Kabbalah and Postmodernism: A Dialogue (Studies in Judaism) 9781433103049, 9781453903650, 1433103044

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Kabbalah AND Postmodernism PETER LANG

W W W . PE T E R L A NG . CO M

/

Sanford L. Drob holds doctorate degrees in philosophy from Boston University and in clinical psychology from Long Island University. He is on the core faculty of the clinical psychology doctoral program at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California, and on the faculty of New York University Medical Center. In addition to numerous publications in clinical, forensic, and philosophical psychology, Dr. Drob is the author of two previous books on the Kabbalah as well as articles on Jewish philosophy that have appeared in various journals, including the New York Jewish Review, for which he served as editor-in-chief for several years. Dr. Drob’s recent work explores Carl Jung’s intimate but highly ambivalent relationship to Judaism and Jewish mysticism, the connection between the Kabbalah and axiological ethics, and the role of the coincidence of opposites in mysticism, philosophy, and psychology.

3

DROB

Kabbalah and Postmodernism: A Dialogue challenges certain long-held philosophical and theological beliefs, including the assumptions that the insights of mystical experience are unavailable to human reason and inexpressible in linguistic terms, that the God of traditional theology either does or does not exist, that “systematic theology” must provide a univocal account of God, man, and the world, that “truth” is “absolute” and not continually subject to radical revision, and that the truth of propositions in philosophy and theology excludes the truth of their opposites and contradictions. Readers of Kabbalah and Postmodernism will be exposed to a comprehensive mode of theological thought that incorporates the very doubts that would otherwise lead one to challenge the possibility of theology and religion, and which both preserves the riches of the Jewish tradition and extends beyond Judaism to a non-dogmatic universal philosophy and ethic.

s t u d i e s i n j u da i s m / 3

Kabbalah Postmodernism AND

A Dialogue

SANFORD L. DROB

Kabbalah AND Postmodernism PETER LANG

W W W . PE T E R L A NG . CO M

/

Sanford L. Drob holds doctorate degrees in philosophy from Boston University and in clinical psychology from Long Island University. He is on the core faculty of the clinical psychology doctoral program at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California, and on the faculty of New York University Medical Center. In addition to numerous publications in clinical, forensic, and philosophical psychology, Dr. Drob is the author of two previous books on the Kabbalah as well as articles on Jewish philosophy that have appeared in various journals, including the New York Jewish Review, for which he served as editor-in-chief for several years. Dr. Drob’s recent work explores Carl Jung’s intimate but highly ambivalent relationship to Judaism and Jewish mysticism, the connection between the Kabbalah and axiological ethics, and the role of the coincidence of opposites in mysticism, philosophy, and psychology.

3

DROB

Kabbalah and Postmodernism: A Dialogue challenges certain long-held philosophical and theological beliefs, including the assumptions that the insights of mystical experience are unavailable to human reason and inexpressible in linguistic terms, that the God of traditional theology either does or does not exist, that “systematic theology” must provide a univocal account of God, man, and the world, that “truth” is “absolute” and not continually subject to radical revision, and that the truth of propositions in philosophy and theology excludes the truth of their opposites and contradictions. Readers of Kabbalah and Postmodernism will be exposed to a comprehensive mode of theological thought that incorporates the very doubts that would otherwise lead one to challenge the possibility of theology and religion, and which both preserves the riches of the Jewish tradition and extends beyond Judaism to a non-dogmatic universal philosophy and ethic.

s t u d i e s i n j u da i s m / 3

Kabbalah Postmodernism AND

A Dialogue

SANFORD L. DROB

Kabbalah and Postmodernism

Studies in Judaism

Yudit Kornberg Greenberg General Editor Vol. 3

PETER LANG

New York ! Washington, D.C./Baltimore ! Bern Frankfurt am Main ! Berlin ! Brussels ! Vienna ! Oxford

Sanford L. Drob

Kabbalah and Postmodernism A Dialogue

PETER LANG

New York ! Washington, D.C./Baltimore ! Bern Frankfurt am Main ! Berlin ! Brussels ! Vienna ! Oxford

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Drob, Sanford L. Kabbalah and postmodernism: a dialogue / Sanford L. Drob. p. cm. — (Studies in Judaism; v. 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Cabala—History. 2. Mysticism—Judaism. 3. Postmodernism—Religious aspects—Judaism. 4. Judaism—Doctrines. I. Title. BM526.D756 296.1’6—dc22 2008016026 ISBN 978-1-4331-0304-9 (hardback) ISBN 978­1­4539­0365­0 (eBook) ISSN 1086-5403

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek. Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de/.

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council of Library Resources.

© 2009 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006 www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited. Printed in the United States of America

To the loving memory of my father, Frank Ephraim Drob

Table of Contents Preface .........................................................................................................xiii Introduction ................................................................................................... 1 A Mysticism of Ideas............................................................................................... 1 Bilinear Thinking .................................................................................................... 5 Rational Mysticism.................................................................................................. 8 Kabbalistic Forms of Consciousness ..................................................................... 10 The Philosophical Status of the Kabbalists’ Basic Metaphor................................ 10 Kabbalah, Deconstruction, Hegelianism ............................................................... 13 Towards a Contemporary Kabbalistic Theology ................................................... 16

1. Postmodernism and Jewish Mysticism.................................................. 19 The Tenor of Post-modernist Thought: Multiple Narratives and the Loss of Center .......................................................................................................... 19 The Lurianic Kabbalah .......................................................................................... 25 The Shattering of the Foundations......................................................................... 28 Overcoming Binary Oppositions ........................................................................... 30 The Role of Negation ............................................................................................ 31 The Infinite Play of Significance........................................................................... 32 Domination and the Dissolution of God and Self.................................................. 33 Nihilism and Negation........................................................................................... 35 Ethnocentrism and Multi-Culturalism ................................................................... 36 The Need for Universalism and Difference........................................................... 37 Lurianic Kabbalah and the Syntax of Classical Narrative ..................................... 38 Kabbalah as a Hermeneutic Methodology............................................................. 40 Tropological vs. Metaphysical Mysticism............................................................. 42 Exile as a Condition of Human Existence ............................................................. 43

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The Dissolution of the Transcendental Signified and the Autonomous Subject......................................................................................................... 45

2. Derrida and Jewish Mysticism ............................................................... 48 Derrida, Judaism and the Kabbalah ....................................................................... 48 Wolfson and Idel on Derrida and the Kabbalah .................................................... 50 The Last of the Jews .............................................................................................. 55 Jabes’ The Book of Questions ............................................................................... 56 Sollers and Scholem .............................................................................................. 60 A Philosophical Accord......................................................................................... 62

3. Tzimtzum and Différance......................................................................... 65 The Doctrine of Tzimtzum ..................................................................................... 65 “Différance” .......................................................................................................... 67 Différance, “Presence” and “Absence” ................................................................. 69 The “Trace” ........................................................................................................... 69 Différance is “Not”................................................................................................ 70 Does Différance Create?........................................................................................ 71 Différance and Negative Theology........................................................................ 71 Derrida and Mysticism .......................................................................................... 73 The Thing is Hopelessly Divided Against Itself.................................................... 74 The Demise of Différance ..................................................................................... 75 Différance, Space and Time .................................................................................. 76 Différance and the Doctrine of Tzimtzum.............................................................. 76 Writing and Tzimtzum............................................................................................ 77 Kabbalah, Logocentrism and the Philosophy of Presence..................................... 78 Who or What Differs? ........................................................................................... 80 Differences Between Différance and Tzimtzum..................................................... 81 Différance, Freud and the Unconscious................................................................. 82 Creation and the Lie .............................................................................................. 83 “Khora” ................................................................................................................. 85 A Cartographic Analogy........................................................................................ 86 Providing Place...................................................................................................... 87 Différance and God ............................................................................................... 88

4. The Shevirah and Deconstruction .......................................................... 91 The Breaking of the Vessels.................................................................................. 92

Contents

ix

Deconstruction as a Condition for Creation .......................................................... 93 Conceptual and Linguistic Aspects of the Shevirah Doctrine ............................... 95 The “Monstrous” and the “Real”........................................................................... 96 Metaphor ............................................................................................................... 97 Bloom on the Shevirah .......................................................................................... 98 I and Thou ............................................................................................................. 99 The Origin of Evil ............................................................................................... 101 The Messianic...................................................................................................... 102

5. A-Systematic Theology.......................................................................... 104 The Postmodern Contextualization of all Writing and Speech............................ 105 “The Metaphysical Gesture” ............................................................................... 108 Anti-Foundationalism.......................................................................................... 109 The Continued Quest for a Foundation ............................................................... 109 Humanity and the Actualization of Divine Potential........................................... 110 Deconstruction, Hegelian Dialectics and the Kabbalah....................................... 112 Temporary Anchors............................................................................................. 115 Fluid Foundationalism......................................................................................... 116 A Metaphysics of “Perspectives” ........................................................................ 117 In Defense of Systematic Theology..................................................................... 119 Deconstruction and Systematic Philosophy/Theology ........................................ 122 The System that is Not a System: Multiple Perspectives in Kabbalah and Deconstruction .......................................................................................... 123 The Urge to Philosophize: From Static to Dynamic Theology............................ 124

6. The Doctrine of Coincidentia Oppositorum in Jewish Mysticism ...... 129 Coincidentia Oppositorum in the Early Kabbalah............................................... 130 Coincidentia Oppositorum in the Lurianic Kabbalah.......................................... 131 Elior on the Chabad Hasidism: The Unification of Opposites as the Purpose of the World .............................................................................................. 133 Dialectical Process in Chabad Thought .............................................................. 135 The Coincidence of Opposites in Other Traditions ............................................. 138 Derrida: the Overcoming of Polar Oppositions ................................................... 139 Understanding the Mystical Paradox................................................................... 144 Model 1: Lessons from a Two-Dimensional World ............................................ 145 The Coincidence of Opposites: From Analogy to Analysis ................................ 149 Model 2: Overcoming the Distinction between Words and Things..................... 150

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7. The Torah of the Tree of Life............................................................... 158 Kabbalistic Reflections on the Hermeneutics of Infinity..................................... 158 Scholem: The Divine World of Language........................................................... 158 Infinite Interpretations ......................................................................................... 160 Idel on the Plasticity of Textual Significance...................................................... 161 Kabbalah, Divine Intent, and Infinite Freedom ................................................... 164 Kabbalah, Dreams, and the Archive .................................................................... 167 Excursus: Deconstruction and Negative Mysticisim ........................................... 172 Joseph Dan: The “Meaningless Text” ................................................................. 173 Torahs of the Trees of Knowledge and Life ........................................................ 175 The Significance of the Torah of The Tree of Life.............................................. 177

8. Beyond the Bounds of Language.......................................................... 180 Kabbalah and the Primordial Nature of Language .............................................. 180 Philosophy and the Primordiality of Language ................................................... 182 Reality as Presented by Philosophy..................................................................... 184 Philosophical Puzzles, Language Games and Forms of Life............................... 185 God “is” Language .............................................................................................. 187 Penetrating the Linguistic Barrier........................................................................ 191 Beyond the Symbolic Order: The Mystical in Kant, Wittgenstein and Derrida................................................................................................ 191 Transcending the Linguistic Boundary................................................................ 192 The Way of Analogy ........................................................................................... 193 Metaphor, Dream, Poetry, Science and Philosophy ............................................ 194 The Resurfacing of an Ancient Mode of Thought ............................................... 196 Levinas and L’infiniti .......................................................................................... 198 Acts Beyond Language........................................................................................ 198 The Coincidence of Opposites: An “Echo” of the Linguistic “Big-Bang” .......... 199 “Word and Object,” “Identity and Difference” ................................................... 200 The Dissolution of the Distinction between Identity and Difference .................. 201

9. Creation Ex Nihilo and the Impossible Messiah................................. 205 Nothingness and Negation in the Theosophical Kabbalah .................................. 205 Creation Ex Nihilo ............................................................................................... 208 Representing “No State of Affairs Whatsoever” ................................................. 211 Derrida and Différance ........................................................................................ 212 Signification as the Origin of Being .................................................................... 213

Contents

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The Impossibility of Nothingness........................................................................ 214 Divine Forgetting, Forgetting the Divine ............................................................ 216 Ayin and the Dissolution of the Self .................................................................... 217 Différance as Numinous ...................................................................................... 218 Prophetic Judaism and the Passion for the ‘Impossible’ ..................................... 220 Derrida and Negative Theology .......................................................................... 221 Negative Theology in a New Key?...................................................................... 222 The Necessity of Negative Theology .................................................................. 224 Messianism and Apocalypse ............................................................................... 226 The Non-meaningful as Divine ........................................................................... 227 The Messiah Cannot Come In Ordinary Time .................................................... 228

10. Kabbalah, Forms of Consciousness and the Structure of Language.................................................................. 230 Kabbalah and Reason .......................................................................................... 231 Forms of Consciousness/ Modes of Understanding ............................................ 232 Leibniz, Van Helmont and the Kabbalah ............................................................ 234 Ein-sof and the Open Economy of Thought ........................................................ 236 Otiyot Yesod: Infinite Interpretation .................................................................... 238 The Unity of Opposites ....................................................................................... 239 On Reason and Authority .................................................................................... 242 Ayin: “Unknowing” and the Intuition of the “Non-Dual” ................................... 244 Tzimtzum: Concealmeant and Contraction .......................................................... 246 The Shattering of All Horizons ........................................................................... 247 Sefirot: The Cognizance of Value ....................................................................... 250 Tikkun: Restoration and Redemption................................................................... 250 “Kabbalah Consciousness”.................................................................................. 252 The Lurianic Metaphors, Creativity and the Structure of Language ................... 253 The Nature of the Creative Process ..................................................................... 254 Language, the Vehicle of Creation and the Substance of the World ................... 255 The Lurianic Theosophy as a Model of Linguistic Meaning............................... 257 The Emergence of the “Linguistic Subject” ........................................................ 262

Notes ........................................................................................................... 265 Bibliography............................................................................................... 315 Index ........................................................................................................... 323

Preface

T

his work questions certain long-held philosophical and theological beliefs, amongst which are the assumptions that the insights of mystical experience are unavailable to human reason and inexpressible in linguistic terms, that either God does or does not exist, that “systematic theology” must provide a univocal account of God, man, and the world, that “theological and philosophical truth” is not continually subject to radical revision, and, more specifically, that the truth of propositions in philosophy and theology excludes the truth of their contradictions and contraries. I have attempted to provide the general reader sufficient background in Jewish mysticism and postmodern thought to understand my approach to problems in theology, philosophy and psychology. That being said, this book cannot be regarded as an introductory text, as I have pursued the problems discussed herein to their limits, even in those instances where such pursuit has led to a level of complexity and abstraction that may strain the patience of the more casual reader. As will become clear in the course of my exposition I regard this work to be both a rational and a mystical one, and although its main ideas, in the end, turn out to be extraordinarily simple, the conceptual road to their simplicity is strewn with complexities necessitated by taking multiple perspectives on ideas, words and things, then taking multiple perspectives on the perspectives, and so on. One of my goals in this book is to explore the boundaries between the linguistic and extra-linguistic in our understanding of language, God, and world, and in the process to retrace the logical and linguistic steps that originally led to multiplicity from its origins in a singular “One.” The reader will bear with me if I must sojourn through certain complexities of language

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and logic as a means of achieving my goal. As will become clear in the course of my exposition, I believe that Kabbalistic symbols, once they are passed through the filter of contemporary philosophy, are not only useful in addressing important philosophical and theological problems, but also lead to modes of understanding that are particularly suited to the intellectual and spiritual problems of our age. It is my hope that the reader will follow me far enough to enter into such forms of consciousness and apply them to his/her own life and work. A work such as this, which has been many years in the making, has been subject to a myriad of influences, many of which the author is only dimly aware. My earliest debt is to my grandfather, Rabbi Max Drob, who, though he passed on when I was but a child was my first spiritual mentor, and whose life, writings, and spirit have continually served as an inspiration in my quest to forge a synthesis between Judaism and modern life. I am greatly indebted to the radical Christian theologian, Thomas J. J. Altizer, under whose tutelage in the early 1970s I first became aware of the challenge that postmodern thought posed to traditional religious practice and belief, and who demonstrated to me the promise of such thinkers as Hegel, Nietzsche, Buber and Derrida for a contemporary theological vision. My understanding of Wittgenstein and the application of his notions of “language games” and “forms of life,” to philosophy and psychology (and later to Jewish law and ritual) was initially guided by my mentor in philosophy at Cornell, Norman Malcolm. It was, however, another former student of Wittgenstein’s, J. N. Findlay, who, serving as my dissertation advisor, led me out of the Wittgensteinian and deconstructive linguistic maze, and in doing so prompted me to look to mysticism as a valuable source for philosophical reflection. It was Findlay’s works on Plato, Hegel, and Kant, and, moreover, his own “rational mystical” writings that I re-read concurrent with my studies of Chabad and Kabbalistic texts in the 1980s which prompted me to embark upon the long venture of forging a dialogue between the Kabbalah and the history of western thought. Findlay’s inspiration is present in virtually all of my writing and thinking, I feel extremely fortunate to have encountered him in his final years of teaching at Boston University. These acknowledgements would be incomplete without my profound thanks to Rabbi Shimon Hecht, who introduced me to the mystical philosophy of Chabad Judaism, and Rabbi Joel Kenney who led me painstakingly through portions of Chayyim Vital’s classic Kabbalistic work,

Preface

xv

Sefer Etz Chayyim, as well as through the writings of Moses Cordovero and others. I would also like to thank Rabbi Chayyim Nachman (Harvey) Gornish who served as my personal guide in the study of Jewish texts (Tenach, Mishna, Midrash) and Jewish law (halakha), and whose patience and dedication immeasurably enriched my understanding of Yiddishkeit, the Jewish tradition. More recently Rabbi Zali Abramowitz has selflessly guided me in the study of relevant portions of a number of Kabbalistic and Hasidic texts. As in my previous books I am greatly indebted to the work of several recent and contemporary thinkers and scholars, including Gershom Scholem, Isaiah Tishby, Moshe Idel, Rachel Elior, Daniel Matt, Joseph Dan, and Elliot Wolfson, who have both made the teachings of the Kabbalists accessible to the modern reader, and who have provided me with insights into how these teachings might interface with contemporary philosophy and psychology. In addition, in this work, with its central focus upon Jacques Derrida, deconstruction and postmodernism, I am indebted to those such as Marc Taylor and John Caputo who have stimulated my own thinking on the theological implications of postmodern and deconstructive thought. A special thanks to the editor of this series, Yudith Kornberg Greenberg, for her painstaking review of, and valuable suggestions regarding, the final manuscript. Finally, dialogues with my wife, Dr. Liliana Rusansky Drob, who maintains a profound interest in Lacan and the French school of psychoanalysis, have stimulated my ideas about the role of language and the “extra-linguistic” in philosophy, psychology and theology. Fifty years ago my grandfather lifted me high above his head, looked into my eyes, and then turning to my father (who had forsaken the rabbinate for a career in the stock market), said that he could see in my face that the rabbinical spirit had skipped a generation. While my family must still await the generation that will again take up the rabbinic mantle, I hope that in some small way I may have fulfilled my grandfather’s prophesy and would receive his imprimatur. Sanford L. Drob, Brooklyn, NY, September, 2008

Introduction

A Mysticism of Ideas

What Derrida told me, if I remember correctly, was that Levinas looked him in the eye and said, "Jacques, you know what you remind me of? A heretical Kabbalist of the 16th century! (Hillis Miller, June 12, 2007)

T

he present work explores the interface between Jewish mysticism and postmodern philosophy and theology. That there should be such an interface may be as surprising to some as it will be obvious to others. It is my hope that by articulating the numerous points of contact between the Kabbalah and the concerns of such 20th century thinkers as Derrida and Wittgenstein I will facilitate a dialogue that will further interest in the Kabbalah as a source for ideas in contemporary theology, philosophy and psychology. In Kabbalah and Postmodernism I continue the task, begun in my previous books, Symbols of the Kabbalah and Kabbalistic Metaphors, of translating and transforming an age old symbolic mystical tradition into a rational theology and “mysticism of ideas.” However, my goal in this work is not simply to translate Kabbalistic symbols and mystical insights into contemporary theology, philosophy, and psychology, but rather to uncover the modes of understanding implicit within Kabbalistic symbols that can contribute to a transformation of contemporary thinking in each of these fields. To this end I have placed the theosophical Kabbalah in an extended

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dialogue with postmodern philosophy, with the expectation that neither the Kabbalah nor postmodern theology will emerge unchanged by this process. I think of this book as an extended Kabbalistic meditation on a number of themes that are central to contemporary theology and philosophy. In contrast to my previous books, which detailed Kabbalistic theosophical symbols and explored their connections with several ancient and modern systems of thought, the present work is more directly involved in a form of thinking that I have come to regard as “Kabbalistic.” My goal in this work is not so much to articulate a theological system, but rather to explore the very possibility of “theology” and “system” from a Kabbalistic point of view. My purpose is not to establish a theological doctrine or philosophical theory, but rather to engage in a form of rational/spiritual meditation that is informed by and lives within the spirit of both Jewish mysticism and contemporary thought. Such meditation might well be termed a form of intellective or rational mysticism. Through it I am not attempting to establish the existence of God, but rather to reach toward God via sustained reflection on certain theosophical and theological ideas. The process of writing this work and the ideas contained herein are thus, at least from a certain perspective, the author’s meditation and prayer, in much the same way that a form of meditation and prayer was a major, if not the major, impetus to the theosophical Kabbalah of an earlier era. While the symbols and ideas that form the basis of my reflection in this work derive from the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria and the interpretations of Luria’s theosophy that have appeared in subsequent phases of Jewish mysticism (including those of the Hasidim and such twentieth century Kabbalah scholars as Scholem, Tishby and Idel), the material to which I apply these symbols ranges across an extremely wide span, from Bible, Midrash and Talmud to modern and post-modern criticism and philosophy. In previous works I have placed the Kabbalah into an extended dialogue with Hegel, Freud and Jung, and these earlier dialogues form an important background to the present work.1 Many of the following pages are concerned with the thought of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, and (to a somewhat lesser extent) with the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Sigmund Freud. Each of these thinkers has not only continued to have an impact on the current intellectual scene, but each also represents a somewhat marginalized and “ghostly” presence of Judaism within the heart of contemporary thought. Both Freud and Derrida were Jews, and both embraced atheism only to find their

Introduction

3

intellectual odyssey leading them into a profound reconsideration of their Jewish identities. Wittgenstein, who was of Jewish descent, grew up in a home in which Judaism was renounced in favor of Austrian culture, and his thought and life in many ways represented a sort of end-point in the assimilation process. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein held that below a seemingly hard and arid surface the Jew possesses the “molten lava of spirit and intellect.”2 Moreover, the kind of close philosophical and particularly linguistic analysis Wittgenstein engaged in, with its rhetorical questions and seeming adoption of contradictory positions, certainly bears the mark of Talmudic pilpul in the highest and most positive understanding of this term.3 In Kabbalistic Metaphors I argued that there is a close affinity between Kabbalah and Freud and that psychoanalysis can in many ways be profitably understood as a form of secularized Jewish mysticism.4 A similar argument, can be made with respect to at least the later writings of Jacques Derrida; though under Derrida’s principle that it is “impossible to determine what is an example of what” it would be moot as to whether deconstruction is a belated Kabbalism or Kabbalah an early form of deconstruction (for Derrida the same indeterminacy would also exist with respect to the relationship between the Kabbalah and Hegel, Freud or Jung). That Derrida himself was aware of the possibility of a Kabbalistic connection with his own work is clear from his rejection of Habermas’ negatively, and Handelman’s positively, toned insinuations that his work has strong affinities with the Jewish mystical tradition.5 In this regard, an interesting anecdote was originally related to me by the radical Christian theologian Thomas Altizer, who in 2000 communicated the following: When I was introduced to Derrida by Hillis Miller, Hillis told the story of the last time he and Jacques had visited Levinas, and Levinas looked Jacques deep in his eyes, and said, "Jacques, you cannot deny that you are a contemporary embodiment of Lurianic Kabbalism."6

I subsequently emailed Miller, asking him about this story. In an email dated June 12, 2007. Miller wrote back, “What Derrida told me, if I remember correctly, was that Levinas looked him in the eye and said, "Jacques, you know what you remind me of? A heretical Kabbalist of the 16th century!"7 Derrida’s own response to the charge of Jewish mysticism involved an unusually straightforward denial for a philosopher whose greatest concern has always been the opening up of new possibilities of interpretation:

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[...] at any rate, unfortunately or fortunately, as you like it, I am not mystical and there is nothing mystical in my work. In fact my work is a deconstruction of values which found mysticism, i.e. of presence, view, of the absence of a marque, of the unspeakable. If I say I am no mystic, particularly not a Jewish one as Habermas claims at one point, then I say that not to protect myself, but simply to state a fact. Not just that personally I am not mystical, but that I doubt whether anything I write has the least trace of mysticism.8

We will see that there is much in Derrida that is “Kabbalistic,” and given Derrida’s approving references to certain Kabbalistic ideas,9 as well as his extended philosophical and personal meditations on such Jewish themes as circumcision10 and the tallith,11 it is hard to understand the force behind his disclaimer. However, it is not my purpose in this book to claim Derrida for Judaism or the Kabbalah, but rather to demonstrate that deconstruction and Kabbalah indeed share certain perspectives on language, philosophical foundations, “God”, etc. and that that they often converge precisely in those areas where Jewish mysticism departs from the doctrines of both normative Judaism and other religious traditions. While one of my goals in this work is to draw certain parallels between Kabbalah and postmodern philosophy, my purpose is not to simply draw connections between Kabbalah and contemporary thought, but rather to engage that thought Kabbalistically; to do, as it were Kabbalistic theology, and moreover to participate in a “new Kabbalistic tradition” that I believe has been evolving as a result of scholarly interest in the Kabbalah over the last 75 or so years. As such, many readers of this book may not immediately recognize the material I discuss here as Kabbalistic. One reason for this is that I have taken the Kabbalistic model of thought and hermeneutics which I evolved in my earlier books, and applied these to problems that were considered indirectly, if at all, in the traditional Kabbalistic texts. Some readers may thus be of the opinion that the reflections contained herein can hardly be termed “Kabbalah,” at most granting that what I have endeavored to accomplish is a reading of certain issues in contemporary secular philosophy through a quasi-Kabbalistic lens, one that has been considerably reground with the tools of the western (as opposed to the “Jewish”) philosophical tradition. I have no real quarrel with this view, but would argue that the question of what counts as “the Kabbalah” or “Jewish” is not anything that I or anyone else can or should decide a priori. The Zohar, the

Introduction

5

locus classicus of the Kabbalah, was clearly influenced by “non-Jewish” ideas,12 and contemporary scholars now recognize that early Jewish mysticism arose out of the interaction between biblical, Midrashic and Talmudic Judaism with Hellenistic thought.13 I believe that my own work is a continuation of this interactive tradition, but I leave it to others to accept or reject my branding it with the term “Kabbalistic.” In a sense what I propose to do in these pages is to iterate the symbols and terms of the Kabbalah in a new context; that of contemporary philosophy, where they are bound to take on new meanings. While there is no way of knowing in advance whether these meanings will end in a new form of life or a dead end, this is a question that the reader must resolve for him or herself. Bilinear Thinking Harold Bloom has pointed out that the Kabbalah overcomes the oppositions of, and thinks in ways that are not permitted by western metaphysics; the Kabbalah’s God is both All and Nothing, total presence and total absence, its interiors all contain exteriors and “all of its effects determine its causes.”14 I will argue that to think Kabbalistically means to think “bilinearly” or “multi-linearly,” that is, in at least two directions at once, so that, for example, at the same time that one is following a train of thought that shows human subjectivity to be the product of a material universe, one also follows a train of thought that shows the “material universe” to be the product of human consciousness and language, or to take another example, just as one recognizes that all “interpretations” rest upon an agreed upon, anchored “datum,” one also recognizes that such a datum is itself the product of interpretations. In the course of such bilinear thinking one comes to realize that certain ideas which one had hitherto thought to be mutually exclusive are actually mutually supportive and interdependent. Further, one not only recognizes that such “coincidentia oppositorum” are the case, but also why they must be the case. The reader will note that at many times during the course of my exposition I argue for a particular mystical or post-modernist point of view (e.g. a metaphysics of “perspectives” or the illusory nature of the ego). In each case it should be understood that such an argument is not made in order to establish a particular philosophical position, but rather to open up a new line of thinking, or redress an imbalance that a certain rigidity of thought has

