Introduction: on the Formation of Research on Kabbalah in America

chapter 1 Introduction: on the Formation of Research on Kabbalah in America

Brian Ogren

In 1938, the distinctly American Jewish Institute of Religion in New York signifi- cantly acted as the locus of an event that would define research on Kabbalah through the twentieth and well into the twenty-first centuries. That year, the eminent German born Israeli scholar of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Scholem, arrived in New York at the invitation of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, then presi- dent of the Jewish Institute of Religion, to give a series of public lectures on Jewish mysticism. Six of these were delivered in English and one was delivered in Hebrew; all were revised and published in 1941 along with two more, quite notably all in American English, as Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.1 Notable is the fact that on American shores at a markedly American Jewish institu- tion for training Reform rabbis, the stage was set for a more comprehensive and charitable academic understanding of the role of Jewish mystical trends throughout history. Also quite notable is the fact that despite the American setting of this important exposition, one major trend was strikingly missing, namely, the trend of American Kabbalah itself. About forty-six years later, again within a specifically American setting, the academic picture of Jewish mysticism began to undergo a major revision. In that year, the Romanian born Israeli scholar of Jewish mysticism, Moshe Idel, had a conversation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with David Ruderman of Yale and Ivan Marcus of the Jewish Theological Seminary, concerning the possibility of writing a new comprehensive study on Kabbalah. A first draft of what was to become the seminal Kabbalah: New Perspectives was subse- quently presented to a colloquium at the Jewish Theological Seminary, in 1986. In the preface to the final published work, Idel explains that “the colloquium was designed to include about thirty American scholars of Judaica and general mysticism who discussed and argued the content of this work.” He goes on to state, “Both their criticism and their encouragement contributed greatly to

1 Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Random House, Inc., 1974), EPUB e-book.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004428140_002 2 Ogren the final draft.”2 Similar to Scholem’s Major Trends, Idel’s New Perspectives was a fundamentally American product, published in English and born out of an American liberal rabbinical seminary. Also similar to Scholem’s Major Trends, it leaves out any discussion of American Kabbalah. The possible reasons for the omission are multiple. In Scholem’s case, his book ends with eighteenth and nineteenth century Polish and Ukranian Hasidism, which he more than suggestively terms “the latest phase” of Jewish mysticism. This is significant for an omission of American developments. As scholars have recently pointed out, “Although Scholem was aware of the fact that both in Europe and in Israel the twentieth century witnessed a renais- sance of kabbalistic thinking, along with the establishment of new schools and the adaptation of traditional doctrine to new conditions and questions, he refused to acknowledge these currents as ‘real kabbalah.’ ”3 Added to these scholars’ mention of twentieth century Kabbalah “in Europe and in Israel” should be Kabbalah in America.4 Indeed, as part of the modern experiment, American Kabbalah, especially in its Jewish context which only really flourished post WWII, falls just outside of Scholem’s purview. Another possible reason that it gets no mention in Scholem’s text is that in its non-Jewish context, which dominates the American eighteenth century Protestant and nineteenth century Western Esoteric realms such as Freemasonry, Theosophy and Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah is no longer “authentically” Jewish.5 It is thus of little interest to Scholem and his school. In Idel’s seminal text, Kabbalah in America perhaps gets no mention due to a lack of treatment of late modernity. To be sure, there is some discussion of nineteenth and twentieth century scholarship on Kabbalah,6 but it

2 Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), ix. 3 Boaz Huss, Marco Pasi & Kocku von Stuckrad, “Introduction: Kabbalah and Modernity,” in Kabbalah and Modernity: Interpretations, Transformations, Adaptations (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), 1. 4 It is perhaps significant that the authors of the critique are European and Israeli. 5 Though Scholem does not get into the American phase, he does state in his introduction that “the greater part of the ideas and views which show a real insight into the world of Kabbalism, closed as it was to the rationalism prevailing in the Judaism of the nineteenth century, were expressed by Christian scholars of a mystical bent, such as the Englishman Arthur Edward Waite of our days and the German Franz Josef Molitor a century ago” (EPUB e-book, 55). He goes on to call Jewish scholars specifically the “authorized guardians” and to state, “The time has come to reclaim this derelict area and to apply to it the strict standards of historical research.” (EPUB e-book, 56). It is thus reasonable to surmise that he would not have had much use for either early Protestant American uses of Kabbalah or American Western Esoteric expressions. 6 See especially New Perspectives 7–16.