live your life because it is certain. By contrast, the commandments, which are the Jewish guide to life, do not provide such certainty because you can argue about their meaning, and you can either observe the commandments or not. I agree that for many Jews it is enough to observe the commandments, without interrogating them. The life of commandments can be a very nice life.

Yet, the rabbinic corpus is filled with arguments about the commandments. So interrogation and questioning (the core of the philosophy) is very much part of rabbinic discourse.

The Rabbis argued about one thing only, about how to do what God commanded the Jews to do. By contrast, philosophers don’t argue about how to do, but about what is truth, what is reality, or what is metaphysics. These are very interesting questions but they are not settled to this day. If you compare the philosophic discourse to a Jewish discourse you will see profound differences. When Jews come together in a minyan, they interact with each other by listening to each other, singing together, and 174 interview with moshe idel for a brief period of time, living with each other. This is a humble way of being in the world; there is nothing elevated about it; it is an ordinary way of being in the world but perhaps it is nicer than a philosophical discussion in which nothing is decided and everything remains open and even those who participated in the discussion will forget it as soon as it is over.

If so, should Jews today care about Jewish philosophy?

I don’t know. Given the fact that Jews are living now in societies in which philosophy is still highly valued, they must and should engage in philosophy. From this point of view, the Jews as individuals or as small groups attempt to integrate into the culture at large and to the extent that philosophy is part of the culture, Jews must engage in it in order to integrate. Society, social institutions, or social organizations always have their own rules, so that if one wishes to be part of it, the society expects one to play the game.

You’re saying that if Jews wish to be part of the cultural game, and philosophy is part of that culture, then Jews must do philosophy. Is that correct?

Yes, but I do not single out philosophy. The cultural game also includes art and science, and Jews should take part in these endeavors. I don’t see anything not authentically Jewish about these pursuits. Take Maimonides, for example. He dramatically changed the definition of Judaism; what was not considered Jewish beforehand (namely, the physics and metaphysics of Aristotle) became Jewish when he declared it the inner, esoteric meaning of the Torah. Can we say that Maimonides is not Jewish enough, or that he is not authentically Jewish? That’s silly.

You keep bringing up Maimonides as a paradigmatic Jewish philosopher. Who else would you consider the most important Jewish philosopher or philosophers? Who are the five Jewish philosophers that everybody (at least all Jews) should know about? That brings us back to the question of the canon of Jewish philosophy.

Well, it all depends on your criterion for importance. I don’t know what criterion to use. interview with moshe idel 175

Well, you just said that Maimonides changed Judaism forever. In this statement you actually defined a criterion for importance. Are there other Jewish philosophers who changed Judaism?

Maimonides did not just change Judaism but the definition of Judaism. He added a new dimension which since then became part and parcel of the life and soul of many, many Jews. What is involved here is no mere change but rather the perception Maimonides is Judaism. For me this perception is erroneous and even ridiculous, but I have to concede that Maimonides was extraordinarily successful in offering a new picture of Judaism that reached very deep.

So are there any other Jewish thinkers who have accomplished something similar?

Since Maimonides, perhaps the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, would fit this criterion. The Baal Shem Tov changed Jewish life dramatically and immediately. Within one generation, people became different and remained different ever since. The changes introduced by the founder of Hasidism were not ephemeral. Here is a person who really had an impact on Judaism without being a philosopher at all or, in my opinion, without even having any philosophy in any sense. We simply cannot imagine Judaism today without Hasidism. To make this point even more bluntly let me put as follows: Imagine there was no Holocaust. Today, without the Holocaust, Hasidim would have dominated Jewish life; the Hasidism would have been the big, big majority. So, it is reasonable to argue that Baal Shem Tov changed Judaism more than Maimonides. The Holocaust killed a lot of Hasidim and dealt a major blow to Hasidic societies in Poland, in Russia, and Hungary. Remarkably, despite the destruction, today Hasidic communities are thriving and powerful in a way that no one imagined twenty-five years ago. Now if you try to imagine twenty-five years from now what will happen to Jewish societies, the historical importance of the Baal Shem Tov will be even more obvious.

That’s very interesting, although it remains speculative. However, I want you to discuss the Holocaust more generally. Do you consider yourself, or any Jewish thinker today, a post-Holocaust thinker, whether philosopher or theologian? What’s the role of the Holocaust in your thinking? 176 interview with moshe idel

I think the question is too early, for me, personally.

Really? Why?

Let me be clear: My family didn’t suffer from the Holocaust. Our little shtetl was not directly impacted by the Holocaust. Until very recently, actually two weeks ago, I never visited an extermination camp. I was once in Theresienstadt but that was a ghetto rather than an extermination camp, and the Nazis made it into a model camp where Jewish culture was allowed and encouraged. It was not an easy experience to be there, but it is very different than the experience I had most recently in Poland. I was in Krakow for a week and I decided to visit Auschwitz. That experience was so overwhelming, that I cannot speak about it yet.

We are in the beginning of the twenty-first century. What do you see are the most challenging kinds of intellectual issues for Jews? I would like to differentiate between the challenges that face the Jews of the Diaspora and the challenges that face the Jews in Israel. Are any of these challenges philosophical in nature? Can Jewish philosophy respond to those challenges in any way or is philosophy irrelevant to the challenges?

Today in the dawn of the twenty-first century we are all challenged by the problem of what is the meaning of being human and what are the rights of human beings. This question occurs all the time in all sorts of ways. As a minority, Jews address these questions much more than any other minority. Perhaps the situation is different in America because of the racial problem that made African-Americans more outspoken than Jews on matters of human rights.

In the Civil Rights Movement, Jews were heavily involved but the Civil Rights Movement was not comprised of Jews only.

I am speaking about Jews as a distinct minority. In the international discourse on human rights Jews were represented much more than any other minority. For sure, Jews were not alone in their struggle for human rights. But what is unique about the Jewish fight for human rights is the intention of this minority was to improve the situation for themselves, but also for all the others. interview with moshe idel 177

Are you saying that human rights are an important Jewish philosophical concern?

Yes, precisely because we are a minority. I am not saying that concern for human rights is Jewish in an essential way. It is very likely that if we were a majority, we would not be so concerned about human rights. But given our minority status whether in Europe or in America, Jews are more outspoken about this issue, which is, how to put it, very sublime, on the one hand, but it has immense cost for Jews, on the other hand. I don’t know if Judaism had to pay a price, but Jews definitely had to pay a price and an incredibly high price. Look at what happened in Russia. All the Jewish intelligentsia, all of whom were Communists, was exterminated. We have to remember that these Jews entered Communism without any intention of conspiracy; they wanted to be Communists and to contribute as Com- munists. In fact, they wanted to be Communists in order to improve the world for all human beings. And these idealist Jews paid the highest price in comparison to others. I don’t say that other groups didn’t pay a price, but relatively speaking Jews suffered more than other groups. Think, for example, about the tri- als of the doctors in the early 1950s. Here Jewish doctors, who had been crucial to the goals of the Communist state, were singled out and the regime basically said to them: “Look, we don’t need you. You did your part, we don’t need you anymore.” So that’s why the price that Jews have paid for their belief in Communism was incredibly high. And it seems to me that something like that also happened in America. Jews were at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, and African- Americans were very nice to the Jews as long as they needed them, but at a certain point there has been a real rift between African-Americans and the Jewish establishment. Today anti-Semitism is flourishing even in America, and it exists in the African-American community in ways that were unthinkable in the 1960s.