6

Kabbalah and Postmodernism

brought about. In each case it should become clear that the pole of the philosophical dichotomy I appear to be defending is actually fully dependent on the truth of its opposite, the pole that, at least for the moment, I appear to have rejected or ignored. While, I think that one can actually come to think bilinearly, actual spoken or written philosophical discourse is always linear and, at least temporarily, unidirectional. I am in agreement with Derrida, Wittgenstein and others who have held that such unidirectional discourse has imprisoned us in a metaphysics in which one aspect of language, the world, consciousness, etc. is always privileged over the other. In this book I attempt to use the very form of (rational, philosophical) discourse that has imprisoned us to provide us with a way out of our confinement. While my goal in this book is akin to the Wittgensteinian objective of “releasing the fly from the fly bottle,” unlike Wittgenstein I am not of the belief that once released the fly will no longer be interested in metaphysics and philosophy. On the contrary, it is my view that once released from the captivity of “unilinear,” “dichotomous,” “privileging” thought, we will not abandon metaphysics but rather be open to doing it in a new light, one that is illuminated by such multilinear Kabbalistic notions as Ayin (Nothingness), Ein-sof (Without-end), Tzimtzum (Concealment/Contraction) Sefirot (Archetypes), Shevirat ha-Kelim (Breaking of the Vessels) and Tikkun haOlam (the Restoration of the World). When one finds oneself laboring over, or involved in a discussion concerning some theological or religious question, e.g. whether God exists, or if there is life after death, one is in all likelihood thinking in a dichotomous linear fashion, in which there are two ideas which seem to be on opposite sides of a great divide, only one side of which can possibly contain the “truth.” There are powerful forces that act to keep one focused on the question in precisely this linear, polar way. These forces are linguistic, epistemological and psychological. One can only represent one thought at a time, both verbally and cognitively. Further, one wants a clear answer; one doesn’t want, for example, to be told that the very manner in which one has framed the question misleads one into falsely believing that an either/or answer can be forthcoming. One doesn’t want to hear that God both does and does not exist (or, as Wittgenstein once provocatively put it, that “he half exists”15) or that there is both life after death and a complete termination of all consciousness and identity with the demise of one’s body. One doesn’t want to hear (as the Buddha is purported to have responded to the question of whether there is personal immortality) that one’s question “does not even

Introduction

7

refer to the case.” In spite of this natural resistance, in these pages I arrive at a form of thinking in which the answers “both and none” to our original theological inquiries make perfectly good sense; a form of thinking within which the either/or dichotomies of traditional theology are seen as a misleading consequence of a limiting perspective inevitably created by language. I will show that there is much within the Kabbalah to lead us to the view that our dichotomous philosophical and theological ideas are limiting instances of a more complex circular whole in which each pole of each dichotomy is actually dependent upon the truth or inclusion (as opposed to the exclusion) of its opposite. One of the problems of linear thought is that it understands deep theological questions such as the existence of God, or the immortality of the soul, as though they were somehow straightforward empirical questions that can be answered from within a familiar framework of understanding, like questions of the sort “Are there any more saber tooth tigers?” We don’t consider the possibility that even after amassing all the “data” necessary to answer our question we might still not be in a position to provide a straightforward (i.e. singular) answer. This is because the very linguistic and conceptual framework that we initially thought was adequate for posing our question is itself responsible for the misleading belief that we must make a unique, definitive response. I think that fundamental theological questions, such as those pertaining to the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, etc. result from the linear/dichotomous thinking conditioned by our forms of representation. The Kabbalah challenges such linear/dichotomous thinking and suggests a more inclusive mode of thought that leads us to understand that our questions should no longer be understood in an either/or light. One of my goals in this book is to indicate, in at least a general way, how and why this is the case. Throughout this book, I endeavor to show how each of the main Kabbalistic symbols embodies an important philosophical or experiential antinomy and, when fully understood, a movement towards that antinomy’s “resolution”. Such resolution does not, however, eliminate the antinomy but rather permits us to think and live it without experiencing a sense of “fatal contradiction.” For example, with the symbol of the Sefirot, the Kabbalists articulate and seek to resolve the opposition between the simple unity of the Absolute and the apparent multiplicity of the world (the classical problem of “the one” and “the many”); in the symbol of the Kellipot (Husks) the Kabbalists articulate and attempt to resolve the antinomy between good and

8

Kabbalah and Postmodernism

evil; in Tzimtzum, the chasm between being and nothingness; in Adam Kadmon (Primordial Man), the distance between God and man, and in the symbol of Tikkun ha-Olam (the Restoration of the World), the antinomy between theism (God created man) and atheism (man created God). Indeed, each of the Kabbalistic symbols can be understood as emerging dialectically, as a higher order sublation of an opposition (or contradiction) between traditional philosophical ideas, and, hence, as a “resolution” to a traditional philosophical problem. For example, the problem of theodicy (of reconciling evil with the existence of God) takes on a different face once we speak the language of the Lurianic Kabbalah, as it will enable us to see that what we call “evil” is woven into the very fabric of both creation (Tzimtzum) and redemption (Tikkun), the ultimate “goods.”16 So conceived, the Kabbalah organizes experience for us in a new way, one that transcends the traditional categories of philosophy, and further, which cuts across the various disciplines (e.g., philosophy, psychology, theology, ethics and hermeneutics) that have addressed themselves to the human condition. If one is to understand the Kabbalah, one must stop thinking in terms of the traditional distinctions altogether. For example, the process of Tikkun ha-Olam, in which individuals are enjoined to “raise the sparks” of divine light which inhere within their souls and the world, is at once a psychological, theological, ethical, political and mystical act. Such distinctions, though perhaps useful in an initial approach to the Kabbalah, are ultimately like the ladders, described by Wittgenstein, which fall away once their purpose has been served.17 Rational Mysticism One of the chief goals of this work is to demonstrate that certain perspectives on “reality” and “truth” that had hitherto been thought of as the exclusive province of mystical experience (both within Judaism and other traditions) are accessible to rational reflection, in part via the “bi-linear” thinking that is one of the modes of understanding that emerge from the theosophical Kabbalah. This claim is explored in Chapter 6 where I describe how a consideration of the Kabbalistic doctrine of coincidentia oppositorum gives rise to a “rational mysticism” that complements the experiential mysticisms of Judaism and other spiritual traditions.

Introduction

9

Commencing from the Kabbalistic/Hasidic notions (1) that Ein-sof, the Infinite, is the union of all oppositions and contradictions, (2) that the world is an expression of multiple polarities and distinctions that are ultimately contained in and return to the divine “One,” and (3) that language is the vehicle of differentiation, multiplicity and finitude, I argue that the inexpressible unity of all things commonly reported by mystical adepts represents the intuition of a singular, unitary plenum, prior to its being sundered into polarities and difference by the word-thing (signifier-signified) distinction. While the world as it is experienced through and described by language is necessarily finite, multiple, and polarized, there nonetheless remains a trace or “echo” of the original pre-linguistic unity that is intuitable within language. This “echo” is evident in the coincidentia oppositorum (the logical interdependence of opposites) that can be shown to exist between the opposing concepts (the “antinomies”) of thought, particularly those that are evident in philosophy, theology, and psychology. Such contrasting pairs as idealism and materialism, essentialism and nominalism, free-will and determinism, fact-based science and hermeneutics, instead of naming incommensurable philosophical positions, are understood as pairs of fully interdependent ideas. Through an understanding of the conceptual interdependence of ideas that are ordinarily thought to be mutually exclusive (e.g. theism and atheism, faith and disbelief, everything and nothing) we can figuratively “listen to the echo” of the primal unity that was sundered by logic and language, and rationally reverse the creative/concealment process (in Lurianic terms, the Tzimtzum) that gives rise to finitude, difference and multiplicity. I will focus, in particular, on certain fundamental oppositions that are wrought by (and foundational for) language itself, most importantly the signifier/signified distinction, the distinction between words and things. Drawing upon ideas originating in Wittgenstein and Derrida I will argue that the distinction between words and things is both philosophically untenable and absolutely essential, and that that the second order distinction between the views (1) that the signifier/signified distinction is untenable, and (2) that this very distinction is indispensable, is itself a coincidentia oppositorum, i.e. that we could not assert (1) without assuming the truth of (2) and vice versa. When we recognize the logical interdependence of these ideas, and with this the logical interdependence of many other philosophical and theological ideas that we had hitherto thought to be mutually exclusive, we have

10

Kabbalah and Postmodernism

figuratively walked up the first rungs on the ladder of rational mystical ascent. Kabbalistic Forms of Consciousness The “coincidence of opposites” is a basic “form of consciousness” to emerge out of our consideration of the Kabbalistic symbols. However, several other forms of consciousness and modes of understanding will emerge from our philosophical and theological reflection upon Lurianic symbols and ideas. Amongst these are (1) the complete “open economy” of thought, (2) the infinite interpretability of text and world, (3) “not-knowing” and “the impossible” as basic modes of thought and being, (4) concealment and contraction as modes of creation and insight, (5) the shattering of all foundations of thought and experience, (6) creativity as a basic structure of human (and divine) consciousness, (7) language as the boundary of thought, which nonetheless requires its own transcendence, and (8) the dissolution of personal identity and the structures of the self. Each of these forms of consciousness/modes of understanding will occupy us in at least one of the chapters of this work. They will, however, be presented with the understanding that they each exist in coincidentia oppositorum with their apparent contraries, and are therefore not to be taken as final or absolute. Two additional forms of consciousness, essential to a contemporary iteration of the Kabbalah, involve a recognition of (9) the omnipresence of value, and the importance of (10) restoration, emendation and repair (Tikkun) as a fundamental mode of human being-in-the-world. These ideas serve as a background for this work, but will not be dealt with at any length. This is both because these axiological forms of consciousness are fundamental to the broader Jewish tradition (of which the Kabbalah is merely a part) and because to detail a Jewish-Kabbalistic theory of value would require an entire work unto itself, a task that I hope to undertake in the future. The Philosophical Status of the Kabbalists’ Basic Metaphor I have previously argued that the myth adumbrated by the theosophical Kabbalah, in particular the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, is a “basic metaphor,” one that provides a comprehensive account, explanation or rationale for all

Introduction

11

experience, and all things. In short, the Lurianic Kabbalah purports to provide the very sort of thing that postmodern thought in general, and Derrida in particular, regarded to be impossible. While I have held that the metaphor of the Lurianic Kabbalah is “basic” in a sense akin to the grand metaphors of Hegel and earlier metaphysicians, I have not claimed exclusivity for it. In fact, in Symbols of the Kabbalah I held that the Lurianic theosophy is one basic metaphor amongst many others, and that its appeal lay not so much in its claim to absolute truth, but rather in its comprehensiveness, non-triviality, ethical value, etc. In that sense it is one world-hypothesis, one creative way of looking at the world. The Lurianic Kabbalah as I described it in my previous work would then be one grand vision, one “symphony of ideas” amongst an indeterminate number of others. However, several considerations point to the conclusion that the Lurianic Kabbalah is potentially wider in its implications than other basic metaphors of the past. Amongst these considerations, which I detailed in Symbols of the Kabbalah and Kabbalistic Metaphors, is that the metaphor of creation/dissolution/re-creation, embodied in the Lurianic dynamic of Sefirot/Shevirah/Tikkun (as well as in many of the details of the Lurianic system) has appeared and reappeared in various guises throughout the history of ancient and modern thought. Of course, the existence of a perennial philosophy is no guarantee of its validity or truth, as history has repeatedly proven that delusion is often much more widespread than insight. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the basic myth of the Lurianic Kabbalah does appear to correspond to certain routes or archetypes of the human mind. Further, I have argued that the Lurianic metaphors correspond to fundamental patterns of psychological development, scientific progress, and dramatic narrative. I have detailed the first two of these correspondences in my book Symbols of the Kabbalah, and will discuss the third in Chapter One of the present volume. Perhaps more importantly, unlike other basic metaphors, the validity of the Lurianic theosophy is not undermined by the argument that it itself is a historical narrative constructed by humankind. This is because constructing/creating history, the world, God, and narratives about each of these, is precisely what the Lurianic Kabbalah is about! Collectively, the Lurianic symbols provide a narrative in which humanity, the world and divinity are in a continual process of creation, deconstruction, reconstruction and redemption, while the Lurianic narrative itself is subject to a similar “revisionary” process. Further, in opposition to dogmatic theology, the

12

Kabbalah and Postmodernism

Lurianic Kabbalah recognizes that both god and the world, like scripture, are subject to an indefinite if not infinite variety of interpretations, and that such infinite interpretability does not undermine, but rather provides the context for the world’s redemption (Tikkun). Thus, in contrast to many if not all overarching interpretations of the cosmos, Lurianic Kabbalah is an open system, one that is itself subject to continual revision, and which is inclusive of multiple points of view on reality. In fact, the Lurianic Kabbalah, through its doctrine of the “Breaking of the Vessels,” provides the rationale and means for its own negation and transcendence. Further, the Lurianic theosophy, through its celebration of the world’s diversity, and its adherence to the doctrine of coincidentia oppositorum, is consistently open to that which it might initially appear to exclude. For example, we will that certain Kabbalists embrace both the notion that God created man and man creates God, and the Lurianic Kabbalah suggests that these ideas are interdependent. The Lurianic metaphors of Tzimtzum, Sefirot, Shevirah and Tikkun offer a model for dialectics in general, one in which the unanticipated, the negative, the broken, and the totally other, is made part of an all encompassing but as-yetundefined, whole. While the Lurianic theosophy is in many ways commensurate with the philosophy of Hegel (the system of thought which according to many postmodernists is the culmination of and proof of the failure of western metaphysics), there is a crucial difference between Hegel’s Absolute and the Lurianist’s, Ein-sof. Hegel, in spite of an apparent openness to all perspectives, ends up privileging a series of events and ideas: Idealism, Christianity, Philosophy, Germany, the West, etc. Hegel could do this because he believed that the dialectic had in fact come to an end in his own time, indeed in his own mind. For Hegel, the Absolute was not something to be expected in the future, but was something that was already present, embodied in his system, in European culture and history. Hegel’s system became a closed one, with the result that for him the Absolute simply came to be identified with Hegelian philosophy. The Lurianic theosophy, on the other hand, as a Jewish phenomenon, is identified with a messiah that is yet to come, and its dialectic need not be subject to an artificial closure. Indeed, the Kabbalah remains open to an as yet undefined future. Y.H. Yerushalmi had written in Freud’s Moses, that “being open to the future, that is being a Jew”18 and Derrida, in his commentary of Yerushalmi’s work writes:

Introduction

13

The affirmation of the future to come…the “yes,” insofar as it is the condition of all promises of all hope, of all awaiting, of all performativity, of all opening toward the future, whatever it may be for science or for religion. I am prepared to subscribe without reserve to this affirmation made by Yerushalmi.19

Deconstruction provided a general dialectical model for the end of the 20th century just as Hegel’s philosophy provided such a model for the 19th. Opposed to the absolutism of Hegel, deconstruction nevertheless makes use of a dialectical method, in its constant discovery of what is opposed, negated, and marginalized in all that is declared to be true and whole. However, the deconstructive dialectic does not come to an arbitrary (or other) end, and deconstruction has conscientiously eschewed all efforts at systematization and metaphysics. The result is that in contrast to Hegelianism, deconstruction provides us with critique, but nothing resembling a world-view or guide for life. For this reason, many have found deconstruction unsatisfying, nihilistic and even immoral in its implications.20 The Lurianic Kabbalah is, I believe, s system that can remain open in the deconstructive sense, without surrendering its efforts to provide (an albeit) tentative weltanschauung. It does so through its multiperspectivism, its various coincidentias, and its openness to a (messianic) future.

Kabbalah, Deconstruction, Hegelianism In my previous books I have drawn attention to the important correspondence between Kabbalistic theosophy and Hegelian philosophy.21 It will be worth our while to pause for a moment and consider in a bit more depth the connection between postmodernism and Hegelian philosophy, and the relationship of each to the Kabbalah. Derrida and the postmodernists share with Hegel a keen interest in dichotomies and oppositions, and typically adopt the Hegelian view that the poles of such oppositions can neither remain pure nor exclude their opposites. Indeed part of Derrida’s deconstructive task is to show that certain ideas (e.g. absolute presence) contain as part of themselves precisely what they are meant to exclude (in our example, absence, past and future), and that the dichotomies that have been foundational for western metaphysics, including essence and accident, subject and object, fact and interpretation, and inside and outside, are each subject to a critique through which their perceived contrasts are discovered to

14

Kabbalah and Postmodernism

be contained within themselves. However, having gone this distance with Hegel, Derrida is adamant that deconstruction stops short of the Hegelian effort to synthesize new overarching concepts, which absorb the interdependence of oppositions and eventually lead to an Absolute, which is the truth of all things. Derrida makes it clear that he regards Hegel’s move towards such “totalization” a ruse, one that is both metaphysically and ethically suspect. Yet he realizes that any effort to contradict Hegel will in the end be just more grist for the Hegelian mill, which transforms all opposition into just another negative moment in the synthetic process.22 Derrida thus acknowledges that trying to refute Hegel is akin to trying to slay the mythical Hydra; when one head is cut off, several grow in its place. Indeed, Derrida goes so far as to suggest that thought itself cannot escape the Hegelian dialectic, i.e. that we cannot defeat Hegel by thinking. For Derrida, if one desires to burn Hegel, one must also consume the fire (thought, philosophy) as well.23 In Glas, Derrida goes so far as to announce the death of the distinction between the signified and signifier, on the grounds that this distinction is based on a false opposition between language and the world, perhaps suggesting that this is the sort of radical move that is needed in order to escape Hegel’s Absolute. Yet, in other places, Derrida readily acknowledges that one could not think, speak or write without this very (false) distinction. To defeat the Hegelian dialectic, it seems one would have to, in effect, ‘fall silent,’ stop speaking and thinking altogether. It is thus unclear whether Derrida actually offers an argument against the Hegelian Absolute, or whether he is simply repulsed by it for other, perhaps ethical or political reasons; for example, on the grounds that in its effort to overcome difference, it makes western, indeed German metaphysics, the final word in philosophy and history, and thereby serves as a vehicle to undermine the power of substantive political change. For Derrida, the Hegelian Absolute is supposed to be inclusive of all things and all perspectives, but it results in the dissolution of difference, and the belittling of all ‘other’ (in Hegel’s view ‘partial’) perspectives. Derrida writes “If there were a definition of différance it would be precisely the limiting, the interruption, and the destruction of the Hegelian dialectic everywhere it operates.”24 According to Derrida, Hegel believes that he will receive a return of “significance and meaning” on all of his metaphysical speculations, and that in the end everything can be made to make sense. Derrida tells us that for Hegel all can be rendered meaningful because there is nothing other than

Introduction

15

meaning. For Derrida, however, there is always something that exceeds meaning, and from which one cannot expect a metaphysical “return.” In contrast to Hegel, Derrida argues for a general or open economy of language, one in which significance can never be fully circumscribed. The Hegelian Aufhebung (lifting up) cannot lift up, negate and then conserve for its own purposes, the trace, which is the excess of meaning beyond simple presence. As I have shown elsewhere, the Hegelian dialectic was both anticipated by the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, and can be marshaled to provide the basis for a contemporary philosophical reading of the Lurianic Kabbalah.25 I believe that the opposition between Hegelianism and postmodernism is not nearly as strong as Derrida would suppose, and if one eliminates or ignores certain (at times fatal) prejudices and inconsistencies in the application of Hegel’s own philosophical method,26 Hegel’s thought still provides a foundation for a systematic philosophy/theology that is both deeply respectful of difference, and open to its own transcendence. As Mark Taylor writes: “contrary to common opinion, Hegel is not a philosopher of identity, for whom difference is either penultimate or epiphenomenal... [For Hegel] instead of identity dissipating difference, difference constitutes identity... To the extent that Hegel refuses to reduce difference to identity, he anticipates one of the most important points repeatedly advanced in deconstructive philosophy and criticism.”27 Deconstruction, in Taylor’s view, actually proposes a “return to Hegel.” For Hegel, it is only via a sojourn through the historical and the specific that the Absolute comes to realize itself. The problem is that Hegel tends to privilege certain ideas, historical eras, and cultures, and is thus guilty of the very marginalization and disregard for the differences that his dialectical philosophy ought to fully embrace. Taylor observes that Hegel tends to “slip back” into the very position he is criticizing, especially in his claims for Absolute knowledge. I would argue that the dialectic can be better conceived as a refusal of such absolute knowledge, as a radical critique of any position that seems to be at rest or regard itself as a final interpretation. A true Hegelian “Absolute” would, paradoxically, never achieve a final perfection, but would, like the Kabbalist’s Ein-sof, be continually in the process of creation and emendation; indefinitely self-critical and changing to accommodate the “new.”

16

Kabbalah and Postmodernism Towards a Contemporary Kabbalistic Theology

Through my reading of the Lurianic system within the context of contemporary thought I have endeavored to formulate a theology that is relevant to our times. A major tenet of this work is that Kabbalistic theosophy, which provides a mythical account of God, the elements of creation, humanity, and the purpose of existence, anticipates, and is highly compatible with, the relativistic, perspectivist, anti-foundational sensibility of postmodernism, and further, that the Kabbalah is able to adopt and integrate precisely those postmodernist ideas (multi-culturalism, multiperspectivism, non-foundationalism, philosophical relativism, and even atheism) that have traditionally been thought to be antithetical to a religious or theological world-view. A major tenet of Jewish mystical thought is that God, the world, and humankind are conditioned by, and are ultimately a union of, opposite, even contradictory notions and ideas, and it therefore should come as no surprise that a Kabbalistic theology should itself rest upon ideas that theologians would typically exclude. As I have already warned, readers of this volume, particularly those who have been exposed on the one hand to traditional accounts of Jewish mysticism, or on the other hand to contemporary “new age” presentations, may find the Kabbalah I describe rather unfamiliar and even a bit unsettling. The Kabbalah, like any great spiritual and textual tradition, is multi-layered and multi-textured, and those who come to it will inevitably focus upon one or more of its aspects, while de-emphasizing and even ignoring others. Although in practice the Kabbalah cannot be neatly divided into aspects, for our present purposes, it will be convenient to articulate five general strata of Kabbalistic literature, even if in the actual texts these strata inevitably intermingle and are conditioned by one another: (1) Philosophical and general theoretical aspects of the Kabbalah, in which the Kabbalists proclaim, for example, that there are an infinite number of readings and interpretations of any given moment or text, that the absolute, Ein-sof, is a union of all contradictions, or that the world is itself comprised of “letters in the holy tongue.” Such general, abstract pronouncements are frequent enough within Kabbalistic literature as to constitute the basis of a Kabbalistic philosophy (as opposed to theosophy), and will form the basis for much that is discussed in this book.

Introduction

17

(2) Theosophical aspects of the Kabbalah, in which Ein-sof (the Infinite), the Sefirot (divine archetypes), and various higher and lower worlds are described, and the reciprocal impact of these worlds and man’s soul are adumbrated. Such theosophical descriptions can be taken more or less literally or interpreted philosophically and psychologically. While philosophical and psychological interpretations of Kabbalistic theosophy do not exhaust their significance, the main direction of the present work is to view such theosophical symbols as Ein-sof (The Infinite), Tzimtzum (Divine Contraction), Sefirot (Divine Archetypes), Otiyot Yesod (Foundational Letters), Shevirat ha-Kelim (The Breaking of the Vessels) and Tikkun ha-Olam (The Restoration of the World) in philosophical and psychological terms. (3) Mystical and theurgic aspects of the Kabbalah, i.e. descriptions of mystical cleaving or union with the divine, as well as the techniques that enable one to achieve such union. These techniques are said by the Kabbalists to both create an exalted state in the mystical adept, and to have a critical (theurgic) impact upon the divine realm, redressing imbalances and schisms within the cosmic order. These aspects of the Kabbalah will also play a role (if not a central one) in the present work, one goal of which is to attempt to understand such mystical experience within the context of a non-absolutist Kabbalistic theology. (4) Biblical, midrashic and halakhic (Jewish legal) references. These constitute a very large, if not the largest, strata within many Kabbalistic texts. The theosophical entities that populate the Kabbalistic universe are allegorically and symbolically related to biblical figures, stories and events, are understood as providing a rationale for the various mitzvoth (commandments), or are considered within the context of Jewish ritual and prayer. From a traditional, Jewish point of view, it is this stratum of the Kabbalah that is in many ways closest to the main body of Judaism and is thus often emphasized. While the Kabbalah originates within and is integrally connected with Jewish religion, culture, literature, and law, the emphasis in the present work will be on those aspects of the Kabbalah that provide the foundation for a general theology, spirituality and ethic. While such a general theology must be expressed in a particular idiom, the major thrust of the present work is to articulate

18

Kabbalah and Postmodernism those ideas that make the Kabbalah a universal rather than a particular theological discourse.

(5) Ideas, superstitions, beliefs and practices that from a contemporary point of view are historically and culturally bound, and which do not readily translate into a universal idiom. Examples of such ideas are Isaac Luria’s prescriptions for particular penitence with regard to sexual offenses, or his practice of metoposcopy, the interpretation of Hebrew letters that presumably appear on the forehead of individuals and the presence or absence of which is said to reveal that the individual has performed or neglected certain mitzvoth. While such ideas, beliefs and “superstitions” are not necessarily excluded from a contemporary philosophical (and particularly psychological) approach to the Kabbalah, they are treated rather sparingly in this book. The present work treats each of these five Kabbalistic strata, but emphasizes the first three, paying less attention to the last two. Traditional Kabbalists have varied in their emphases, some focusing on the theosophical aspects (2), others on the ecstatic (experiential) aspects of Kabbalistic doctrine (3), and still others on the halakhic/midrashic (4), or practical/magical (5) aspects of Kabbalistic thought. Most contemporary popular accounts tend to focus upon these experiential, mythological and practical aspects of the Kabbalah. In contrast, the purely philosophical or theoretical aspects of the Kabbalah (1) have generally not been emphasized by the traditionalists, the popularizers, or the academicians. My goal in this work is to pass the Kabbalah through the matrix of postmodern thought and in doing so to “extract the philosophical and theological gold” that is dispersed within the sources of Jewish mysticism. My belief is that such a passage is needed, not only because of the strong affinity between the Kabbalah and postmodernism, but because postmodern thought (which can be said to have begun with Nietzsche’s declaration of the “death of God”) poses one of the strongest challenges to traditional theology. A Kabbalistic theology that survives passage through the gates of postmodern thought will thus be one that is far more able to sustain the intellectual and psychological challenges of the contemporary world.

