huss, ask no questions

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Boaz Huss

ASK NO QUESTIONS: GERSHOM SCHOLEM AND THE STUDY OF CONTEMPORARY

JEWISH MYSTICISM

By way of introduction, let me recount something that happened to ayoung acquaintance of mine in 1924. The fellow came to Jerusalem,unpretentiously bearing his training in philology and modern history,and sought to get in touch with a circle of latter-day kabbalists whohad preserved, for over 200 years, the traditional mystical teachings ofthe Jews of eastern lands. Eventually, he met a kabbalist who told him:“I am prepared to teach you Kabbalah, but on one condition that I’mnot sure you’ll be able to fulfill.” Some of my readers may not guessthat condition: “Ask no questions.”1

Gershom Scholem used this mythical tale to open his lecture“Kabbalah and Myth” at the Eranos Conference in Ascona, Switzerland,in 1949—the first time he lectured at that conference. In a 1974 inter-view with Muki Zur, Scholem disclosed that he himself was the youngman in the story, a fact that had no doubt been clear to his audience atEranos. He went on to tell of his reaction to the condition imposed byR. Gershon Vilner, the aged Ashkenazi kabbalist from the “Bet-El”yeshiva, a reaction that was likewise unsurprising: “I told himI wanted to consider it. And then I told him I couldn’t do it.”2

Paradoxically enough, by his negative response Scholem effectivelyaccepted the condition proposed by the kabbalist, for he chose not toask questions about—and not to study—Kabbalah as a living, contem-porary phenomenon.3

In his partial autobiography From Berlin to Jerusalem, Scholemmentions several more encounters with kabbalists and mystics, but hepresents these meetings anecdotally, never raising the possibility thatthese mystics might be the subjects of study or research.4 Indeed,Scholem’s meeting with contemporary kabbalists left no impressionwhatsoever on his vast corpus of scholarly work. He labored to examinethe most out-of-the-way kabbalistic manuscripts he could find, but hedevoted not a single study to the Bet-El kabbalists or any other kabbalisticstream of his own time. The kabbalistic yeshivas that functioned inJerusalem during Scholem’s time (“Bet-El,” “Rehovot ha-Nahar,” and“Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim”) and prominent kabbalists, most of them likewise

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in Jerusalem during Scholem’s period, such as R. Saul ha-KohenDwlck, R. Judah Petaiah, R. Solomon Eliashov, and R. Judah Ashlag,go nearly unmentioned in Scholem’s studies. That is the case as wellwith respect to the few mystics of his generation for whom Scholemexpressed esteem—Rabbi Kook, R. Menahem Mendel Schneerson,and R. Ahrele Roth.5

Gershom Scholem was trained as a philologist and engaged prima-rily in historical study, and his inattention to contemporary Kabbalahmight be attributed to that historical-philological orientation. ButScholem did not merely forgo ethnographic study of contemporarykabbalists; he paid no scholarly attention even to kabbalistic texts thatwere written and published in his time. Moreover, Scholem sought touse philological and historical methods to get to the metaphysical andmystical basis of the Kabbalah and to describe comprehensively the Jewishmystical phenomenon. In his recent book on three great twentieth-centurystudents of religion, Steven Wasserstrom distinguished GershomScholem, who rejected the possibility of learning from kabbalists them-selves, from Mircea Eliade, who learned from and received theapproval of Indian gurus, and Henry Corbin, who engaged in pro-found discussions with Sufi sheikhs.6 Noteworthy as well is the distinctionbetween Scholem and his friend Solomon Dov Goitein; the latter alsounderwent philological and historical training in Germany but, afterimmigrating to the Land of Israel (sailing on the same ship as Scholem),turned to ethnographic study of Yemenite Jews.7

Gershom Scholem refrained from studying the Jewish mysticismof his own time not because he was a historian and philologist butbecause he denied its significance and value. In his monumental MajorTrends in Jewish Mysticism, published in 1941, he issued the followingpronouncement: “At the end of a long process of development inwhich Kabbalism, paradoxical though it may sound, has influencedthe course of Jewish history, it has become again what it was in thebeginning: the esoteric wisdom of small groups of men out of touchwith life and without any influence on it.”8 And in his 1963 article“Thoughts on the Possibility of Contemporary Jewish Mysticism,” hewrote as follows: “When all is said and done, it may be said that in ourtime, for the most part, there is no original mysticism, not in thenation of Israel and not among the nations of the world.”9

In the present article, I will argue that these findings should beseen not as a description of actual circumstances but as a value judg-ment reflecting the underlying assumptions of the modern study ofKabbalah and of the conceptual framework and cultural stance thatshaped that study. That cultural stance, itself forged in the context ofmodernist thought and with an orientalist perspective, contributed tothe cultural and social marginalization in Israeli society of mystical

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Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism 143

beliefs and practices and of the circles maintaining them. This hasmade it impossible for Scholem, and, to a great extent, makes it difficultfor investigators of Kabbalah even today, to consider the study ofcontemporary Jewish mysticism.

Let me stress that I do not make this argument as a moralisticattack or “indictment,” nor do I mean to downplay the value of thevast scholarly accomplishments of Scholem and his followers. Myintention, rather, is to cast a critical eye on the frame of reference andunderlying assumptions of the field of research from which and inwhich I work, so as to test and understand how those perspectivesshaped the field’s corpus of knowledge and scholarly practices. A cri-tique of this sort, made possible by the different historical and ideologicalframework in which I operate, is based on the scholarly achievementsof Scholem and his disciples.