By comparison, anti-Semitism is flourishing in Europe much more than in America.

The fact that anti-Semitism flourishes in Europe does not mean that it is absent from America. I can say a lot more about anti-Semitism in Europe, but my point was only to illustrate how Jews who have been very, very 178 interview with moshe idel outspoken about the human rights of other groups end up paying for it dearly, often with their own lives. This is especially evident in the history of Communism, where Jews entered in droves to Communist parties in Germany, France, Italy, and Eastern Europe. Many of these Jews lost their lives, and if you need an example, just think about Gershom Scholem’s brother who was part of the Communist party in Germany. What is the lesson we are to draw from this history? I would define it as follows: When you attempt to help all human beings, when you make a special effort to improve the human condition, you renounce too many things which are particularistic to the group. At the moment you give up your particularity, you are reminded, “Sorry, we don’t need you. You did your job, now we can manage without you.” This is happening now in Europe, in Hungary as well as in France.

Yes, the revival of anti-Semitism in Europe is very disturbing.

France, the first European nation to emancipate the Jews, welcomed Jew- ish integration into the society and enabled Jews to enter all professions and all walks of life, including government and politics; as you know, France even had Jewish prime ministers. Yet, in retrospect, the price that Jews paid for the emancipation was enormously high. The revival of anti- Semitism in France, as happened not that long ago in the attacks on three Jewish school children in Lyon, suggests that Jews are not safe and secure in France. There are various reasons why these attacks are now taking place, but we have to come to terms with the reality that attacks on Jewish life and property is happening now in greater frequency than before. The same can be said for other countries in Europe, even though contemporary European society is not a Christian society.

In your view, then, is anti-Semitism going to be one of the growing challenges for Jewish existence in the twenty-first century?

For a while, especially during the post-Holocaust decades, we thought that Europe had changed. But I do not believe so. Europe did not really change; we simply had the illusion that something deep had changed because of the Holocaust. A case in point is the celebrated author, Günter Grass, whose association with Nazism came to light after years of denial. Most Germans did not condemn Grass for his Nazi past, and interview with moshe idel 179 in fact, many Germans believe that he’s right. So Germany, which gave the world the impression it has made a deliberate effort to change, did not really change.

If anti-Semitism will persist in the twenty-first century, what does that tell us about the place of Jews in the world? What are the implications for Jewish life in the State of Israel?

I don’t know if we can generalize about the place of Jews in the world. For example, I do not know what will be the condition of Jewish life in India, but I do know that anti-Semitism thrives, for example, in Japan, where there are practically no Jews to speak of. What is remarkable about the case of Japan is that some European Jews were saved by the Japanese, even though Japan was an ally of Germans. In other words, why anti- Semitism emerges in countries that have not many Jews is a very complex subject. If you look at Jewish history as a whole you can identify patterns from antiquity, namely, two thousand years ago, which recur today. The symptoms of anti-Semitism emerge to a reveal a much deeper systemic hatred of Jews. Don’t forget, for example, the flourishing of anti-Semitism immediately after the war, especially in Poland, the location of most of the extermination camps. Poland was then under the control of the Communists, and what did they do? They started to purify the Jewish elite of the Commu- nist Party, over a thousand Jews. My recent experience in Auschwitz was most instructive. On the one hand, I didn’t learn anything new in terms of factual information, but I had an odd feeling about the way Auschwitz was preserved. In Aus- chwitz everything was done so nicely; all the descriptions were accurate; everything is properly preserved, in fact, I would say, preserved to the maximum. So, there is no reason to complain or be critical. They even made an effort to include Hebrew in the inscriptions of the exhibit. Obvi- ously, they have made the maximum effort, or the maximum that people can do to preserve the past. But perhaps the very fact that Auschwitz has been turned into a museum is the problem and the cause of my utter discomfort. Now you can see Japanese tourists coming to visit, they listen to the descriptions, as one does in a museum, and they even tell you “It’s terrible; it should have never happened.” But the real horror is that the Holocaust already happened! The preservation of Auschwitz was done in such a sterile way that it glosses over the horrors. I am not saying that 180 interview with moshe idel

I have a better proposal how to preserve the memory of Auschwitz, but I can tell you that my experience was very disturbing precisely because everything was done in such a professional, balanced way. So, the Holo- caust belongs to the past already and the extermination camp is now a big museum. Even if people come to visit and listen to the information, which, I am sure, affects them emotionally, the Holocaust for them is no more than a past event. What impacted me so deeply was the discrepancy between the way Auschwitz looks today as a clean, orderly museum, and the limits of this orderly organization, namely, the horrific darkness that generated Auschwitz. The people who turned Auschwitz into a museum were not anti-Semites; they all had good intentions; they are not deniers of the Holocaust, and they are not trying to distort history deliberately. So how can people with good intentions preserve the memory of Auschwitz? After all, it is beyond human experience. Human beings have a predilection to forget negative experiences, the bad parts of our life. Because we forget, painful experiences fade away even though we recognize that they were bad.

So, how are we to live with the memory of the Holocaust today? How should the memory of the experience shape Jewish existence today? If, as you say, the perpetuation of anti-Semitism is the most serious challenge for Jewish life in the twenty-first century, what should be the Jew- ish response to the challenge?

Well, I do not have a crystal ball, and I do not know what is going to happen. I am troubled by the fact that the call for the annihilation of Jews was stated publically by the [now former] President of Iran, Mahmud Ahmadinijad. He called for it in a lecture delivered at Columbia Univer- sity, of all places. The anti-Semitic pronouncements of Ahmadinijad have been made respectable because he receives support from Putin in Russia and from the leaders of China. How and why has anti-Semitic discourse become respectable? The liberal value of freedom of speech has something to do with it as well as economical interests, but whatever the reason, the situation is the same and it is worrisome, because it is not going to change for the better. Hatred is a very important tool to manipulate people; the use of hatred allows people to rule by dividing the popula- tion. Hatred is thriving not only in Iran but in other countries as well, all of which are civilized places. So anti-Semitism poses a serious challenge to the existence of Jews in the twenty-first century. interview with moshe idel 181

Does the existence of the State of Israel relieve some of these fundamental, existential challenges?

The State of Israel both relieved some of the existential challenges but also created new ones. It’s not a simple story. It was naively believed that the creation of a Jewish state would solve the problems of Jewish existence, but in truth the state solved some problems while aggravating others. The existence of the State of Israel did not solve the problem of anti-Semitism. Take, for example, the case of France where anti-Semitism thrives now. Many French Jews have migrated to Israel, and there are neighborhoods in Jerusalem not far from where we are where many people speak French. French Jews today feel that they have a place to escape to should the situation become intolerable. In this regard, the State of Israel offers a solution to Jews, who conceivably could choose other alternatives. For those who come here, the State of Israel offers a solution and it is a good solution. But it’s another story in regard to American Jewry, for example. Many American Jews may buy apartments in Israel, but they do not come to live in Israel or even to spend extended periods of time here. It is hard to predict what will happen in the next few decades and how the State of Israel will fare in the turbulent Middle East, but I do have a sense of history. In 1939 European Jews didn’t have any place to go to flee Nazi persecution because no one wanted to accept them, including the United States, England, and many other free countries who could have done much more to save Europe’s Jews. A small number of Jews did find their way to Japan, China, Australia, and countries in Latin America, but Jewish history could have been very different today if the free world had acted differently. At least now the State of Israel has solved that problem: Jews have a home where they are always welcome. They can come here and settle here without asking favors. What will be the quality of life in Israel in the future remains to be seen, but at least Jews no longer have to depend on other nations for their physical existence. I would go even further and say that the very existence of the State of Israel has made it possible for many Jews to remain Jewish. The State offered a sense of belonging, a goal to support through funding or political aid. The State of Israel created a focus for Jews all over the world, especially in the United States. If Israel did not exist, Jews would have given their philanthropy to museums, hospitals, and various other chari- table organizations. Ironically, giving to the State of Israel has enabled American Jews to feel good about themselves as Americans. So the State of Israel gives meaning in their life for American Jews. 182 interview with moshe idel

All this is true, but does it have anything to do with Jewish philosophy? Does philosophical thinking play any role in the self-perception or existential decision of Diaspora Jews today?