Chapter One

Postmodernism and Jewish Mysticism

The Tenor of Post-modernist Thought: Multiple Narratives and the Loss of Center

T

here is something rather self-defeating in any effort to define the nature of postmodernism, a “non-movement” that rests, in part, on the impossibility of providing definitions. However, I believe we can say this much: those who have been regarded as exponents of postmodernism, share a radical skepticism towards the possibility of providing an ultimate, absolute, or singular account of human knowledge, practice and belief, and they hold that the knowledge, beliefs, and practices (religious, scientific or otherwise) which previous generations had assumed to be foundational and absolute are best understood as social and linguistic constructions that have no particular claim to truth, except within the cultural and linguistic framework within which they arise. What one takes to be “truth” is simply one possible narrative amongst countless others, and as Marc Taylor has argued, it is little more than an illusion to hold that such things as cosmic and world history, or even individual human lives, form a single story or even a coherent one. The world and our lives, according to Taylor, are “inscribed in multiple and often contradictory texts,” and, depending upon the context and our perspective, what once seemed inherently true and meaningful can suddenly appear arbitrary and senseless. In this regard, Taylor quotes Yeats well-known phrase: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism

Amongst the “postmodern” philosophers to be discussed in the following pages, Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) is perhaps the most intriguing from a Jewish mystical point of view. As will become clear, Derrida, whose philosophy of deconstruction brought about a revolution in literary criticism and in European, and, to a lesser degree, British and American philosophy,1 has much in common with the Kabbalah, an observation that was made by several of his contemporaries.2 While Derrida himself denied that he was a postmodernist3 or that he had anything in common with the mystics ,4 he has repeatedly been associated with postmodern philosophy,5 and it has been suggested that he advocated the form, if not the content of the “apophantics”, the “negative theology” frequently associated with mysticism.6 Indeed, as we will see, a case can be made that Derrida is in many ways a modern representative of Jewish mysticism, and the Kabbalah, in particular. While Moshe Idel7 and Elliot Wolfson8 have recently drawn some interesting parallels between Derrida’s writings and specific Jewish mystical texts, and Adeena Karasick has suggested certain parallels between deconstruction and the Kabbalah in general,9 I am aware of no comprehensive effort to trace the and develop the relationship between Derrida’s thought and the Lurianic Kabbalah. One of the purposes of the present study is to help fill this important vacuum in contemporary scholarship. I will not here enter into the dialogue and debates over the lines joining or separating postmodernism from deconstruction, post-structuralism, constructivism, anti-foundationalism etc.10 While there are those who argue for a relatively hard distinction between these various terms (and I have no doubt that such distinctions can be made) it is useful to treat them together and to identify Derrida and deconstruction as an example, if not the prime exemplar, of postmodern philosophy. In these pages I will regard Derrida and deconstruction as “postmodern”, and also discuss a rather broad range of other thinkers who have adopted basic ideas regarding the linguistic and cultural relativity of religion, philosophy, science and other “foundational” institutions and traditions. In this sense, postmodernism includes not only those philosophers, such as Wittgenstein, who have participated in philosophy’s “linguistic turn”, but, as Richard Rorty has pointed out, a whole host of thinkers, going back at least to Nietzsche, who have radically questioned the possibility of an absolute foundation for knowledge about

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ourselves and our world. From this perspective, Derrida and deconstruction, is simply the most recent and acute representative of this anti-foundationalist trend. If modernism inaugurated the shift from a foundationalism of religion and authority to one of science and reason, postmodernism inaugurates the relativization of religion, authority, science and reason, each of which are now understood as a constructed product of context, culture and language. It will be worth our while to explore certain developments in culture, the arts and philosophy that have impacted upon the postmodern world-view. The philosopher, Jean-Francois Lyotard is frequently cited as inaugurating the postmodern movement in philosophy with his 1979 book, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.11 In this book Lyotard argued that stability and order are maintained in both traditional and modern societies via “master narratives,” through which a society or culture articulates and justifies itself and its beliefs. According to Lyotard, all societal institutions, including those of education, religion, and science are founded upon such master narratives, which dictate what counts as knowledge and what is to be regarded as valuable. In addition, individuals who adhere to these master narratives are provided with a compelling story of their origins and ultimate destiny. Christianity, Marxism, liberal capitalism, and experimental science, each provide a master narrative in this sense. However, according to Lyotard, such narratives mask the contradictions, instability and disorder that are inherent within them and the cultures within which they appear. Further, each of these narratives is a product of what Wittgenstein spoke of as a “language game,” a form of life and discourse that is set up for a certain purpose and within which such terms as “reality,” “truth,” “origins,” “history,” and “goals” are defined. Such definitions are made in a self-justifying manner and cannot be further validated by appealing to any standards or criteria outside the language game itself. Lyotard critiqued and ultimately rejected such master narratives, and argued that the postmodern condition is one in which only local and “mini” narratives” can be sustained. Such mini-narratives can explain local and subcultural practices and events but can make no claim to completeness, stability, universality, or absolute truth. It is important to realize that postmodern philosophy is generally critical of modern philosophy (which is identified with such notions as the primacy

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of science and reason, human progress and objectivity), but has much in common with modernism in art and literature, with its movement towards subjectivity, fragmentation, discontinuity, and the rejection of formal standards and distinctions between genres. However, in contrast to modern art, which often sees the loss of center and growing fragmentation as a lamentable indication of a spiritual, aesthetic and moral decline, postmodernism celebrates the dissolution of foundations, and sees it either as an opportunity for liberation, or, more radically, as inaugurating the possibility of linguistic, artistic and philosophical “play.” Derrida argued that traditional systems of knowledge and power attempt to defend against the inevitable breakdowns in their “constructed” narratives, through the positing of an original or foundational logos or utterance. This logos, which is obvious in religions such as Judaism and Christianity, but which is also evident in national, racial and gender politics, involves a privileging of certain concepts and terms (generally one pole of a linguistic polarity, e.g. God vs. world, man vs. woman, and good vs. bad). Derrida refers to such privileging as “logocentrism”12 and argues that in order to move beyond the dominance of logocentric, constructed knowledge one must critique or deconstruct it. What then is deconstruction? A deconstructive reading of any text locates within that text an ‘outside,’ which the text originally appears to exclude. Heidegger had originally used this notion to combat dogmatic theology and to open possibilities for future thought. He did this by reexploring the past, and discovering what was implied but left unthought and unsaid in the early texts, e.g. those of the Greeks. Deconstruction generalizes Heidegger’s procedure, and entails a reversal of the privilege accorded to certain poles of each of a number of binary oppositions in discourse and thought. The second, unprivileged pole is always thought to be the ‘outside,’ but a deconstructive reading discovers traces of this outside at the heart of the privileged term. Derrida’s understanding of ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ is paradigmatic for this type of deconstructive analysis. Presence is meant to exclude absence but, on Derrida’s analysis the present moment, for example, is constituted by an absent past and future without which “presence” would have no sense. As such, a “trace” of that which is presumed to be absent (the past and the future) is actually constitutive of what is present. Derrida, like Heidegger,

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argues that traditional philosophy is founded upon a privileging of ‘presence’—a privileging which Derrida deconstructs in his critique of Husserl’s phenomenology.13 Derrida seeks to overcome such privilegings and to replace philosophical polarities such as presence and absence with terms, such as ‘trace’ and ‘difference’ that are ‘undecidable’ between the various poles and oppositions. Derrida further holds that the privileging of presence has led to an elevation of speech over writing. Derrida works to show how this is true even for Plato, who in the Phaedrus denigrates writing, both for its failure to be fully present (like speech) and its reference to an absent object. However, once the myth of “presence” is exploded, writing can be “rewritten” into its rightful place within philosophy. According to John Caputo, who is perhaps Derrida’s most important theological interpreter, the goal of deconstruction is very clear: “to show that there is never a final word.”14 While this may have indeed been the goal of deconstruction in the early years, Derrida moved beyond his early concerns of opening discourse to reinterpretation and recontextualization to a consideration of substantive philosophical and theological issues, e.g. the nature of faith and the meaning of messianism. Derrida held that his concerns with such issues, like his view that “deconstruction is justice,” flow naturally from his early emphasis on pluralism and difference, and that these in turn follow from fundamental considerations regarding “presence” and the nature of language. Thus, according to Derrida, a concern with substantive ethical/theological issues was implicit in deconstruction from the very beginning. Postmodernism thus has a positive moment that complements its skepticism and relativism. If no single perspective can claim hegemony over truth, then all perspectives are valuable and must be included in the marketplace of ideas. Thus postmodernists, and especially deconstructionists, have championed those cultures, theories, readings and interpretations that in the past have been marginalized because they lie beyond what is considered acceptable by the “ruling discourse.” As such, postmodernism has been associated with feminism, multi-culturalism, and the politics of liberation. Postmodernism is in many ways a predictable consequence, and even a reflection, of the progressive destabilization of human life and institutions that has occurred throughout most of the world over the past 150 years. Whereas men and women of previous generations could conceivably live out their entire lives within the context of a single meaning-structure,

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contemporary humanity is increasingly confronted with the relativity and transience of institutions and forms of life that at one time lent security and coherence to the individual and community. Postmodernism would, at least at first blush, not only reflect the erosion of religious authority that we have witnessed over the past century and a half, but also be antithetical to any religious doctrine, including the Kabbalah, which purports to explain the inner-workings of the Godhead, the fundamental nature of the cosmos, and the meaning of human life. Indeed, according to Marc Taylor in Erring, the chaos resulting from the “loss of center” and the consequent recognition that our lives no longer have a single locus of significance actually brings about the death of God, self and history, at least as these have been traditionally understood. Since, according to Taylor, the western religious traditions each rest upon absolute notions of God, history, and self, religion as it has been understood in the west is incompatible with the postmodernist vision. As such, according to Taylor, “Postmodernism opens with the sense of irrevocable loss and incurable fault.”15 Further, “Deconstruction is the ‘hermeneutic’ of the death of God,” and deconstructive theology cannot be anything if it is not utterly transgressive. (Taylor has since modified his views, and for good reason, as his declaration that deconstruction presides over the death of God, etc. places deconstruction in the decidedly un-deconstructive position of marginalizing a form of discourse, i.e. that of traditional religion. A more conservative view would be that deconstruction undermines the claim of traditional religion to be a super-discourse above all other modes of thought and superior to all other accounts of human experience). It will be part of my task in this book to explore the extent to which the postmodernist and deconstructive critique of traditional religion is applicable to the Lurianic Kabbalah, and to examine the possibility that the Lurianic Kabbalah can provide a valuable corrective to certain aspects of postmodern thought. I will attempt to show that the Lurianic Kabbalah actually presents us with a theological system that encompasses the very anti-foundational tenets of deconstructive thought, that the Lurianic “system” is in effect both a system and a non-system, and that a fundamental principle of the Kabbalah is that all fundamental principles, including those of Jewish mysticism, are not only open to indefinite reinterpretation, but are also, in order to be what they are, continually subject to their own deconstruction, revision and transcendence. It will be my task to show that while the Kabbalah anticipates and is quite compatible with many postmodern ideas it is so without

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abandoning the effort to provide a coherent, and comprehensive, account of the universe and humanity’s role within it. The Lurianic Kabbalah The connection between postmodernism and Jewish mysticism is most clearly evident when we turn to the most mature and influential of the Kabbalistic theosophical systems, that of Isaac Luria (1534-72). I will provide a brief summary of the Lurianic Kabbalah here. Those interested in a more detailed philosophically oriented account are referred to works by Scholem,16 Schochet,17 Jacobs,18 and Menze and Padeh,19 as well as to my earlier books, Symbols of the Kabbalah and Kabbalistic Metaphors. Luria was perhaps the greatest of the Kabbalistic visionaries. Living and teaching in the mystical community of Safed, which had already produced such luminaries as Moses Cordovero and Joseph Karo, Luria developed a highly original theosophical system, which, though rooted in the classical Kabbalah of the Zohar, introduced a number of symbols and innovative ideas that determined the course of later Jewish mysticism, and, in the 18th century, became the foundation for Hasidism. Luria himself wrote comparatively little, and it is mainly through the works of his disciples, most notably Chayyim Vital (1543-1620) that we are familiar with Luria’s unique system of theosophy. The Lurianic Kabbalah is an extremely complex system of thought,20 one that integrates a variety of symbols into what appears, at least on the surface, to be a purely mythological account of the creation and the ultimate destiny of the world. Like previous Kabbalists, Luria begins and ends his theosophical system with the one, infinite God, who is beyond all knowledge, being, existence and time, yet who contains and sustains within itself all that ever was, will, or could be. This godhead, the Kabbalist’s Einsof (The Infinite, literally “without end”) is Ayin (nothingness) prior to creation, but realizes and actualizes its potential as the “All”, with the advent of the finite worlds. Ein-sof exists in a state of coincidentia oppositorum, one in which the opposites of being and nothingness co-exist in a state of interdependence. Indeed, all other oppositions and polarities exist in

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism

coincidentia oppositorum within Ein-sof, which, according to the 13th century Kabbalist Azriel, is the “synthesis of everything and its opposite.”21 Ein-sof is the source, substance and goal of all things, and its “light”, the Or Ein-sof (Light of the Infinite) is the energy of the cosmos. However, in order to complete itself as both Ayin and Yesh (nothing and being) Ein-sof must manifest itself in a world. It does so through an act in which it negates, withdraws, contracts and conceals its own infinite being, thereby providing an opening or place for the existence of finite things. Luria termed this act the Tzimtzum (concealment and contraction). Through it, Ein-sof withdraws from a point within itself, yielding a “metaphysical space” for an indefinitely large series of finite, seemingly independent worlds (Olamot) that are nonetheless dependent upon Ein-sof for their substance and continued vitality. The Lurianists also understood the Tzimtzum in linguistic terms, as a contraction and concealment of divine light into the letters of language, one which brings about distinctions between ideas, values and, ultimately, all finite entities. As such, they regarded the Tzimtzum (and creation itself) as a linguistic act, which is at once a concealment and a revelation. According to Luria, acts of contraction and concealment alternate with emanations of divine light. In this way, the cosmos initially takes the form of Adam Kadmon, the Primordial Man, who embodies within himself the fundamental ideas and values from which the finite world and the soul of man are created. The Kabbalists held that these archetypal ideas and values are ten in number, and they referred to them as the Sefirot, a term that is related to Hebrew roots for “book,” “number,” and “sapphirine splendor.” The Sefirot are dimensions of meaning and value that initially exist within Ein-sof (as divine traits) and which subsequently become the elements of the created world. They are, according to Luria, emanated through the eyes, mouth, nose and ears of the Primordial Man, and in their original form they are vessels (Kelim) for containing the further emanations of the divine, infinite light. The Sefirot embody the archetypal values of Will, Wisdom, Understanding, Kindness, Judgment, Beauty, Endurance, Splendor, Foundation, and Kingship, and are, according to Luria, the molecular components of the cosmos. Luria, followed previous Kabbalists in holding that the Sefirot are complementary to and even identical with the Otiyot Yesod, the “Twenty-two

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Foundational Letters” of divine speech, which the proto-Kabbalistic, Sefer Yetzirah, had declared to be the building blocks of creation. Indeed, the Kabbalists held that the world is constructed upon a linguistic model (the Primordial Torah), is composed of linguistic elements, and that both Torah and world are subject to a multitude, if not infinite, series of interpretations, at least one for each of the six hundred thousand souls that were said to be present at Mt. Sinai for the revelation of the Torah. Luria held that the Sefirot are organized into five basic Olamot (Worlds) (each of which contain varying proportions of each of the ten Sefirot), and that in addition they comprise a multitude of lesser worlds and several divine personalities (Partzufim), the latter representing the masculine and feminine aspects of God. Our world, Assiyah (the world of "Making") is the most remote from Ein-sof. Luria was again completely original in his view that because the Sefirot as they were originally emanated were disunified and incomplete, they could not be sustained, and thus shattered under the impact of the infinite light. This shattering, known as the Shevirat Ha-Kelim (the Breaking of the Vessels) brings the cosmos into a state of exile (galut) in which everything is out of place and the lower worlds are riddled with spiritual, moral and psychological contradictions. This rupture repeats itself in all places and all times, with the result that every thing, event and individual exists in a state of alienation and fragmentation. As was the case with Tzimtzum, Luria and his disciples regarded the Shevirat Ha-Kelim as a linguistic event, one in which the combination of letters that were to be the foundation and structure of the world, are disarranged and severed from one another.22 Further, as a result of the Breaking of the Vessels, the masculine and feminine aspects of the cosmos, which had hitherto been face to face (panim el panim), are rent apart, turning their backs on one another (acher v’ acher), and thereby exacerbating the condition of cosmic exile. Shards from the broken vessels tumble through the metaphysical void (tehiru), capturing sparks (netzotzim) of divine light and forming husks (kellipot), which are comprised of a lifeless outer shell and a divine inner core that is alienated from its source in Ein-sof. These husks constitute the dark and evil realm of the Sitra Achra (the "Other Side"), but are also the constituents of our actual world. Thus, the world as we experience it is composed of metaphysical/linguistic elements, each of which conceal and encumber a spark of divine light or meaning.

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With the advent of the Breaking of the Vessels, the Sefirot immediately begin to reorganize themselves into Partzufim (Visages or Personalities), which in archetypal fashion represent the developmental stages of humanity, from birth to old age. The Partzufim restore the world by engaging in conjugal relations. However, this restoration, which is known as Tikkun haOlam (the restoration and emendation of the World), must be completed by humankind. It is humankind's divinely appointed task to extract (birur) and liberate the captured sparks of divine light and significance from their shells, gather them together, and raise them on high so they may once again rejoin the Infinite, Ein-sof. In performing mitzvoth, the spiritual, ethical, and intellectual acts prescribed by Jewish law and tradition, humanity completes creation and, in a fashion, gives full actuality to God Himself. The restored world of Tikkun is the very meaning of creation and the ultimate destiny of the universe. It is only with this restoration and emendation of the world that Ein-sof, which had originally been Ayin (nothing), is completed and fully becomes itself. The above, then, is a brief account of the Lurianic Kabbalah, its “fundamental "myth", or "basic metaphor." It is certainly a “master narrative” in Lyotard’s sense, and like all master narratives it should, on the postmodernist view, be subject to deconstructive critique. Nevertheless, a close examination of this narrative reveals that it contains many, if not all of the elements, of such a deconstructive critique within itself, and is, in many ways, premonitory of fundamental postmodernist ideas. Throughout this book, I will have occasion to return to the Lurianic narrative and its elements. Here I would like to briefly discuss how several of its elements anticipate certain trends postmodern thought. The Shattering of the Foundations As we have seen, an important, perhaps the most important, characteristic of postmodern thought is the view that the ideas and structures that once rendered the world meaningful have shattered with the result that there is no longer a secure, inviolate foundation for meaning, faith or belief. The Lurianic symbol of the Shevirat ha-Kelim, with its implication that our world is broken, exiled and displaced is thus an important precursor of postmodernist/deconstructive thought. As the postmodernists have so clearly

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articulated (and the earlier quotation from Yeats illustrates) we experience ourselves as living amongst the shards of the beliefs, values and institutions that structured the lives of our ancestors. What more powerful symbol for our current state affairs than that of the Kabbalist’s Shevirah, the Breaking of the Vessels? For the Shevirah is an image which represents that the foundational ideas and values of our world are displaced and shattered, their fragments tumbling through the metaphysical void only to form a distorted, confused, alienated and broken reality. The question that arises from any contemporary consideration of the Kabbalist’s Shevirat ha-Kelim is not whether the vessels have broken, i.e. whether the clear, absolute foundations of the past have been shattered and displaced—that this has occurred is apparent—but rather, what our response should be to their having shattered. While some, like Taylor in Erring,23 and the psychologist James Hillman,24 and even Derrida, initially suggested that our response should simply be one of being open to, accepting and even celebrating the shattering, these and other postmodern thinkers inevitably embraced certain (new) values (for Derrida—multiculturalism, radical democracy, for Hillman—“soul-making”) which are broadly compatible with the Lurianic response to the shattering, i.e. its doctrine of Tikkun ha-Olam, the “repair” and “restoration” of the world. The first step in the process of Tikkun, may well be to recognize that in a postmodernist culture, the vessels cannot actually be “reassembled” and that there is no turning back to a system within which the sense of all things has an absolute pre-given foundation. The Kabbalists themselves recognized that the “repair of the world” could not be a simple restoration of what existed before, but rather that the “World of Tikkun,” unlike the original “World of Points,” will be a world that bears the unmistakable likeness of humankind.25 Tikkun, far from being a restoration of an old order, is, in fact, the creation of something entirely new and human from the shattered pieces of a once pristine divine world. Further, no one can say precisely what the World of Tikkun will be like; the Kabbalists linked it to the ingathering of the exiles and the advent of the messiah, but were hardly more specific. Indeed, according to some of the Lurianists, the cosmos is destined to move through a series of cyclical ruptures and restorations, and just as there is no absolute foundation to the universe, there is also no final conclusion or fulfillment.

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism Overcoming Binary Oppositions

A second important characteristic of postmodernist and deconstructive thought is an interest in overcoming the “binary oppositions” that have characterized western philosophy. Amongst these oppositions are God and world, good and evil, darkness and light, knowledge and ignorance, meaning and absurdity, permanence and change, identity and difference, matter and mind, and a whole host of other dualities.26 These opposites cannot, according to traditional metaphysics and theology, coexist peacefully; there is an asymmetry in which one member of each dyad is privileged, valued and dominant, and the other is rejected, devalued and debased. While at times philosophers have reversed the privileging of certain of these terms (e.g. between God and world, or between permanence and change), Taylor, following Derrida, argues that a radical, postmodern theology will not simply reverse the privileging, for example, of sacred and profane, or sanity and madness (to take two examples of the many polarities he describes) but will effect a “dialectical inversion” that dissolves these dichotomies. “What is needed,” Taylor says, “is a critical lever with which the entire inherited tradition can be creatively disorganized.”27 Deconstruction is conceptualized as just such a lever. Deconstruction seeks to, in Taylor’s words, “unravel the very fabric” of Western metaphysics and theology by undermining the structure that maintains opposites, separates them, and privileges one over the other. However, in spite of Derrida’s introduction of such terms as the “trace” and “différance” deconstruction does not (at least avowedly) propose a new theoretical structure as a substitute for traditional metaphysics, theology, etc., but rather works within the original discourse to subvert it. As Taylor puts it, deconstruction wanders, and is inscribed, between the opposites it subverts, creating a ceaseless play of opposites, a “milieu,” which is the “nonoriginal origin” of all that is and is not.28 Like deconstruction, the Kabbalah works to overcome the dualisms that define traditional metaphysics and theology, and it does this by openly introducing an alternate discourse and theoretical structure. When one attempts to understand or define the main symbols of the Lurianic Kabbalah in terms of the categories of traditional metaphysics, it becomes apparent that each of these symbols deconstructs and transcends one or more of the basic dualities within which metaphysics has traditionally been cast. For example, the Kabbalistic notion of Ein-sof (the Infinite) is both Yesh (all) and Ayin

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(nothing), the object of both faith and unbelief29, and both the origin of humanity, and humanity’s creation. Tzimtzum (concealment, contraction) is both the primordial act of creation and negation, both revelation and concealment, and both expansion and limitation. The Sefirot are the permanent, essential elements or archetypes of reality, yet by definition they undergo continual flux and change. The Shevirat ha-Kelim (Breaking of the Vessels) is at once an act of destruction and creation. Both the Shevirah (rupture) and the Tzimtzum are at the origin of evil, but they are also essential for the good. Tikkun (restoration, emendation) is both the act which restores broken values while at the same time the very origin of the values which it seeks to repair. The examples could be continued. As I argued in Symbols of the Kabbalah, in explicating these and other Kabbalistic symbols via traditional binary metaphysical notions, we momentarily catch a glimpse of their significance in relation to the old terms before the very metaphysical structures that afford us that glimpse collapse in the face of our new conceptions. Kabbalistic notions such as Ein-sof, Tzimtzum, Shevirah and Tikkun are deconstructive of the very binary notions (being-non-being, concealment-revelation, destruction-creation, completion-origin, good-evil) that we must utilize in order to provide them with a traditional metaphysical sense, and in the end we must learn to accept the Kabbalist’s notions on their own terms, without attempting to translate them into our prior, dualistic, metaphysics. The role of Kabbalistic symbols in overcoming the binary oppositions of traditional metaphysics and common-sense will be explored in greater detail in subsequent chapters. We will see that the Kabbalistic/Hasidic notion of achdut hashvaah (the coincidence of opposites) is the major intellectual lever through which the Kabbalah reconceptualizes God, humanity and the world. The Role of Negation One binary opposition, affirmation/negation plays a particularly important role in postmodern thought. Like Hegel, postmodern theorists have placed an emphasis on negation as a critical moment in language and thought. Gasche, for example, holds that negativity can be regarded as “a sort of deep structure underlying the system of differences and oppositions.”30 Negativity in effect creates the interplay of oppositions that constitute

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thought, language and experience. A similar emphasis on negation is present in the Lurianic Kabbalah; in what might be referred to as the three Kabbalistic moments of negation: the primordial Ayin (Nothingness), Tzimtzum, (Concealment/Contraction) and Shevirah (Breakage/Destruction). However, as in postmodernism, for the Kabbalists the negative is “permeable” to the positive and vice versa. Each of the Kabbalistic moments sets the stage for cosmic affirmations that realize creation (Ein-sof), establish values (the Sefirot) and restore the world (Tikkun). The Infinite Play of Significance For deconstruction, the dialectic of thought not only inverts and subverts the dichotomies upon which traditional metaphysical/theological thinking is based, but remains forever “errant.” Deconstructive thought is forever nomadic and transitory, without either an ultimate foundation or a final goal or place of rest. It is “repeatedly slipping through the holes” of the system of thought it deconstructs and is dependent upon, and it is through such nomadic, errant, slipping and wandering that it creates a labyrinthine world, which, according to Taylor, is the arena of postmodern theology. For deconstruction, “Ideas are never fixed but are always in transition...”31 There are no complete books, only indefinitely open, broken texts. Because postmodern thought is deconstructive of traditional dichotomies and aseities, it cannot properly be called either theistic or atheistic, religious or secular, believing or non-believing. As such, Taylor sees deconstruction as itself graphing a “scriptural network” which continuously re-inscribes the infinite play of the “divine milieu.” The Kabbalah too, transcends the distinctions between theism and atheism, faith and unbelief, etc. The Kabbalist Azriel, for example, tells us that Ein-sof is the principle in which everything hidden and visible meet, and as such it is the common root of both faith and unbelief.32 Indeed, for the Kabbalists, the infinite principle reveals itself precisely at the point where ideas such as God, faith, and the good are transformed into and contain their opposites. The Kabbalah, like deconstruction, creates an open, labyrinthine discourse, one in which symbols and ideas are constantly in transition. For the Kabbalists, scripture is never fixed in its meaning, but is rather subject to infinite interpretation. Scholem, for example, speaks of the

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Kabbalistic belief in the “unlimited mystical plasticity of the divine word,” quoting the Kabbalist Azulai to the effect that each time a man reads a given verse of Torah the combination of its linguistic elements change in response to the call of the moment.33 Yet the Kabbalah is not content to remain with such “errant wandering” and indeterminacy of meaning, but rather sets up a dialectic between infinite interpretability and unitary meaning, between the proliferation of difference and the unity of all things, between a deconstructive critique of the tradition and a restoration of the very tradition that has been subverted. This is the dialectic between Shevirah and Tikkun, what might be spoken of as the Kabbalah’s turning of the deconstructive gaze upon deconstruction itself. Domination and the Dissolution of God and Self Postmodern thought challenges the thematics of “domination” and “master-slave,” which have characterized modern western consciousness. According to Taylor, the modern loss of faith in a transcendent, controlling God initially yields a humanistic atheism, in which the characteristics that were once thought of as belonging to the deity are transferred to the self, the nation or humanity as a whole. The demise of a sovereign God coincides with the birth of the sovereign Self.34 This transition results in a shift from classical theology to modern anthropology. However, humanistic atheism remains wedded to a psychology of mastery in which an individual, coherent, and centered self attempts to dominate others, utilize an environment, and deny the power of death over life. Such a view, however, is self-defeating, and ultimately leads to a further loss of center, i.e. the dissolution of the self. The attempt to transcend death leads to a future orientation that results in the repression of life.35 Deconstruction exposes the recurrent but futile human effort to achieve domination by suppressing difference, rationalizing experience, securing presence and knowledge, and in the process endeavoring to overcome death.36 This struggle for mastery is however, selfdefeating, as the “slave” - or whoever and whatever was subjugated (absence, meaninglessness, difference, the suppressed, etc.) returns to overcome the master, an event which, in both psychoanalytic and philosophical terms, can be termed the “return of the repressed.” Where does the Kabbalah stand in regard to the dialectic and politics of master-slave? At first blush, the Kabbalah would appear to share certain

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features of both theism and humanism. The Jewish mystical view that God’s consciousness is manifest in human self-consciousness,37 as well as the notion that humankind completes and perfects creation,38 at first appear to be themes that reflect the transition from theocentric to humanistic world views. However, unlike certain forms of humanism, the Kabbalah does not regard the individual to be the center and measure of all things, and it clearly rejects the politics of narcissistic domination. While on the one hand, the individual is, for the Kabbalists, created in God’s image, and the instrument through which God and world are completed and perfected, on the other hand, the Kabbalists held that the individual ego is an illusion that must be nullified or overcome. Whereas in atheistic humanism, humanity is placed at the center and takes on the attributes that were thought to be God’s, in the Kabbalah humanity realizes these attributes, not as an end for itself, but as a means of transcending an original egoistic position, and improving, if not perfecting the world. In Jewish mysticism a person is not enjoined to be master and king, to “fill himself” and dominate his world, as he is in modern secular humanism, but is rather enjoined to do precisely the opposite. His task is to nullify himself (bittul ha yesh), to empty himself out, and contract himself, and it is only through such acts of human Tzimtzum, that man fulfills himself as a being created in God’s image. The “dominion” over the earth granted to humanity by God is severely restricted, both by the expulsion from paradise and through the limitations established by divine law. Just as God contracts, nullifies and conceals Himself in creating the world, man must constrict, nullify and transcend his ego in mastering and perfecting it.39 For the Jewish mystics, self-actualization is always in the service of self-transcendence. Whereas in humanistic atheism a consuming self seeks to attain the impossible condition of a “pure presence,” in which all needs and desires are satisfied, for the Kabbalists, and particularly the Hasidim, humanity’s goal is not the satisfaction of individual desires, but rather their nullification in favor of a universal desire for Tikkun ha-Olam, the restoration and perfection of the world. The individual’s Tikkun, his or her self-actualization, involves the nullification (bittul) of the individual ego, in favor of an identification with a wider consciousness or self.

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Nihilism and Negation Humanistic atheism may ultimately lead to nihilism, “the nothingness of consciousness when consciousness becomes the foundation of everything.”40 Indeed, one of the criticisms of postmodernism, and deconstruction in particular, is that it is a radicalization of the humanistic perspective, which leads to a nihilistic relativization of all ideas and values. Hillis Miller sums up the predicament of the atheistic humanist when he says “Man the murderer of God and drinker of the sea of creation wanders through the infinite nothingness of his own ego.”41 One must agree that nihilism may follow, when there is a loss or “death” of an absolute, transcendent source of all values. However, this is not the only possible result of the demise of the “transcendent God.” Nihilism results only within the context of a western conception of humanity, in which the binary opposition between God and man is assumed. A Hindu or Buddhist (or a Kabbalist) does not become a nihilist by virtue of his awareness that consciousness is the foundation of everything. This is because “his consciousness” is not the consciousness of an encapsulated individual acquisitive/assertive ego, but rather a universal consciousness that he participates in along with the rest of nature and humankind. The danger of enclosing all meaning and value in a transcendent God is that we can be cut off from that God and as such alienated from the source of all significance and value. The Kabbalah implicitly recognizes this danger and places the source of value in archetypes (the Sefirot) that are both transcendent and immanent and are contained within both God and man. Value and significance, on the Kabbalistic view, is indeed the responsibility of humanity, but a humanity responding to a higher calling, reaching beyond itself to an absolute that is both the source and result of man’s very prayer and inspiration. Western theologians can speak of the death of a transcendent Jewish or Christian god, but can they speak equally of the death of Brahman-Atman, Buddha-nature, or Ein-sof, each of which are understood as being at least partly immanent within humankind? For the Lurianic Kabbalists, Ein-sof is not simply equated with the creator, law-giving God of traditional Judaism, but is rather identified with the entire system of being, values, concepts, and language, and their rupture and emendation, as these are articulated through

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the symbols of Ayin, Tzimtzum, Sefirot, Shevirah and Tikkun, and which both includes, and is contained within, the consciousness of humanity. It would seem that the dissolution of the traditional western conception of God and self leads to two possible outcomes, nihilism or mysticism. Deconstruction, according to Taylor, offers the possibility of a middle ground between the two. For Taylor, the dissolution of the traditional Self gives rise to a new, anonymous subject, who overcomes the opposites of interiority/exteriority, and thus appropriates rather than denies death. The loss of the traditional Self allows for the emergence of the “trace” which embodies the potential for desire and delight. Carefree creativity and delight thus takes the place of anxious mastery. There is something akin to Hasidic joy in Taylor’s formulation. However, for Taylor this joy appears to be without the foundation in either meaning or ethics that is present in the Hasidic conception; he holds in Erring that life no longer has a beginning, middle or end, but can only be described as a serpentine wandering, leading to what he refers to as “carnival.” Individual identity dissolves and joined oppositions are overcome. Comedy replaces tragedy. One wonders, however, whether a spiritual formulation that leads to “carnival” as its most positive expression isn’t tragic after all. Ethnocentrism and Multi-Culturalism One of the effects of the postmodern critique of foundationalism has been a decentering of Western European ideology and male-white culture as axiological and philosophical norms. The postmodern shift from ‘truth’ and ‘being’ to a concern with language and interpretation has prompted not only a radical critique of the foundations of western metaphysics, but a relativizing of its values, and a consequent interest in non-western, feminist, and other hitherto “suppressed” points of view. As applied to Judaism, this critique has not only brought into question such concepts as “the chosen people,” but has also posed a grave challenge to the presumed divine basis of Jewish scripture, law, custom and ritual, leading to a complete relativization of religious truth and practice. Is it possible for Judaism to embrace such relativism, and might relativism itself be a condition for a renewed Jewish faith and theology?

