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Home , Gershom Scholem, Moshe Idel

Mystical Vistas

The Intriguing World of : An Interview

Moshe Idel, a senior fellow of the and Max Cooper Professor of at the Hebrew University of , is widely regarded as the most important scholar of Jewish since . For more than three decades, in dozens of books and countless articles, he has rewritten the of , applying a bold variety of interpretive methodologies.

42 | Spring 2009 Mystical Vistas /// An Interview with Moshe Idel

Mystical Vistas

Photo of Moshe Idel by Hezi Hojesta. Courtesy of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

In 1999, Idel was awarded the Prize, His forthcoming book is Old Worlds, New the nation’s top honor, in the field of Jew- Mirrors: On and Twenti- ish thought. He has also received honor- eth Century Thought (2009). ary doctorates from several universities, Renowned for his meticulous reading of including Yale in 2006. Among his most texts, Idel has reinterpreted Jewish mysti- important works are Kabbalah: New Per- cal sources and discovered many new ones. spectives (1988), Hasidism: Between Ec- His prodigious oeuvre has enhanced the stasy and (1995), Messianic Mystics global reach of , influencing (1998), Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah scholars of religion, and liter- and Interpretation (2002), Kabbalah and ary theory, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. Eros (2005), Enchanted Chains: Techniques In an interview with Havruta, Idel offers and Rituals in Jewish Mysticism (2005), and personal reflections on his life and his Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism (2008). evolving work.

HAVRUTA | 43 You were born in , and you mainly as a way of becoming acquainted with Q came to Israel in 1963 at the age of 16. Israeli culture. I happened also to take a class How many languages did you know then? in mysticism, but not because of any special interest in it. I wasn’t even formally registered Not too many. Romanian, Yiddish, in the class, but the professor, Ephraim Gott- A French, Russian, Latin. lieb, said to me one day, you seem to know the answers to my questions, perhaps you want to Not Hebrew? be my research assistant. For me, this was a Q huge honor. I knew how to daven in the synagogue. So, while I was starting my Ph.D. with A I studied in heder, but after two years it Pines in , to make some was closed, because the schoolteacher died, money I started working for Gottlieb, read- the melamed, but also because of . ing manuscripts. This is when I first started I had a traditional background, but I can’t say reading manuscripts. And at a certain mo- I knew Hebrew well, although my father, who ment, I came across a manuscript of Avraham was in the shoe business, made many efforts Abulafia on the Guide of the Perplexed. This to find me a tutor. I learned Hebrew in an was the accident. I was doing my Ph.D. on the ulpan for immigrants, after I got to Israel. We Rambam, and came to Abulafia through the lived in a , a market town called Târgu Rambam. I thought it might be a good idea Neamţ. All the Jews spoke Yiddish, and were for my dissertation to write about this com- more or less traditional. There were a few peo- mentary of Abulafia on . This is ple in the shtetl who knew Hebrew and stud- how it began. ied . I was not part of this group: they didn’t want to accept me, since I didn’t wear Did you study with Scholem? a yarmulke regularly. It was a pity. I was ac- Q tually interested, not because of the Talmud, but because I read a book about the Dead Sea No. When I arrived at the Hebrew Uni- Scrolls, translated from Russian to Romanian. A versity in 1970, he had already retired. It was fascinating. Only when I started to work on Abulafia did I call him. It was not out of some fascination And that book kindled your interest in with the figure of Scholem. But from the mo- Q Jewish mysticism? ment we met, we began to see each other reg- ularly, maybe 50 to 100 times between 1971 No, I wasn’t particularly interested in and 1981. Lengthy meetings. A Jewish mysticism. Not then, and not even later. I entered Jewish mysticism sim- Your friend, the Yale literary critic Har- ply by accident. After we got to Israel, we Q old Bloom, has written, with regard to lived near , in Kiryat Ata, and I did my poetry, about the “anxiety of influence.” Can undergraduate studies at Haifa University, in you connect that notion with your relation- Hebrew and English literature. I wasn’t too ship to Scholem? interested in this either, but as a new oleh I wanted to acquire a profession, to become Unlike many other people, given the a high school teacher. But then I became in- A fact that I did not study with him, the terested in Jewish philosophy, and when I figure of Scholem was not so authoritative for came to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem me. He was like an institution – beyond a hu- I studied with , the great scholar man being – but I did not have this form of of Maimonides. I read Gershom Scholem, but fascination and rebellion. When I entered the