As Scholem himself made clear, his interest in Jewish mysticism andKabbalah grew out of the Zionist ideology he had adopted as a youngman in Germany. In the interview with Muki Zur referred to above,Scholem says, “I wanted to enter into the world of Kabbalah through mythinking of and believing in Zionism as a something alive, as a renewal ofa nation that had deteriorated greatly. . . .I was interested in the ques-tion: “Was halakhic Judaism strong enough to persevere and endure?Was halakhah without a mystical foundation really possible? Did it haveenough vitality of its own to persevere without deteriorating over thecourse of two thousand years?”10 Scholem saw Jewish mysticism and Kab-balah as an expression of Judaism’s vitality and revolutionary force,which made possible its existence in exile and, in a dialectical manner,ultimately led to the Enlightenment and to Zionism.11 The modern incar-nation of this force, in Scholem’s view, appeared in his generation in anew form as the Zionist enterprise. Thus, in “Thoughts on the Possibilityof Contemporary Jewish Mysticism,” Scholem declares:

It is a fundamental fact that the creative element, which in the current gener-ation draws on a radical awareness, is invested in secular building blocks. Thisbuilding, or this reconstruction, of the life of the nation was difficult, or still isdifficult, demanding forceful planning and execution; and it is questionablewhether it leaves room for productive expression of traditional forms. Theforce there invested includes much of what in other circumstances would beinvested in the world of religious mysticism, known from it and in it as mysti-cism. But now this force is invested in matters that on their face lack religioussanctity and on their face are entirely secular.12

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


144 Boaz Huss

movement. His view of Jewish mysticism as the vital force of DiasporaJudaism explains the paradox of Scholem turning his back on the bear-ers of the kabbalistic tradition precisely when he came to the Land ofIsrael, settled in Jerusalem—a center of kabbalistic ferment in the1920s—and finally had the opportunity to meet with them. Instead ofdoing so, he returned to European libraries to do his research, in orderto lay the groundwork for the study of Kabbalah on the basis of themanuscript archives preserved there.13 Scholem’s Zionist perspectivemade Kabbalah into a significant factor in Judaism’s past, but one thathad lost its historical role in the present. In so doing, Arthur Hertzbergargued—using the same locution Scholem himself had applied to theWissenschaft des Judentums scholars who had preceded him—Scholem pro-vided an honorable burial for Kabbalah: “Scholem was quite clearly re-evoking these fascinating shades but ultimately, to use the language of hischarge against the scholars of the Wissenschaft school, in order to burythem with due respect. It was part of the Jewish past, the present wasZionism.”14

As noted, Scholem concluded that not only Jewish mysticism butmysticism in general had ceased to be a meaningful phenomenon inthe modern world. In his words, “Certainly, in recent generationsthere have been no individual stirrings producing either new forms ofmystical teachings or movements having significance in the life of thecommunity. This is equally the case in Judaism, Christianity, andIslam.”15 Scholem does not explain this phenomenon; but his claimthat the impediment to formulating significant Jewish mysticism in hisday was the lack of belief in “Torah from Heaven” and his declarationthat “we all, to a great extent, are religious anarchists” clarify Scholem’smodernistic perspective, which believes in the triumph of secularizationand regards the traditional forms of religion as phenomena losingcommunal significance in the modern world.16

Scholem does not abandon hope that mysticism will reappear onthe stage of history, but he assumes that any such reappearance will bein a secularized form rather than in traditional dress:

Perhaps mysticism will appear not in the garb of traditional sanctity . . . perhapsthis holiness will appear at the very center of this secular essence, andperhaps mysticism will not be known in its new forms in the terms of the tra-dition. It is possible that this mysticism will not correspond to the terms of theconservative tradition of the mystics, but will instead have secular meaning.What I am alluding to is not something I have cut from whole cloth. Thereare those who see in our secular lives and in the building of the nation areflection of the mystical meaning of the secret of the world.17

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



represents, in his words, “a sense of absolute sanctity within absolutesecularity”—as an example indicating hope for a renewed appearanceof Jewish mysticism.18 Scholem elsewhere expresses this neo-romanticconcept, which sees literature and art as the heirs of religiosity in asecular age, in his presentation of Kafka as a modern bearer of theJewish mystical spirit. He concludes his essay “Ten Non-historicalStatements about the Kabbalah” as follows: “For in a uniquely loftyway, Kafka gave expression to the boundary between religion andnihilism. For that reason, certain readers in our day see in his writ-ings—which are representations in secular terms of a kabbalistic senseof the world (which he himself did not know)—something of thedemanding light of the canonical, of the variegated whole.”19 These“certain” readers, of course, included Scholem himself, who con-cluded in his 1974 lecture “My Path to the Kabbalah” (delivered at theBavarian Academy of Art) that the three “books” that reflect the spiritof Judaism are “the Hebrew Bible, the Zohar, and the writings ofKafka.”20 One could say that this definition of the Jewish canon offersthe most succinct expression of Scholem’s understanding of Judaism.

The continuation of the Jewish mystical spirit can be found, accor-ding to Scholem, not only in literature but also in academic inquiry,from a Zionist perspective, into Jewish mysticism. Scholem saw theZionist academic study of Judaism in general, and of Kabbalah in par-ticular, as part of Judaism’s spiritual revival; and he strove to reachthe metaphysical and mystical foundation of the Kabbalah throughthe use of philological and historical methods.21 And so, at the end ofhis 1937 letter to S. Z. Schocken, entitled “A Frank Word about MyTrue Intentions in Studying Kabbalah,” Scholem writes:

In the uniquely wondrous mirror of philological criticism, there is firstreflected for a man of our times, in the purest possible form and through thetime-honored processes of commentary, the mystical splendor of the systemwhose existence necessarily has been completely hidden precisely through itsprojection into historical times. It is the force of that paradox, and the antici-pation of a response from the mountain top, of a slight, nearly imperceptiblemovement in history allowing for the truth to speak through what appears tobe “development,” that feed my work today as they did when I first set out onmy path.22

In that sense, as David Biale has argued, Scholem saw the academicstudy of Kabbalah as the modern heir of the kabbalistic tradition:“Scholem therefore sees the Kabbalists as his precursors and Kabbalistictheology as the precursor to his theological anarchism—but they arenot the same. Modern historiography is a new development in thehistory of commentary in which the Kabbalah was an earlier stage.”23

It follows that in Scholem’s view, the continuation of the Jewish mysticalspirit is to be found not in contemporary kabbalistic and mystical


146 Boaz Huss

circles but, rather, in the secular world—in Kafka’s literary creations,in the Zionist effort to build the nation, and in the philological-historicalstudy of Kabbalah as practiced by Scholem’s school.