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Relativism has, of course, been knocking at the door ever since Judaism began to contend with the claims of both Christian and secular belief systems, prior to and especially during the Enlightenment; but never before has this challenge been quite so radically conceived. The question that postmodernism poses for Judaism is whether it is possible to conceive of an authentically Jewish religious expression that is nonetheless fully open to its own relativization, and thus to the value of other cultural and religious forms. Admittedly, neither the Kabbalists nor the Hasidim were multi-cultural and inclusive in practice or belief. Nonetheless, their thought provides a basis for a celebration of multi-culturalism without abandoning a particular Jewish point of view. For example, according to the Chabad Hasidic thinker Aaron Halevi Horowitz of Staroselye (1766-1828), ...the essence of His intention is that his coincidentia be manifested in concrete reality, that is, that all realities and their levels be revealed in actuality, each detail in itself, and that they nevertheless be unified and joined in their value, that is, that they be revealed as separated essences, and that they nevertheless be unified and joined in their value.42

It follows from this dictum regarding every detail in the world, that every species, every cultural manifestation, every “difference” is absolutely necessary for the fulfillment of the divine purpose, and yet each of these various manifestations must be united in a single awareness of their infinite value. God’s intention cannot be fulfilled unless and until “all realities and their levels are revealed in actuality,” i.e. until each human perspective and point of view is articulated in itself, “revealed as separated essences,” but also “united and joined in their value.” Such multi-perspectivism is a necessary condition for the full manifestation and unity of both the world and God. Again, according to Isaac Luria’s chief disciple, Chayyim Vital, “Everything was created for the purpose of the Highest One… that is why it is necessary for there to be good, bad, and in-between in all these worlds and why there are endless variations in all of them.43 The Need for Universalism and Difference Postmodernism’s concern with “difference” is said to lead to a respect for multiple points of view, and especially for all that has hitherto been marginalized in western life and thought: the non-European, non-white, non-

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masculine etc. This is certainly a welcome corrective to the absolutism and elitism that has dominated western philosophy and religion for millennia. However, without a concomitant universalism, an awareness of difference provides little or no basis for providing those who are different from us with the same rights we claim for ourselves. As the contemporary Jewish scholar and Kabbalist, Adin Steinsaltz, points out, the recognition of difference per se, and in particular differences with respect to skills, intelligence, creativity, wealth, etc. could readily lead to a psychology of domination. It is only when we recognize the universal behind these apparent differences, i.e. that in spite of their differences all humans are created equal, or endowed with a soul, and recognize the reign of universal law, that an awareness of difference leads to a respect or regard for the other.44 There must, it seems, be a dialectic between the particular and the universal if the postmodern concern for difference is to evolve into anything like the ethic that deconstruction is said to imply. Indeed, when one thoroughly carries out the program of deconstruction, one must also deconstruct deconstruction itself, and conduct a deconstruction of such key Derridean concepts as différance and the trace, with the result that one returns to a (critical and forever incomplete) dialectal reciprocity between opposing particular and universal principles. Just as there must be coincidentia between the immanent and transcendent, between God and man, good and evil, etc. there must also be a dialectic between difference and universalism. As will become evident in later chapters, such a dialectic is clearly present in the Lurianic symbols of Ein-sof (the Infinite), Tzimtzum (creation as concealment), Shevirah (rupture) and Tikkun (emendation).45 Lurianic Kabbalah and the Syntax of Classical Narrative Postmodernism is critical of any view that sees history as enacting a singular, redemptive drama, or as progressing towards an end state that has anything more than relative significance. As we have seen, Lyotard held that the end of “master narratives” characterizes the postmodern point of view. According to Taylor, the whole notion of a linear history, plotted with a beginning, middle and end is linked to metaphysical notions of God and self, which are themselves no longer tenable from a postmodern perspective.46 Taylor is specifically critical of the Christian (and implicitly Jewish) theological view which understands creation as being perfected through the

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acts and deeds of humankind, an idea that is clearly reflected in the Kabbalistic notion of Tikkun-ha-Olam, the repair and restoration of the world. This view, as articulated by Taylor, appears in a Christian context in the notion that “Christ surpasses Adam in the very act of completing and perfecting the original creation.”47 On Ricouer’s interpretation of the Christian tradition, creation, fall and redemption are integrally related, part of a single, unfolding historical drama. Taylor sees this as a thread that defines the Christian view of history; a view that is no longer tenable once we recognize the constructive nature of all historical narratives. Taylor recognizes that while narrative might embody transcultural structures, he emphasizes that history can always be narrated in a variety of ways. The Christian story of Creation, Fall, Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Redemption enjoys a “privileged status” in Western culture, and has been used to orient both individual and communal life. This narrative, with Christ at its center, is a “logos’ that rationalizes history. A similar “logos” is present in the Lurianic drama of creation, rupture and restoration. The question is whether or not one can continue to legitimately maintain that a logos is discoverable within history as opposed to being imposed upon it. Since Nietzsche we have come to recognize that history, like autobiography, is, in many ways, a work of productive imagination. There is a close relationship between history (perceived fact) and novel (supposed fiction). As Collingwood put it in his Idea of History,48 facts do not support a historical narrative but, on the contrary, are actually constructed by it. On what basis can we hold that the “syntax” of classical, “dramatic,” narrative, of which the Lurianic Kabbalah is apparently an example (but in other ways its dissolution), is an account of how things really are as opposed to a useful fiction? To what extent can we hold that the historical and personal narrative of Tzimtzum, Sefirot, Shevirah and Tikkun is anything more than a construction we place on events in order to provide them with an illusion of rationalizability? And what privilege can we give to a narrative form (beginning, middle, crisis, victory, and end) that appears to be peculiar to western, perhaps male consciousness? How does the Kabbalah escape the charges of subjectivism, chauvinism and ethnocentrism? And if we grant that the Kabbalah is simply a useful fiction, how can it make any claim whatsoever to have revealed the nature of anything absolute? First off, we should note that while the Lurianic Kabbalah promulgates a historical view of the world, it is one in which the basic elements of its

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"universal history"—contraction, breakage, and restoration—-are each held to be fully present in all things, events and experiences, at all times. The Kabbalistic dialectic is superficially a historical one, in which the infinite principle is said to contract itself in order to emanate a world that selfdeconstructs and which must be restored and redeemed by the ethical and spiritual activities of humankind. However, the Lurianists regarded this “historical” dialectic not so much as a temporal progression in time, but rather as a logical progression that is present at all times and in all things. Tzimtzum, Shevirah, and Tikkun (contraction, rupture, and redemption) are said to be constitutive of all life and experience. Each thing we encounter is simultaneously contracted, created, broken and redeemed, and is our point of view that leads to the emphasis of one or another of these logical aspects. Further, and most interesting from a deconstructionist point of view, the so-called "universal history" present in the Kabbalah is actually an articulation of deconstruction itself! Within this universal history, the moment of Tzimtzum suggests that for the Kabbalists, all things and ideas are a "contraction" and "concealment" and are thus partial and incomplete. The moments of Sefirah and Otiyot Yesod (foundational letters) suggest that all things are subject to indefinite reinterpretation. The moment of Shevirah suggests that all things, ideas, systems and events, no matter how secure and complete they might seem, are subject to rupture, emendation, dissolution and transcendence. Finally, the moment of Tikkun, suggests that the truth of any thing or idea is a human construction as opposed to an absolute given. These moments together describe both a universal history, and a conception of the Absolute, Ein-sof or God, while at the same time deconstructing all absolutes and opening the field for further deconstruction. As we will see in Chapter Five, the Lurianic Kabbalah provides a systematic account of God, humanity, the world, and history that paradoxically functions so as to undermine our ordinary idea of “system.” Kabbalah as a Hermeneutic Methodology Two important themes in postmodern thought are the primacy of metaphor and the role of hermeneutics in philosophy. Derrida and his followers have sought to bring about an inversion of the literal and the metaphoric. According to Derrida, the literal use of language is actually derivative of and in a sense inferior to metaphor.49 Derrida seeks to

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deconstruct what past generations believed to be the inviolable opposition between the metaphoric and the literal, and in the process he seeks to undo the hard and fast distinction between literature and philosophy. He considers both as ‘texts’ and denies that philosophy can present truth independent of the language in which it is expressed. Yet he rejects any assimilation of philosophy to literature. Derrida questions distinctions, subverts them, but does not deny or erase them. Wittgenstein once proclaimed, “Philosophy ought really to be written as a poetic composition.”50 The Kabbalah, with its proliferation of symbols and metaphors, can be understood as a form of philosophy that is written as poesis and myth. Postmodern, and particularly, deconstructive, thinkers have used the interpretation of texts as a paradigm for their philosophical discourse. Adeena Karasick has noted a number of affinities between Kabbalistic and feminist/deconstructive hermeneutics. She points out that both the Kabbalah and deconstruction question traditional metaphysics, and that each problematize such notions as “property,” “being,” “form and content,” etc. Karasick argues that even though the theosophical Kabbalah announces itself as a metaphysics, its primary concern is with text as opposed to being. Further, like contemporary deconstruction, the Kabbalah views text as a continuum or network of letters, echoes, and traces, which have been “displaced in a palimpsestic process of rupture, supplementation, and disease.”51 Karasick wishes to reinterpret (or reinvent) mysticism, specifically Jewish mysticism, not as a metaphysics of the transcendent, but as a hermeneutics that resists specific or specifiable meaning and totalization. Rather than producing a totalistic metaphysics or final analysis, the Kabbalah “opens possibilities for alternative reading strategies.” For Karasick, mysticism is essentially radical and disruptive, and she defines it as “that which does not fit into the system.”52 The conception of mysticism as a puncturing or rupture of one's received discourse, and hence the opening up of the possibilities of new meaning and experience, may actually accord quite well with the more traditional notion of mysticism as an experience of the transcendent, the real or the divine. This is because in each view, the "mystical" is that which is beyond the horizon of ordinary discourse and experience.

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism Tropological vs. Metaphysical Mysticism

Like Harold Bloom, in Kabbalah and Criticism,53 Karasick holds out the possibility that Cixous and Derrida have re-invented a “mysticism that does not function through a metaphysical framework, but through tropological linguistic processes.”54 This idea follows quite naturally from the postmodern notion that all so-called facts, metaphysical foundations and philosophical truths are founded upon and subject to (re) interpretation. If every thing is a matter of interpretation, than what becomes important are ‘interpretations’ (hermeneutics, linguistic processes) rather than ‘things’ (metaphysics, being). Mysticism, instead of being inscribed in the categories of being, then comes to be inscribed within the categories of language and hermeneutics, where all talk of metaphysical “things” is itself understood to be a language game, completely circumscribed within discourse. Tropes, as ways of speaking, writing and interpreting become metaphysically interesting, once things are seen to be tropological (i.e. linguistic/metaphorical) constructions. In this context, it becomes easier to understand how the Sefirot and other Kabbalistic symbols (Tzimtzum, Shevirah, Tikkun) can be understood as tropes (Bloom) or reading strategies (Karasick). For example, Karasick understands the Sefirot as metonymically standing for all that is “receptive and generative.”55 Karasick argues that unlike traditional mysticism, which necessarily tends towards an absolutist and exclusionary position, tropological mysticism is democratic, open to difference, and mutliperspectival. The Kabbalah, with its deep concern for the multiple possibilities of language, and its dictum regarding the infinite range of re-interpretability, becomes especially suited for inscription as a tropological mysticism. Karasick points out that the very form and content of the Zohar and other Kabbalistic works is deconstructive. Filled with “contradictions, inexactitudes, fictional quotations, illocatable texts,”56 the Zohar, in effect, dismantles and mocks traditional scripture, in the same way that modern art dismantles and mocks traditional representation. In the Kabbalah the blurring of the borders of language - -“new words, verbal acrobatics, schizimatics, intentional modulations of grammar, syntax, orthography” reflects a blurring of “worlds” and “levels of existence.” The “absurd conglomeration of words and images” reveals a “ruptured, fragmentary, incomplete exposition that language “can not hold.” We might say that the “Breaking of the Vessels,” here interpreted linguistically, is actually reflected in the Kabbalistic text

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itself, and in much postmodern poetry and writing. Just as the world of things cannot, according to Luria, contain the divine light without being ruptured, language cannot hold fast to a single unruptured expression or truth. Unified discourse is replaced by a disunified “superfluity of perspectives.” Mysticism moves from a male-centered metaphysics of expositional clarity to a feminine “shifting and multiperspective” condition.

Exile as a Condition of Human Existence Postmodernism, in common with one of its philosophical predecessors, existentialism, has viewed alienation and exile as an essential condition of human existence. In this it is in company with the Lurianists who held that a double exile (via Tzimtzum and Shevirah) is at the origin of the finite world. Twentieth century philosophers have utilized Hegel’s conception of the “Unhappy Consciousness” in their descriptions of the alienation inherent in the human condition.57 The Unhappy Consciousness lives nostalgically in the past or expectantly towards a future but never experiences the “identity” and “presence” that would presumably bring it satisfaction. According to Hegel, the unhappy consciousness is always struggling to be “somewhere else.” History, as a longing for a ‘presence’ that satisfies or saves, is a collective reenactment of the unhappy consciousness’ exile from itself. The Unhappy Consciousness falsely believes that such alienation or exile can be cured. However, such exile is actually the very condition of human existence. As Taylor puts it, “The history of the West unfolds between limits set by the garden and the kingdom.” 58 “Expelled from the garden…unable to reach the kingdom,”59 man is exiled from all including himself. However, both the garden and the kingdom are an illusion, as deconstruction negates all origin and renders problematic any sense of primal plenitude. Any time, place or event that we might regard as our origin is, like any history that we narrate, a construction based upon our current perspective and nothing more. In addition, the notion that we could overcome our exile by having our origin present to our consciousness is an illusion, as the very structure of human consciousness is, as we have seen, alienated in a past and future. Exile is completely ‘original’. The radical interdependence of all things eliminates the possibility of even conceiving, let alone arriving at an origin.60 On this view, wherever one is, one is exiled.

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The Kabbalistic view is that exile is indeed inherent to all things. As Scholem has put it, for the Lurianic Kabbalah one of the consequences of the Breaking of the Vessels is that “Nothing remains in its proper place. Everything is somewhere else. But a being that is not in its proper place is in exile.” However, Scholem continues that because “all being has been in exile, [it is] in need of being led back and redeemed.”61 For the Kabbalah, in contrast to postmodernism, the possibility that exile can indeed be overcome is very real. Just as the Jewish people for millennia awaited return from their physical and spiritual exile from Eretz Yisrael, the Kabbalist believes that his and the world’s ontological exile can indeed be overcome. However, the question remains as to what this return from exile can possibly consist? In order to address this question and suggest an answer, I will ask a second question, regarding another domain, which on first reading may seem completely unrelated to the topic at hand. That question is: What does one “recover” when one gains psychoanalytic insight into a dream or one’s own biography? Is there an original, foundational significance to one’s dream, or an original, uninterpreted set of facts about one’s personal history, or are the dreams understood and memories recovered in psychoanalysis, as Derrida and others contend,62 themselves necessarily constructions based upon a creative interpretations in the present? Just as the history of a people or a nation can always be narrated in a variety of ways, the history of a person (and the significance of any experience or dream) is a creative construction, a work of productive imagination. The “discovery” of presumably unconscious affects, memories and ideas, is thus itself a creative construction more than a recovery. The past is continually re-signified in the context of both the present and the future, and Freud’s metaphorical description of the contents of the unconscious coming to light virtually unaltered like the uncovered ruins of Pompeii is a misleading figure. However, the recognition that psychoanalysis does not return one to a pre-existent “archive” does not lead to the end of psychoanalysis, but rather to a reinterpretation of what occurs within the psychoanalytic process. Psychoanalysts influenced by such postmodern ideas now speak of “narrative reconstructions” as opposed to recovered meanings and memories, while at the same time recognizing that the process of analysis itself must continue to rest on the working assumption of arriving at one’s “truth,” albeit a truth that is as much created as it is discovered. Similarly, for the Kabbalah, the overcoming of exile need not lead to a return to an original paradise, frozen in lava like Pompeii, but rather may

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lead to a non-exilic condition as it is understood and transformed by the very process of recovery and restoration. The notion of Tikkun ha-Olam, which, according to the Kabbalists, overcomes both divine and human exile, is not simply a restoration, but is rather an emendation and transformation of the very vessels that are to be restored. For Luria, the restored Sefirot in the “World of Tikkun,” differ radically from those that were displaced and shattered in the original “World of Points;” indeed they are recast and united into the ‘visages’ of the five Partzufim that bear only a topological resemblance to the originals. It is this “recovery” that for the Kabbalah is the overcoming of our ontological exile.

The Dissolution of the Transcendental Signified and the Autonomous Subject Michel Foucault held that modernity was inaugurated when words were no longer thought to function as a representational grid for a direct apprehension and knowledge of things.63 The decisive step in this direction was made by Kant, who held that all knowledge is conditioned by a priori structures of human cognition and that the thing-in-itself is an inaccessible and opaque limit to knowledge. In post-Kantian philosophy the thing-initself, rather than being immediately available to perception, is a cognitive construct. There is, since Kant, a movement away from mimesis, a representational view of reality, to poesis, a creative view of reality; one in which the human subject is understood as constructing the very things it had once believed itself to be representing. This movement to poesis shifts the center or foundation of knowledge and reality from God to man, and further poses challenges even to a naturalistic understanding of the universe. Subsequent developments in archetypal, structuralist and post-structuralist interpretation have taken this process a step further, in the direction of the decentering, or dispersal of the human subject. In the archetypal and structuralist view, man’s creativity and constructive activities are not rooted in a “real,” external world, but are rather a function of the systems of significance that constitute human language and culture which both transcend and constitute individual subjectivity. On this view, the “given” does not stand before the subject as the datum of a world, but rather stands behind him, so to speak, as certain structures of consciousness and language.

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Taylor points out that there has been a gradual decentering of the human subject in the modes of interpretation that have predominated over the last century. While not apparent in romantic conceptions of the “book” (which focus on the intention of the author), such decentering begins to show itself in phenomenological criticism (focusing on the logos or idea of the created object), archetypal criticism (which seeks to uncover universal psychological patterns that lay beyond the author’s consciousness) and structural criticism (which yields transpersonal structures that govern creativity). Taylor points out that while in these movements there is a gradual decentering or dispersal of the author, there is nevertheless a continued effort at logos. The postmodern view, however, completes the decentering process, by understanding writing (and language in general) as an autonomous structure or act, one that does not emanate from a subject, but within which the subject is created or inscribed. The author’s “I” is not an original source, bur rather all writing is a patchwork of prior passages, a “tissue of quotations.”64 This decentering process, which is here spoken of in “historical” terms, is in many ways akin to the mystic’s “dissolution” of the ego in favor of a wider transpersonal self (Adam Kadmon, Atman) and ultimately in favor of an ‘oceanic non-self’ (Ein-sof, Brahman) upon which the individual ego is a transitory wave. On the archetypal and structuralist interpretation, this transpersonal self involves certain invariant structures of meaning, consciousness and language. Deconstruction, however, goes beyond structural and archetypal theory in challenging the notion that there are invariant structures either “ahead” of, “within” or “behind” the human subject. For deconstruction, which regards itself as post-structuralist, there are no such invariant structures, only an infinite, errant play of language and its multiplicity of interpretations. The deconstructive view not only moves the position of the anchor (from external world to conscious subject) but eliminates the notion of an anchor altogether. Deconstructive philosophy has completely abandoned the “representational” theory of meaning, to the point that it no longer regards our words to be tied to a pre-linguistic reality in any discernible way. There is no “transcendental signified;” in the final analysis our words do not represent things in the world or structures of the mind, but rather attain their meaning only via their connections to and differences from other words (Saussure, Derrida) or their use (Wittgenstein). This leads to the overcoming of the signifier/signified (word/thing) distinction, a thesis that, as we will see, is anticipated in the Kabbalist’s ideas on the nature of language.

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The question that will occupy us in later chapters is whether, with the demise of the distinction between words and things, there is any hope at all of attaining a consciousness or intuition of a “real” that is somehow prior to, independent of, or beyond language. While the assumptions of postmodernism might immediately suggest that the answer to this question is “no,” we will see, that the possibility of fulfilling such hope goes to the heart of the rational-mystical endeavor, and leads us to a Kabbalah that incorporates and yet transcends the challenges of postmodern philosophy.

Chapter Two

Derrida and Jewish Mysticism

I

n a meeting with his friend, Jacques Derrida, the French-Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas 1906-1995), is said to have looked Derrida in the eye and said, “Jacques, you know what you remind me of? A heretical Kabbalist of the 16th century!”1 Levinas’ reported observation seemed to confirm what I had suspected for quite some time, that an encounter with Derrida’s thought is potentially an important gateway to a contemporary, if antinomian, Kabbalistic philosophy and theology.2 Derrida, Judaism and the Kabbalah The question of the influence of Judaism, and specifically, the Kabbalah on Derrida’s thought has surfaced now and again in recent literature on Jewish mysticism. Derrida himself frequently spoke of his life as a child and young man in Algeria as one in which he was alienated from three cultures; the French, the Arab and the Jewish. Born of Jewish parents, Derrida relates that his family was observant of Judaism only “banally” and that their observance was “external” and “not grounded by a true Jewish culture.”3 In an essay entitled “Monolingualism of the Other,” Derrida tells us that the Jewish environment in which he was raised was so fanatically “Frenchifying” that “the inspiration of Jewish culture seemed to succumb to an asphyxia: a state of apparent death, a ceasing of respiration, a fainting fit,

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a cessation of the pulse.”4 Derrida acknowledged that even as an adult he knew very little Hebrew and had a very limited knowledge of Jewish history, texts, and culture, a fact that prompted him, he says, to shift to the metaphorical, rhetorical, allegorical dimension of Judaism.”5 Derrida’s late writings on “circumcision”6 and the “tallith”7 fall under this heading, and he suggests that in them he bears “in a negative fashion…the heritage of that amnesia (for Judaism) which (he) never had the courage, the strength, the means to resist.”8 In her book, Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint, Derrida’s friend and fellow Algerian Jew, Helene Cixous, describes him as a “marrano,” a secret Jew, “one of those Jews without even knowing it; and without knowledge…guardian of the book he doesn’t know how to read.”9 Indeed, Derrida in “Circumfession” writes “I am a kind of Marrano of French Catholic culture…I am one of those Marranos who no longer say they are Jews even in the secret of their own hearts.”10 Yet, in pointing to Derrida’s own extended meditation on the tallith he inherited as a youth in Algeria, Cixous shows how Derrida’s attachment to this prayer shawl is a metaphor for his attempt to preserve the Jewish tradition within himself. In support of her view she cites Derrida’s own proclamation: “Up to the end, never, whatever may happen in no case, whatever the verdict at the end of so formidable journey, never can one get rid of a tallith. One must never, ever, at any moment, throw it away or reject it.”11 While Derrida believed that he had not worn his tallith “for almost half a century,” he tells us that after his father’s death he inherited it a “second time.” Although he still did not wear it, Derrida affirms “I simply place my fingers or lips on it, almost every evening…I touch it without knowing what I am doing or asking in so doing, especially not knowing into whose hands I am entrusting myself, to whom I’m rendering thanks.”12 There can thus be little doubt that Derrida came to acknowledge a profound impact of Judaism upon both his life and work. However, with regard to the specific impact of Jewish mysticism on his thought, we have already seen that at least in 1986 Derrida had explicitly rejected Susan Handelman’s (and Jurgen Habermas’) charge that he is a “lost son of Judaism” who has much in common with the Jewish mystical tradition. Although Derrida wrote on explicitly Jewish themes, and later admitted to

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Gideon Ofrat that he regularly expressed “the concepts of Judaism in an oblique way,”13 Derrida never formally acknowledged a specific Kabbalistic influence on his thought. Nonetheless, as we will see, Derrida made a number of approving references to Jewish mystical symbols,14 which suggest, that if he was not directly influenced by the Kabbalah, he was at least in accord with many of its key ideas. Wolfson and Idel on Derrida and the Kabbalah Recently, the question of the impact of the Kabbalah on Derrida and deconstruction has been addressed by two of the most influential contemporary scholars of Jewish mysticism, Elliot Wolfson15 and Moshe Idel.16 Whereas Idel argues for a direct influence of Kabbalah on Derrida’s thought, Wolfson holds that the relationship between Derrida and Kabbalah should be understood as one of “convergence” rather than influence. As Wolfson’s analysis is more systematic I will deal with it first. According to Wolfson, the convergence between Derrida and the Kabbalah is apparent in several places in Derrida’s thought, including his analysis of the “gift” and “secrecy,” as well as in his “belief that the materiality of being is textual.”17 Wolfson sees “convergence” rather than influence even in those places where Derrida makes specific use of Jewish symbols and ideas, for example in Derrida’s use of the rite of circumcision as a metaphor linking “language, secrecy, and the gift,” in a manner, which according to Wolfson, is consonant with, but not necessarily derivative of, the Kabbalah.18 According to Wolfson, Derrida’s references to Jewish mysticism are “occasional asides.” Wolfson points out that Derrida has neither offered up a “sustained analysis of Jewish mysticism” nor suggested that an understanding of the Kabbalah is necessary for comprehending his own philosophy. Further, according to Wolfson, Derrida “does not position himself primarily as a thinker trying to determine his place within Judaism.”19 In Wolfson’s view (a view that he shares with Cixous) “Derrida’s relationship to Judaism is one particular instantiation of a larger sense of belonging-by-not-belonging that has informed his way of being in the world.”20 Derrida refers to himself as the “last of the Jews”21 since,

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according to Wolfson, “he does not envision the possibility of meaningfully perpetuating the tradition.”22 In his book, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida,23 John Caputo suggests that deconstruction does perpetuate and build upon the prophetic tradition in Judaism, a tradition, however, which Caputo distinguishes quite radically from the negative theology of Jewish mysticism. Caputo holds that Derrida’s work is in the tradition of the Jewish prophets and the “wandering” Jew who lives for a messianic, redemptive promise, the sole meaning of which is that it is always “yet to come.” Wolfson takes this idea a step further in holding that for Derrida the messianic is not predicated upon revelation, is not a “historical” messianism, and paradoxically rests on the idea that the messiah cannot come. While this view appears to contravene the traditional Jewish understanding of the messiah, Wolfson argues that “Derrida has grasped the paradoxical implication of the conventional Jewish messianic belief: The possibility of the messiah’s coming is predicated on the impossibility of the messiah’s arrival.”24 Wolfson points to similar ideas not only in Franz Kafka, but also in the Hasidic sage, Nahman of Bratslav. For example, Wolfson informs us that Rabbi Nahman told a tale of a “footless beggar” who does not come to the wedding, and which for later Bratslav tradition became symbolic of the Messiah.25 According to Wolfson, a key to grasping the relationship between deconstruction and Judaism lies in the Jewish mystical view that “reality is a text” and that the world’s most basic elements are the twenty-two letters of the holy tongue, which are in turn comprised of the four letters (YHVH) of the divine name.26 While Idel has suggested that Derrida may well have been influenced by the Kabbalah in his formulation that “there is nothing outside the text” (see below) Wolfson holds that there is no “definitive proof” and only scanty secondary evidence for this assertion.27 For example, Wolfson points out that Shira Wolosky argues for such influence on the basis of Derrida’s 1967 comments28 that “Jabes29 is conscious of the Cabalistic resonances of his book,” which she infers applies equally to Derrida’s own version of “linguistic mysticism.”30 While Wolfson holds that it is uncertain that Derrida’s comments on Jabes can be read as applying to Derrida’s own work and opinions,31 I believe that it is certainly a fair reading of Derrida’s essay on Jabes’ The Book of Questions to hold in agreement with Ofrat, that “many of the assumptions that Derrida attributes to Jabes appear to be oblique declarations touching upon his (Derrida’s) own identity as a Jew.”32