I don’t really know. Perhaps you should pose this question to George Steiner, a Jewish philosopher who lives the truly cosmopolitan life and whose philosophy is inherently cosmopolitan. Steiner’s overt philosophical stance is not to go to Israel, and instead to go to Switzerland and to England. As far as he is concerned, there are better Jewish liaisons than to come to Israel. The fact that he would like to be invited to come to Israel is another story. Unlike Steiner, I am not a cosmopolitan, and I have no illusions about the place of Jews in the world. Steiner is alive today because his father had intuition to leave at the right moment. Otherwise, Steiner and the rest of the family would not survive the Nazi regime. So my philosophy is the philosophy of an Israeli. Well, I’m Israeli and I do not share the views of George Steiner, even though I recognize his greatness. Steiner is a very clever person and he knows Europe and European culture better than the Europeans. In Europe, Steiner is not a refugee, but in my conversations with him I felt his need to escape all the time, which became a little bit, how to put it, a certain form of ideal life.

Do you mean his tendency to live the peripatetic life?

Yes, the peripatetic life is based on insecurity, deep insecurity that leads one to be constantly on the move from one place to another. I too travel a lot but the only place where I feel well, or feel at home, is here, in Israel. By the way, it is a myth that travel adds much to life. A life of constant travel is a superficial existence, after all. And that, I contend, is the nature of cosmopolitan life. You can be truly cosmopolitan culturally speaking without travel. Professor Shlomo Pines was a typical example; he was more cosmopolitan than anyone else, in terms of knowledge of the world, and knowledge of languages and cultures, but without leaving too much his apartment in Jerusalem. So, to live “up in the air,” so to speak, and to use two passports is but a parody of cosmopolitanism.

The cosmopolitan life requires knowledge of languages. I would like us to return to the connection between language and identity. In the beginning of the interview you described the difficult time you had interview with moshe idel 183 when you settled in Israel and found yourself devoid of language. With- out a language you feel yourself to be utterly inadequate. How did that experience shape your understanding of language? You wrote your dissertation on Abraham Abulafia, whose mystical system was first and foremost mysticism of language. How do you understand yourself in terms of philosophy of Hebrew language and the postmodern obsession with language? In short, what is your philosophy of language and how does it relate to your own biography and intellectual development?

Philosophically speaking, I do endorse the so-called “linguistic turn” charac teristic of postmodernism. Postmodernism enabled us to understand that degree to which language construes existence: We try to understand the world, and we speak about the world and analyze our own speech, and we do so with linguistic instruments. There is certain circularity here: We are using our instruments to see but we see with what our instruments are. As a result, we don’t really understand the world. So that’s why texts are so important for me. Meaning, I think, for sure, there is something there, but that something is itself linguistic. What I have is the language of the text and the language in the text. So, language is not just a way of expression, but a way of shaping reality.

The linguistic nature of reality is pretty much taken for granted by leading postmodernist thinkers.

Now, for the kabbalists, it was obvious that the language shaped reality. In fact, it is more accurate to say that for the kabbalists, language is reality. God created the world through language, reality is language, and we use language, especially the Hebrew language, to understand reality.

For the kabbalists, then, there is nothing but language. Right?

Yes, from this point of view, the kabbalists anticipated many postmodernist themes. There is no accident that people like Jacques Derrida or Umberto Eco used the kabbalists as inspiration for their own linguistic and literary theories. This is not to say that Derrida or Eco look to Kab- balah for spiritual guidance, but rather that in Kabbalah contemporary postmodern thinkers found the same fascination with language and text, a fascination with the creative power of language where the world is 184 interview with moshe idel

created for us through language. When I say “created” I am not speaking so much about the origin of the world, but how the world functions for us. Language is not just a way to express something that you know; rather, you know only what your language can teach you. And what you don’t know is what other languages can teach you; you need to learn another language in order to see another world. It seems to me that the kabbalists had an interesting point that is relevant to us today much more than the cosmological story about the creation of world. The kabbalistic fascination with language and with texts is today shared by many, many people. Leading Western philosophers today, including Harold Bloom, Umberto Eco, Jacques Derrida (and perhaps also Emannuel Levinas) all appreciate the deep insights of the kabbalists. I consider these thinkers the most important intellectuals today. It is true that they are mainly literary critics who theorize about the nature of text and language. There’s no one else in my view.

Even if you are factually correct, there are many philosophers today, especially analytic philosophers, who consider the popularity of these thinkers to be a problem.

Maybe, but so what? A quick and somewhat reliable way to establish the centrality of these thinkers is to turn to Google and type their names. The sheer quantity of references indicates that many believe that these four are the most powerful and influential thinkers in the last twenty-five to thirty years. This, to me, indicates that something has changed in West- ern intellectual life. For sure, this change is not endorsed or accepted by professional academic philosophers who don’t like it. That is their pre- rogative. But the critique does not entail that the impact of Derrida, Eco, Bloom, and Levinas is not huge. So, I don’t say that this situation is going to remain forever. Who knows what is going to happen in the next few decades? Perhaps there will be a shift away from the linguistic turn. But for now, it is quite obvious that these four thinkers dominate the intellectual scene in the West. And I find that fascinating. I remember the first time that Professor Geoffrey Hartman from Yale University came to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to discuss Romantic literature. As you know, he was one of the first literary critics to introduce postmodernism and especially Deconstruction to American academe as well as one of the theorists who understood the relevance of interview with moshe idel 185

Kabbalah for contemporary literary theory. Hartman, of course, is Jewish, and his family had rabbinic lineage. He found kabbalistic texts fascinating, but his interest in these texts was not rabbinic; he did not pose to the text the questions of the Rabbis. Rather, he asked the question of a critical theorist who wanted to understand the mechanism of language. That seems to me to be a change characteristic of the contemporary cultural moment. Today, the work of philosophy is done by many theorists who are not philosophers in the classical sense. It doesn’t matter that Derrida wanted to be a philosopher. That’s what he wanted to be.

Should Derrida be considered a Jewish philosopher? Not just a philosopher or a theorist who happens to be a born Jew?

The answer to the question depends on when, since Derrida changed his self-understanding over time.

Do you mean, sometimes he saw himself as a Jewish philosopher, and sometimes he didn’t?