The modernist and Zionist perspective of Scholem’s scholarlyenterprise took shape, as some have recently shown, in the context oforientalist discourse.24 Biale has considered the distinctive and com-plex nature of the orientalist perspective of European Jews, in whoseconsciousness the concept of “the Orient” became bound up with theirself-identification as Europeans and Jews (i.e., orientals) at one andthe same time.25 Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin has pointed out Zionism’sambivalence toward “the East”: “In a seemingly paradoxical way, theJews’ exodus from Europe and the establishment of Jewish settlementin the East actually provided a basis for their integration into theWest, and for defining the Jews as a European nation.”26 This per-spective provides the background for Scholem’s decision to immigrateto the Land of Israel and to make the Kabbalah the focus of his schol-arly work: the latter, like the former, partook of a turning to the East.The fields of study in which Scholem determined to engage—Judaismand mysticism—were regarded in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century western Europe as manifestly “oriental” categories.27

Scholem’s turn to the “East,” like that of many other Jewish intellectualsof his time, entailed typical orientalist ambivalence—a posture ofbeing both drawn to and repelled by the East, which was simulta-neously regarded as exotic and as degenerate, as authentic and asprimitive. This ambivalence, which took on particular complexity inEuropean Jewish consciousness generally and in Zionist consciousnessin particular, gained expression in Scholem’s emphatic insistence thatthe return to the Land of Israel did not imply absorption into theLevant.28 It shows up as well, as Gil Anijar has stressed, in Scholem’sremarks on the feelings of admiration and disgust aroused in him byhis reading of the great kabbalists.29

A prominent manifestation of Scholem’s ambivalence towardKabbalah is his negation of contemporary Jewish mysticism. In assign-ing enormous importance to Jewish mysticism as a historical phenom-enon while spurning its present-day manifestation, Scholem displays acharacteristically orientalist stance, exalting the “East” as a source ofarcane and authentic information while regarding the “oriental”present (which included, in the consciousness of western EuropeanJews, the milieu of their eastern European brethren) as fossilized,degenerate, and backward.30

As we know, Scholem traces the roots of Jewish mysticism to theEast. The last significant developments in Jewish mysticism took place,in his opinion, during the eighteenth century, with the establishmentof the “Bet-El Yeshiva,” which he described as “the center for kabbalists



from the Sefardic and arabized tribes (as well as the Yemenites),” andwith the appearance in eastern Europe of Hasidism, which Scholemdefined as “the last great religious outburst within Judaism, as thegates were about to close.”31 After Hasidism, Scholem says, “our cre-ative forces turned, during the period of emancipation and liberalism,in a totally different direction”—that is, toward the Enlightenment andthence, dialectically, to Zionism, the final stage in the dialectical devel-opment of the Jewish mystical spirit.32 Cultural phenomena that failedto take part in that process—including the mystical currents of thenineteenth and twentieth centuries, which continued to flow through-out the Islamic world and in eastern Europe—were relegated, inScholem’s view, to the margins of Jewish history.33 The Jewish mysti-cism of his day, which continued as the living tradition of the easternEuropean Hasidim and “the Sefardic and arabized tribes,” was por-trayed by Scholem in terms of preservation and decadence: “In thisgeneration, the earlier forms continue, as a precious living inheritanceor as an inheritance that has decayed but that continues to exist in itsexternal garb, even though its soul has departed from it.”34 The con-ception of Jewish mysticism held by Scholem and his school becameintertwined with the negative attitude of the hegemonic streams inIsraeli society toward the bearers of the mystical traditions and theavatars of “diasporism”—emigrants from Islamic countries and east-ern European haredim, the “blacks” within “white” Israeli society.35

The academic study of Kabbalah afforded a degree of legitimacy toJewish mysticism; at the same time, it justified marginalizing the bear-ers of that tradition within Israeli society.36

There are, however, some exceptions to Scholem’s disdain for theJewish mysticism of his day. In reflecting on the possibility of Jewishmysticism in his time, Scholem mentions three phenomena that hefound interesting: the Hasidism of R. Ahrele Roth, the Habad move-ment, and, especially, Rabbi Kook.37 The importance he assigns toRabbi Kook—whom he elsewhere labels as the last instance of produc-tive kabbalistic thought that he knows of—highlights Scholem’snationalist, secular, and orientalist perspective.38 The importance ofRabbi Kook’s mysticism flows, in Scholem’s view, from the Zionist per-spective of Kookian mysticism, from its ties to the intellectual world ofEuropean philosophy, and from Kook’s readiness to acknowledge thesanctity within the secular.39 Moreover, as already noted, Scholemregards Rabbi Kook’s devotion to “Torah from Heaven” as an obstacleto his mysticism being meaningful to the public of his day.

Along with the mysticism of the “oriental” kabbalists and of easternEuropean Hasidism (which Scholem classified as fossilized anddecayed) and the mysticism of Rabbi Kook and a few other figures(which Scholem regarded as authentic mysticism but void of historical


148 Boaz Huss

significance in the modern age), Scholem also considered several rep-resentatives of contemporary occult circles—Jewish and non-Jewish—who showed an interest in Jewish mysticism. Although Scholem had acertain curiosity about some of these circles, which arose in westernEurope, he rejected them as delusions, charlatanisms, and pseudo-Kabbalah.40 This hostility exposes Scholem’s stance, which accepts tra-ditional involvement in Kabbalah as authentic (albeit decadent andlacking historical significance) and the academic study of Kabbalah asprofessional. Nontraditional circles involved in Kabbalah in a nonaca-demic manner, as seen from this perspective, are nothing more thaninauthentic charlatans.

To a great extent, Scholem’s studies defined the field of researchinto Kabbalah, and his disciples and their successors continue theirwork within the framework of discourse he shaped. And even thoughhis successors, as we shall see below, challenged many of the basicpremises that guided Scholem’s work, contemporary mysticismremains beyond the pale of the research and teaching conducted byacademic investigators of Kabbalah. Most of the studies in the fieldare done by sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and folklor-ists. Departments of Jewish Thought in Israeli universities offer acourse of study in modern Jewish philosophy alongside the programin medieval Jewish philosophy, but not one university has a course ofstudy—or a scholar—devoting time to modern Jewish mysticism.Academic students of Kabbalah treat contemporary mysticism—tothe extent they treat it at all—as outside the context of their scholarlywork, primarily in media interviews. Contemporary groups of kabbalistsor mystics are presented, at best, as “preservers” of the kabbalistic tra-dition and, at worst, as charlatans. Jewish mysticism is treated as aphenomenon that has lost its relevance in modern times, and the keyto understanding it is said to lie with the academic investigators, notwith those who see themselves as its contemporary practitioners.Thus, according to Joseph Dan, “the wellsprings of spiritual, intellec-tual, moral, theological and even mystical creativity ran totally dry”after the Holocaust.41 Dan, like other researchers of Kabbalah, rejectsnonacademic engagement with Kabbalah on the part of nontradi-tional circles (especially R. Philip Berg’s Institute for the Study ofKabbalah), and he regards them—as Scholem did the occultistgroups in his time—as delusional or as charlatans.42 Rachel Eliormanifests a similar attitude toward Yigal Arikha, the author of popu-lar books on Kabbalah. In a review of his book Practical Kabbalah(Heb.), she assigns an aesthetic value to Kabbalah and magic, whichshe places, along with religious thought in general, in the realm of artand literature, but she dismisses the effort to present mystical or magicaltraditions as relevant in the present.43