44 | Spring 2009 Mystical Vistas /// An Interview with Moshe Idel

Illuminated page from ’s Light of the Intellect (1285). Artist unknown (PD art)

HAVRUTA | 45 field, I did not think there would be any clash came in from many places. There are differ- or difference with Scholem, because Scholem ent trends that are equally representative of simply was the truth. But if you read a lot of what we call Kabbalah, because there are dif- manuscripts you see that things aren’t so sim- ferent and different sources. In my ple. You read the same manuscripts in a differ- book, Messianic Mystics, I claim that there is ent way, or you read other manuscripts that no such thing as one messianic idea. There is emerge. You see things that can’t be seen by an apocalyptic idea, a mystical idea, a magical someone who did not read those manuscripts. idea. From this point of view, my book Ben is I don’t believe that we had any significant not an exception. I believe this is the only way divergence for the first five years. I was ta- to really understand the history and phenom- bula rasa, absorbing everything, without even enology of Kabbalah. We cannot subsume ev- dreaming that it would be possible to have a erything into one major line, one major trend. dispute. This was beyond my horizon. This way of looking at things is my basic as- The first time it happened, I don’t know sumption. when, I was reading manuscripts and I saw It is not that I am pluralistic as an intel- that not everything was working. Scholem lectual predilection, but it is a matter of the and I discussed it in a relatively open man- material coming from so many places. The ner. But it just happened, without any inten- Jews, including the kabbalists, were cosmo- tion to diverge. So I don’t see it as a form of politan. They could absorb and transform “anxiety of influence.” Certainly, without and generate a variety of material. Because Scholem I would not have become a teacher the Jewish scholars were in contact with so at the Hebrew University. I came from no- many cultures and in contact with each oth- where and no one knew about me, and Sc- er, they could transmit knowledge from one holem accepted me. He also never attempted center of learning – Ashkenazi or Sephardi to convince me that I was wrong. I published, – to another. For sure, there are differences during his lifetime, articles that held a differ- between Ashkenazi and Sephardi, but my ba- ent view from his, and he thought this was sic assumption is that that there was cross- legitimate. fertilization. I use the plural a lot. I believe the plural is very important. What would you say is the most impor- Q tant point of departure? Your recent book Ben: Sonship and Jew- Q ish Mysticism won the National Jewish I think that it would be a simplification Book Award for scholarship. Do you see it in A to try to find one point of departure. some way as a culmination of many of the things you had done before? In your work, you emphasize streams, Q confluences of materials, which origi- Yes. In my Ph.D. dissertation, I wrote nate in antiquity and skip a period and then A a section dealing with the son of God resurface, rather than a clear-cut historical in Avraham Abulafia. Since then, whenever account of the tradition. Would it be fair to I have come across something on the son of call your approach pluralistic? God, I have made a note. I never intended to write a book, but simply wanted to be up-to- This has always been my method. I have date in this field. I did not intend to write a A always claimed that is not a book on it until 2004, when I was in Paris and theological religion. We did not have a central had a discussion with an editor. He had seen authority, or one point of view, and we were a small article I had written on this subject, tolerant and less suppressive of trends that and he wanted to publish it as a small book of