I knew Derrida personally and I was interested in the story of his life as well as in his writings. We had some conversations and I asked him very open questions which he answered, but he never answered them openly. For example, he was an Algerian Jew up to the time of his bar mitzvah. Derrida was born a Jew and he thought about his part in the Jewish community in a deep sense. His father was a traditional Jew, and Derrida himself told me that he was filled with the Jewish tradition while growing up. Derrida’s own brother is an adherent of Habad, and Derrida’s son, who is not an observant Jew, is studying Hebrew. That’s what Derrida told me, but I never met the son. So, if you ask Derrida are you Jewish or not, he would hesitate. And his answer will be formally, “I am an Arab Jew.” We actually had this discussion, so I know a little bit about his self-understanding. In fact, he defined himself as an Arab Jew in public lectures as well and not only in our private conversations. Derrida would never deny that he was Jewish. In his last seven or eight years of life, Derrida started defining himself in such a way. Both French and Arab Jew, but he did not do so in the early years of his career. He didn’t want to be too much of an “Arab Jew” because he would not be treated so nicely in France. To a very great extent, Derrida protested against French culture, especially against its rhetoric, with all its pomposity. It doesn’t matter that 186 interview with moshe idel

Derrida did it better than all the French, but that’s another story. But deeply, he was against French culture and that is why people detested him in France. In the early years of his career, to say that you spoke with Der- rida was not well received in certain quarters, including Jewish society. In fact it happened to me personally, after I first met Derrida and mentioned it to a person from an Algerian Jewish family of high standing. In that household it was unacceptable to mention Derrida; I was told that to say you met with Derrida was like saying that you just visited a prostitute. Der- rida was clearly persona non gratis rather than a big intellectual celebrity.

Well, that is quite a remarkable story. I was not aware that there was such deep hostility toward him in some Jewish quarters.

Note that Derrida also suffered because he was an Algerian Jew. The French academic establishment did not accept Derrida, and he was not a member of the Academie, even though he was the most influential figure of maybe the second part of the twentieth century. Is Derrida a Jewish philosopher? I think the question needs to be rephrased and asked more mildly. Derrida wouldn’t deny he’s Jewish, but you know, he attempted to escape the ghetto, only to be ghettoized by the French establishment. Derrida was quite sensitive about his Jewishness. Here is an anecdote that documents the point. I once gave a lecture to a Jewish audience in honor of Derrida’s seventieth birthday in Paris. My lecture was about Der- rida and the Kabbalah. Before the lecture I told Derrida: “Jacques, I am not going to say that you are a kabbalist, even though I know about Kab- balah and you.” I knew that the minute he understands what I am saying about him, he will deny it anyway. It doesn’t help to try to label Derrida; he resists labels. Derrida is just one example of Jewish intellectuals in France who occupy high places in society, and yet they feel alien in that society or alienated from the society. I will not mention other names, because that’s sensitive. But I know many stories about people in the highest cultural positions who feel alien. Derrida, at least, felt that he could speak up, he could afford to say something critical of French society and of Western culture. Other people do not have the same courage. interview with moshe idel 187

The contemporary sense of alienation which you suggest is characteristic of many cultured Jews in France today is reminiscent of your own sense of alienation growing up in Communist Romania in the 1950s.

Yes, that is true.

As you explained earlier, you grew up with a strong sense of alienation and even an awareness of desolation, about which you speak at some length in your most recent book. Could you elaborate on that point? Is alienation relevant to the ability to philosophize? Does philosophy, which requires a critical stance toward the world, emerge out of that existential alienation?

The answer to the question depends on how you define philosophy. For me, philosophy is basically a critical endeavor. The task of the philosopher is criticism and I consider it a huge contribution of the Greeks to Western culture. The need to criticize all the time is what philosophy is all about, not the construction of a worldview. The Jews became philosophical because they were persecuted, not because they shared the Greek philosophical outlook. The Greeks engaged in philosophy without being a minority. They were not persecuted. Philos- ophy was the authentic achievement of the ancient Greeks and it meant the ability to criticize your society. Socrates is an example of the cost that one pays for being a critic of society; he was after all condemned to death because of his philosophical critique.

One particular critique today is feminist critique, which has touched all aspects of culture (especially academic culture) and which has increasingly played a role in reshaping contemporary Jewish culture. You have written quite extensively about gender in Kabbalah, but you have not really engaged feminist theory or feminist criticism in depth.

Yes, I admit that I engaged feminist criticism only a little bit.

How do you assess the importance of feminist critique today? Is it important, marginal, or negligible? Should Jewish philosophers pay more attention to it, or less? What is your perspective on feminism in general and feminist theory in particular? 188 interview with moshe idel

I read a lot and I also quote the work of the scholars I read. My books refer to and quote a long list of feminist figures. As I see it, we must learn from everyone, and feminist theorists are just one group of critics with whose work one should be familiar. There’s no reason to assume that gender studies are less important than psychological studies or trauma studies or whatever other kind of studies. Having said that, my stance toward gender studies is similar to my view of psychoanalysis; I just see it as a certain form of ideology. And I developed a strong opposition or resistance to ideology during my adolescent years in Communist Romania. When you live under a Communist regime you start to repeat the ruling ideology too much and too often as a story that is somehow your story. I read the works of feminist theorists such as Judith Butler or feminist historians such as Carolyn Bynum. I don’t attempt to dismiss feminism, as much as I do not dismiss psychoanalysis. Both of these approaches raised new questions and launched new inquiries, but both approaches were based on certain assumptions, which are themselves open to questioning. We can learn from the new questions but we do not have to subscribe to the general theory of either feminism or psychoanalysis. I have been reading a lot of psychoanalysis, especially Carl G. Jung, and I engage it in my own scholarship on Kabbalah, but that doesn’t mean that I subscribe to psychoanalytical theories, or specifically to Jungian psychoanalysis. I already referred to Jung in my dissertation on Abulafia, long before any other scholar of Kabbalah did it. In the 1970s no other scholar in Jeru- salem used psychoanalysis to shed light on Kabbalah, whereas I had no problem looking at Kabbalah with psychoanalysis in mind. But I do not employ psychoanalysis systematically in my interpretation of kabbalistic texts because to do so is to engage in ideology. I exercise the same caution in regard to literary criticism and theories of Derrida, Bloom, or Eco—people with whom I have very good relations. In my book Absorbing Perfections I quoted them and engage their theories, but I do so on my terms; I take whatever is convenient for me and whatever is useful for my interpretation of kabbalistic texts. I am not beholden or committed to their theories, as Communists, feminists, or psychoanalysts are committed to their ideologies. Ideology has a propensity to perpetuate, but I am not ideologically motivated. In order to understand the texts at my disposal, I feel free to use whatever methodology available to me. We can argue about my use of the various methodologies, and that is just fine with me. interview with moshe idel 189

So, for you, feminism, psychoanalysis, or Deconstruction are no more than a means to an end, that is, a means to understanding the texts.

Sure. The meaning of the text is not written by a psychoanalyst, as much as it is not written by a woman, or even by a man. A male author can write from a feminist point of view, and a male historian can show how important women were. Take for example, the research of the medieva list scholar Abraham Grossman, who explored in great depth the power of women in medieval, traditional Jewish society in Europe. Grossman did not write as a feminist, even though he brought to light the economic and social role of women in medieval Jewish society. He showed how women were very powerful, because they made the money. As I see it, it is possible for women to be powerful or indispensable in one domain of life, for example, the domestic sphere, and at the same time to be socially marginalized.

Yes, you can, but it’s less plausible.