This approach is typical of hegemonic Israeli discourse, as itappears in Israeli communications media. Early kabbalistic literatureand the academic investigators who work with it are regarded asworthwhile, authentic, and “professional,” but contemporary kabbalisticbelief and practices (such as prostration on the graves of therighteous, ritual reading of the Zohar, and exorcism of dibbuqs) and thekabbalists who believe in and practice them are considered to be prim-itives, charlatans, and even a menace to modern Western-Israeliculture.44

During the eighties, as noted above, several scholars (includingMoshe Idel, Yehudah Liebes, Eliot Wolfson, Charles Mopsik, and oth-ers) questioned the meta-narrative at the basis of Scholem’s studiesand many of the basic premises that shaped research into Kabbalah.45

In the context of this revision, the chronological framework of Jewishmysticism constructed by Scholem was broken. In particular, textsfrom earlier periods, including rabbinic and biblical literature, wereadded to those considered by researchers of Kabbalah; but, at thesame time, scholars also became increasingly interested in variousaspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Kabbalah that had notbeen considered in Scholem’s studies.46

In this revisionist context, some of the scholars proposed a newapproach to contemporary mysticism. In his book Kabbalah: NewPerspectives, published in 1988, Moshe Idel suggested that investiga-tors of Kabbalah forge links with contemporary kabbalists, pointingout that familiarity with them could “enrich the academic conceptionregarding the essence of Kabbalah.”47 A similar approach was recentlysuggested by Yehudah Liebes in his lecture “Reflections on the ReligiousSignificance of Research on Kabbalah”: “I do not share the opinion ofcolleagues who disparage the kabbalists who work among us—RabbiKadouri will not learn from me what Kabbalah is; rather, we investiga-tors must learn from him.”48

Despite these recommendations by Idel and Liebes, the study ofpresent-day Jewish mysticism remained very much at the margins oftheir research efforts and those of other late-twentieth-century investi-gators of Kabbalah. Recently, however, scholars have begun to show agreater interest in contemporary Kabbalah. A comprehensive reviewof twentieth-century Jewish mysticism and mystical groups appearedfor the first time in Charles Mopsik’s book Cabale et Cabalistes, pub-lished in 1997.49 Jonathan Garb, in his 2002 article “The Understand-able Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” offered a review of thevarious contemporary mystical streams as well as analyses of variousaspects of these phenomena. And other investigators have recentlypresented lectures dealing with various aspects of contemporaryKabbalah and Jewish mysticism.50


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The recent (limited) awakening of interest in contemporary mysti-cism on the part of investigators of Kabbalah can be explained as areaction to the enhanced status of mysticism in the Western world ingeneral and in Israel in particular. But, as I argued at the outset, theneglect of contemporary mysticism in the work of Scholem and hissuccessors resulted not from mysticism’s disappearance but from acultural stance that denied the value and significance of present-daymystical practices and beliefs and fostered the shunting of these phe-nomena, and of the circles devoted to them, to the margins of thehegemonic Israeli culture. The increasing scholarly awareness of con-temporary mysticism can be seen not only as a response to “the revivalof mysticism” but as part of the process allowing mysticism a moreprominent presence in Israeli culture.51

In his study “The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in OurTime,” Garb attributes the current rise of mysticism to, among otherthings, the dismantling of the modernist-rationalist narrative and theweakening of Western-Zionist cultural hegemony.52 In my judgment,these factors, which have contributed to the more prominent presenceof mysticism in Western culture generally, and in Israeli culture inparticular, have also made it possible for researchers to direct theirattention to contemporary Jewish mysticism.

And so, research into contemporary Jewish mysticism is possiblein the twenty-first century, though it remains at the margins of thefield. The study of this mysticism poses challenges and difficulties, notonly because it requires new research methods but also—indeed,primarily—because it requires confronting the framework of dis-course and cultural stances that shaped the field of study in whichscholars of Kabbalah (myself included) have labored. Turning schol-arly attention to the Jewish mysticism of today constitutes not merely awidening of the investigative field of vision but also the adopting ofnew types of perception, requiring researchers to direct a criticalglance at themselves and to confront the basic premises that shapetheir research methods and establish their identity.

BEN GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV

NOTES

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



and Ada Rappoport Albert, who provided important comments on an earlydraft of the article. My thanks also go to Moshe Idel, who, despite his reserva-tions about some of my contentions, engaged with me in a fruitful conversa-tion that helped me to sharpen my arguments.

The article is dedicated to the memory of the late Charles Mopsik, whoopened new paths in the modern study of Kabbalah and many other areas ofJewish mysticism. The English translation was done by Mr. Joel A. Linseder.

1. Gershom Scholem, Pirqei Yesod (Jerusalem, 1961), p. 86. 2. Gershom Scholem, Devarim be-Go (Tel Aviv, 1975), p. 45. 3. Steven R. Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea

Eliade and Henry Corbin at Eranos (Princeton, 1999), pp. 32, 39–40. 4. On Scholem’s meetings with members of Oscar Goldberg’s circle, see

Gershom Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth (Tel Aviv, 1982),pp. 174–178 (and see n. 42). On his meetings with R. David ha-Kohen, seeScholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem, p. 204 (and n. 39). It is noteworthy that Scholemdoes not speak in his autobiography of his meetings with the kabbalists of Bet-El.They, along with the kabbalists of the “Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim” and “Porat Yosef”yeshivas, are mentioned in the context of the kabbalistic book market in Jerusalem(Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem, p. 206). Fanya Scholem (Kol ha-Ir, January 19,1990) told of kabbalists meeting with her husband during the World War IIperiod, but these were kabbalists who had come to take counsel with Scholem.