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Wolfson points out that Harold Bloom has argued that Kabbalistic hermeneutics were influences upon Derrida’s notions of “différance” and the “trace,” but Wolfson again holds that there is more evidence for convergence as opposed to influence between the Kabbalah and Derrida. Wolfson cites Wolosky’s and Susan Handelman’s33 view that Derrida’s “visceral familiarity with Jewish ritual experience” may have informed Derrida’s according of primacy to the written text over the spoken word, and ultimately to the formation of the textual view of reality that provided Derrida with an alternative to Hellenistic “ontotheology.”34 Wolfson further suggests that Judaism ultimately became a vehicle through which Derrida, in his study of the Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, expressed precisely this “textual” point of view.35 According to Wolfson, there is a strong affinity between Kabbalistic hermeneutics and Derrida’s “grammatology,” one that is expressed by the notion that interpretation never leads to an original truth, but always to a text in need of further interpretation. Wolfson quotes from the early Hasidic master, R. Zadoq ha-Kohen of Lublin: “Thus I have received that the world in its entirety is a book that God, blessed be He, made, and the Torah is the commentary that he composed on that book,”36 which Wolfson compares with Derrida’s assertions that “there is nothing outside the text,”37 that “Being is grammar” and “that everything belongs to the book before being and in order to come into the world…”38 Wolfson believes that Derrida and the Kabbalah can be distinguished in terms of their respective attitudes toward apophantics or “negative theology.”39 Whereas the Kabbalists and Derrida were each concerned with referring (and not-referring) to that which is before being, existence, and form, the Kabbalists held that the “unutterable divine name” ultimately points to a hyper-essential being that is the object of faith. For Derrida, on the other hand, it is a condition of faith that such references actually point to a true absence, an actual nothing. For Derrida “that there might be no addressee at the other end of my prayer is the condition of my prayer,” and he therefore goes so far as to suggest “that there should be a moment of atheism in the prayer.”40 As we have seen, this line of thought is hardly unknown in the Kabbalah. For example, Scholem has pointed out that according to the 13th century Kabbalist Azriel of Gerona, because Ein-sof “is the principle in which everything hidden and visible meet” it is “the common root of both faith and unbelief” (italics inserted).41 The potential for “atheism” within the Kabbalah is not lost on Derrida, who writes:

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Indeed, reduced to its textuality, to its numerous plurivocality, absolutely disseminated, the Kabbalah, for example, evinces a kind of atheism, which, read in a certain way—or just simply read—it has doubtless always carried within it.42

By introducing the notion of “atheism” into the very heart and meaning of prayer, Derrida points to a “nondogmatic doublet of dogma…the possibility of religion without religion,”43 a possibility that he says is shared by thinkers as varied as Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Levinas, but which may well be coiled up in the heart of the Kabbalah as well. Both Wolfson and Idel argue that deconstruction and the Kabbalah differ precisely on this point of the “hyper-essentiality” of the divine. Wolfson points out that in contrast to Derrida, the Kabbalists “do assume there is a reality beyond language.”44 Similarly, Idel argues that whereas in the Kabbalah multiple, indeed infinite interpretations of scripture point to an infinite authorial source, in Derrida they are simply a manifestation of the indefinite play of readings independent of all authorial intent.45 According to Idel, whereas modern hermeneuticists speak of the indeterminacy of the text, the Kabbalists preferred to view the Torah as having an indefinite, if not infinite, number of determinate meanings.46 Nonetheless, Idel holds that “Derrida [is] a thinker who has been influenced by Kabbalistic views of the nature of the text.”47 As an example, Idel points out that Derrida’s (and Mallarme’s) interest in the white page of the text, and the idea that the white background for the black letters itself is a source of future, as yet unknown meaning “testifies to a certain contribution of Jewish Mysticism to a modern philosophy of the text.”48 This is because these ideas, as expressed in the writings of the Hasidic Rabbi Isaac of Berditchev, and brought into contemporary intellectual discourse by Gershom Scholem, are, according to Idel, “hardly found outside Kabbalistic literature.” According to Idel, Derrida viewed the Kabbalah’s emphasis on the text and its interpretability as an indication of “a kind of atheism” within Jewish mysticism.49 Indeed, Idel goes so far as to say “if the Kabbalists or the Hasidic masters may be thought to exhibit ‘a kind of atheism,’ then it seems to me that deconstruction may indeed contain a certain residue of Kabbalistic thought in its cult of the book or textuality or, as Eco called this phenomenon, ‘atheistic mystics.’”50 More strikingly, Idel suggests that Derrida’s famous dictum “There is nothing outside the text”51 may well bear the mark of Kabbalistic influence.52 Idel points to the Italian Kabbalist R. Menahem Recanati, who in the early fourteenth century wrote, “All the sciences altogether are hinted at in the

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Torah, because there is nothing that is outside of Her…Therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, is nothing that is outside the Torah, and the Torah is nothing that is outside Him, and this is the reason why the sages of the Kabbalah said that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the Torah.”53 Idel points out that this passage had never been translated and was unknown outside of Kabbalistic circles prior to its discussion by Gershom Scholem at the 1954 Eranos Conference in Ascona. At that time Scholem’s comments and the passage itself were printed in English and French translations in the journal, Diogenes (Diogene). The French translation (1955-6), which was made by the distinguished Judaica scholar Georges Vajda, reads “there is nothing outside her (i.e. the Torah).” Idel writes “the fact that this statement about the identity between the Torah and God was available in French in 1957 may account for the emergence of one of the most postmodern statements in literary criticism: ‘There is nothing outside the text.’” Idel suggests that in the Grammatologie, which was first published in 1967, Derrida, who maintained a certain interest in the Kabbalah, “substituted the term and concept of Torah with that of text.”54 However, Idel argues that in spite of a striking similarity between Recanati’s and Derrida’s phrases, the Kabbalistic equivalence between God, text and the world, gives voice to a metaphysical theory that Derrida completely disavows. Indeed, Derrida’s claim that there is “nothing outside the text” suggests not an equivalence between the text and its author (i.e. God), but rather the obliteration of the author himself. Derrida adapts the Kabbalistic formula, but distances himself from its metaphysical implications, including the view that language creates and maintains reality.55 Idel holds that Derrida’s attempt to distance himself from Kabbalistic (and all other) metaphysics is not completely successful, as “the book [has] remained the main metaphor for reality, and it survived even Derrida’s attempt to get rid of God.”56 Further, Idel holds that Derrida “conceives of the text as so pregnant with infinite meanings that his system is, after all, another reading, slightly secularized, of the formula of the Kabbalist: ‘the canonical text is God.’” Only the “God” that Idel equates with Derrida’s text is “not a transcendental entity emanating meaning into a lower text, but an immanent divinity that ensures the infinity of meanings within the human text.”57 Both the conservative Kabbalist Recanati and the radical postmodernist Derrida can agree on “the absolute centrality of the book.”58 The former understands the book as a vehicle through which one can intuit the infinite God, whereas the latter understands it as a prism

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through which one encounters an infinitude of free-floating meanings. “From Recanati to Derrida the nature of the infinity changed, but not the absolute statement regarding the all-inclusiveness of the text.”59 Idel goes so far as to suggest a theological significance to Derrida’s point of view, holding that Derrida’s exploration of the infinite plenitude of meaning within the text, to be an exploration of an imminent divine.60 God, so conceived, is the source and totality of all significance whatsoever, a significance that is embodied in the infinite interpretability of any text. In the end, Idel seeks to “demarginalize” the Kabbalah as a source for Derrida’s conception of the text, as part of a greater project, suggested by Derrida’s own work, to “allow a greater role to forms of knowledge, though formulated and transmitted in Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, that have been neglected or repressed by the historiography of European culture.”61 For Idel, postmodernism involves a return of certain intellectual concerns that actually preceded the modern era. In the following sections I will re-examine some of Derrida’s explicit references to Judaism and the Kabbalah in an effort to articulate some additional points of contact between deconstruction and Jewish mysticism. The Last of the Jews In Circumfession, his 1991 meditation of the universal significance of circumcision as a symbol of “linguistic rupture” Derrida writes “the last of the Jews that I am is doing nothing here other than destroying the world on the pretext of making truth.”62 Derrida later explained in an interview with Elisabeth Weber that his assertion that he is the last Jew can be simultaneously understood as “’I am a bad Jew…but also ‘I am the end of Judaism,’ that is, the death of Judaism, but also its only chance of survival, I am the last who can say it, the other’s don’t even deserve to say it, they’ve forfeited the right, because to say ‘I am a Jew’ one should perhaps say how hard it is to say ‘I am a Jew.’”63 In the Weber interview, Derrida acknowledged that “in everything I may do or say, there is a ‘Of course, I’m a Jew!’ or ‘Of course, I’m not a Jew’…and a way of living simultaneously slightly maladroit and ironical, the condition of the Jew.”64 For Derrida, a condition of division, alienation and exile from Judaism, is today the very nature of Judaism itself: “the more one says ‘My identity consists of not being identical with myself, of being alien, noncongruent with myself,’ etc.,

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the more Jewish one is.” It is thus “possible to say…the less one is a Jew, the more one is a Jew.”65 For this reason Derrida can hold that “those Jews who proclaim an actual circumcision, a Jewish name, Jewish descent, Jewish soil, Jewish sun, etc., are not by definition better placed than others to speak on behalf of Judaism…There is ‘Of course I am a Jew’ and ‘Of course, I am not a Jew’…both together, that is the condition of the Jew.”66 Derrida, who confesses that his own sons were not circumcised,67 nevertheless tells us, “Circumcision, that’s all I’ve ever talked about,”68 and that all his discourse about writing, margins, the pharmikon, bodily inscription, etc. is a discourse related to this Jewish symbol. For Derrida, circumcision signals the primal lingual rupture,69 humankind’s entry into writing and the alienation from presence which writing necessarily brings with it, and in this sense it is both universal and specifically Jewish. Yet such alienation from presence (writing denotes a “meaning” even long after its reference is gone) is, for Derrida, the very condition of truth. Derrida’s views on the inherently alienated nature and experience of the contemporary Jew (as well as the inherently alienated nature of human experience in general) can be understood against the background of the Lurianic symbol of Shevirat ha-Kelim, the Breaking of the Vessels. This symbol suggests that all life and experience, indeed all “being” is in a state of psychological and metaphysical exile. According to Gershom Scholem, as a result of the Breaking of the Vessels, Nothing remains in its proper place. Everything is somewhere else. But a being that is not in its proper place is in exile. Thus, since that primordial act, all being has been in exile...70

In this light Derrida’s “inverted” understanding of his Judaism and his role as a Jew who is also not a Jew (i.e. non-congruent with himself) takes on distinctly Lurianic Kabbalistic overtones. Jabes’ The Book of Questions As early as 1964, several years before the publication of his seminal paper on différance, Derrida published an essay on “The Book of Questions” by the Jewish postmodernist writer and poet Edmund Jabes (1912-1991). There, Derrida not only noted Jabes’ own Kabbalistic references, but made several such references himself. For example, Derrida wrote,

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The well-worn themes of the question within God, of negativity within God as the liberation of historicity and human speech, of man’s writing as the desire and question of God (and the double genitive is ontological before being grammatical, or rather is the embedding of the ontological and the grammatical within the graphein), of history and discourse as the anger of God emerging himself, etc. etc.—these themes are not first proper to Böhme, to German romanticism, to Hegel,71 to the final Scheler, etc., etc. Negativity in God, exile as writing, the life of the letter are already in the Cabala. Which means “Tradition” itself. And Jabes is conscious of the Cabalistic resonances of his book.72

Derrida’s own “Cabalistic resonances” are to be found in several of his comments on Jabes’ work. Here Derrida writes, in an apparent allusion to the Lurianic symbols of Tzimtzum and Shevirah: “God separated himself from himself in order to let us speak, in order to astonish and interrogate us. He did so not by speaking but by keeping still, by letting silence interrupt his voice and signs, by letting the Tablets be broken...This difference, this negativity in God is our freedom.”73 These ideas resonate with those of Luria, who held that the Tzimtzum (the divine contraction and concealment) along with the Shevirat ha-Kelim (the shattering of the world as an opening to its being restored and revised by man), are the origin of human freedom. In perfect step with the Kabbalistic and Hasidic notion that the Tzimtzum is manifest through the letters of divine writing and speech, Derrida, again commenting on Jabes, avers, “Absence is the permission given to letters to spell themselves out and to signify, but it is also, in language’s twisting of itself, what letters say: they say freedom and a granted emptiness, that which is formed by being enclosed in letters.”74 One also hears an echo of the Kabbalistic symbol of Shevirat ha-Kelim when Derrida writes, “Between the fragments of the broken Tables the poem grows and the right to speech takes root.”75 Derrida informs us that “commentary, like poetic necessity, is the very form of exiled speech.”76 For the Kabbalists, the broken Tablets symbolize a cosmic occurrence in which an ideal, pristine world is shattered and a world of exile, freedom and human creativity is inaugurated. Like the Lurianists, Derrida holds that a withdrawal or concealment is the origin of revelation and truth. He writes in Dissemination, “The disappearance of the truth as presence, the withdrawal of the present origin of presence, is the condition of all (manifestation of) truth. Nontruth is truth. Nonpresence is presence. Différance, the disappearance of any originary

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presence, is at once the condition of possibility and the condition of impossibility of truth.”77 Derrida’s thought not only reflects the Kabbalistic principle that concealment (Tzimtzum) is the condition for revelation, but also echoes the Lurianic idea that destruction (Shevirah) is the sine qua non of truth. Indeed, it can be argued that the entire project of Derridean deconstruction is a reprise of the Lurianic notion of Shevirat ha-Kelim, the Breaking of the Vessels, understood in linguistic/conceptual as opposed to linguistic/ metaphysical terms. Commenting on Jabes’ declaration “Do not forget that you are the nucleus of a rupture,” Derrida writes, “The breaking of the Tables articulates, first of all, a rupture within God as the origin of history.”78 The Kabbalists held that the Shevirah (Breaking, rupture), is symbolized by the expulsion of Eden, the deluge, and the breaking of the Tablets, events which indeed mark historical beginnings. The Shevirah further implies that all concepts, values, systems, and beliefs are inadequate containers for the phenomena they are meant to contain and circumscribe. As such, the Breaking of the Vessels provides a caution against being satisfied with any of the interpretations or constructions we place upon our experience, texts and world, a caution that goes to the very heart of the deconstructive project. In its recognition of the permeability of all concepts (e.g., good and evil, man and God, etc.), in its view that concepts imply and are in fact dependent upon their opposites, and through its insistence that there is an indefinite number of interpretations of any phenomenon or linguistic act, the Lurianic Kabbalah implicitly performs a “deconstruction” of traditional philosophical ideas, one that clearly anticipates contemporary deconstruction. The idea that reality is a text and that hermeneutics is the most fundamental vehicle to knowledge (an idea that is quintessentially Jewish and, moreover, Kabbalistic), also makes an early appearance in Derrida’s essay on Jabes. In anticipation of his later pronouncement that there is “nothing outside the text”79 Derrida writes, “In the beginning is hermeneutics,”80 and he tells us that in Jabes we find the views that “the world is in all its parts a cryptogram…that everything belongs to the book…that anything can be born only by approaching the book, can die only by failing in sight of the book.”81 The Kabbalists held that God created the world by patterning it upon a linguistic original, the Torah, and the doctrine emerged in Kabbalistic (and later in Hasidic) sources that the Torah is the

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essence, foundation, and cause of the world, and that God Himself is identical with His Torah. In his 1964 essay on Jabes, Derrida’s own notion of the primacy of the text appears to be mediated by Jabes’ Kabbalistically inspired ideas, “The world exists because the book exists” and “If God is it is because He is in the book.”82 In these comments on Jabes’ “The Book of Questions” we may have a link connecting Derrida’s understanding of the Kabbalistic equivalence between God, world, and Torah, and his later dictum that “there is nothing outside the text.” While Derrida clearly identifies the Jew with “writing” he draws a distinction between hermeneutics as it is practiced by the rabbi and the poet, a distinction that is foundational for deconstruction and postmodern thought. This distinction, as Alan Bass (Derrida’s translator) suggests, is between one who seeks a return to an original or final truth (the rabbi) and one who “does not seek truth or origin, but affirms the play of interpretation” (the poet).83 As will become clear in this and later chapters, the Kabbalah holds these two notions of interpretation in exquisite tension, suggesting that, in Derrida’s terms, a Kabbalist is a “rabbi-poet.” Indeed, the Kabbalists permitted themselves a hermeneutic latitude that enabled them to make multiple interpretations not only of each word and letter of the Torah, but also of the white spaces dividing them, and to reinterpret and effectively rewrite the Torah text by rearranging the order of its words and letters.84 The deconstructive notion of the “play of interpretation” is anticipated in the hermeneutics of such Kabbalists as Abulafia, Cordovero and Luria. Derrida, in spite of his lack of facility with the original Kabbalistic sources, could well have encountered this and other Kabbalistic ideas through a reading of the works of Gershom Scholem. In Derrida’s essay on Jabes’ The Book of Questions we also find remarks suggestive of the doctrine of coincidentia oppositorum which played such an important role in the Kabbalist’s world-view. I do not mean to suggest here that Derrida derived his fascination with polarities and opposites, and his notion that all totalities are founded upon what they are meant to exclude,85 from Kabbalistic sources (these ideas are present throughout the history of mysticism and in the philosophy of Hegel) only that the coincidence of opposites is quite visible in this early essay on Jabes’ highly Kabbalistic work. This is clear in such Hegelian comments as “freedom allies and

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exchanges itself with that which restrains it”86 but even more pointedly in Derrida’s comments on Jabes’ views about language, e.g. “It is thus simultaneously true that things come into existence and lose existence by being named,” and that “Being is Grammar.” These comments, which collapse the signifier-signified distinction, and therefore suggest a coincidence of opposites between words and things, as well as other traditional polarities, resonate throughout Derrida’ later work (where we read such things as “Nontruth is the truth. Nonpresence is presence”87) and are not, as Derrida suggests “unprecedented.” They are, as the essay on Jabes makes clear, anticipated in the writings of the Kabbalists. Sollers and Scholem In his 1971 essay, “Dissemination” Derrida discusses Phillipe Sollers’ 1968 novel, Nombres (Numbers). In the course of this essay Derrida makes reference to “the ungraspable column of air in the Zohar,” the number mysticism of the Kabbalah, and the tree of the ten Sefirot. He notes that the Hebrew word “Safar means ‘to count’ and Sefirot is sometimes translated as ‘numerations.” Derrida states that “the tree of the sephiroth, an engraving of the whole, reaches down into the En Sof, ‘the root of all roots,’ “and he tells us that this structure is entirely recognizable in Sollers’ work. Derrida further makes reference to the “fires of the Torah, the black fire and the white fire,” an image that he correctly attributes to 18th century Hasidic rebbe, Levi Isaac of Berditchev.88 Derrida informs that “the white fire, a text written in letters that are still invisible, becomes readable in the black fire of the oral Torah, which comes along afterward to draw in the consonants and point the vowels…,”89 and that according to Rabbi Levi Isaac “the blanks, the white spaces in the Torah scroll also arise from the letters, but we cannot read them…”90 However, “when the Messianic era comes, God will unveil the white Torah in which the letters are now invisible to us, and this is what the term “new Torah” implies.”91 For Derrida, the opening of the Torah to its “white spaces” is important philosophically, because as a result “it is always possible for a text to become new, since the white spaces open up its structure to an indefinitely disseminated transformation.”92

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Derrida describes how Sollers provides an Orphic explanation…an analogue of the pleroma, which is a sort of original space, or pneumatic layer (tehiru) in which the zimzum [Tzimtzum], the crisis within God, the ‘drama of God’ through which God goes out of himself and determines himself, takes place.93

He continues, This contraction into a dot, this withdrawal and then this exit out of self located within the original ether, is of course linked to the mythology of ‘Louria,’ but it can also arise by way of ‘Hegel,’ ‘Boehme,’ etc.94

In an article entitled “The Eyes of Language: The Abyss and the Volcano”95 Derrida comments upon a letter of the great Kabbalistic scholar, Gershom Scholem to Walter Benjamin, date December 26, 1926, entitled “Confession on the Subject of Our language.” In his essay, Derrida writes: There is a power of language, therefore, at once a dynamis, an enveloped virtuality, a potentiality that can be brought or not to actuality; it is hidden, buried, dormant. This potentiality is also a power (Macht), a particular efficacy that acts on its own, in a quasi-autonomous manner (facon) without the initiative and beyond the control of speaking subjects. Scholem will not cease to develop this theme in his works on the name of God, Jewish mysticism, and above all on the Kabbalah. This is indeed an explicit motif in certain trends of the Kabbalah. The magical power of the name produces effects said to be real and over which we are not in command. The name hidden in its potency possesses a power of manifestation and of occultation, of revelation and encrypting [crypte]. What does it hide? Precisely the abyss that is enclosed within it. To open a name is to find in it not something but rather something like an abyss, the abyss as the thing itself. Faced with this power, once we have awakened it, we must recognize our impotence. The name is transcendent and more powerful than we are…96

The impact of Jewish mystical modes of interpretation on Derrida’s thought is further evident in his autobiographical essay, Circumfession, where Derrida makes reference to the medieval Kabbalistic acronym, PaRDeS, which is used to refer to four levels of scriptural meaning, peshat, the literal meaning, remez, the allegorical meaning, derash, the homiletic meaning, and sod, the profound, mystical meaning.97 He even suggests that this

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“quaternary model of a paradisiac discourse of Jewish ‘rationality’” is “in [his] blood.”98 A Philosophical Accord Within Derrida’s comments on the Kabbalah one can discern more than a few of the more significant trends in Derrida’s own thought. While I agree with Wolfson that one cannot unequivocally assert that Derrida’s ideas on such topics as language, hermeneutics, God, exile, alienation, and the coincidence of opposites originated in Kabbalistic or neo-Kabbalistic sources, our review of his comments on Jabes, Sollers, Scholem, etc. reveals a remarkable accord between Derrida’s own understanding of the Kabbalah and what were, or were to become, his own philosophical views. Specifically, on Derrida’s own interpretation of the Kabbalah, as he understood it through his reading of Jabes, Sollers, Scholem and others, the Kabbalah (and particularly the Lurianic Kabbalah) suggested the following: (1) reality is a text, and God himself has his origin and being in the book; (2) being is “grammar” and the distinction between words and things is untenable; (3) interpretations rather than facts are primordial; (4) hidden within the apparently plain meaning of a linguistic event are innumerable other, as yet unknown, possibilities that can transform both the text and its significance; (5) there is an exquisite tension between hermeneutics as a vehicle for arriving at an original truth, and hermeneutics as a creative, “playful,” and indeterminate endeavor; (6) language has a power that pre-exists, goes beyond and conditions the speaking subject; (7) the “name” produces powerful effects over which the speaker has no command, but it refers to nothing, an “abyss”—there is no transcendental

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signified; there is no “presence” behind the “name,” only an abyss, a “creative absence” (for the Kabbalists, this is the Ayin (nothing) which is equivalent to Ein-sof); (8) an “original space” provides the arena out of which all things, including God, language and being, are determined; (9) language is the vehicle of creation and revelation, while at the same time producing alienation and exile; (10) experience, in particular Jewish experience, is one of division, alienation, and exile; (11) God’s eclipse, separation, contraction and concealment is necessary for human speech and creativity, and this separation/concealment is accomplished through writing and speech; (12) concealment is the origin of revelation and truth; (13) the broken tablets symbolize a logical or linguistic rupture that engenders alienation, but also gives rise to freedom and creativity; (14) a rupture in God or the Absolute is the origin of both poesis and history; (15) all concepts, values, systems, etc. are inadequate to contain or account for their supposed referents; (16) polar oppositions do not exclude but rather contain and are in some sense dependent upon one another; (17) a concern with the hidden, the “secret” and the “gift;” (18) an openness to an indeterminate messianic future, characterized by an as yet unborn and unknown justice; and (19) a convergence between atheism on the one hand and faith, prayer and mysticism on the other.

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While one can certainly point to divergences between Kabbalah and deconstruction (e.g. the Kabbalah’s, albeit equivocal, acceptance of an hyper-essential divine being that is the object of faith), it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the propositions I have enumerated point to a very significant overlap between Kabbalistic and deconstructive hermeneutics and philosophy, and give warrant to Levinas’ reported suggestion that Derrida is a modern day, if perhaps heretical, representative of the Kabbalah. The overlap, and moreover, the dialectic between Kabbalah, deconstruction and postmodernism will occupy our attention in the chapters to come.

Chapter Three

Tzimtzum and Différance

M

any of the major themes of Derrida’s thought emerge in his 1968 paper on “Différance.” In this chapter I will provide a reading of this paper and related writings, and will compare Derrida’s notions of “différance,” the “trace” and “Khora” with comparable Kabbalistic notions, including Tzimtzum (contraction), Ein-sof (the Infinite) and Din (distinction and judgment). In the process I hope to both deepen our understanding of these Kabbalistic symbols and their relation to contemporary theology. In order to gain insight into the relationship between Derrida’s ideas and the Lurianic metaphors, a considerable foundation must be laid regarding both the Kabbalistic doctrine of Tzimtzum and Derrida’s notion of “différance.” Only then différance’s relation to (and difference from) Tzimtzum and other Kabbalistic symbols can be adequately appreciated. The Doctrine of Tzimtzum In the Lurianic Kabbalah, the doctrine of Tzimtzum gives expression to the view that the fundamental act of creation is a negative one, a withdrawal, contraction and concealment of the divine presence. The concept or symbol of Tzimtzum is clearest in the writings of the disciples of Isaac Luria (153472). However, earlier Kabbalists anticipated the basic idea. For example, Nachmanides, Rabbi Moses Ben Nachman (1194-1270), held that the divine wisdom (Chochmah) was created as a result of a Tzimtzum or contraction of

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the divine light or will in the highest Sefirah.1 The Zohar anticipated the notion of Tzimtzum in its doctrine that the light of Ein-Sof is manifest only when it is hidden and concealed like a seed,2 and Moses Cordovero (b. 1522), Isaac Luria’s older contemporary in Safed, developed a theory of Tzimtzum that fully paralleled and in all likelihood influenced Luria’s later views. Cordovero held that the Sefirot, the archetypes of creation, were formed as a result of a concealment of the infinite God. For Cordovero, creation is simply our perspective on this concealment, and revelation and concealment exist in coincidentia oppositorum; “revealing is the cause of concealment and concealment is the cause of revealing.”3 For Isaac Luria and his disciples (most notably Joseph Ibn Tabul and Chayyim Vital) the doctrine of Tzimtzum came to be viewed as the central act of creation. Luria followed Cordovero in appealing to Tzimtzum as a principle that would allow God to create a finite world without adding anything to His substance. According to Luria, in Tzimtzum, Ein-sof, contracts to “make room” for a world,4 and it is, in effect, the diminution of the divine light that constitutes the world’s finite reality, and provides for the “possibilities of distinction” that comprise the cosmos. Indeed, the Lurianists understood the Tzimtzum as a manifestation or “catharsis” of din (judgment), the characteristic within Ein-sof that produces distinctions and differences. Luria referred to the “possibilities of distinction” within the universe as Kelim, vessels. The vessels are compared to curtains that filter and partly conceal the infinite divine light, thereby producing the various manifestations of a finite world. Today, we can gain insight into Tzimtzum by viewing it as analogous to the interposition of a photographic slide, which selectively filters the spectrum of the projector’s pure white light, thereby “creating” a detailed and multifarious image or “world.” The Kabbalists regarded the Tzimtzum, along with their other theosophical symbols and concepts, as purely metaphorical ideas that should be understood as “appeasements to the ear” and “aids to the understanding.” Above all, they held that the Tzimtzum should not be understood in physical or temporal terms. Indeed, since God or “Ein-sof” does not Himself exist within space and time, He cannot contract himself physically or temporally. Rather, it is through God’s meta-physical contraction and concealment that space, time, and matter come into existence. Indeed, the distances of space and time, and the opacities of material bodies, are fundamental limitations on human knowledge and endeavor, and it thus stands to reason that the Tzimtzum (as a limitation on knowledge) should result in these limiting

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categories. In contracting itself via the Tzimtzum, Ein-sof limits its (and our) knowledge and power, creating a perspective on being that amounts to the spatio-temporal and material framework of our world. Schneur Zalman of Lyadi, the first Lubavitcher rebbe, provided a linguistic interpretation of Tzimtzum, according to which Ein-sof contracts and invests its life force in the holy letters that comprise the so-called “ten utterances of creation,” verses in the book of Genesis through which God is said to create the world through His speech.5 According to the Alter Rebbe, the world is created through the combination of letters “by substitutions and transpositions of the letters themselves and their numerical values and equivalents.”6 This combination of letters, and the variations achieved via Gematria,7 results not only in names and meanings, but the very existence of the objects named. According to Schneur Zalman, God’s revelation through divine speech is an act of Tzimtzum, a limitation of the divine essence. Letters and words function to limit divine thought to some specific content and are therefore held to be equivalent to the vessels that structure the archetypes of creation, the Sefirot. “Différance” The notion that language is the vehicle of Tzimtzum, and thus the origin of plurality and difference brings the Lurianic theory of creation close to Derrida’s notion of différance. Derrida introduces the word différance as a pivotal term in his critique of the representational theory of language, the theory that words gain their significance through a direct association with experiences or things. Derrida appeals to the view of the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), who held that “in language there are only differences.” For Saussure, sounds, words and concepts, do not “attach” themselves directly to their supposed referents, but rather derive their significance as a result of their differences from other sounds, words, and concepts in a linguistic system.8 Derrida adopts the term “différance” to refer to that which enables phonemes and ultimately words to be distinguished from one another.9 He creates a difference in the spelling of his term, “différance” by substituting an “a” for an “e” in “différance,” in such a manner that this difference in spelling cannot be heard in (French) speech and can thus only be discerned graphically. This is fitting because as Derrida