It is also possible to be a man and be socially marginalized. Grossman’s historical research describes a society in which women were de facto powerful. Their objective social standing has nothing with the worldview of Kabbalah. In Ashkenazi society for a long period of time, women made the money and dominated the economic sphere as much as they also dominated the domestic sphere, because they were the mothers. Given this reality, it is misleading to claim that women were marginalized in traditional Jewish society, as feminists have claimed. The balance of power between men and women was in favor of women since they were the major source of income as well as the educator of the children.

If so, is there a connection between the social power of women and the kabbalistic doctrine of the Shekhinah?

I do not think we can show a one-to-one correspondence between the social reality of women and the kabbalistic doctrine of Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of God. That’s too simplistic. But, on the other hand, you cannot deny that women played an important and very powerful role in traditional Jewish society. There is some correlation between these two facts, even though we cannot derive the kabbalistic doctrine from the 190 interview with moshe idel social conditions of women, nor can we reduce kabbalistic ideas to specific social arrangements. We can only say that there is a certain consonance between them.

In the kabbalistic doctrine, the Shekhinah, the female aspect of God, is the object of divine worship by male kabbalists. If the male kabbalist was in love with the Shekhinah, how did that impact his relationship with his earthly wife? To some extent, the divine female functioned either as an alternative to or even a competitor to the earthly wife. So, in societies where Kabbalah flourished, real women could not possibly be the winners.

You are right, but keep in mind that according to kabbalistic theory if a man is not married to a woman, he is unable to gain access to the Shek- hinah. In this regard, the earthly woman is a necessary condition for kabbalistic religious life and Her reflection here below. The kabbalists were not ascetics, they were married men and they engaged in sexual activity within the strictures of Jewish law. The kabbalists not only had to be married, they also had to have children. So the family was the proper context for all of traditional Jewish life, including the kabbalists. Within the context of the family, the male kabbalists had responsibilities as specified by Jewish law. The man is obligated to satisfy his wife’s sexual needs, and sexual intercourse takes place regularly barring the days during which the woman is ritually impure. Compare that to the norms of Christian society and you will see important differences. The relationship between the sexes within the traditional Jewish family was much more complex than the simplistic image of marginalization and disempowerment offered by feminist critics.

Are you saying that the claims of Jewish feminism are not justified or unsubstantiated?

Look, the Jewish feminists in my opinion don’t read the texts. If and when they read kabbalistic texts, they’ll find hundreds of texts about the equality between the sexes. In the writings of Jewish feminists you find no references to these texts; none of these texts, not one is quoted. I am not talking about sporadic or obscure references to equality. There are hundreds of quotations which use the word shaveh, meaning “equal.” interview with moshe idel 191

Do the kabbalistic texts speak about equality between the male and female principle within the sefirotic system, or do they speak about equality between men and women in the earthly social system? There is a big difference between the divine and the earthly worlds, after all.

The equality between the male and female pertains to the divine world, of course. We are talking about kabbalists for whom the sefirot is true reality, which is only mirrored in the social, human sphere.

I would say that equality is easier to attain within a divine system, namely, an ideal reality, than the messy social realm of human relations.

You are right. I admit that equality within the sefirotic system does not necessarily translate to having equality in human relations in this world. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that kabbalists theorized about equality between male and female principles within the divine world. The causal relationship between kabbalistic doctrines and social reality is rather complex to ascertain. I propose to divorce the story from social reality and to discuss kabbalistic theories of the divine world on their own terms, and there I see that the kabbalists endorsed the principle of equality.

So you’re saying that Jewish feminists today have to understand the complexity of the situation on theoretical and social terms and realize that their critique is somewhat unjust.

Reality is always more complex than ideology, not only in this case of feminism. I am saying that in Kabbalah we find a complexity which is rather unique. Why Jews, presumably out of the blue, started to worship the feminine aspect of God, a mode of worship that has entered the modern period through Hasidism, is a very good question. We need to be very cautious when we examine kabbalistic texts with modern theoretical assumptions of either the social sciences or theology. We cannot pretend that the premodern texts are speaking about what matters to us in the twenty-first century. That is simply implausible. By the same token, I do not believe that the insights of Freudian psychoanalysis, which were wonderful for Vienna and for New York, a little bit, are at all valid with Nairobi. 192 interview with moshe idel

To use this analogy, the kabbalists were more in Nairobi rather than in Vienna. Even though most kabbalists lived in Europe, their world was in fact far away from the Europe in which they lived; their inner world belonged to another continent. I am not saying that we should not pose to kabbalistic texts the questions articulated by Freud, but we should also not assume that the kabbalists necessarily share the complexes that Freud has identified in Vienna. To go back to the issue of feminism, I do not deny that men in traditional Jewish society were chauvinists; of course they were. But we must deal with specifics and not with generalizations, especially because we are dealing with very complex texts.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century should we be optimistic about the future of Jewish intellectual life, or Jewish philosophical thinking? How do you assess the future of Jewish creativity? Given Jew- ish culture today, shall we be optimists, pessimists, or skeptics?

I’m very optimistic, and I see no reason to be pessimistic. There are so many areas of Jewish creativity today, be it in the sciences, in music, in literature, or in film, among some of the most creative domains of contemporary culture. I don’t believe that Jewish creativity will disappear, but I am concerned about the fact that we don’t have big cultural challenges. I consider that to be the problem. The Jews are not so extraordinarily creative, and they need to respond to challenges.

But we have many challenges, ranging from the Israeli-Arab conflict to the ecological crisis.

No. I am not saying that Israelis do not have serious challenges; indeed they have too many of them, and I would prefer to have less. What I’m saying is that today they are no serious cultural challenges. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Communist Russia offered a serious cultural challenge, but with the fall of Communism, that is no longer the case. Russia does not offer a serious challenge to which intellectuals such as Solzhenitsyn have responded. Today we do not have intellectuals of his stature because Communism does not pose a serious challenge and there is no other alternative challenge. interview with moshe idel 193

Well, what about China? Would it emerge in the twenty-first century to be a serious political as well as cultural challenge?

China might eventually be, but I do not see it now; China today does not offer a visible cultural challenge.

Are you saying that we now live in a kind of cultural vacuum?

No, I am only saying that today we face a certain form of inertia. Intel- lectuals are still publishing books but, in truth, without insulting anyone, contemporary culture is governed by inertia. There are no intellectual giants today, someone like Freud, who could offer a totally new paradigm for interpreting the human condition. With all my critique of Freud, I prefer to have one Freud more than one less. For me, the very existence of Freud is a kind of cultural miracle, since he was so powerful, so creative, and so disruptive. Now, this is not because I accept Freud (even he if he were still alive, he would not have accepted many of the things that were attributed to him), but because I would prefer to have one more intellectual like him. As I look at the intellectual scene today, I do not see that we have giants of his stature. I do not see much creativity or innovation among intellectuals who are in their sixties or fifties today. Most of what is being said today is derived from or based on what intellectuals such as Bloom, Derrida, and Eco have already said a few decades ago. So, I do not see big, younger luminaries today, but perhaps because I am provincial and parochial and do not know what happens in the world at large.

Could it be that the cause of the lack of true intellectual creativity actually lies in the very structure of the universities, the stronghold of intellectual life? Could it be that the universities which frame scholarly activities have lost their creativity?

I don’t think that creativity depends on the institutional framework. The real problem is not that people are less creative today or more stupid, but that creativity has been channeled in different directions, such as the exact sciences; hence creativity is found in the sciences and they will determine the meaning and orientation of our culture in the twenty-first century. 194 interview with moshe idel

Yes, I tend to agree with you.