5. A brief overview of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Jewishmystics can be found in “Kabbalah,” Encyclopedia Judaica; it appears as well inScholem’s collected encyclopedia articles: Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (NewYork, 1974), p. 85. A brief treatment of R. Ashlag’s Kabbalah appears inScholem’s review essay of a book by R. Levi Isaac Krakovsky, a disciple ofRabbi Ashlag, in Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 15 (1953), p. 312. On the absencefrom Scholem’s (and from his followers’) work of any research into Jewishmysticism and Kabbalah as living phenomena, see Charles Mopsik, Cabale etCabalistes (Paris, 1997); Daniel Abrams, “Presenting and RepresentingGershom Scholem: A Review Essay,” Modern Judaism, Vol. 20 (2000), p. 231;Jonathan Garb, “The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time—Innovation versus Conservatism in the Thought of Joseph Ahituv,” in JewishCulture at the Eye of the Storm—Festschrift in Honor of Joseph Ahituv’s SeventiethBirthday, ed. A. Sagi and N. Ilan (Ein Zurim, 2002), p. 175. Ira Robinsonnoted this as well in “Kabbalah and Orthodoxy: Some Twentieth-CenturyInterpretations,” paper presented at the American Academy of Religion,1987; my thanks go to Prof. Robinson for sending me a copy of his lecture.

6. Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion, pp. 32, 40. 7. Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem, pp. 186, 190–193; Miriam Frenkel,

“Historiography of the Jews of Islamic Lands in the Middle Ages: Landmarksand Prospects” (Heb.), Pe’amin, Vol. 92 (2002), pp. 48–50.

8. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1974), p. 34. 9. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 71. See also Arthur Hertzberg, “Gershom

Scholem as Zionist and Believer,” in Gershom Scholem, ed. H. Bloom (NewYork, 1987), p. 198; and see Weiner’s impressions of Scholem’s lecture inHerbert Weiner, 91/2 Mystics (New York, 1971), pp. 84–87. My thanks go toDr. Yoni Garb, who directed my attention to Weiner’s comments.


152 Boaz Huss

10. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 26–27. 11. See David Biale, Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, and Counter-History (Cambridge,

MA, 1979), pp. 162–163; David Myers, Re-inventing the Jewish Past (New York,1995), pp. 163–164, 167; Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “The Nationalist Represen-tation of the Diaspora: Zionist Historiography and Medieval Jewry,” Ph.D.dissertation (Tel-Aviv, 1996), p. 132.

12. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 81–82. 13. In his 1937 review of kabbalistic research at the Hebrew University,

Scholem reaches the conclusion that research into Kabbalah can be conductedonly in Jerusalem, for only there can the scholar meet the still-extant rem-nants of Kabbalah. But it becomes clear from the ensuing passages that he isspeaking of books and manuscripts, not flesh-and-blood kabbalists. See GershomScholem, Kabbalah in the University (Jerusalem, 1973), p. 12.

14. Hertzberg, “Gershom Scholem as Zionist and Believer,” p. 199. IraRobinson (“Kabbalah and Orthodoxy”) uses the same phrase in connectionwith Scholem’s attitude toward the kabbalistic tradition.

15. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 71. 16. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 79–80. In his article “Reflections on the

Religious Significance of Research on Kabbalah” (forthcoming), Yehudah Liebesconsidered Scholem’s denial of the possibility of new modern Kabbalah on thegrounds that a modern person cannot sustain a belief in “Torah fromHeaven.” I thank Prof. Liebes for providing me a copy of his article, which hasnot yet been published. In Garb’s view, Scholem’s position “apparentlyreflected the Ben-Gurion position that saw religious Judaism as a forgottenresource” (“The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” p. 175).

17. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 82. See also Hertzberg, “Gershom Scholemas Zionist and Believer,” p. 199; Gershom Scholem, The Fullness of Time, Poems,intro. and annotation by Steven M. Wasserstrom (Jerusalem, 2003), pp. 38,139; Abrams, “Presenting and Representing Gershom Scholem,” p. 230; andLiebes, “Reflections on the Religious Significance of Research on Kabbalah.”See also Scholem’s comments at the end of Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism:“The story [of Jewish mysticism] is not ended, it has not yet become history,and the secret life it holds can break out tomorrow in you or in me” (p. 350).For an examination of these comments, see Garb, “The UnderstandableRevival of Mysticism in Our Time,” p. 99; and Moshe Idel, “Abraham Abulafia,Gershom Scholem, and R. David ha-Kohen (‘The Nazir’) on Prophecy” (forth-coming). I thank Prof. Idel for providing me a copy of this yet-unpublished article.As I read these remarks, they expresses Scholem’s premise that the revival ofJewish mysticism will take place within his own peer group (“in you or in me”)rather than in traditional kabbalistic circles.

18. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 82. In an interview with Muki Zur, Scholemtells that he “took a beating” for referring to Walt Whitman in this context.See Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 54; Weiner, 91/2 Mystics, p. 87; and Steven M.Wasserstrom, “Introduction,” in Gershom Scholem, The Fullness of Time, Poems(Jerusalem, 2003), pp. 38, 139.

19. Gershom Scholem, Od Davar (Tel Aviv, 1989), p. 37. See also Scholem’scomments in his letter to S. Z. Schocken: “Agitated examination of the questionhas led me both to an extremely rational skepticism about my areas of inquiry



and to an intuitive affirmation of mystical theses situated at the delicateboundary between religion and nihilism. The perfect expression of that border,which cannot be improved upon, is a secularized account of a contemporaryman’s kabbalistic sense of the world, and it is that which later led me to see inKafka’s writings an almost canonical splendor” (Od Davar, p. 29).

20. Scholem, Od Davar, p. 304. 21. Biale, Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, and Counter-History, pp. 74, 100–103;

Raz-Krakotzkin, “The Nationalist Representation of the Diaspora,” p. 141 n.37; Idel, “Abraham Abulafia, Gershom Scholem, and R. David ha-Kohen(‘The Nazir’) on Prophecy”; Liebes, “Reflections on the Religious Significanceof Research on Kabbalah.”