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himself puts it, “The difference which establishes phonemes and lets them be heard remains in and of itself inaudible in every sense of the word.”10 Derrida asks whether in considering différance we must not then “be permitted to refer to an order which no longer belongs to sensibility.” He adds that in addition to being non-sensible, différance is also non-conceptual, inasmuch as concepts themselves already assume a differentiation on the basis of (sensible) names. It is important to attain a basic understanding of why Derrida (following Saussure) holds that it is the system of differences, as opposed to a direct relationship between language and the world that is the source of linguistic significance. The idea that Derrida argues against is in many ways the intuitive one, and being freed from its grasp is an important step in understanding not only Derrida, but also much of the philosophy of the past century as well as certain basic concepts in Jewish mysticism. Suppose that one attempted to forge a language by attaching words (think of them as written labels) to objects in the environment. One might invent the word “enrex” and place it on a rabbit pelt. What does “enrex” mean and how do we know its meaning? Does it mean “rabbit,” “rabbit pelt,” “death,” the “color” of the pelt’s fur, the act of “labeling,” the notion of “reference” etc.? How would we come to know this word’s meaning except by using other words and locating “enrex” within a system of differences that distinguishes it from other terms? Similar considerations prompted Saussure and Derrida, to adopt the notion that the meaning of a linguistic term is determined by its place in an entire language and not through a direct connection with “objects” in a (pre-linguisticized) world. Any effort to name things directly will run up against the obstacle of having to disambiguate what one is labeling via an appeal (and regress) to an indefinite series of other words. In isolating the notion of différance, Derrida believes that he has found an order that resists “one of the founding oppositions of philosophy,” the opposition between “the sensible and the intelligible.”11 He says that he cannot expose différance, he cannot tell or show us what it is, because unlike sensible and intelligible things, différance cannot be made present, i.e. it cannot be placed before us as an experience. Différance makes possible the very gesture or presentation of being present, but it itself can never be presented. In telling us that “différance is what makes possible the presentation of being present” he crosses out the “is” to indicate that this is just a pointer for our understanding, and that différance certainly cannot be

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said to have any “being.” For Derrida, différance “exceed(s) the order of truth” but it is not itself a “something.”12 Différance, “Presence” and “Absence” With his notion of différance Derrida is interested in overcoming our reliance on the presence/absence distinction. He argues that all presence implies absence and vice versa. For Derrida signification is only possible if each element in speech or writing, each element that is present, is necessarily related to that which is not present, i.e. that which constitutes the background system of differences, and that which is both past, i.e. what was written or said before, and future, what is yet to be said or written. A single element or word in this sentence is only significant by virtue of its location in the language within which it occurs and, more immediately, by virtue of the words that precede and follow it. There is thus, according to Derrida, a trace of something that is absent (the system of differences that render a word meaningful) and a trace of both the future and the past (the discourse that came before and comes after the word) in the very fabric of the word that is “presently” before us. Interestingly, Derrida accepts (for the moment) the traditional premise that an interval “must separate the present from what it is not in order for the present to be itself.”13 But because the present necessarily contains within itself what is other (past and future) the very interval that separates the present from everything else, ends up also dividing the present from itself, and thus dividing “along with the present, everything that is thought on the basis of the present,”14 which is, in short, every being, substance and subject. In sum, a metaphysics or epistemology that wishes to hold on to the present and to the possibility of “presence” (and for Derrida this is the entirety of western philosophy) results in a division or alienation in the heart of all things. The “Trace” Derrida introduces the notion of the “trace” in order to indicate that all that we regard as present to consciousness, all that is in the temporal present,

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is only significant because it is marked by a “trace” of something else, something that is not present. According to Derrida, language, and particularly writing makes the movement of signification possible only if each element that is said to be ‘present’ appearing on the stage of presence, is related to something other than itself but retains the mark of a past element and already lets itself be hollowed out by the mark of its relation to a future element. This trace relates no less to what is called the future than to what is called the past, and it constitutes what is called the present by this very relation to what it is not, to what it absolutely is not....15

The trace is not only relevant to language, but to all experience as well, as any experiential present is unavoidably marked by a past and a future that contextualizes it and renders it meaningful. A pure point of “presence” could have no significance whatsoever; in fact, it could not even be regarded as an experience. The “trace” entails that all thought and experience is in fact inhabited (and constituted) by a “non-now” and, as Derrida later elaborates, by a whole host of other “outside” determinations, including the unconscious, materiality, animal nature, etc. each of which “experience” is originally meant to exclude. The “trace” of what is other exists in what is thought to be the self-same.16 Différance is “Not” Derrida tells us that différance is not. It is not a present being, however excellent, unique, principal, or transcendent. It governs nothing, reigns over nothing, and nowhere exercises any authority. It is not announced by any capital letter. Not only is there no kingdom of différance, but différance instigates the subversion of every kingdom. This makes it obviously threatening and infallibly dreaded by everything within us that desires a kingdom, the past or future presence of a kingdom.”17

Yet Derrida confesses that “in a certain aspect of itself, différance is certainly but the historical and epochal unfolding of Being...”18 However, since Being itself cannot be thought or said except through beings, which are already differentiated, différance is then actually, according to Derrida, “older than being.”19 différance in this “aged” sense is the “play of the trace.”

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The trace is that which always differs and defers, which “erases itself in presenting itself...” For Derrida, the system of differences is what is older than being itself. We thus find in Derrida a “non-metaphysics,” a “nonphilosophy” that somehow manages to engage our metaphysical and theological interest, and which reflects something of the Lurianic dynamic of Ein-sof, Tzimtzum, and its understanding of the creation of a finite world. However, there is no ‘name’ for the différance that is “older” than Being.20 This is not because it is ineffable and thus beyond naming, but rather because it “is the play which makes possible nominal effects.” To name it would be to provide a unique, master-name; but since nothing can be named except within a matrix of difference, that which permits naming cannot be named or mastered by anything outside or anterior to that matrix. The proper name of this play that permits nominal effects would have to come outside that play, but we know that this is an impossible demand, a demand to describe in language what “is” prior to the advent of words.

Does Différance Create? For Derrida différance is not a concept but “rather the very possibility of conceptuality.” However, because différance itself is non-full, non-present, non-simple, it cannot be conceptualized as an origin or foundation. For Derrida, there can be no cause or foundation for language (including even différance itself) that eludes the play of différance. In speaking about différance Derrida uses the terms “constitute,” “produce,” “create” and “history” only in a strategic sense, and it is in this strategic sense alone that différance constitutes language “as a weave of differences.” Derrida will later deconstruct “cause,” “constitutes,” etc., showing, for example, that différance is in fact prior to and indifferent to the distinction between structural and genetic (or historical) points of view, which are themselves terms in a system of differences.21 Différance and Negative Theology Derrida readily acknowledges that his characterization of différance appears to have much in common with negative theology, in that his only means of characterizing différance is to say what it is not; différance is “not

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being,” “does not exist,” “has no form,” etc. in much the same manner that the negative theologians characterize God. Différance, as it turns out, is not everything. However, Derrida denies that différance has anything to do with negative theology, which is always in his view “concerned with disengaging a superessentiality beyond the finite categories of essence and existence.”22 Différance has neither being nor “hyper-being.” For Derrida, différance is actually quite neutral; as the condition for all language and thought, it is in a way more fundamental than any theological or philosophical notion or idea. It is “the very opening of the space in which ontotheology and philosophy produces its system and its history, it includes onto-theology, inscribing it and exceeding it without return.”23 In talking about différance, Derrida will not and cannot operate according to the rules of philosophical and logical discourse, which are after all contained by différance. Instead, he proposes a certain errant and adventurous wandering as his method: If there is a certain wandering in the tracing of différance, it no more follows the lines of philosophical - logical discourse than that of its symmetrical and integral inverse, empirical - logical discourse. The concept of play keeps itself beyond this opposition, announcing, on the eve of philosophy and beyond it, the unity of chance and necessity in calculations without end.24

Derrida is here proposing a form of writing that is neither reducible to sensing nor thinking, nor to philosophy nor science. This writing is a “play,” which according to Derrida is not to be reduced to or circumscribed to thinking, which is itself, in Derrida’s view, conditioned by a program that assumes certain binary distinctions that he wants to question and/or overcome. To make a computer analogy: Derrida wishes to continue typing on the keyboard, but he has made a shift that has disengaged him from the program, any program; his keystrokes no longer have a pre-determined programmatic meaning but are just a free-play on the computer, not in “Windows”, not in “DOS”, etc. It is a play that enables him to go on a new adventure to some place unanticipated by the programmed discourse. Différance is his opening to this free-play. Of course by typing on the keyboard outside of any program he will not make sense, he will not even be thinking, but that, in a way, is precisely where he wants to go.

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Derrida and Mysticism The notion of a form of discourse that is somehow prior to or outside the laws of thought and logic is familiar to students of mysticism. Stace, in his classic book Mysticism and Philosophy,25 argues that the reason why mystics have almost universally held their experiences to be ineffable and beyond language, is precisely because they are attempting to express an experience of the “One” that is prior to all multiplicity and thus outside the realm of logic (whose laws only apply to the relations between different things). It is small wonder that Derrida, in writing of a discourse that is prior to or outside logic, immediately brings upon himself the charge of “mysticism,” in both the positive and negative connotations of this term. Derrida’s own avowed reason for eschewing the “charge” of “mysticism” is that mysticism, if it stands for anything, stands for the proposition that the absolute, the unity of all things, or God, can be present to a subject in a singular act of mystical consciousness. When interviewed on this very issue he says, “I am not mystical and there is nothing mystical in my work. In fact my work is a deconstruction of values which found mysticism, i.e. of presence, view, of the absence of a marque, of the unspeakable.”26 We will deal more extensively with the question of Derrida’s alleged mysticism in due course. Here I wish to focus on the question of mysticism and “presence.” The question of whether mystical experience, and Jewish mystical experience in particular, is of an absolute presence, in Derrida’s sense of the term, is obviously critical to Derrida’s denial that he himself is in any way “mystical.” It should be pointed out that many mystics describe their experience not in terms of a vision or perception (e.g. of the presence of God or other absolute) but rather in terms of a complete emptying of consciousness, a complete lack of sensation, perception, thought, etc.27 The Kabbalists speak of their absolute, Ein-sof, as Ayin, nothing, and the experiential or mystical process they and, especially, the Hasidim frequently describe is not one of experiencing the Lord’s presence, but rather one of bittul ha-Yesh, the nullification of existence and the self, and the transformation of Yesh (existence) into Ayin (nothingness). Perhaps then Derrida has mischaracterized mysticism, and hence has denied his affinity only with a mysticism of his own construction, or a version of mysticism which may not be typical of the Jewish mystical experience.

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism The Thing is Hopelessly Divided Against Itself

Derrida holds that a simple, separate unitary anything is itself hopelessly divided by the very operation that distinguishes it from all things. By this he means to say that because any entity, experience or word, must implicitly contain within itself the system of differences that constitute it as itself, it cannot be separate, self-sufficient and unique. In asserting its uniqueness it becomes “divided” between itself and the system of differences beyond itself that provide it with its identity. This raises yet another potential question regarding the mystical experience of a singular, unitary absolute. Perhaps the unity of the mystic is simple but not separate; in short, the mystics’ “One” may be completely indistinguishable from all other things, and in fact, leads to the conviction that on the deepest level, all things are reflected in each thing, that the All is reflected in even the smallest grain of sand. On this view, the mystic’s proposition that “All is One” is not far from Derrida’s own notion that each thing contains within itself a trace of the entire system that renders it meaningful.28 By what appears to be a striking coincidence, the Lurianists invoke virtually the identical terminology of a “trace” (reshimu) that remains in the void created by the divine Tzimtzum. Just as Derrida’s trace assures that difference is never complete, the Kabbalist’s trace assures that Tzimtzum is never total, and that a positive element remains in what would otherwise be a void of “pure distinctiveness.” We will have much more to say about the “trace” in Derrida and the Kabbalah later in this chapter. Finally, we should note that in the Lurianic Kabbalah, the world is torn asunder because the Sefirot as they were originally emanated were distinct unto themselves, and not connected with all other things. This condition (what the Kabbalists called the World of Points), like Derrida’s conception of a unique and separate identity, is self-contradictory and must ultimately break apart, and eventually yield to a notion of a fully integrated world in which a thing is itself only by virtue of its containing all other things within it (the Kabbalist’s World of Tikkun). The Breaking of the Vessels is the result of an inadequate manner of thinking and being which seeks ultimate difference and distinctiveness. Paradoxically, it is the very notion of difference as foundational for all thought that leads to an overcoming of difference itself. In Derrida this occurs via his notion of the “trace,” of an otherness that subsists in the core of all presumably self-same things, and which overcomes the boundaries between them. In the Kabbalah, this

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overcoming of difference occurs via a reshimu or trace of the Infinite that remains in all finite things, and which assures that everything in the world not only reflects the Infinite, but contains an element of all other things within itself.29 The Demise of Différance Derrida believes that différance provides us with a certain insight, yet he does not believe that this insight should necessarily be considered permanent. The efficacy of the thematic of différance, Derrida informs us, “may very well, indeed must, one day be superseded, lending itself if not to its own replacement, at least to enmeshing itself in a chain that in truth it never will have governed.”30 Derrida offers this as one more reason why différance is not theological. The thematic of différance is neither a being, a word, nor a concept. It is more akin to a strategy, something that Derrida does to get us to see things in a new way; for example, to undermine the notion that “being” and “thought” are unquestionable rock-bottom characteristics of all that we can do or say. But like the Buddhist “ferry-boat” or the “ladders” of Wittgenstein, différance may well be discarded once its purpose has been achieved. Derrida implicitly raises the question of whether the same can be said of “God” or any other theological principle; that it has its transcendence, its possibility of being superseded, built into its very core. This suggests the possibility of theological concepts, or a theological system the very nature of which lends itself to being superseded and transcended. Perhaps this is the very “absolute” that emerges from Derrida’s thinking (and also, as we will see, from the Lurianic Kabbalah). Indeed, Derrida’s views on différance prompt us to ask whether the Kabbalah can be regarded as a theological system that includes the possibility, even the necessity of its own revision and transcendence. This topic, however, can only be fully addressed via our consideration of the Lurianic symbol of Shevirat ha-Kelim (the Breaking of the Vessels) in later chapters.

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism Différance, Space and Time

Derrida points out that the French verb differer and the Latin verb differre have two distinct meanings, the first expressing distinction, and the second, suggested by the English word “defer”, involving “putting off until later” or a “taking account of time,” which Derrida summarizes with the word temporization: Differer in this sense is to temporize, to take recourse, consciously or unconsciously, in the temporal and temporizing mediation of a detour that suspends the accomplishment or fulfillment of “desire” or “will.”31

Différance is not only a temporalization, but is also, for Derrida, a spacing, a spacing that permits the more common meaning of “difference” to emerge, i.e. to be distinct, discernible, not identical. Derrida refers to différance as “the ‘originary constitution’ of space and time.” The notion that différance is the origin of both space and time brings us to a full consideration of the relationship between différance and the Lurianic doctrine of Tzimtzum. Différance and the Doctrine of Tzimtzum We can readily see that Derrida derives from his notion of “différance” much, if not all, of what the Lurianists had attributed to the Tzimtzum, the contraction, concealment and judgment (din) that gives rise to finite distinctions and which, for Luria and his followers, is the origin of both space and time. For the Kabbalists, Tzimtzum is that which allows finite things to be differentiated and to appear. It is the contraction/concealment within the godhead that opens up a metaphysical place for being. Indeed, prior to the Tzimtzum there is no “being,” and Ein-sof is, properly speaking, identified with Ayin, nothing. There is a sense in which Tzimtzum is itself equiprimordial with, and even identified with Ein-sof; for if God or Ein-sof is the “place of the world”32 then Tzimtzum is that which provides such place. The place that Tzimtzum provides, however, is not a physical space, but is rather more properly understood as “spacing in general,” the “space” that allows for the differentiation of objects, thoughts, letters, and words. As we have seen, according to Schneur Zalman of Lyadi, the first Lubavitcher rebbe, the letters of the Hebrew language are the vehicles of Tzimtzum, as

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they are the primary means through which a finite world is differentiated and created. If Tzimtzum is embodied in the letters of language, we may be perfectly justified in speaking of the space that Tzimtzum opens, as the space between letters and words that allows them to function as units of sound and meaning. The Lurianists emphasized the differentiating nature of Tzimtzum, by holding that the Tzimtzum is both derived from and in many ways identical to, the divine middah or trait of din, judgment, which the Kabbalists understood as the power in the universe that makes for moral, spiritual and conceptual distinctions. The deferring nature of Tzimtzum is evident in the Kabbalist’s affirmation that Tzimtzum is the origin of both space and time. Space and time come into being because the Tzimtzum conceals Ein-sof from itself, or, in more immanent terms, conceals the fullness of Ein-sof from the partial divine consciousness in human beings. The vehicles of this concealment are space and time,33 which continuously defer the presence of Ein-sof or God. Were Ein-sof to become fully present to itself (or humankind), space and time would collapse and the differential matrix that permits the existence of finite distinct entities would be overcome. Such differential/deferring, in Derrida’s terms, is the necessary prerequisite for creation. For this reason there is not only a “trace” (reshimu) of the divine, but also a trace of the Tzimtzum in all created things. Without such a trace, finite things would not exist as independent letters, words, objects or ideas. Derrida considers the two senses of différance as temporalization (deferring) and spacing (differentiating) and asks how they can be joined. With regard to the first of these senses, Derrida points out that a linguistic sign, by representing that which is not present, is actually traditionally conceived of as a deferred presence. This idea can provide us with a certain insight into how language is the embodiment of Tzimtzum. Since language defers presence, it creates a certain distance between itself and the thing represented, thus limiting, concealing, and contracting the presence of that thing in its very (linguistic) reference to it. Writing and Tzimtzum In his comments on Jabes in Writing and Difference, Derrida suggests that writing is what fills the void of God’s absence; “with the stifling of his voice and the dissimulation of his Face,”34 a notion that is commensurate

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with Schneur Zalman’s linguistic interpretation of the Tzimtzum. In his later philosophy Derrida again comes remarkably close to adopting the Tzimtzum concept as his own. In Memoirs of the Blind Derrida speaks of a seeing that is dependent upon a withdrawal or concealment of the very lines which constitute a drawn image.35 Such lines are akin to Venetian blinds, which permit a certain seeing by structuring the light that passes through them. Derrida goes so far as to compare the withdrawal of the lines and other structural elements in art to God who withdraws, leaving behind a visible world, stating that were we to see such a God without blinds we would be blinded by the intensity of His light. The Kabbalists held a similar view, i.e. that if the Tzimtzum were somehow reversed, then all difference would cease, and all would be absorbed back into the Godhead, dissolved in a single unitary light.36 Kabbalah, Logocentrism and the Philosophy of Presence Derrida is critical of what he calls “Logocentrism,” which he understands to be the view that the world is present to consciousness and that consciousness is present to itself. His main arguments against the phenomenological and metaphysical traditions that embody this view revolve around his criticism of their efforts to attain epistemological certainty regarding what is present to a human subject. As we have seen, Derrida’s conception of the trace is introduced to undermine the possibility of a “presence” that is not contaminated by an absence, a present that is uncontaminated by past and future, an inside that is uncontaminated by an outside, a self that is uncontaminated by an other, and an intended meaning that is uncontaminated by an indefinite possibility of variant interpretations. Even the self-evidence of Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” is brought into doubt by a trace which assures that the “I think” is never fully present, and because it is a linguistic expression, never fully independent of a linguistic matrix that assures that something of the “other” will be part of all of one’s thoughts and language.37 In this regard, we should note that in spite of Derrida’s claim that mysticism is a philosophy of absolute presence, the Kabbalah in Derrida’s terms is decidedly non-logocentric. While logocentrism assumes an uninterrupted chain from a transcendental object or signified through consciousness, experience, reference and expression in speech and writing,38

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the Kabbalistic dialectic posits several breaks, distortions, emendations and reconstructions in this supposed epistemological chain. For Luria, the access of consciousness to the pure being of presence is severely restricted by two negations, the Tzimtzum (concealment) and the Shevirah (rupture). As a result of the Tzimtzum, the light of being is concealed as if through a number of veils that diminish and obscure it, and as a result of the Shevirah, being or presence cannot be perceived or cognized except in a displaced, shattered, and chaotic form. Finally, nothing can be perceived at all except through the interpretive, valuational and redemptive praxis of humankind, expressed through the Lurianic symbol of Tikkun. For the Kabbalists, full presence would overcome the distinctions between God, man, and world, and would actually result in the end of human consciousness. Indeed, human subjectivity is founded upon the illusion of a split between subject and object, which in Kabbalistic terms is the illusion of a distinction between God and an individual human being. “Truth” is not something that can be immediately observed, but rather something that must be extracted and reconstructed from an illusory, broken experience. Even the self, man’s personal consciousness, is obscured in a kellipah (an encapsulating “husk”) that must be unbound and freed. The Kabbalists share with Derrida the notion that there is an illusory split between subject and object, word and thing, consciousness and world, but that such distinctions are nonetheless necessary for language, thought and subjectivity. For the Kabbalists, this idea follows from their view that all finitude is simply a concealment and contraction of the one absolute, Ein-sof. For Derrida the idea follows from his view that the meaning of words and sentences can only come from other words and sentences and never from a confrontation with the so-called “transcendental object,” which, if it is anything at all, is itself a linguistic construction. An analogy to the phenomenon of dreams can perhaps grant us some insight into these unusual ideas. In a dream there is an obvious identity between (the dreamer’s) consciousness and its object (the dream—which after all is only in the dreamer’s “mind”). There is also an identity between dream objects and words (in dreams objects often illustrate linguistic phrases, or suddenly become their words and vice versa—further, there is the impossibility of others distinguishing the actual dream from the dreamer’s linguistic report). However, in order for a dream to be sustained, these identities must be temporarily “forgotten,” and a distinction posited between the dreamer and his dream world, and a further distinction between the dream and the dream

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report. In short, the dream rests upon an illusory distinction between subject and object, consciousness and world, word and thing. Similarly, in our waking life, consciousness, self, and language are all predicated upon the (illusory) distinctions between subject and object, consciousness and world, and word and thing. Were one to actually penetrate to the “truth” behind these illusions, one could no longer speak, think, or perceive. In Kabbalistic terms, the Tzimtzum, which posits a fundamental, though illusory, rift between mind (Ein-sof) and world, is the necessary background assumption of all that is experienced and said. Similarly, for Derrida, a distinction between words and the “transcendental object,” though ultimately illusory, is a necessary assumption of all writing and speech. Who or What Differs? Derrida rhetorically asks “What differs? Who differs? What is difference?” suggesting that the metaphysical spirit is so ingrained within us that even he is tempted to ask these misguided questions. However, if we attempted to provide an answer to such questions, Derrida tells us, “we would immediately fall back into what we have just disengaged ourselves from.”39 If we answered such questions we might be tempted to posit a being, a consciousness, or a God that “differs” and “defers” but which is itself not “constituted” by différance. This is an impossibility, as being, consciousness, God, etc. are all preceded by the differential matrix that antecedes and constitutes language, thought, etc. For Derrida, the subject, whether human or divine, only appears within the system of differences that is language. The subject is, as it were, already inscribed within language and cannot be called upon to function as language’s and difference’s “origin.”40 So Derrida effectively blocks the notion that ‘difference’ is a constitutive or creative act of transcendental consciousness, absolute, mind, God or Infinite Being. In Kabbalistic terms it is not Ein-sof that performs an act of Tzimtzum, but Tzimtzum is itself prior to and, in effect, constitutive of, Ein-sof, or perhaps that Ein-sof, as the “place” of the world is equiprimordial with if not identical to Tzimtzum.41 Speaking metaphysically here we might say that the subject, and even God, emerges out of something even more primordial than itself, i.e. difference, spacing. Reading the Kabbalist’s absolute through Derrida’s notion of différance (and remaining within the metaphysical spirit), we might

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say that Ein-sof becomes the “place” as opposed to the cause or creator of the world. Ein-sof, through the Tzimtzum, allows being, language and thought to emerge. I will have more to say on this topic shortly, when I consider Derrida’s critique of the ancient Greek notion of khora. Differences between Différance and Tzimtzum The Kabbalists at times place their symbols of Ein-sof, Tzimtzum, etc., in a more traditional metaphysical, almost causal context, one that Derrida assiduously avoids. As we have seen, Derrida is very careful to disengage différance from any hint of theology, negative or otherwise. We should note, however, that at times the Kabbalists also write as if Ein-sof, Tzimtzum, etc. were pre-theological terms and that their referents, if indeed these terms have referents, are totally unsuited for worship and prayer. For example, according to one anonymous Kabbalist, “Ein-Sof is not even alluded to in the Torah or in the prophets, or in the hagiographers or in the words of the sages; only the mystics received a small indication of it.”42 For Isaac the Blind, in contrast to the biblical God to whom we may direct our praise and our prayers, Ein-Sof, is “not [even] conceivable by thinking.”43 There is thus warrant for the view that, just as Derrida holds with regard to différance, the Kabbalists do not ascribe being or even concept to Tzimtzum and Ein-sof. On the other hand, Derrida himself tells us that if we were to speak of différance in conceptual terms it “would be said to designate a constitutive, productive, and originary causality, the process of scission and division which would produce or constitute different things or differences,”44 thereby suggesting a possible metaphysical interpretation of différance. For Derrida, différance is neither active nor passive, but remains “undecided” as between the two. It is neither an act nor passion of a subject but is rather something which only later gets “distributed into an active and a passive voice.”45 Understood in this (conceptual) way, différance is perfectly analogous to the divine attribute of din (judgment/distinction) which the Kabbalists speak of as occurring within the hidden recesses of the godhead, and which is the origin of the Tzimtzum, distinctiveness, finitude, and thus creation. Our task here, however, is not to completely assimilate Derrida to Luria, or vice versa, but rather to comprehend how a new “gateway” to an understanding of the Kabbalah might be opened through a juxtaposed reading of the two.