My contention is not that the generations are declining, but rather that the focus of our culture has changed. Today the focus is money and prestige. Young creative people are unconsciously attracted to those fields that bring money and prestige.

Do you mean that young creative minds are drawn into the sciences and technology?

Young minds are attracted to the sciences because there maybe is a place for greater creativity; I don’t know, but I imagine that is the case. If you take the case of Israel, there is a lot of creativity by very gifted people, but it is directed to security matters. Hence, you see a lot of creativity in computer science or high tech.

Are you troubled by the decline of the humanities?

Oh, sure I’m troubled, but that is another question that goes beyond assessing the current cultural moment. The decline of humanities is obvious; we have more and more and more programs in the humanities, and less things to say. This is very similar to cellular phones: People use them to talk more and more and more, and say less and less. So, it’s not the decline of humanities per se that needs to concern us. There is something much deeper here.

What about the humanities within the structure of the university?

The university structure is a reflection of society. Society has changed, and it now puts resources in another place and the prestige in another place. Young scholars are sensing what is going to happen and they are going instinctively to those fields that can guarantee financial success and prestige. I do not see a decline of human creativity or in human intel- ligence. I believe there are many areas in which we see real improve- ment. The humanities, in a way, lost the creative edge, at least for now, because society values other endeavors. It need not be forever. Perhaps there will come a moment when people will retire much earlier and then they will feel a certain vacuum that will inspire them to turn back to the interview with moshe idel 195

humanities, to literature, to philosophy, and to art. If humanity reaches the point of filling a vacuum, people will either commit suicide or start to learn something. So, maybe they will start to pursue these topics not at the age of eighteen, but the age of fifty-eight.

Well, that is an interesting thought that allows us all to remain optimistic about the future.

It is also possible that cultural creativity will be less scholarly but more entertaining. In general I do not believe in linear progression, so I do not accept the notion of linear decline. Rather, cultural development moves in cycles and it is possible that we will see it operating here as well. In the future people will say, “Look, it’s very nice and I have worked all my life, but I see no meaning in my life, because science took away the meaning.” When they begin to search for meaning, they will return to the pursuit of the humanities, after devoting their life to whatever career. We see this trend already beginning as people return to the university in their sixties after having a career and working all their life. This is not bad at all. These adult students, in fact, are more intellectually and emotionally mature than young students.

Yes, I agree with you that these so-called returning students are much better, and I can see the reason to be optimistic.

As you know me, I’m always optimistic. But, you know, I tend to be also realistic. To be naïvely optimistic is very cheap.

Well, on this happy note, we can end the interview, and I want to thank you for taking so much time from your very busy schedule to share your thoughts about such a wide range of issues.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

1. Kabbalah: New Perspectives. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988. Translated in Hebrew, French, Czech, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, and Romanian. 2. The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia. Translated from the Hebrew by Jonathan Chipman. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988. Translated into French, Italian, and German. 3. Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988. 4. Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia. Translated from the Hebrew by Menahem Kallus. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. 5. Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthro- poid. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990. Translated in Hebrew, German, Romanian, French, Italian, and Spanish. 6. Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Translated into Hebrew and Romanian. 7. Messianic Mystics. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. Translated into French and Italian. 8. Abraham Abulafia, An Ecstatic Kabbalist, Two Studies. Edited by Moshe Lazar. Lancaster, CA: Labyrinthos, 2002. 9. Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Translated in Hebrew and Romanian. 10. Les Kabbalistes de la nuit. Translated by Olivier Sedeyn. Paris: Allia, 2003. Translated in Hebrew, Portuguese, and Romanian. 11. Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders. Buda- pest: CEU, 2005. Translated in Italian and Romanian. 12. Enchanted Chains: Techniques and Rituals in Jewish Mysticism. Los Angeles: The Cherub Press, 2005. Translated in French and Romanian. 13. Kabbalah and Eros. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Trans- lated in Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, and German. 14. Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism. London and New York: Contin- uum, 2007. Translated in Spanish, Italian, and Romanian. 198 select bibliography

15. Old Worlds, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Trans- lated in German and Romanian. 16. Kabbalah in Italy 1280–1510. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Translated in Italian. 17. Saturn’s Jews: On the Witches’ Sabbat and Sabbateanism. London and New York: Continuum, 2011. Translated in Italian and Romanian.

Edited Books

18. (With Bernard McGinn) Mystical Union and Monotheistic Faith: An Ecumenical Dialogue. New York: Macmillan, 1989; 2nd ed., New York: Continuum, 1996. Translated in French. 19. (With Mortimer Ostow) Jewish Mystical Leaders and Leadership. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1998. 20. (With Yom Tov Assis and Leonardo Senkman) Emsayos Sobre Cabala y Misticismo Judio. Buenos Aires: Lilmod, 2006. 21. (With Yom Tov Assis, Leonardo Senkman, Cyril Aslanov, and J. Guins- burg) Cabala, Cabalismo e cabalistas. San Paolo: Perspectiva, 2008.

Book Chapters

22. “The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations of Kabbalah in the Renaissance.” In Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, edited by Bernard D. Cooperman, 186–242. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 1983. Reprinted in Essential Papers on Jew- ish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, edited by David B. Rud- erman, 107–69. New York: New York University Press, 1992. 23. “We Have No Kabbalistic Tradition on This.” In Rabbi Moses Nahman- ides (Ramban): Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity, edited by Isadore Twersky, 51–73. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. 24. “Hitbodedut as Concentration in Ecstatic Kabbalah.” In Jewish Spiri- tuality, edited by Arthur Green, 405–38. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986. 25. “Infinities of Torah in Kabbalah.” In Midrash and Literature, edited by Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sandford Budick, 141–57. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. select bibliography 199

26. “The Land of Israel in Medieval Kabbalah.” In The Land of Israel, edited by Lawrence A. Hoffman, 170–87. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986. 27. “Sitre ‘Arayot in Maimonides’ Thought.” In Maimonides and Phi- losophy, edited by S. Pines and Y. Yovel, 79–91. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986. 28. “Differing Conceptions of Kabbalah in Early 17th Century.” In Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Isadore Twersky and Bernard D. Septimus, 137–200. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. 29. “Mysticism” and “Music.” In Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought, edited by Arthur A. Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr, 635–56. New York: Scribner, 1987. 30. “Franz Rosenzweig and the Kabbalah.” In The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr, 162–71. Hanover, NH: Uni- versity Press of New England for Brandeis University Press, 1988. 31. “The Golem in Jewish Magic and Mysticism.” In Golem! Danger, Deliverance and Art, edited by Emily Bilski, 15–35. New York: Jewish Museum, 1988. 32. “Hermeticism and Judaism.” In Hermeticism and the Renaissance, edited by Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus, 59–76. Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1988. 33. “Kabbalistic Prayer and Colors.” In Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times, edited by David R. Blumenthal, vol. 3, 17–27. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988. 34. “Some Conceptions of the Land of Israel in Medieval Jewish Though.” In A Straight Path: Studies in Medieval Philosophy and Culture: Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman, edited by Ruth Link-Salinger and Jeremiah Hackett, 140–214. Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press, 1988. 35. “Jewish Magic from the Renaissance Period to Early Hasidism.” In Reli- gion, Science, and Magic, edited by Jacob Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Paul Virgil McCracken Flesher, 82–117. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. 36. “Kabbalah, Platonism, and Prisca Theologia: The Case of Menashe ben Israel.” In Menasseh ben Israel and his World, edited by Yosef Kaplan, Henry Méchoulan, and Richard H. Popkin, 207–19. Leiden: Brill, 1989. 37. “Universalization and Integration: Two Conceptions of Mystical Union in Jewish Mysticism.” In Mystical Union and Monotheistic Faith: An Ecumenical Dialogue, edited by Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn, 27–58, 157–61, 195–203. New York: Macmillan, 1989. 200 select bibliography