22. Scholem, Od Davar, pp. 30–31. Even earlier, in 1925, Scholem had con-cluded his famous letter to Bialik as follows: “At the end of these projects, I hopeto do what previously brought me to all these studies and led me, unwillingly, todevote myself to philological studies whose limits I am well aware of; that is, toanswer the question, ‘Is there value to Kabbalah or not?’. . . And I acknowledgeunashamedly to you that it is this philosophical interest that has supported meeven while I was doing linguistic and historical research” (Devarim be-Go, p. 63).

23. Biale, Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, and Counter-History, p. 102. 24. See Gil Anijar, “Jewish Mysticism Alterable and Unalterable: On Ori-

enting Kabbalah Studies and the Zohar of Christian Spain,” Jewish SocialStudies, Vol. 3 (1996), pp. 96, 114–118; David Biale, “Shabbetai Zevi and theSeductions of Jewish Orientalism,” in The Dream and Its Destruction: The SabbateanMovement and Its Branches—Messianism, Sabbateanism, Frankism, ed. R. Elior(Jerusalem, 2001), pp. 107–110; Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “Orientalism, JewishStudies, and Israeli Society,” Jema’a, Vol. 3 (1999), pp. 49–52; Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “From Covenant of Peace to Holy Temple,” Theory and Criticism,Vol. 20 (2002), pp. 100–110; and Abraham Elqayam, “The Horizon of Reason:The Divine Madness of Sabbatai Sevi,” Kabbalah, Vol. 9 (2003), pp. 43–48.

25. Biale, “Shabbetai Zevi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism,”p. 88. On Western European Jews confronting their oriental image, seeP. Mendes-Flohr, “Orientalism and Mysticism—The Aesthetics of the Turnof the Nineteenth Century and Jewish Identity,” Jerusalem Studies in JewishThought, Vol. 3 (1984), pp. 631–633.

26. Raz-Krakotzkin, “Orientalism, Jewish Studies, and Israeli Society,”p. 44. See also Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “From Covenant of Peace to Holy Temple,”pp. 100, 406–407; and Biale, “Shabbetai Zevi and the Seductions of JewishOrientalism,” p. 89.

27. On the orientalist connection of the infatuation with mysticism in theGermany of that time, see Mendes-Flohr, “Orientalism and Mysticism,”pp. 623–629; on the Jew as an Oriental, see Mendes-Flohr, “Orientalism andMysticism,” pp. 629–641. On the European inclusion of Jewish studies withinthe rubric of orientalist studies, and on the connection and distinctionbetween “Hebraism” and “Orientalism,” see Raz-Krakotzkin, “Orientalism,Jewish Studies, and Israeli Society,” pp. 37–40. The commingling of the termsmysticism and orientalism in Israeli anthropological research was considered byAndrei Levy in his lecture “Anthropology and the Anthropologization of EasternMysticism in Israel” (Heb.), delivered at the Van Leer Institute, June 2000.


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On orientalist perspectives in the study of Kabbalah, see Anijar, “Jewish Mysti-cism Alterable and Unalterable,” pp. 113–118 (and see Moshe Idel’s response toAnijar in “Orienting, Orientalizing or Disorienting: An Almost Absolutely UniqueCase of Occidentalism,” Kabbalah, Vol. 2 (1997), pp. 13–47). I do not join in Ani-jar’s belligerent criticism of Idel and Liebes; on the contrary, I believe the recentresearch suggests new perspectives that make it possible to examine critically theframe of discourse and basic assumptions of research into Kabbalah. See alsoRaz-Krakotzkin, “Orientalism, Jewish Studies, and Israeli Society,” p. 50 n. 17.

28. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 143. See also Biale, “Shabbetai Zevi and theSeductions of Jewish Orientalism,” pp. 89, 107–108.

29. Anijar, “Jewish Mysticism Alterable and Unalterable,” pp. 90–91.Scholem writes, “If one turns to the writings of the great Kabbalists, one sel-dom fails to be torn between alternate admiration and disgust” (Major Trendsin Jewish Mysticism, p. 36). It is noteworthy that a similar turn of phraseappears in Buber’s introduction to the legends of R. Nahman of Braslov;Buber writes: “And thus were created texts such as the Book of the Zohar,which arouse both admiration and disgust” (Abraham Huss’s Hebrew transla-tion of Buber in Od Davar, p. 381); and see Martin Buber, The Tales of RabbiNachman (Bloomington, IL, 1962), p. 5 (where the wording is softened a bit).Ron Margolin (“The Internalization of Religious Life and Thought in theFirst Generations of Hasidism—Sources and Epistemological Foundations,”Ph.D. dissertation [ Jerusalem, 1999], p. 5) observed that Buber’s introduction(first printed in German under the title Der Jüdische Mystik) constitutes theschema used by Scholem in writing Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.

Scholem’s ambivalence toward Kabbalah and mysticism is expressed as wellin his assessment of the Zohar’s author’s personality (typical, according toScholem, to many mystics): “The author’s spiritual life is centered as it were ina more archaic layer of the mind. Again and again one is struck by the simul-taneous presence of crudely primitive modes of thought and feeling and ofideas whose profound contemplative mysticism is transparent . . . a veryremarkable personality in whom, as in so many mystics, profound and naïvemodes of thought existed side by side” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism,p. 175). And see Anijar, “Jewish Mysticism Alterable and Unalterable,” pp. 90,117; and Raz-Krakotzkin, “From Covenant of Peace to Holy Temple,” p. 100.

30. See Andrea Grace Diem and James R. Lewis, “Imagining India: TheInfluence of Hinduism on the New Age,” in Perspectives on the New Age, ed.J. R. Lewis and S. J. Gordon (Albany, 1992), p. 53; and Edward Said, Oriental-ism (New York, 1994), pp. 53, 92–93. See also Steven E. Ascheim, Brothers andStrangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness,1800–1923 (Madison, WI, 1982), p. 20; Aziza Kazum, “Western Culture, Eth-nic Stigmatization, and Social Barriers—The Background for Ethnic Inequal-ity in Israel,” Israeli Sociology, Vol. 1 (1999), pp. 395–396 (Heb.) (on theconflation in western European Jewish consciousness of the Jews of the Islamiccountries with those of eastern Europe, see also p. 399); and Mendes-Flohr,“Orientalism and Mysticism,” pp. 632–633. It is noteworthy that Buber mani-fested a similar “orientalist” ambivalence toward Hasidism, whose origins heexalted but whose present-day reality he saw as degenerate. See Ascheim,Brothers and Strangers, p. 126; Sander Gilman, “The Rediscovery of the Eastern



Jews: German Jews in the East, 1890–1918,” in Jews and Germans, 1860–1933,ed. D. Bronsen (Heidelberg, 1979), pp. 345–349; and Mendes-Flohr, “Orien-talism and Mysticism,” p. 656 n. 122. Buber (The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, p. 3)also denied the existence of significant contemporary Jewish mysticism,regarding R. Nahman of Braslov as the last Jewish mystic.

31. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 71; Scholem, Od Davar, p. 205. The chapteron Hasidism in Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism is titled “Hasidism,the Latest Phase”; see Margolin, “The Internalization of Religious Life andThought in the First Generations of Hasidism,” p. 5.

32. Scholem, Od Davar, p. 205. 33. Thus, the North African and Near Eastern Kabbalah of relatively

recent times (including that of R. Shalom Shar‘abi and the Bet-El kabbalists),as well as that of the Vilna Ga’on and his disciples, merited very little attentionin Scholem’s research.

34. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 75. 35. Translator’s note: In this context, the Hebrew imagery alludes not

only to the ethnic divisions within Israeli society but also to the black attirecharacteristic of the haredim.

36. It is interesting to compare the attitude of the Christian Hebraists towardthe Judaism and Jews of their time, as A. Raz-Krakotzkin describes it, toScholem’s attitude, and that of other investigators of Kabbalah, toward contempo-rary Kabbalah and kabbalists. Raz-Krakotzkin pointed out that Hebraist discourse“made possible a distinction between various aspects of Jewish literature that weretaken to be authentic expressions of ancient truth, and those aspects of theJewish way of life that were regarded as foreign, or even hostile, to the ChristianEuropean culture. The images of the Jews in this context are paralleled by thoseassigned to ‘the Orient’ in Orientalist discourse” (“Orientalism, Jewish Studies,and Israeli Society,” p. 39). On the similar position assigned in hegemonic Israelidiscourse to contemporary Kabbalah and kabbalists, see n. 44 below.

37. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 75–76. Scholem (Devarim be-Go, p. 73)also cites Nathan Birnbaum as an authentic mystic. In From Berlin to Jerusalem(p. 187), he tells of his meetings with Birnbaum, in which he apparentlylearned of the latter’s mystical experiences. In contrast, Scholem had no par-ticular regard for Rabbi Kook’s disciple, R. David ha-Kohen, “the Nazir”: “Allmy efforts to penetrate his thought produced only confusion, but what we shareis the impression made upon us by the thirteenth-century writings of R.Abraham Abulafia. While we were neighbors, I visited him from time to time . . .butto discuss the methods for studying Kabbalah and understanding it with a ba‘alteshuvah is a hopeless assignment, as I foresaw in my gut” (From Berlin to Jerusalem,p. 204). It is interesting to note that all of these mystics were Ashkenazim.Even when Scholem met with one of the kabbalists of Bet-El, “the center forkabbalists from the Sefardic and arabized tribes (as well as the Yemenites),” theindividual he met was an Ashkenazi kabbalist, R. Gershon Vilner!

38. Scholem writes, “Rabbi Kook’s great work. . . is a veritable theologia mysticaof Judaism equally distinguished by its originality and the richness of itsauthor’s mind. It is the last example of productive Kabbalistic thought ofwhich I know” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 354 n. 17). But in Reflections,written later, Scholem downplays the importance of the kabbalistic and mystical

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156 Boaz Huss

element in Rabbi Kook as well as in the other mystics he mentioned: “Thesealready are not kabbalists in the manner of the Bet-El kabbalists or theirpredecessors. One who reads Rabbi Kook’s book Orot ha-Qodesh understandsimmediately that this is no kabbalist; rather, it is a great man who translatedhis religious experience, drawn from the legacy of the generations, intohuman terms. . . . [A]ll three of these phenomena share something strangefrom the point of view of our question: they reduce to the extent possible themystical element of their inspiration to the point that it cannot be recognized”(“Thoughts on the Possibility of Contemporary Jewish Mysticism,” pp. 76–77).

39. See Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “The Golem of Scholem,” in Politik undReligion im Judentum, ed. C. Meithing (Tübingen, 1999), pp. 225–227; andScholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 77–78.

40. Scholem met with members of Oscar Goldberg’s group, whom helabeled “metaphysical magicians” (Walter Benjamin [Tel Aviv, 1987], pp. 98–100(Heb.); Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem, pp. 174–178). Despite Scholem’snegative attitude toward Goldberg, whom he perceived as “schizoid” and“delusional,” he showed a degree of interest in his circle (From Berlin to Jerusalem,p. 154) and even dedicated an article to him in the Encyclopedia Judaica.Scholem also met with the mystical writer Gustav Meyrink, whom he labeled a“charlatan” and whose books he labeled “pseudo-kabbalah” and “historicalcastles-in-the-sky” (From Berlin to Jerusalem, pp. 156–158; on Meyrink, see alsoMendes-Flohr, “Orientalism and Mysticism,” p. 634). In contrast, Scholemclassified Alfred Schmid-Noerr, the ghostwriter who wrote Meyrink’s last book,as an “authentic mystic” (From Berlin to Jerusalem, p. 159). Scholem called theworks of occultist Eliphaz Levy (Alphonse Louis Constant) “the products ofcharlatanism rich in imagination” (From Berlin to Jerusalem, p. 158), and hetermed the works of Aleister Crowley “humbug” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysti-cism, p. 2). My thanks go to Yoni Garb for directing my attention to these mat-ters. Scholem called the theosophical circle of Madame Blavatsky a “pseudo-religion” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 206, 398–399 n. 2).

41. Joseph Dan, “From Belief in the Torah to Belief in the Pious Man”(Heb.), Ma‘ariv, February 12, 1988. See also Garb, “The UnderstandableRevival of Mysticism in Our Time,” p. 175 n. 9.