46 | Spring 2009 Mystical Vistas /// An Interview with Moshe Idel

Illustration by N. Yedil from H.N. Bialik’s King Solomon and the Flying Cape (1924). The Jewish National & University Library, Shapell Family Digitization Project 50 pages. So I agreed and started to work on much more resistant to Greek culture. So in a it. I was sure that a month later I would send way, Ben was a byproduct of discovering this him these 50 pages, but it had soon grown to figure, who became very important to me in 100 pages. Each week I wrote to him in Paris, terms of the transmission of material. saying that the following week I would send it. After a couple of months it had become Certainly, that is one of the central much longer than 100 pages, and I stopped Q themes in the book – issues of intellec- writing him because it had become ridicu- tual and scholarly transmission. Metaphori- lous. Soon it became 300 pages, not a full- cally speaking, it seems to be a transmission, fledged book yet, but an idea that was more from father figures to son figures. It is inter- than a matter of 50 pages. esting that you repeatedly refer to the figure At some point while working on the book, of the Romanian-born Anglo-Jewish scholar I discovered an unknown figure by the name Moses Gaster. of Rabbi Nehemiah ben Shlomo, an Ashke- nazi mystic from the 13th century, who was Gaster was a genius. He knew dozens completely marginalized in Jewish schol- A of languages. He read manuscripts in arship. I discovered that he wrote, anony- these languages. This led him to propose a mously, a whole body of extant literature. I vision of culture, which was larger than any wrote an article identifying his authorship of other scholar I am acquainted with. He got a a series of anonymous manuscripts. The dis- Ph.D. in linguistics at the age of 21 [in 1878, covery of Rabbi Nehemiah was a clue for un- in Leipzig.] He also had a rabbinic degree. In derstanding the transmission of ancient vi- his twenties he was already a major figure in sions of sonship, but also the rediscovery of Romania, writing in a variety of languages. an important historical figure who had been He had a theory that ancient Jewish writings ignored. He represents an unknown angle came from the Middle East into Eastern Eu- of Judaism, more magical than I imagined rope, and gradually arrived in Western Eu- before, much more anthropomorphic, and rope. These writings, including midrashim,

HAVRUTA | 47 were absorbed by a variety of sects in the It is not my goal or intention to be eso- Balkans. This was provocative, because it A teric. I would prefer to be more lucid or pointed to a Judaization of the folklore of exoteric. This is a problem, I agree, with all my Europe. books. The explanation for it is simple. Earlier we discussed Scholem and Pines. Neither of You have a more Gaster-like approach these men wrote books that were much easier Q than a Scholem-like approach. Was he than mine. What I mean is, they are my part- a role model for you? ners in dialogue. The ideal reader for me is not the undergraduate student, but Scholem and This is true, but it is not because I am Pines, and now, . I am reading A looking for a father figure. The desire for manuscripts in a very professional manner, sonship should not be applied to me. Gaster and attempt to make points that are more was a late discovery for me. The first article I important for a scholar than for a lay reader. published about him was in 2007. Here again, That is my reason. I don’t purposely seek to I discovered a figure who was neglected by be esoteric. But the topics that I am dealing modern Judaic scholarship. They neglected with are very, very difficult and complicated, someone who was a real genius. He was the and if I didn’t use the terminology that I use, one who initiated the study of the Samaritans, I would have to write a book that was three or who have lived since antiquity in the land of four times bigger. Let me ask you a question. Israel. He corresponded with them in Hebrew. Would you say the same to a mathematician He had a private collection of thousands of who is writing a book on mathematics, full of manuscripts, tens of thousands of fragments technical terms? of manuscripts, in 15 languages, which are now at the University of Manchester. Is it possible to summarize, for the He was able to see a picture that no other Q readers of Havruta, what you have tried figure in Jewish studies had seen. I showed to accomplish in Ben? in 2007 that in his early twenties, Gaster al- ready had theories about the , which he The book just emerged, like a , with- had written in Romanian. These things were A out any clear intention. Looking back, I ignored in the scholarship of the Zohar for can say that I myself was surprised by the rich- 40 years. It is hard to explain why. Gaster’s ness of the category of sonship. For me, the book writings were in Scholem’s library, which demonstrates that the Jewish relationship with meant that Scholem knew about them. Christianity is more complicated and variegated than, “we don’t have a son, they have a son.” This Ben is a very difficult book. Many read- is a mistake that emerges from the polemics of Q ers don’t know words that you use free- the Middle Ages. The Jews were actually more ly, such as “theophoric” and “theophanic” and open and more creative on this issue, and con- “katabatic.” It might be said that the book, sidered themselves to be sons of God. All of us and other works of yours, embody a fascinat- know today that we are, in the language of the ing tension. On the one hand, there is a great Bible, “sons to the Lord, your God.” However, openness and pluralism, and the celebration on a theoretical level, Jews have other forms of of the loosening of authority in Jewish schol- sonship, different from Christianity, rarely in- arship, yet on the other hand, you seem to be fluenced by Christianity, and even antagonistic writing for an elite, highly professional read- to Christianity, which were not explored, be- ership. Do you think that your immersion in cause people were either afraid or did not see the esoteric manuscripts makes you a more eso- range and scope. But it describes a much more teric writer? intimate relationship to God within Judaism.