38. “Maimonides and Kabbalah.” In Studies in Maimonides, edited by Isa- dore Twersky, 31–81. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. 39. “Jewish Thought in Medieval Spain.” In The Sephardi Legacy, edited by Haim Beinart and Moreshet Sepharad, vol. 1, 261–81. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992. 40. “Judah Muscato: A Late Renaissance Jewish Preacher.” In Preachers of the Italian Ghetto, edited by David B. Ruderman, 41–66. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. 41. “Particularism and Universalism in Kabbalah, 1480–1650.” In Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, edited by David B. Ruderman, 324–44. New York: New York University Press, 1992. 42. “Reification of Language in Jewish Mysticism.” In Mysticism and Lan- guage, edited by Steven Katz, 42–79. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 43. “Religion, Thought, and Attitudes: The Impact of the Expulsion on the Jews.” In Spain and the Jews: The Sephardi Experience: 1492 and After, edited by Elie Kedourie, 123–39. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992. 44. “Spanish Kabbalah after the Expulsion.” In Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy, edited by Haim Beinart, vol. 2, 166–78. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992. 45. “The Contribution of Abraham Abulafia’s Kabbalah to the Under- standing of Jewish Mysticism.” In Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism: 50 Years After, edited by Peter Schaefer and Joseph Dan, 117–43. Tuebingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1993. 46. “Defining Kabbalah: The Kabbalah of the Divine Names.” In Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics and Typology, edited by Robert A. Herrera, 97–122. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. 47. “Jewish Kabbalah and Platonism in the Middle Ages and Renais- sance.” In Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, edited by Lenn E. Good- man, 319–51. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. 48. “Magic and Kabbalah in the Book of the Responding Entity.” In The Solomon Goldman Lectures, edited by Mayer I. Gruber, vol. 6, 125–38. Chicago: Spertus College of Judaica, 1993. 49. “PaRDeS: Some Reflections on Kabbalistic Hermeneutics.” In Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys, edited by John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane, 249–64. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. 50. “Secrecy, Binah and Derishah.” In Secrecy and Concealment, edited by Hans Kippenberg and Guy Stroumsa, 311–43. Leiden: Brill, 1995. select bibliography 201

51. “Conceptualizations of Music in Jewish Mysticism.” In Enchanting Powers: Music in the World’s Religions, edited by Lawrence Sullivan, 159–88. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. 52. “Encounters Between Spanish and Italian Kabbalists in the Genera- tion of the Expulsion.” In Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, edited by Benjamin R. Gampel, 189–222. New York: Columbia Univer- sity Press, 1997. 53. “On Judaism, Jewish Mysticism, and Magic.” In Envisioning Magic, edited by Peter Schaefer and Hans G. Kippenberg, 195–214. Leiden: Brill, 1997. 54. “ ‘Unio Mystica’ as a Criterion: ‘Hegelian’ Phenomenologies of Jew- ish Mysticism.” In Doors of Understanding: Conversations in Global Spirituality in Honor of Ewert Cousins, edited by Steven Chase, 305–33. Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1997. 55. “Abulafia’s Secrets of the Guide: A Linguistic Turn.” In Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism, edited by Alfred Ivri, Elliot R. Wolfson, and Alan Arkush, 289–329. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publish- ers, 1998. 56. “Jewish Mystical Thought in the Florence of Lorenzo il Magnifico.” In La cultura ebraica all’epoca di Lorenzo il Magnifico, edited by Dora Liscia Bemporad and Ida Zatelli, 17–42. Florence: Leo Olschki, 1998. 57. “Nahmanides: Kabbalah, Halakhah, and Spiritual Leadership.” In Jew- ish Mystical Leaders and Leadership, edited by Moshe Idel and Mor- timer Ostow, 15–96. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1998. 58. “Some Concepts of Time and History in Kabbalah.” In Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, edited by Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron, and David N. Myers, 153–88. Hanover, NH, and London: Brandeis University Press, 1998. 59. “Subversive Catalysts: Gnosticism and Messianism in Gershom Scholem’s View of Jewish Mysticism.” In The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians, edited by David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman, 39–76. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. 60. “Astral Dreams in Judaism: Twelfth to Fourteenth Centuries.” In Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming, edited by David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa, 235–50. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 61. “The Infant Experiment: The Search for the First Language.” In The Language of Adam: Die Sprache Adams, edited by Allison Coudert, 57–79. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1999. 202 select bibliography

62. “Allegory and Divine Names in Ecstatic Kabbalah.” In Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the Modern World, edited by Jon Whitman, 317–47. Leiden: Brill, 2000. 63. “Deus Sive Natura: The Metamorphosis of a Dictum from Maimonides to Spinoza.” In Maimonides and the Sciences, edited by Robert S. Cohen and Hillel Levine, 87–110. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pub- lishers, 2000. 64. “Panim—On Facial Re-Presentations in Jewish Thought: Some Cor- relational Instances.” In On Interpretation in the Arts, edited by Nurit Yaari, 21–56. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2000. 65. “ ‘The Time of the End’: Apocalypticism and Its Spiritualization in Abraham Abulafia’s Eschatology.” In Apocalyptic Time, edited by Albert Baumgarten, 155–86. Leiden: Brill, 2000. 66. “Transmission in the Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah.” In Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Diffusion, edited by Yaakov Elman and Israel Gershoni, 138–64. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000. 67. “The Zohar as Exegesis.” In Mysticism and Sacred Scripture, edited by Steven T. Katz, 87–100. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 68. “Eric Voegelin’s Israel and Revelation: Some Observations.” In Poli- tics, Order, and History: Essays on the Work of Eric Voegelin, edited by Glenn Hughes, Stephen A. McKnight, and Geoffrey L. Price, 299–326. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001. 69. “Kabbalah and Hermeticism in Dame Frances A. Yates’s Renaissance.” Esoterisme, gnoses & imaginaire symbolique: Melanges offerts a Antoine Faivre, edited by Richard Caron et al., 71–90. Louvain: Peeters, 2001. 70. “The Kabbalah’s ‘Window of Opportunities,’ 1270–1290.” In Meʾah Sheʾarim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky, edited by Ezra Fleisher, Gerald Blidstein, Carmi Horowitz, and Bernard Septimus, 171–208. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 2001. 71. “Prisca Theologia in Marsilio Ficino and in Some Jewish Treatments.” In Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, edited by Michael J. B. Allen and Valery Rees, 137–58. Leiden: Brill, 2001. 72. “Torah: Between Presence and Representation of the Divine in Jewish Mysticism.” In Representation in Religion: Studies in Honor of Moshe Barasch, edited by Jan Assmann and Albert I. Baumgarten, 197–236. Leiden: Brill, 2001. 73. “From Platonic to Hasidic Eros: Transformations of an Idle Man’s Story.” In Self and Self-Transformation in the History of Religion, select bibliography 203