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Derrida’s notion of différance (and its Kabbalistic parallel Tzimtzum) has certain psychological implications that should not be ignored. Derrida suggests that Freud implicitly recognized différance and placed it at the center of his thinking, but failed to acknowledge the radical implications of this notion. For Freud, différance, in the sense of deferring pleasure, is at the core of the psychic economy. Derrida, however, proposes that the deference of pleasure spoken of by Freud is ultimately an impossible presence, an “irreparable loss of presence,”46 which Derrida associates with the death instinct and the “totally other” that disrupts every economy. This deferring is an “expenditure without reserve” that opens itself up only to “death” and “non-meaning.” Derrida utilizes his previous arguments against presence in his critiques of Freud and Hegel, for whom pleasure or meaning is deferred to a later time when they may become present. But since such presence is itself a deferment, and thus an impossible ideal, the economy that these theories are based on is a fiction. The longed for pleasure will never be achieved, and full meaning will never be realized. For Derrida, the unconscious, rather than being an empirical unknown that can potentially be revealed, is part of the very structure of language and thought. According to Derrida, it is not that a certain deferred presence remains hidden, but rather, it is part of the very structure of différance that what has been thought of as deferred or displaced is implacably postponed. A certain “otherness,” Derrida tells us, is completely exempt from the possibility of ever showing itself. This “otherness” is spoken of by Freud as the unconscious. But this “unconscious” is not a hidden or potential selfpresence, but is rather constantly deferring itself; it is an irreducible delay, not a thing that can be ultimately or eventually grasped. For Derrida, the language of presence/absence is wholly inadequate, as is the view of the unconscious as an agency or archive. The unconscious is better understood as part of the very structure of différance, of language. For the Lurianists, Tzimtzum plays a psychological role that is very similar to différance and the trace. Tzimtzum inserts an essential concealment, deferment and nescience into the heart of all creation and into human subjectivity in particular. Indeed, for the Kabbalists, the very definition of finitude is that it is an aspect of the infinite for which infinitude is deferred and concealed. This entails that the individual human subject is an aspect of (infinite) consciousness, which by its very nature is partial and

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ignorant. Indeed, for the Kabbalists (as for Freud), the very structure of individuality, personality, and human creativity is predicated on concealment, deferment and ignorance.47 For the Kabbalists, the human personality is rooted in an ignorance (or deferment) of its own identity with the infinite. As such, it is an illusion, an illusion that is paradoxically necessary not only for human life, but for the redemption of the world as well. This is because, according to the Lurianists, it is only in a spatiotemporal finite world of ignorance, partiality, mortality and evil that humankind can perform the spiritual, ethical, intellectual, relational, and aesthetic acts (i.e. the mitzvoth) that will bring about the realization of Tikkun ha-Olam, the restoration of the world, and thereby bring full realization to the divine essence, which would otherwise exist only in potentia. We should here further note that it is only in a world of concealment and deferment (a world in which God is eclipsed and the ultimate fulfillment of desire continually deferred) that the notion of the messiah and the messianic age can take root. Of course, the messianic becomes an important regulatory concept in the history of Judaism, and the impetus to the Lurianic notion of Tikkun. That Derrida should himself take an enormous interest in the messianic in his later writings provides further evidence that the logic of his thought parallels that of the Jewish mystics, as both he and the Kabbalists understand the messiah as that which “has yet to come.” Derrida’s “messianism” is a theme that I will consider in some detail later in this book. Creation and the Lie One aspect of the deferment and concealment implicit in both the trace and Tzimtzum concerns the implications of these notions for the concept of “truth.” Indeed, the distinction between “truth” and the “lie” is a binary opposition that has been deconstructed both by both postmodernists and Kabbalistic thinkers. As we have seen, Derrida writes that “Nontruth is truth,”48 and Jabes writes in The Book of Questions, “Reb Jacob, who was my first teacher, believed in the virtue of the lie because, so he said, there is no writing without lie. And writing is the way of God.”49 The Kabbalists, in their conception of creation as Tzimtzum (concealment) provide their own deconstruction of the truth/lie distinction. As we have seen, according to the Lurianists, Ein-sof creates a world through an act of concealment. The vehicles of this concealment are the letters of the

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Hebrew tongue and language in general. The letters are embodied in the Torah, which becomes the blueprint of creation. Thus, scripture, which is generally thought of as divine revelation and the template for creation is also the concealment of divine truth, and in this expression/concealment, Torah, is thus the origin of the lie. Creation, which, from one point of view is the manifestation, fulfillment and perfection of divine truth, from another perspective is alienation, and negation, illusion and deceit. According to Schneur Zalman, “Even though it appears to us that the worlds exist, this is a total lie.”50 We thus see that for the Jewish mystics, the lie, both as a concealment of the truth and a permanent possibility of linguistic deceit is necessary if there is to be any creation or revelation whatsoever. The lie, for the Kabbalah, exists in coincidentia oppositorum with the truth. In the post-modern vision, forgetfulness of truth, misunderstanding and error, are not simply weaknesses to be overcome, but are actually essential to communication.51 Language, and writing in particular, for Derrida and others, not only makes possible the transmission of meaning and truth, but also guarantees error, deceit, misunderstanding, mis-transmission and loss. Language and symbolization is absolutely necessary for science, history and knowledge, but is also the occasion for their alienation and degradation.52 One aspect of language that underlies its potential for mistransmission and misunderstanding is its linearity. Language does not transmit ideas at once, but rather presents them in serial fashion, with the sense of earlier words and sentences being dependent upon later words, sentences and punctuation. What I am writing now will, of course, take on new significance when placed in the context of what follows, and as such will essentially be open to new, different (and mis-) understandings that occur as a result of this development.53 As I write these words I ‘contract’ my thought into language and at the same time conceal, obscure, and mistransmit what I have to say. Isaac Luria expressed this paradox regarding the seriality of language when, in apologizing for not putting his teachings into writing, he said that he had so many thoughts that the dam threatened to burst every time he tried to write them down. I cannot possibly place the entire context (emerging from my own life and thought) that leads to this statement into this sentence. By necessity, an enormity of thought and background is excluded. Such exclusion makes my communication both a revelation and concealment. For the Kabbalists, the complement and “correction” for the finitude, concealment, constriction, and linearity of spoken and written language, is the nearly infinite expansion of interpretive possibilities. The Kabbalists held

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that both the Torah and the world were subject to at least 600,000 interpretations, one for each of the souls that are traditionally thought to have left Egypt during the Exodus.54 Other Kabbalists went so far as to hold that the Torah text could be reinterpreted indefinitely, even by means of rearranging its words to form new ideas, and its letters to form new words.55 For the Kabbalists, it is the act of interpretation that, in effect, works to reverse the Tzimtzum, and restore the infinitude that had been concealed in the linguistic act of creation. Hermeneutics then becomes the means of overcoming the “deceit” and “error” inherent in a finite world. “Khora” As we have seen, Derrida draws our attention to the articulation of or ‘spacing’ between the elements in a linguistic system, which he sees as necessary for syntax and language in general. In speech such spacing is found in the intervals between spoken words and phrases; in writing, in the actual physical spaces between letters and words, and in punctuation. For Derrida, such spacing is a “constitutive nothing,” one that, as we have seen, is quite commensurate with the Kabbalist’s notion of Tzimtzum. We have seen that for the Kabbalists the Tzimtzum is the opening of a metaphysical space that enables finite things and ideas to be differentiated. It is perhaps natural to think of the Tzimtzum as the origin of physical space and time,56 but, given the Kabbalistic equation between Tzimtzum and language, it is equally if not more helpful to think of it as the origin of the spacing that permits representation and the articulation of words and ideas. The notion of “spacing” receives an interesting treatment in Derrida’s consideration of the Greek notion of “khora,” which, I believe, can give us further insight into the Kabbalistic notions of Ein-sof and Tzimtzum. The term “khora” is used by Plato in the Timaeus to refer to the ‘place’ within which the demiurge is said to cut or engrave the images of the forms. At times Plato refers to it as the receptacle, space, matrix or mother. Khora is the progenitor of Aristotle’s hyle and Descartes’ extensio. At other times, however, Plato speaks of khora in more “negative” terms, as neither logos nor myth, being nor non-being, sensible nor intelligible, present nor absent, active nor passive. In this trope it has no meaning or identity; even the “receptacle” is something that appears within it. Khora receives everything but becomes nothing.

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According to Derrida, khora “gives place” without being generous or giving in any divine or human sense. 57 It is beyond the Good, God, and the One. It is a barren, characterless, no-thing. We might say that it is the possibility of this or that, the potential that some thing might take place. Khora is that which we could not imagine away even if we were capable of imagining away all time or space and even all being and nothingness; it is the potential, deep within the recesses of whatever is or is not, that something might or might not be, that there could or could not be anything whatsoever. It is that there is any state of affairs whatsoever, and the place within which such states of affairs, including nothing are formed. In contemplating khora, we realize that the real miracle of creation is not that there is one state of affairs or another, e.g. the universe or its destruction, but rather that there is any state of affairs at all. Khora is thus akin to (and perhaps even more fundamental than) Derrida’s “différance.” The Kabbalists posited Ein-sof as similarly transcending being and nothingness, as Ein-sof is said to empty itself, contract itself to realize the tehiru (void) within which all the worlds arise. Derrida speaks of khora as the “desert” and “difference” that “gives place” to all, and as that which is “older” or more primordial than any religion. This ‘desert,’ like the Kabbalist’s Ein-sof and Tzimtzum, provides the opening for and ‘gives place’ to that which it withdraws from. Its main characteristics are “reticence, distance, dissociation, [and] disjunction.”58 It is the origin of all possibility, including the messianic, which is an “opening up to the future.” Khora is also that which is completely without being but which provides place for all singularities and is completely tolerant of and even identical to difference. As John Caputo puts it, it is “a placeless place of absolute spacing.”59 A Cartographic Analogy In order to comprehend the notion or gestures of khora and différance we can use the analogy of a two-dimensional representation of a three dimensional space. A two-dimensional cartographic projection, i.e. map of the world, enables us to pare down our view of reality into a more limited and manageable picture. The picture I would like to focus upon in this instance is the “interrupted sinusoidal projection,” or “orange-peel” map of the world, which has been utilized as one of the many imperfect means of

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representing a three dimensional globe on a two-dimensional plane. This particular model sacrifices the continuity of the earth in order to retain a measure of accuracy with respect to the sizes of land masses and the convergence of global lines of longitude at the poles. The problem, of course, is that this form of representation entails that there are vast gaps in between the world’s segments (generally conveniently placed in the oceans) which have absolutely no interpretation on the map itself. These gaps may give the viewer an eerie sense of an abyss of non-being encroaching upon the world from both the north and south poles. They, in effect, provide a place for the map without in any way being part of the map itself. These gaps are necessary for our representational system, but they do not have any significance within it. Strictly speaking, like Plato’s ‘khora’ and Derrida’s ‘différance’ these cartographic spaces cannot be said to be being or nonbeing, a place or not a place; they are necessary for the map, but not part of the map. This is not unique to the equal areas “orange peel” projection; the same observations that we have made about the gaps in this projection can be made about the border or edge of the page in a Mercator or other projection. Providing Place The borders, gaps, edges of our maps or other representational systems can thus be said to provide a place for our representations without themselves being a place within our map or representational system. (One is here reminded of the biblical phrase “God is the place of the world.”) These borders, gaps, edges are, of course, a place in our world but are not in the world that is represented in a given map. Now in order to make our analogy apply to khora, différance, and Ein-sof, we must move from a finite representation of a world, to the infinite reality of all possible universes. Just as our borders, gaps, edges provide for the possible representation of finite states of affairs, without themselves being representations, khora, différance, Tzimtzum, Ein-sof, (or God as the place of the world) provide a ‘place’ (or for the possibility) for all states of affairs without themselves being or indicating any state of affairs. If we ask how it is that states of affairs are possible at all, we might answer: because khora/ différance / Tzimtzum provides place. This providing of place, a metaphysical void (what the Kabbalist’s called the tehiru or clal), within which all worlds and possibilities are formed, is

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itself sometimes spoken of by the Kabbalists as an event in the life of Einsof, as if prior to the Tzimtzum there is a state of affairs, something like Einsof existing in perfect equanimous repose. However, this way of speaking is misleading, as according to the Kabbalists, Ein-sof and Tzimtzum are metaphors or conditions and not events, and they have no interpretation within our cosmos. To return to our cartographic analogy, Ein-sof’s contraction to provide place is at a level akin to the (human) act of providing a place, i.e. a flat piece of paper, for the making of the map. That act is uninterpretable within the context of the map itself, just as Ein-sof’s “providing of place” is incomprehensible from within the context of any models we can generate about the world. As we have seen, Derrida suggests that the “providing place” that he attributes to ‘khora’ and ‘différance is nothing generous, nothing akin to an act of divine benevolence. “Rather “it gives place” in the same way that “it rains,” an occurrence without any attribute of thought or intentionality, since thought and intention are themselves concepts that must first have a “place” within which they can be differentiated from other ideas. We might say that the whole problem of différance, khora, and the “place” of the world, only arises within discourse, i.e. once we have begun to conceptualize and speak. It is a function of our representational efforts that the problems of khora and différance even arise. However, as we can neither philosophize nor think without engaging in some form of representation, we cannot think without giving rise to khora and différance. We would like to be able to think and even speak of a world independent of our efforts to represent it, but this is plainly impossible (in perhaps the strongest sense of impossibility). So for all intents and purposes, the account of the world involving différance, khora, Tzimtzum, Ein-sof, etc. is about the world itself. The problematic of différance, khora, and Tzimtzum is inherent in all forms of representation, all forms of discourse; any gesture towards representation raises the question of difference, contraction, concealment, loss of meaning etc. Différance and God John Caputo, in The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida60 considers the question of whether différance can be appropriated by theology. Caputo follows Derrida in rejecting the notion that at bottom différance is indeed the

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God of the negative theologians, and ultimately the creator God of Genesis. Yet he considers the possibility that though différance may not be the God of the Bible, it is divine nonetheless: “all the God one wants, or needs, or can imagine.” In this light, Derrida’s différance becomes the open-endedness, the resistance to closure, the potential reinterpretability, and hence creativity, that is inscribed in all things, or better, within which all things are inscribed. Différance is thus what keeps all things open to “novelty, innovation, renovation.” It is “the possibility of the face of the earth being renewed.”61 It is, as Derrida himself avers “the negativity in God [that] is our freedom,” the origin of divine and, particularly, human writing “which starts with the stifling of his (God’s) voice and the dissimulation of his face.”62 This possibility, this ‘drive of life,’ Caputo tells us, is actually something worth being grateful for, and may indeed correspond to the one conception of God that even Nietzsche thought made some sense. It is not a thinking being with intentions, but just the play of possibility. Caputo speaks of “an asymptotic point of contact toward which religious faith and the thought of the trace tend to touch.”63 The trace and différance not only begin to look numinous, but religious faith becomes inscribed in, and thus welcomes, the indeterminacy and relativity of meaning, which for some constitute atheism and/or the death of God. The Kabbalist Azriel spoke of Ein-sof as the point where faith and unbelief meet.64 Caputo’s position can be understood as a contemporary expression of Azriel’s view. Caputo here arrives at a position that is not quite in accord with the one with which he began. From the start, Caputo is adamant that différance is not God, not something to worship, not something to thank; however, here he makes at least a quarter turn and speaks of différance as the innovative, experimenting, gift-giving spirit in all things.65 Interestingly, Caputo, following Derrida, wants to push différance beyond the notion of a cosmic impersonal gift of open possibility to something that stands closer to the Jewish prophetic tradition. Derrida is concerned with a particular kind of possibility brought into play by différance, and this is the possibility that opens up to those, who because of their ‘difference,’ are social, political, sexual and national ‘outsiders.’ It is almost as if the play of possibilities conditioned by différance has special favor for those who are ‘different,’ the outsiders, the marginalized, and as Derrida almost seems to intimate, “the widowed and the orphaned, the crippled,” etc. That différance should somehow favor the “different” does not simply arise from a semantic connection, but is something of a logical

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point, for when possibilities are opened, the alienated and estranged are indeed afforded an opportunity.66 Différance, as Caputo understands it, turns out to be something very similar to Ein-sof, which the Kabbalists describe as an ‘it,’ not a He, as present in all things, and as the nothingness (Ayin) which is both at the source of all things’ separate being (Tzimtzum), deconstruction (Shevirah) and renewal (Tikkun). The changing, creative character of Ein-sof, and the infinite reinterpretability that creates an openness to new possibilities and creative change is evident, for example, in Chayyim Vital’s descriptions of the transformations of the worlds: “The worlds change each and every hour...and in accordance with these changes are…the sayings of the book of the Zohar changing, and all are the words of the living God.”67

Chapter Four

The Shevirah and Deconstruction

T

he Lurianic symbol of Shevirat ha-Kelim (the Breaking of the Vessels) provides a critical point of contact between the Kabbalah and deconstructive thought. The Breaking of the Vessels1 symbolizes the biblical and later Jewish mystical view that God’s original creation must be radically altered and even destroyed as a prelude to its completion and perfection by humankind.2 The Lurianists held that the Breaking of the Vessels, like all other moments in the Lurianic dialectic, is present in all things, and at all times. As such, the Shevirah introduces a “crisis in creation” into all divine, natural, and human events, however great or small.3 This crisis, which involves the repeated alteration between Shevirah (Breaking or Destruction) and Tikkun (Restoration or Repair) is, for the Lurianists, the basis for all creativity and progress in the world, and is even necessary for the completion of God Himself. The logic of Shevirah and Tikkun is ubiquitous, operating in the realms of reason, spirit, emotion, sexuality, art and history; in the life of both nations and individual men and women. While some commentators have interpreted the Breaking of the Vessels in a unidimensional fashion (Scholem, for example, held that it is a symbol of the exile and Diaspora of the Jewish people4), the Shevirah is better understood as a symbol of nearly universal application, one that is able to bring diverse aspects of human experience under a single, powerful, dynamic idea. Indeed, the symbol of “broken vessels” may be particularly applicable to the fragmented, displaced condition of contemporary life. In Symbols of the Kabbalah I explored the philosophical and psychological implications of the Shevirah doctrine and the dynamic

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between Shevirah (rupture) and Tikkun (emendation) for a wide variety of both Jewish and more general human concerns. I described how the symbol of the breaking vessels can shed light not only on the theme of exile and redemption, but upon such diverse topics as historical change, progress in the sciences, individual psychological development, psychopathology, dialectical thinking, classicism and romanticism, and the mystical ascent to higher worlds.5 I will not repeat these considerations here. Instead, after providing a brief introduction to the Shevirah doctrine, I will focus upon an aspect of the Breaking of the Vessels that is particularly relevant to the dialogue between Kabbalistic and postmodern thought, i.e. the introduction of a deconstructive, and hence radically skeptical and relativistic, principle into the heart of the Lurianic theosophical system. The Breaking of the Vessels With the symbol of Shevirat ha-Kelim, Isaac Luria brought into the Kabbalah a dynamic principle, one which entails that all things and ideas are subject to repeated deconstruction and emendation. According to Luria and his followers, the light of the infinite was originally meant to fill the Sefirot, the vessels that the Kabbalists held to be the archetypal containers or elements of the created world. However, in the process of being filled, the first three vessels, Chochmah (Wisdom) Binah (Understanding) and Da’at (Knowledge) were radically displaced, and the remaining seven vessels, representing the values of kindness (Chesed), judgment (Din), compassion and beauty (Rachamim/Tiferet), endurance (Netzach), splendor (Hod), foundation (Yesod), and kingship and the feminine (Malchuth/Shekhinah), were shattered. As a result of the Breaking of the Vessels, humanity is enjoined to continuously restore, and moreover, emend the Sefirot. This activity, known in the Lurianic Kabbalah as Tikkun ha-Olam, the restoration and emendation of the world, assures that humankind will be a partner in the completion of creation. The Breaking of the Vessels also causes a split between the masculine and feminine aspects of the cosmos. According to Luria, the Sefirot are themselves organized into and personified as five major Partzufim (visages or aspects of the divine persona). As a result of the Shevirah, the Celestial Father (the Partzuf Abba) and Celestial Mother (the Partzuf Imma), which had hitherto been in a “face to face” erotic union, turn their backs upon one

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another. The Breaking of the Vessels thus also leads to a cosmic erotic alienation; one that can only be remedied via a dialectical blending of opposites, symbolized by a renewed coniunctio of the sexes. Finally, like the water that breaks signaling the birth of a child, the Shevirah signals the birth of a new personal and world order to be completed by humanity in the process of Tikkun ha-Olam. Deconstruction as a Condition for Creation The failure of the Sefirotic vessels to effectively contain the light of the infinite God implies that the conceptual, spiritual, aesthetic, emotional and material archetypes they represent are displaced and fragmented in the actual world. Further, as the Breaking of the Vessels continuously repeats itself in all places and all times, the Shevirah symbol suggests that any attempt to contain, circumscribe or absolutize values and ideas will “deconstruct.” Such deconstruction occurs on a scale as large as the entire cosmos and as small as the individual human psyche. We might go so far as to say that the Breaking of the Vessels symbolizes the doubt, displacement, rupture, and hence, potential for continual revision and renewal within both the cosmos and our theories about it. However, as a complement to the Shevirah (“Breakage”) Luria introduced the symbol of Tikkun (“Emendation”), a principle of restoration, revision, and creative renewal. The Kabbalists interpreted the expulsion from Eden, as well as other biblical events (the tower of Babel, the flood, and the destruction of the temple) as repetitions and exemplars of the Breaking of the Vessels. However, when read in the context of the Lurianic principle of Tzimtzum (divine contraction/concealment) the expulsion from Eden is not so much an alienation or exile from an idyllic, full state, but rather a shattering of an already alienated, exiled and unbalanced condition. This is because, the world of Eden, the world as it was originally created, was (insofar as it contained finite, discrete entities and ideas) itself a function of the Tzimtzum, the occultation and concealment of the full-presence of God.6 Further, the world restored under Tikkun ha-Olam, can hardly be a simple return to Eden, for Eden itself was a highly imperfect state, in need of the Shevirah, in order that it might be emended and made complete. The Shevirah doctrine thus gives expression to the view that God’s original creation must be radically altered and even destroyed, before the

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world can be completed and perfected. This idea is rooted in, and symbolized, in the expulsion from paradise, the story of the flood, and the “death of the kings,” i.e. the “kings who reigned and died in Edom” (Genesis 36:31), which the Zohar held to be a veiled reference to the idea that God created and destroyed many worlds before creating our own. The Kabbalists therefore held that the Shevirat ha-Kelim is an archetypal event, one that is absolutely necessary in order to complete the project of creation. Indeed, for Luria and his followers, the shattering of the Sefirotic vessels is actually a condition not only for the Sefirot’s perfection but also for their very identity and existence. Such paradoxical or bilinear thinking (in which a result is the origin of its own antecedent) is central to the thought of the Jewish mystics, who as early as Sefer Yetzirah proclaimed with regard to the Sefirot “their end is imbedded in their beginning and their beginning in their end.”7 How is it that the Breaking of the Vessels is involved in the creation of the vessels themselves? Briefly put, the Sefirot embody such values as will, wisdom, understanding, kindness, judgment, and compassion. However, the Sefirot cannot actually be what they are, and the world cannot actually exhibit these values, unless these values have been shattered and displaced; for it is only (to take one example) in a world in which infinite compassion has been broken (i.e. in a cruel world) that actual, concrete compassion can exist. A world that was infinitely compassionate would paradoxically afford no opportunities for actual compassion, as no one and no thing would be in need of this virtue. For this reason, we can say that the Sefirah Rachamim (Compassion) has its origin in its own dissolution. The same is true of all of the other Sefirot: their shattering provides the very condition of their existence; their beginning is wedged in their end. In a world of infinite, perfect wisdom (Chochmah) there would be no need, nor even room, for the acts of discovery, learning, creativity and insight that give rise to concrete wisdom in the actual world. The Tikkun or emendation of the Sefirot that is called for after the Shevirah, involves the spiritual, ethical, and intellectual labor of humankind, and it is this labor that reconstructs, emends, and provides the Sefirot with a real, as opposed to merely ideal, existence. What, we might ask, does the Shevirah add anything to the Tzimtzum? After all, the Tzimtzum is itself a limitation on the infinite attributes of Einsof. The Kabbalists held that the Shevirah brings death into the world, and hence brings about a fuller realization of time than that which is afforded by the Tzimtzum alone. The Shevirah, which, as we have seen, is spoken of as the “death of the kings,” is the origin of humanity’s temporal and mortal

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condition. Further, the shattering of values, as opposed to their mere concealment or exile (resulting from the Tzimtzum), provides a dramatic impetus for Tikkun ha-Olam, the repair, restoration and emendation of the world. Post-Shevirah, not only must humankind seek to recover a lost state, or fill a primordial lack, it must, as it were, pick up the pieces of a broken world. The Shevirah provides humanity with a task it can strive to accomplish, as opposed to the virtual impossibility of undoing or overcoming the Tzimtzum. To completely overcome the Tzimtzum one would have to undo finite creation and become God. To restore the vessels one simply must be human. Conceptual and Linguistic Aspects of the Shevirah Doctrine A “deconstructive” reading of the Breaking of the Vessels is predicated, in part, upon the Kabbalist’s own understanding of the Shevirah as a symbol of disruption in the conceptual and linguistic arena. That the displaced and broken vessels are conceptual, spiritual, ethical, and emotional archetypes suggests that what is displaced or shattered by the Shevirah are concepts and ideas, not concrete, material things. Indeed, Luria’s predecessor in Safed, Moses Cordovero, held that earlier, “worlds” which according to the Midrash (and Zohar) were created and then destroyed by God8 should be understood in purely conceptual terms, as possibilities within the divine mind that remained unrealized because of their inherent illogicality or unworkability.9 The idea that the Sefirot or vessels are concepts or ideas is reinforced by the fact that the Lurianists elaborated the Shevirah, as they did the other aspects of their theosophical system, in linguistic terms. According to Luzzato, all the stages of extended Light are also represented by [a] combination of letters. These are the functioning lights from which everything comes into being. Since they were unable to endure the abundance of Light, the combination of letters became disarranged and were severed from each other. They were thus rendered powerless to act and to govern. This is what is meant by their ‘shattering.’”10

In Luzzato’s view, the Breaking of the Vessels is a disruption in linguistic coherence and meaning. We thus have the Kabbalist’s own warrant for considering the Breaking of the Vessels in the context of cotemporary theories of conceptual and linguistic disruption.

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I would like here to briefly consider two similar conceptions of linguistic disruption, that of the founder of “deconstruction,” Jacques Derrida and that of the French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, each of which will serve as useful points of comparison for our understanding of the Lurianic conception of the Shevirah. Derrida uses the term “monstrous” to refer to that which is totally unanticipated, which cannot be assimilated by our categories of discourse, and which thereby disrupts our linguistic and conceptual schema.11 Similarly, Lacan uses the term “real” to denote an “unspeakable” brute reality that lies completely outside the symbolic order, and which traumatically breaks apart our psychic and linguistic structures.12 Derrida’s “monstrous” and Lacan’s “real” are by definition unsymbolized; they cannot be understood, assimilated or processed by our current conceptual and linguistic schemes. The “real” may be something primally sexual, painful, or transgressive. It may be a ghastly confrontation with death or the experience of an emotion or intuition that cannot be described. Or, it may be a transcendent experience, such as those which the mystics of all ages and places have held to be beyond language. The Neo-Jungian psychologist, James Hillman speaks of dreams as having this kind of extra-linguistic thrust and power, and he tells us that one eliminates this power by interpreting the dream and assimilating it to one’s “framework.” The only way to experience the radical reality/newness of the dream is to allow oneself to be bitten by it as if by a snake, to “seethe in its juices,” to be surrounded by its affect, tone, and flavor, to allow its images to "threaten the hell out of you,” to keep you in the realm of the unknown for as long as possible.13 It is both paradoxical and illuminating that one of the best examples of the extra-linguistic real is a dream, which normal discourse considers the prime example of an unreal illusion. Indeed, one of the best means that the “ruling discourse” (in Lacanian terms, the discourse of “the ego”) has for protecting itself from intrusion by an “extra-linguistic object” is to discount all such objects or label them “illusions.” We might say that for postmodern thinkers like Derrida and Lacan, one function of historical narrative, theory, and discourse in general is to assimilate and tame the monstrous and real, and to accommodate whatever is traumatic and incomprehensible to the categories of the symbolic and the known. One function of culture and civilization in general is to take whatever is original, monstrous or real (in Lacan’s sense) and assimilate it to the

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symbolic categories of human consciousness, in the process, occasionally stretching and accommodating those categories. Thinkers such as Derrida and Hillman believe that there is something of value in the monster and that we should not be so quick to tame it. For Hillman, the “monstrous” (in Derrida’s sense of the term) is what brings originality, creativity and soul into the world. It is, to use psychological examples, the dreadful dream, terror, “night of the soul,” symptom or affect before it has been interpreted, therapized and assimilated by theory. It is the raw experience of the “numinous” prior to its being institutionalized into a “religion.” It is the encounter with anomalous data that may signal that there are cracks in an old scientific theory. It is what Freud originally encountered in his work with his first hysterical patients, what frightened Freud’s early collaborator, Josef Breuer away from psychoanalysis, and what was eventually tamed and “mannered” by generations of psychoanalytic theorists. 14 Kabbalistically, Derrida’s monstrous is that which “breaks the vessels.” It is the divine light that cannot be contained by the vessels, and which causes them to shatter and “deconstruct.” The Breaking of the Vessels is thus the very condition of the new and the creative. The vessels must continually break, not only in order for there to be anything valuable, but also for there to be anything new, original and creative in the world. It is in both of these aspects that the Shevirah becomes the condition for the completion of creation. Lacan contrasts the “real” with what he refers to as the “symbolic order,” the order in which things are named, assimilated and known. The symbolic order is actually what is normally referred to as the “real world,” and it is no accident that Lacan reverses the usual mode of description. The world may seem complete when viewed through the categories of the symbolic order. While whole lives, families, institutions, sciences, etc. apparently exist within its bounds, there is in most of us, unless it has been silenced by our total surrender to one way of speaking and thinking, a desire for the real, for a truly new, creative, traumatic experience, something that has the potential to change one’s life; a love affair, a cause, an experience of the numinous. Metaphor The question arises as to whether an incursion from beyond the symbolic order can arise within language itself. The philosophers Donald Davidson

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and Richard Rorty suggest that in the case of a novel metaphor, this is precisely what occurs. According to Rorty, metaphor, when it functions as metaphor, has no cognitive content, i.e. it tells us nothing. This is because it uses words in a manner that remains outside the “clearing” of conventional use. But while metaphor tells us nothing it nevertheless can have a profound impact upon the way in which we experience ourselves and the world. Metaphor, in this view, functions not as a meaning but as a cause. In this sense, as interpreted by Davidson and Rorty, metaphor functions in a manner similar to Lacan’s “real,” and the linguistic Shevirah, as described by Luzatto. Metaphor is in effect a “linguistic trauma” that is not assimilable to our current linguistic schemata, makes no meaning or sense, but which nevertheless provides us with a linguistic impetus to a new and creative point of view. However, once we do assimilate a metaphor, provide it with sufficient “meaning” to make it a part of our general discourse, it dies as a metaphor, fails to function as a cause, and is no longer a window into the ‘real.’ If we conceive of the real as an actuality or truth that lies beyond our constructions, conventions, and language, we are left with the rather paradoxical conclusion that there is a sense in which the more we understand a metaphor the less truth it carries. Bloom on the Shevirah The literary critic and postmodern thinker, Harold Bloom provides another linguistic interpretation of the Lurianic image of the Shevirah. He understands the “Breaking of the Vessels” in hermeneutic terms “as too strong a force of writing, stronger than the ‘texts’ of the lower Sefirot could sustain.” Bloom, like the Kabbalists, continually returns to the metaphor of the world as text, and he sees the elements that provide the world with its structure and sense as narrative texts that are continually reinterpreted, challenged, broken-apart and reintegrated. Such narrative “texts” can here be understood in the widest sense of the term to include not only scripture, literature, and philosophy, but scientific theory and all other narrative and linguistic forms. It is clear that “texts” in this wide sense constitute both a culture and a world, and when texts are challenged and broken apart, this paves the way for creativity, and the advent of something new, in Kabbalistic terms, a new world, the world of Tikkun.