42. See Sarit Fuchs: “There is a discernable tendency on the part ofacademic researchers into Kabbalah to buttress their scientific rigor so as toplace a clear divide between themselves and groups of humbugs who, accordingto Prof. Dan, are sometimes boors and ignoramuses wrapping themselves in akabbalistic mantle. The populism of Kabbalah—which does not exist amongtrue kabbalists, who tend to keep their studies under wraps—infuriates Prof.Dan. He regards it as a monstrous perversion of Jewish spirituality, dissoci-ated from the 613 commandments and seriously distorting the historicalnature of Kabbalah, which was always anchored in a life filled with study ofTorah and observance of the commandments. These religious sects, whicharrived here from California and speak of ‘pure spiritual life’ or ‘mystical con-templation of reality,’ offer the masses the drug of false bliss” (“Where Are theRoots of the Tree of Souls?” [Heb.], Ma‘ariv, February 14, 1986). M. Halamish,in the preface to his book Introduction to the Kabbalah (Jerusalem, 1991) (Heb.),warns against secondary effects entailing dangers and charlatanism that are to



be found in “institutes and courses of various sorts that ‘sell’ Kabbalah to allwho ask” (p. 7).

43. Rachel Elior writes, “In no event does Kabbalah or magic withstand atest of its objective force, of its capacity to heal, of its connection to the laws ofnature, or the discernable fulfillment of its promises. In other words, like art,literature, or religious thought, they are found in the fascinating domain ofhuman creativity and cultural history, but they do not exist in the areas of nat-ural forces or scientific understanding. Every attempt to present practicalKabbalah and magic in scientific terms involving ‘energies and connections’and removing it from the field of religion, belief, and creativity has a degree ofthe misguided. . . . [I]t is necessary to distinguish clearly between, on the onehand, folk beliefs, magical and mystical traditions, and customs and religiousthought grounded in the past . . . and, on the other, modern life, based onopen, free, and critical rational understanding of the present” (review of YigalArikha’s Practical Kabbalah [Heb.], Yedi‘ot Aharonot, June 19, 1998).

44. One expression of this attitude—exalting “classical” Kabbalah (and,even more, its academic study) while disdaining and manifesting hostilitytoward its contemporary manifestations—can be found in the aricle of SaritFuchs. Distinguishing between “sects of humbugs . . . who wrap themselves ina kabbalistic mantle” and academic researchers of Kabbalah, Fuchs writes:“But let us leave the delusions alone and consider the newly discovered schol-arly truths at the center of the academic conference” (“Where Are the Roots of theTree of Souls?”). Ya’ir Sheleg, in his article “An Academic Dispute in the Shadowof a Folk Ritual,” likewise distinguishes between “astrology sections . . . new-ageshops . . . the copy of the Zohar kept in many homes as a sort of good luckcharm against the evil eye . . . or even in roadside restaurants under a pictureof Rabbi Kadouri or some other kabbalist . . . an entire industry of institutesand groups for the study of the Zohar” and academic scholars: “A totally differ-ent group of students of the Zohar gathered last Friday at the Hebrew Uni-versity’s Institute for Advanced Studies. About 25 scholars from Israel andthe United States, experts in research into Kabbalah” (Ha-Aretz, February 8,1999). Sheleg writes that those who study the Zohar in such places (roadsiderestaurants?) see the texts not as symbolic myth but as straightforwardaccounts of the divine reality. Like Fuchs, who prefers “new academic truths,”Sheleg presents the academic reading, which interprets the texts as “symbolicmyth” and rejects its original meaning (“a straightforward account of thedivine reality”) as the legitimate, authoritative reading of the Kabbalah.

45. On the challenge by Moshe Idel and Yehudah Liebes to Scholem’sur-narrative and its context, see Amos Funkenstein, “Annals of Israel amongthe Thorns,” Zion, Vol. 60 (1995), pp. 335–347 (Heb.), especially pp. 342–344.For an examination of various aspects of this revision, see Raz-Krakotzkin,“The Nationalist Representation of the Diaspora,” pp. 134–139. See also Liebes’scomments in his review of Idel’s book: “It seems that Idel’s world, like those ofothers today (myself among them) differs somewhat. In a certain sense, we aredealing with post-Zionism. This should not be understood as repudiating theideas of the Zionist revival. On the contrary: We are in a situation in whichZionism is taken as self-evident, as a fixed and necessary circumstance thatmakes the next stage possible. . . .What flows from this is an examination of


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Judaism’s religious and historical circumstances in their entirely, with no particulardirection being emphasized for reasons of ideology or apologetics. . . . Thisapproach enabled Idel (and others) to see additional possibilities that couldnot be seen in Scholem’s time” (“Metaphysics of Interpretation” [Heb.],review of Moshe Idel’s Kabbalah: New Perspectives, Ha-Aretz, October 15, 1993).

46. Some of these studies are summarized in Garb, “The UnderstandableRevival of Mysticism in Our Time,” p. 181.

47. Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven, 1988), p. 43. 48. Liebes, “Reflections on the Religious Significance of Research on

Kabbalah.” In an interview with Ya’ir Sheleg (Kol ha-Ir, May 19, 1995), Liebestold of contacts he had had with kabbalists that did not turn out well. Liebesblamed the failure on his own deficiency: “When I began to study Kabbalah,I made several attempts to approach those referred to as kabbalists. It did notturn out well. I do not make an ideology of that. It was an aspect of it thatI found less engaging, and I see that as a flaw. But I deal with written sources”(“Reflections on the Religious Significance of Research on Kabbalah”).

49. Mopsik, Cabale et Cabalistes, pp. 239–270. Mopsik also published an articledealing with Kabbalah in twentieth-century France; see Charles Mopsik,“La Cabale dans le pense francaise; available online at http://www.jec.cm.free.fr/artmop.htm.

50. For example, lectures on contemporary Israeli mysticism were deliveredat the Van Leer Institute’s June 2000 conference “Kabbalah and Israeli-ness.”At the Association for Jewish Studies conference in Los Angeles in December2002, Jody Myers presented her study of the Institute for Research inKabbalah led by Rabbi Berg, and I recently examined the activities of the Cen-ter for the Study of Kabbalah and of “Benei Barukh” in a lecture delivered atBen-Gurion University in May 2003. In a lecture that same month at HebrewUniversity, Moshe Idel considered the contemporary revival of R. AbrahamAbulafia’s prophetic Kabbalah.

51. Garb (“The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,”pp. 182–183) notes that developments in the academic study of Kabbalah cannot be severed from the position of Kabbalah within the broader community.

52. In addition to these factors, Garb (“The Understandable Revival ofMysticism in Our Time,” pp. 194–196, 199) cites the inherent power of themystical ideas, as well as other factors.


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