edited by David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa, 216–35. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 74. “Golems and God: Mimesis and Confrontation.” In Mythen der Kreati- vitaet, edited by Oliver Krueger, Refika Sarioender, and Annette Deschner, 224–68. Lembeck: Frankfurt am Main, 2003. 75. “Jewish Thinkers versus Christian Kabbalah.” In Christliche Kabbala, edited by W. Schmidt-Biggemann, 49–65. Pforzheim: Thorbecke, 2003. 76. “Hermeticism and Kabbalah.” In Hermeticism from Late Antiquity to Humanism, edited by Paolo Lucentini, Ilaria Parri, and Vittoria Per- rone Compagni, 389–408. Turnhout: Brespols, 2004. 77. “Italy in Safed, Safed in Italy: Toward an Interactive History of Sixteenth- Century Kabbalah.” In Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy, edited by David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri, 239–68. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2004. 78. “On Prophecy and Early Hasidism.” In Studies in Modern Religions, Religious Movements, and the Babi-Baha⁠ʾi Faiths, edited by Moshe Sharon, 41–75. Leiden: Brill, 2004. 79. “On the Theologization of Kabbalah in Modern Scholarship.” In Reli- gious Apologetics—Philosophical Argumentation, edited by Yossef Schwartz and Volkhard Krech, 123–73. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004. 80. “On the Language of Ecstatic Experiences in Jewish Mysticism.” In Religionen—Die Religiöse Erfahrung/Religions—The Religious Experi- ence, edited by Matthias Riedl and Tilo Schabert, 43–84. Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen and Neumann, 2008. 81. “On the Performing Body in Theosophical-Theurgical Kabbalah: Some Preliminary Remarks.” In The Jewish Body, Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period, edited by Maria Diemling and Giuseppe Veltri, 251–71. Leiden: Brill, 2009. 82. “R. Israel Ba⁠ʾal Shem Tov’s Two ‘Encounters’ with Sabbatai Tzevi.” In The Beauty of Japheth in the Tents of Shem: Studies in Honour of Mor- dechai Omer (Assaph—Studies in Art History 13–14), edited by Hana Taragan and Nissim Gal, 471–91. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2010. 83. “R. Israel Ba⁠ʾal Shem Tov in the State of Wallachia: Widening the Besht’s Cultural Panorama.” In Holy Dissent: Jewish and Christian Mystics in Eastern Europe, edited by Glenn Dynner, 69–103. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011. 84. “ ‘The Besht Passed His Hand over His Face’ ”: On the Besht’s Influ- ence on His Followers: Some Remarks.” In After Spirituality, edited by Jonathan Garb and Philip Wexler, 79–106. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. 204 select bibliography

Journal Articles

85. “Abulafia on the Jewish Messiah and Jesus.” Immanuel 11 (1980): 64–80. 86. “Music and Prophetic Kabbalah.” Yuval 4 (1980): 150–69. 87. “The Attitude to Christianity in Sefer ha-Meshiv.” Immanuel 12 (1981): 77–95. 88. “Major Currents in Italian Kabbalah between 1560–1660.” Italia Juda- ica (Roma, 1986): 243–62. 89. “The Origins of Alchemy according to Zosimos and a Hebrew Paral- lel.” Revue des etudes juives 145 (1986): 117–24. 90. “The Anthropology of Yohanan Alemanno: Sources and Influences.” Topoi 7, no. 3 (1988): 201–10. 91. “On Symbolic Self-Interpretations in Thirteenth-Century Jewish Writ- ings.” Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts 16 (1988): 90–96. 92. “Enoch Is Metatron.” Immanuel 24/25 (1990): 220–40. 93. “An Astral-Magical Pneumatic Anthropoid.” Incognita 2 (1991): 9–31. 94. “Perceptions of Kabbalah in the Second Part of the 18th Century.” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 1 (1991): 55–114. 95. “Rabbinism versus Kabbalism: On G. Scholem’s Phenomenology of Judaism.” Modern Judaism 11 (1991): 281–96. 96. “Some Remarks on Ritual and Mysticism in Geronese Kabbalah.” Jew- ish Thought and Philosophy 3 (1993): 111–30. 97. “Kabbalah and Elites in Thirteenth-Century Spain.” Mediterranean Historical Review 9 (1994): 5–19. 98. “On Talismatic Language in Jewish Mysticism.” Diogenes 43, no. 2 (1995): 23–41. 99. “Gazing at the Head in Ashkenazi Hasidism.” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 6 (1997): 265–300. 100. “Orienting, Orientalizing, or Disorienting the Study of Kabbalah: ‘An Almost Absolutely Unique’ Case of Occidentalism.” Kabbalah 2 (1997): 13–48. 101. “Non-Linguistic Infinities and Interpretations in Later Jewish Mysti- cism.” The Jerusalem Review 2 (1998): 209–31. 102. “On Mobility, Individuals, and Groups: Prolegomenon for a Socio- logical Approach to Sixteenth-Century Kabbalah.” Kabbalah 3 (1998): 145–76. select bibliography 205

103. “Radical Hermeneutics: From Ancient to Medieval, and Modern Hermeneutics.” In Atti dei convegni lincei: Ermeneutica e critica 135 (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1998): 165–204. 104. “ ‘That Wondrous, Occult Power’: Some Reflections on Modern Per- ceptions of Jewish History.” Studia Judaica 7 (1998): 57–70. 105. “Academic Studies of Kabbalah in Israel: 1923–1998: A Short Survey.” Studia Judaica 8 (1999): 91–114. 106. “Kabbalah-Research: From Monochromatism to Polychromatism.” Studia Judaica 7 (1999): 27–32. 107. “Reflections on Kabbalah in Spain and Christian Kabbalah.” Hispania Judaica Bulletin 2 (1999): 3–15. 108. “Adam and Enoch According to St. Ephrem the Syrian.” Kabbalah 6 (2001): 183–205. 109. “On Binary ‘Beginnings’ in Kabbalah-Scholarship.” Aporematha: Kri- tische Studien zur Philologiegechichte 5 (2001): 313–37. 110. “Mystique juive et pensée musulmane.” Perspectives 9 (2002): 138–57. 111. “On Prophecy and Magic in Sabbateanism.” Kabbalah 8 (2003): 7–50. 112. “Some Forms of Order in Kabbalah.” Daat: Journal of Jewish Philoso- phy and Thought 50–52 (2003): 31–43. 113. “Kabbalah, Hieroglyphicity, and Hieroglyphs.” Kabbalah 11 (2004): 11–47. 114. “Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed and the Kabbalah.” Jewish His- tory 18 (2004): 197–226. 115. “Androgyny and Equality in the Theosophico-Theurgical Kabbalah.” Diogenes 52, no. 4 (2005): 27–38. 116. “On European Cultural Renaissances and Jewish Mysticism.” Kab- balah 13 (2005): 43–64. 117. “Some Forlorn Writings of a Forgotten Prophet: R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo ha-Navi.” Jewish Quarterly Review 95, no. 1 (2005): 183–96. 118. “The Image of Man above the Sefirot: R. David ben Yehuda he-Hasid’s Theosophy of the Ten Supernal Sahsahot and its Reverberations.” Kabbalah 20 (2009): 181–212. 119. “Ascensions, Gender and Pillars in Safedian Kabbalah.” Kabbalah 25 (2011): 55–107. 120. “In a Whisper: On Transmission of Shiʿur Qomah and Kabbalistic Secrets in Jewish Mysticism.” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 47, no. 3 (2011): 443–88.