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In the book, I describe the different cat- about gender equality. In the case of Ben, the egories of the relationship to God, with intimacy with God was through masculine ap- sonship as a major clue. I don’t come to in- proaches. The daughter was not included. She validate Christianity, to say that they are was considered totally different, and inferior wrong, or that we are better. However, the to the son. fact that such a category was ignored, in such a blatant manner, by all the Jewish In today’s world, Jewish mysticism is theologians who were afraid of it, saying often mediated by pop culture. Do you “that is not us, it is them” – this is inter- Q think the vogue of popular Kabbalah is det- esting and significant. In fact, the ideas of sonship reflect a search by Jews, especially rimental, or can it have positive aspects? the mystics among them, for a special af- finity with the Divine. An important point I don’t see negative aspects here. For a of my book is that the Jewish approach to A simple reader, those consuming popular sonship does not gravitate around one ap- Kabbalah, what we have is a form of leisure, proach; there are alternatives. as well as a search for identity. If this wasn’t available, they would find something else. Do you think that and inde- People need something to do in their spare Q pendent statehood have enabled Jew- time to give them relaxation, and this popular ish thinkers and religious thinkers to be Kabbalah emerged. Yes, there are exaggera- more relaxed about Christianity, and there- tions and exploitations. This is negative, and fore such ideas as sonship? found in any cult. But in itself, the phenom- enon is neither positive nor negative. We should differentiate between Zionism A and the State of Israel. Gaster was vice- president of the Zionist movement, but he died Your forthcoming book, Old Worlds, in 1939, before the state was established. He Q New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and did not have any complexes relating to Chris- Twentieth-Century Thought, deals with such tianity. He was ready to say in Romania and diverse Jewish thinkers as , Wal- London what he believed about Judaism. Even ter Benjamin and , as well as if he suffered – he was expelled from Romania, and Gershom Sc- and could not find an academic job in England holem. Do you believe that Jewish mysticism – he was not apologetic. For sure, the existence has re-emerged as a central element of Jew- of the state is contributing something, but ish thought, secular as well as religious? even before the state was created, people like Scholem also wrote in an unapologetic way. Definitely yes, though only in a frag- For the younger generation, of course, the mented, and sometimes veiled, man- burden of the tension with another religion A ner. The vast kabbalistic and Hasidic litera- is much smaller. ture inspired 20th-century thinkers who are normally identified with non-mystical Ju- Ben is a very masculine book. Is the Q woman, the daughter, included in the daism or even atheistic Judaism. Elements masculine, the son? Or is this particularly of mystical literature found their way to about the male form of sonship? these thinkers, especially via the writings I hope to write a book on the emergence of , Scholem and Heschel, and A of femininity in Jewish thought. I have fertilized Jewish and sometimes even non- plenty of material, including discussions Jewish thought.

HAVRUTA | 49