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Bloom is impressed by the fact that in Luria, creation is a startlingly regressive process, one in which an abyss can separate any one stage from another, and in which catastrophe is always a central event. Reality for Luria is always a triple rhythm of contraction, breaking apart, and mending, a rhythm continuously present in time even as it first punctuated eternity.15

Following Bloom’s lead we might understand Tzimtzum, Shevirah, and Tikkun as punctuations in divine writing or speech, punctuations that both limit the text, make it finite, and hence comprehensible, but which also continually open it to new readings and interpretations. Bloom refers to Sandor Ferenczi’s idea, in Thalassa, that every act of creation is ascribed to a catastrophe.16 He further compares the Lurianic view of creation, in which Ein-sof felt compelled to undergo a catharsis of Din, to Freud’s explanation of why people fall in love, i.e. “to avoid an over-filled inner self.” In Bloom’s view, Ein-sof had to create the world in order to preserve its own health. I and Thou Martin Buber, in his classic psychotheological work, I and Thou, suggests that the “other” is a manifestation of a divine light, what Buber calls the “eternal thou,” which can challenge and burst through our schemas and expectations. The ‘thou,’ the other, challenges the discourse of the ‘me,’ the repetitive self-fulfilling knowledge of the ego and, according to Buber, provides us with a glimpse of something beyond ourselves, something eternal.17 However, Buber observes that the “exalted melancholy of our fate is that every thou must become an it.”18 It is inevitable that this thou, whether it is experienced in the encounter with a tree, holy scripture, or a fellow human being, will eventually be assimilated to our theoretical and practical schemata and come to be treated, at least at times, as an it. For Buber, this is both “melancholic” and “exalted.” The practical and theoretical discourse that humanity has developed to master its environment and itself is certainly an exalted achievement, one that we would hardly wish to bring to an end. It is, however, melancholic that in achieving such discourse we inevitably objectify that which had hitherto been beyond language and which infused us with life, the other, the “thou.”

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Similarly, the French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas equates the other with “infinity,” an infinity that can never be assimilated to a horizon of expectation.19 For Levinas the infinite cannot be anticipated, because as the other, it is totally different from ourselves. Our relationship to such an other can only be one of non-assimilation, as the ‘other’ bursts through all expectations, and shatters our horizons. Derrida is sympathetic to Levinas’ view, but argues that if the ‘other’ is totally unanticipated it could well present itself and slip by without our even noticing. A certain preparation is necessary in order to be shocked and broken by the other; one must, as it were, set a place for Elijah, if the messiah is to ever burst on the scene. As long as one remains in a closed discursive system, one may never be touched by the other. However, if one is in the slightest way open, the other may burst into and shatter one’s horizon. The above considerations suggest that the “divine light,” which the Kabbalist’s Sefirotic vessels are unable to contain, and that results in their displacement and rupture, can be understood through a variety of similes and metaphors: as Buber’s “thou” and Levinas’ “infinite,” Rorty’s metaphor, Derrida’s monstrous, Lacan’s real, and Hillman’s (uninterpreted) dream.20 The light of Ein-sof, in this view, is not the tamed and assimilated God of the theologians and official religion, but is actually quite its opposite: the divine light challenges institutions, conventions, and current “truths;” it overwhelms, traumatizes and inspires us to go beyond what we have been taught to say, think or feel. The Kabbalists held that each Shevirah, each rupture, is potentially followed by a Tikkun, a creative restoration, emendation or revision, and it is such Tikkunim that actually complete the world. However, the positive moment of creativity is fully dependent upon the (apparently) negative moment of rupture, destruction, trauma, and death. Tikkun functions so as to create new structures that assimilate experiences that would overwhelm us with awe, or paralyze and disorganize us with fear. In short, Tikkun serves to erect the theories, language, technology, artifacts, and institutions of culture. It is, however, misleading to assume that the Shevirah is always the “negative,” and Tikkun, the “positive” side of the dialectic of change and creativity. This is because the results of Tikkun also have a negative aspect, i.e. the rigid maintenance of a symbolic order or ruling discourse, in Kabbalistic terms a “vessel” that serves to maintain a status quo. However, in the face of a new “other,” “monstrous” or “real,” the vessels will again

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shatter, once again making way for originality, prophecy, soul, and further Tikkunim, ad infinitum. The Origin of Evil While the Shevirah creates a critical opportunity for Tikkun ha-Olam, the Kabbalists did not hold that a creative Tikkun immediately or even inevitably follows the Breaking of the Vessels. Indeed, for Luria, the Shevirah initially results in the capture of divine sparks of light in the shards of the broken Sefirot. These shards, along with their captured sparks, form the Kellipot, the evil “husks” or “shells” of the Sitra Achra, the “Other Side,” a shadow realm that is the source of the world’s evil and negativity. It is only after the captured divine sparks are liberated through an act of birur (extraction) that the process of Tikkun can begin. The symbol of the Kellipot suggests that the trauma of the “real” initially prompts an automatic, premature and ill-fated attempt to assimilate and “capture” its contents with the broken remnants of our old theoretical, emotional, spiritual and linguistic structures. This initial effort has mostly negative, stultifying consequences, which must be reversed if a true creative act of Tikkun is to occur. In psychological terms, the sparks captured by the shards of our old structures form a “complex” or “symptom,” which constricts our libidinal or life energy, and paralyzes our creativity. This pattern, of course, occurs not only on the level of the individual, but collectively as well, in the life of families, cultures, and nations, and also in the development of science, the arts, and other aspects of human endeavor. In more general terms, the Kellipot, the husks that entrap the sparks of divine light and prevent their return to their source, represent a “closed economy” of intellect, spirituality, or emotion. In the Lurianic system, the Kellipot, close off the flow of Sefirotic energy, and in this way they become the source of evil in the world. Thus, it is not the deconstruction of the divine archetypes and values that is the origin of evil, but rather their premature integration in a closed, limited and stagnating form. The Hasidim often say of a man who is wreaking havoc upon himself and those around him that he is under the influence of a vicious Kellipah, a shell that binds and constricts his intellectual, spiritual and emotional energy. It is precisely because deconstruction is a method that unbinds the intellect, and opens it to that which it might otherwise tend to exclude, that Derrida is justified in his claim

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that “deconstruction is ethics.” In this sense, in addition to its connection with the Shevirah, deconstruction can be understood Kabbalistically as an aspect of the “extraction” (birur) phase of Tikkun.

The Messianic The connection between the Lurianic theosophy and the Hegelian dialectic has been noted, by a number of scholars, including Scholem.21 As we have seen, deconstruction makes a more modest use of the dialectic in which it is opposed to any Hegelian-like effort to resurrect an absolute out of the inadequacies of previous philosophies. While deconstruction has itself been charged with intellectual, ethical, aesthetic and spiritual relativism and even nihilism, Derrida has been steadfast in his defense of deconstruction as ethics. In this vein, Derrida holds that deconstruction challenges all “absolutes”, and as such promotes creativity, pluralism, democracy, and justice, and that this is its ethical legacy. When Derrida ventures to speak in quasi-religious or theological terms, as when he introduces his conception of the “messianic,” this is always in the context of a refusal to grant hegemony to any set of principles, knowledge or ideas. Indeed, for Derrida, the messianic is forever unknown, and “yet to come,” for it represents the redemptive value of the impossibility of any one form of discourse having a monopoly on truth. Lurianic theosophy accords well with Derrida’s conception of the ethical and the messianic. As a result of God’s essential eclipse (Tzimtzum), and the inherent failure of any conceptual scheme to circumscribe truth (Breaking of the Vessels), the Kabbalist’s Ein-sof remains essentially unknown, out of reach, a future goal, event or revelation, that is never quite achieved. Derrida speaks of this as “viens”, that which is “yet to come.” As described by Caputo, for Derrida “Viens is a certain structural wakefulness or openness to an impossible breach of the present, shattering the conditions of possibility, by which we are presently circumscribed.”22 Viens, as the expectation for a completely unknown, impossible future, opens us to an awareness of future possibilities, and yields an open-mindedness that Derrida equates with justice. According to Caputo, Derrida’s conception of the messianic as our openness to an unknown and impossible future is a

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Jewish prophetic call. However, Derrida speaks of the messianic in terms that are very reminiscent of the Kabbalist’s Breaking of the Vessels. He says: These seismic events come from the future; they are given from out of the unstable, chaotic, and dis-located ground of the times. A disjointed or dis-adjusted time without which there would be neither history, nor event, nor promise of justice.23

Derrida and his followers regard deconstruction as involved in acts that are very much akin to Tikkun, a reassembling end emendation of the fragments of the fallen vessels. Caputo, comparing himself to Derrida, says, “I am like Jacques, a ragpicker, picking up the fragments of the system that have fallen to the floor.”24 Kabbalistic theology can be said to correspond with the ethics of deconstruction. The Breaking of the Vessels sunders all absolutes and assures our openness to new possibilities. Moreover, the Lurianic Kabbalah is a theological system that contains within itself the principle of its own emendation, and even demise. As a result of the Shevirah, it becomes a truly open theological system, a “systematic theology” that is at once disruptive of all systems and all theology.

Chapter Five

A-Systematic Theology

T

he Lurianic Kabbalah, as it is traditionally understood, is a theosophical system that purports to detail the nature of the cosmos, the meaning of human existence, and the inner workings of the godhead. Superficially at least, this theosophy partakes in the very search for foundations that Derrida and others have “deconstructed” in their critique of western metaphysics. It would appear that the Lurianic Kabbalah is a prime example of the metaphysical impulse at work, as it articulates a center and foundation through which all things can be understood. Looked at from this perspective, nothing could be further from the postmodern and deconstructive spirit. However, as we have seen, there are elements within the Lurianic theosophy that are decidedly “postmodern” and “deconstructive” in character. For example, the equation of the divine infinite principle with Ayin (nothingness), threatens to nullify the very foundation of the Lurianic system, the doctrine of Tzimtzum (concealment, contraction) entails that the creation of the world involves a limitation, concealment, and deconstruction of a unified totality, while the symbol of the Shevirat ha-Kelim (the Breaking of the Vessels) implies that every entity, attribute, value, idea, and utterance, is displaced, exiled, broken and incomplete, and that all things, including the attributes of God, the Torah, and the Lurianic Kabbalah itself, are subject to deconstruction, revision, and transformation. These three “negations” (Ayin, Tzimtzum, and Shevirah) destabilize the Lurianic system and preclude it from ever becoming final and absolute.

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In this chapter I will argue that the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria is both a comprehensive theosophical and theological system and a critique of the very idea of such a system. This is but one instance of the Kabbalistic notion (to be explored in detail in Chapter 6) that all entities and ideas exist in coincidentia oppositorum, i.e. that ideas both entail and are completed by their own apparent contradictions. The Lurianic system thus both provides a complete account of God, the universe and the meaning of human life, and a radical critique of the very idea that such a complete account is even possible. The Kabbalah holds these two opposing ideas in an exquisite and creative tension. Rather than leading to a fatal contradiction, this tension enhances the Kabbalah’s power and appeal. In order to examine the very possibility of a systematic Kabbalistic theology, I will first detail aspects of the postmodern critique of foundations and system, and explore the challenge that this critique poses for traditional thought. I will then outline several possibilities for a contemporary Kabbalistic theology, each of which takes full cognizance of the postmodernist critique. The Postmodern Contextualization of all Writing and Speech One of the major tenets of the postmodern point of view is that language does not and indeed cannot, picture reality in any absolute sense, but instead always functions to perform a certain task in a specific context. For example, Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Philosophical Investigations, developed the notion that “meaning is use,” which suggests that even descriptive language achieves its warrant from the purposes which it serves, rather than from the state of affairs it presumably points to in the “world.” Wittgenstein’s conception of “meaning as use” is echoed both in J. L. Austin’s How to do Things with Words,1 and Derrida’s discussion of Austin’s concept of the linguistic “performative.”2 It will be useful to consider both Austin’s and Derrida’s views as a means of radicalizing the problematic for a contemporary Kabbalistic theology and, moreover, for any postmodern theology. For Austin, “truth” is not something that corresponds to a state of affairs, but is rather what is proper to say in certain circumstances. As Austin puts it “It is essential to realize that ‘true’ or ‘false’, like ‘free’ and ‘unfree,’ do not stand for anything simple at all; but only for a general dimension of being a right or proper thing to say as

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opposed to a wrong thing, in those circumstances, to this audience, for these purposes and with these intentions.”3 On the one hand it appears as if Austin has reduced truth to rhetoric. However, this is no cynical reduction, but a recognition of how truth claims are actually made and verified within a community of speakers. What is so radical here, however, is not so much that truth is relative to one’s point of view but rather, that both truth and one’s point of view are themselves relative to one’s dialogic circumstances. My perspective, and thus what I deem true, is always in part a function of with whom I am in dialogue. One would, for example, say many things in earnest in front of one’s friends that one would never say in earnest (or even believe) in a public forum. This view of truth has manifold implications for philosophy, not the least of which is that what I believe, know, or say about myself and the world is not static, but changes according to my position within the linguistic/dialogic circumstances I find myself in. (Here we should recall the Kabbalist Vital’s dictum that “in every single hour the worlds are changing, so that no hour is like any other.”4) Austin holds that words can function properly only once a certain context is established, and he suggests that in such cases my sentences can realize my intentions and I can be fully and properly understood. Although Derrida agrees that “there are only contexts (of meaning) without any center of absolute anchoring,”5 he is highly critical of the idea that a context can be established that will permit an act of speech or writing to precisely and sincerely realize a speaker’s or writer’s intentions. For Derrida, fully circumscribing context is an impossible ideal. A wider context is always possible within which a given utterance can be reinterpreted; for example, it can be seen to have been disingenuous, part of a “play,” etc. It is impossible, according to Derrida, to ever fix one’s meaning and intentions. This is essentially the same point made by Wittgenstein in his later philosophy. The meaning of any utterance is always subject to reinterpretation, as each time a statement is read or reiterated, it appears in a new setting and context. The impossibility of obtaining a synoptic point of view in philosophy thus stems from the fact that new points of view, new ways of understanding and even seeing things are being created at all times, with each new iteration of any given idea. One implication of these views is that any theological or philosophical proposition will be “true” only under certain circumstances, for a certain audience, for certain purposes.” According to Chayyim Vital, not only the

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meaning of sacred texts and the nature of human experience, but also the nature of higher “worlds” are altered with the change of the “hour.” For Vital, any description of the “Worlds” can only be true for a certain moment in time.6 Indeed, the history of ideas itself provides evidence for the transitory nature of “truth.” Metaphysical and theological systems come and go; those that are illuminating in one place and time are completely unilluminating for those in a different setting or era. Of course, philosophers and theologians write as if what they have to say is true sub species aeternae. None acknowledge that what they have to say will only be “true” or even interesting for a limited readership; although projecting such a readership is and always has been a prime consideration of those who publish philosophical and theological works. Such relativity of interest has never been particularly troubling to the poet or the author of imaginative literature, but is particularly difficult for the traditional philosopher to acknowledge, as he typically presents himself as making claims that are true for all readers at all times. As we have seen, the radically relative nature of truth is recognized in the Kabbalistic tradition; for instance, in the Lurianic dictum that there is an interpretation of Torah corresponding to each of the men, women and children who participated in the Exodus from Egypt.7 Any contemporary effort at systematic theology must come to terms with such claims regarding the relativistic, performative and dialogic understanding of philosophical truth. The postmodern view of truth holds that truth is not a static entity, and that it only emerges in the context of a dialogical inquiry. Further, truth is sustained by that inquiry, i.e. by the relationship of the participants and their special circumstances, rather than through any reference to a presumably fixed “world.” Perhaps this helps explain why the Kabbalists went to such lengths to attribute their ideas to the rabbinic sage, Shimon Bar Yochai or even to Moses, thereby placing a pedigree on the Kabbalah that traces its origins to the oral revelation at Mount Sinai. The Kabbalists implicitly recognized that ideas are not necessarily valid in and of themselves. According to speech-act theory, ideas are never valid in and of themselves, because truth is never derived from what is said, but always from the context and position of the one who is saying it.8 Indeed, one of the most difficult tasks of a thinker and author is to find a position from which to write. For the author of the Zohar, there was no possibility that he could effectively write this important work from the position of “Moses de Leon,” a 13th century Spanish Kabbalist, and so,

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according to Scholem and others,9 he promulgated his own work as a “discovery” of a long lost ancient writing, the author of which, Shimon Bar Yochai, was and remained in a place of theological authority. Again, from the point of view developed here, the principles of theology appear to be secondary to the vicissitudes of rhetoric, and the possibility of even beginning the task of formulating a postmodern systematic theology increasingly remote. How can one even hope to develop a theology that takes full cognizance of the view that any claim to truth and even reasonableness is relative to one’s context, audience, etc. without surrendering the quest for a comprehensive theological vision? The situation only gets worse. “The Metaphysical Gesture” Derrida argues that in spite of Austin’s contextual approach to meaning and significance he remains a party to the fundamental metaphysical gesture of western metaphysics, a gesture which prioritizes the normal over the abnormal, the fulfilled over the incomplete, the serious over the non-serious, the literal over the non-literal, and the ideal over the non-ideal. Derrida writes: All metaphysicians, from Plato to Rousseau, Descartes to Husserl, have proceeded in this way, conceiving good to be before evil, the positive before the negative, the pure before the impure, the simple before the complex, the essential before the accidental, the imitated before the imitation. And this is not just one metaphysical gesture among others, it is the metaphysical exigency, that which has been most consistent, most profound and most potent.10

Derrida holds that the very possibility of the prioritized metaphysical term (e.g. serious speech) is contingent upon the possibility of its opposite, non-prioritized term (e.g. pretend, non-serious speech). Fiction is not a derivative of literal language, but is rather fully present as a possible background to serious, propositional, factual discourse. His views suggest that philosophy, theology, and even science cannot make claims to truth that are somehow completely uncontaminated by the fictive and the absurd. But how, we might ask, can a theology be constructed that takes equal notice of fiction as it does of truth, of pretense as it does of serious inquiry, of impure as it does of the pure, of evil as it does of the good? This is a question that must be kept in mind as we inquire more deeply into the

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significance of the Lurianic metaphors later in this chapter. However, by way of anticipation, we should recall that the Jewish mystics takes very seriously the notions that there can be no “good” without “evil,” no “reality” without “illusion” and no “truth” without “fiction” and “error.”11 Anti-Foundationalism As Richard Rorty has observed, philosophy over the last 150 years has for the most part been anti-foundationalist. Postmodernism in particular has been associated with the view that there cannot be a center that serves as an adequate and fixed foundation or origin of the world. All purported centers, God, man, consciousness, the Absolute, etc. are for Derrida and his followers, permutations of the illusory idea of an incorrigible, self-present being. The center is, for postmodern thought, an unattainable object of desire rather than a reality. The postmodern conception of “meaning as use” and of language as a self-enclosed “system of differences” without the possibility of a non-mediated reference to a transcendental object, brings with it the realization that all purported “centers” are relative, ephemeral and replaceable. Derrida speaks of the endless procession of substitutions that philosophers seek to place at the foundation of reality and discourse, when there is indeed nothing that can serve in this role.12 The chimerical search for a center is, for Derrida, the history of western metaphysics. However, because language is a system in which all units obtain their significance by virtue of their position and difference with regard to all other units in the system no single unit can serve as an anchor or foundation. For Derrida (and postmodernism in general) there can be no “privileging of presence” (i.e. no notion of an uninterpreted object or experience that is simply present to consciousness), no “privileging of logocentrism” (no single theory, metaphor or criterion of intelligibility), no synoptic view of the world (the “Absolute”) that can be equated with God, no semiotic closure, and therefore no possibility of a complete philosophical or theological system. The Continued Quest for a Foundation Still, the quest for foundations does not die easily, even for those who are in basic sympathy with the postmodern point of view. For example, some

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have been tempted to posit the entire system of differences, language as a whole, as a center or foundation. Indeed, we might be inclined to equate God or the Absolute with the “infinite play of signifiers,” the infinite, unfolding, never ending possibility of significance, an idea that we will have occasion to explore in some depth in Chapter Eight. Or as some have suggested, we might equate God or the Absolute with Derrida’s “différance” itself, i.e. the linguistic space that allows terms to differ from one another, which is prior to any significance, and as Derrida suggestively declares, “older than being” itself.13 Further, one can abandon the connection between God and a foundation altogether, and conceive of the absolute as something as yet unattained, something which must be strived after, an idea that, as we will see is suggested by Derrida’s own treatment of the messianic in some of his later writings. The notion that God is equivalent to the infinite play of signification is implied by those Kabbalists, such as Menahem Recanati,14 who have suggested an equivalence between God, the world, and Torah, the latter often conceptualized as the infinite combinatorial possibilities inherent in its letters.15 The notion that God is to be found in “différance” is suggested, as we saw in Chapter Three, by the identification of divinity with the Tzimtzum, the limiting force that activates the finite universe. Finally, the idea that the divine is not something that is, but rather something yet to be, is implicit in the Kabbalistic notion of Tikkun ha-Olam, the restoration of the world. For the Lurianists, it is the ethical, intellectual and spiritual acts of humankind that actually complete and perfect both the world and God. Humanity and the Actualization of Divine Potential While traditionally the Kabbalists held that the acts that constitute Tikkun ha-Olam are the consciously performed mitzvoth commanded by the Torah, others who have adopted the view of an evolving absolute have understood it as reflecting the mainly unconscious forces of human history. Hegel, for example, in his Philosophy of History held that even the selfish, uninspired acts of certain historical figures carry out the will of the Absolute, even if these figures are completely unaware of this greater meaning. Without adopting Hegel’s particular views we might suggest that, the sum of all human activity, humanity’s multifarious enterprises, languages, and cultures constitutes and potentially perfects both the world and God, regardless and

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even because the individual agents who carry out such activities, are acting without such purpose, or even any ultimate purpose, in mind. It is just such “errant” human activity that wanders about through humanity’s infinite possibilities, blossoms into actuality, and realizes each of the “details” of the “human experiment.” Humankind cannot know in advance in what the realization and redemption of the world will consist, but since it is humankind who, through its acts, determines the world, the march of human history will create the vast set of individual, collective, cultural and historical expressions that constitute the “Absolute.” Further, in the process of reflecting upon its own activities, humanity will have the opportunity to realize something akin to a philosophical synopsis. As we have seen. According to Rabbi Aaron of Strashelye: ...the essence of His intention is that his coincidentia be manifested in concrete reality, that is, that all realities and their levels be revealed in actuality, each detail in itself, and that they nevertheless be unified and joined in their value, that is, that they be revealed as separated essences, and that they nevertheless be unified and joined in their value.16

Humanity is, in effect, thrown into a world of ignorance, disaster, ugliness and injustice, “the worst possible world in which there is yet hope,” to borrow Adin Steinsaltz’s phrase,17 in order that it might, through its struggles with such a world, realize the values, achievement, and differentiation that exists only in potentia prior to its endeavors. The “result,” if the human experiment is “successful,” (though what counts as “success” can hardly be defined in advance) will be the ever-evolving completion and perfection of humanity and the world. And it is humankind’s wanderings, the following of its adventurous, creative, and ethical spirit that provides the raw material for this “end.” No one can anticipate this end, no one can tell us precisely where to go, for it is arguably the creative, the new, the never before said or done that constitutes the path to redemption. It would therefore not be unreasonable to suggest that such “errant wandering” on the part of humanity, constitutes the actualization of humanity’s potential, and, hence, the fulfillment of the “holy potential” (to borrow a phrase from David Birnbaum) that is the very meaning and purpose of the cosmos and Ein-sof. Perhaps this will allow us to form a bridge between Marc Taylor’s notion of writing (and theology) as a kind of “erring” or aimless wandering, and the Kabbalah’s notion of God or the Absolute. If

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one wanders aimlessly but continually, one will eventually cross over one’s own path on multiple occasions, and in time will become quite familiar with the territory one has traversed: so familiar that one’s wanderings can be said to create the possibility of constructing a map of the territory. Like the city described by Wittgenstein, which one gets to know by continually wandering along its “maze of little streets and squares,”18 the serpentine wandering of thought traces out a philosophical or theological territory, creating a journey through, and a map of, thought itself, at least the thought that philosophy has thus far ventured to think. This “city of thought” is, in certain ways comparable to Hegel’s “World-spirit,” a “spirit” that is constituted by the very adventurousness, wandering and creativity of human inquiry. To be sure, the mapping process not only journeys through territory that has been previously laid out and explored, but always has the potential to “go beyond the clearing” and discover or create something new. In this way the mapmaker himself has the distinction of creating a portion of the very land he is presumably “exploring.” Theologically, we might say that in this manner, the human mind not only “thinks God,” but as the Kabbalists affirmed, becomes like one who has created God Himself. God or Ein-sof, so conceived, is the ever-expanding totality of mind and matter, creativity, experience, knowledge and thought, a ‘totality” that is continually shattered, reinterpreted and emended; constituted by the serpentine wanderings of human thought and imagination. Included in this totality are all ideas: those that are exalted and debased, good and evil, spiritual and material, theistic and atheistic, scientific and religious, rational and irrational, factual and poetic, reflecting any and all polar dichotomies in a truly infinite, open-ended play of sense and nonsense, meaninglessness and significance. Deconstruction, Hegelian Dialectics and the Kabbalah We have already noted the affinity between the Kabbalah and the philosophy of Hegel. Indeed, the Lurianic dialectic of creation, rupture, and emendation appears to provide a synoptic account of the world that is very similar to the one found in Hegel and involves a progressive account of the inadequacy of perspectives, leading to more adequate and integrated perspectives and ultimately to an all-encompassing idea, identified with the Absolute or God. There can be little doubt that the Lurianic Kabbalah anticipates Hegelian philosophy, and it is even possible that Hegel, who was

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familiar with such Kabbalistic terms as Adam Kadmon and the Sefirot,19 was indirectly influenced by Kabbalistic ideas. As I have dealt with the relationship between Hegel and the Kabbalah in some depth elsewhere,20 I will here only consider Hegelian philosophy to the extent that it has a bearing on the question of Kabbalah and systematic theology. For Hegel, no individual concept, being, telos, or good, however conceived, can serve as a metaphysical or theological foundation; for every individual concept can be demonstrated to be inadequate, inconsistent, etc. But the very power of critical reason which shows all concepts to be inadequate in their attempts to be synoptic is, in Hegel, elevated to a foundational principle. For Hegel, “Reason” is both the foundation and motive force of the universe. Hegel’s move is to take the idea of critical, dialectic thought, and regard it not only as a philosophical tool, but also as the motive power of the universe itself. For Hegel, the power of reason expresses itself in thought and history, and ultimately culminates in an absolute, which is conceived of both as a systematic application of dialectical reason to all concepts and all things, and the rational-ideational evolution of these things themselves. For Hegel, the dialectic operating on each successive idea exposes these ideas inadequacies until we reach the “Absolute,” which, like the Kabbalist’s Ein-sof, embraces all stages of the dialectic and is both the foundation and apex of a coherent system. Derrida is highly critical of Hegel’s efforts to utilize the dialectic in service of a metaphysical foundation for, and absolute perspective upon, the world. Derrida is particularly critical of the Hegelian effort to recover an ultimate ground through the negation of all “partial” points of view, going so far as to call the task of deconstruction that of dismantling the Hegelian dialectic wherever it appears. However, Hegel is not so easy to either dismantle or escape, and the main thrust of his philosophical method actually provides the basis for much if not most of the post-modern critical apparatus. The Hegelian dialectic anticipates deconstruction in its efforts to uncover the inconsistencies and contradictions that exist at the heart of any concept, and it is essentially Hegelian methods at work when Derrida places the uncovering of textual self-contradiction at the center of the deconstructive project.21 Finally, the Hegelian dialectic suggests (as does deconstruction) that we should never be fully content with any account of the world. Where Hegel and Derrida differ is that Hegel holds that dialectic, systematically applied, can yield a synoptic view of reality, and that dialectic both as a

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method and (reconceptualized as a) ‘power’ can provide the adequate philosophical foundation that western metaphysics has aspired to. According to Derrida, Hegel’s error was that he was not content to rest with a powerful critical tool, but instead sought to elevate that tool and its handiwork (i.e. the history of philosophy and Hegel’s system itself) to an absolute that was somehow immune to its own brand of criticism. Indeed, Hegel succumbed to the temptation of suggesting that the dialectic of reason had somehow reached its conclusion in 19th century Europe, achieving its ultimate expression in Hegel’s own philosophy! We should ask if this same critique might also applicable to the Kabbalah. At first blush, it would seem that in spite of the Kabbalah’s apparent openness to criticism, dialectics, multiple perspectives and indefinite reinterpretations, it too succumbs to an absolutism, resulting in a closure of its system; in this case a closure dictated by the Jewish religion. While it is clear that the Kabbalah has historically been tied to Judaism, we must ask (1) if there is an essential connection between Kabbalistic ideas and any form of religious dogma, (2) whether the Kabbalah’s connection to a historical tradition is necessarily fatal to it as an open system of discourse, and (3) whether the Judaism that emerges through a postmodern reconceptualization of the Kabbalah, remains closed in the manner that would be subject to a deconstructive/democratic critique. While definitive answers to these questions are beyond the scope of the present inquiry, we should note with regard to (1) that the Kabbalah has throughout its history evinced a strong tendency to transcend the boundaries of traditional Judaism (witness the Christian Kabbalah from the 16th to 19th centuries, and the great interest in the Kabbalah amongst non-Jews in our own time). With regard to (2), it is by no means clear that the Kabbalah’s connection with Judaism is a weakness rather than strength, even from a postmodern point of view. This is because any critical or deconstructive enterprise must address itself to a tradition if it is to say anything whatsoever. Like Wittgenstein and Derrida, who, in their critical activity, are dependent upon the classic texts of western philosophy, the Kabbalah, in both its “deconstructive” and “constructive” moments is dependent upon the texts, practices, and values of the Jewish tradition. Finally, with respect to (3) it would be reasonable to assume that the Judaism that emerges from a re-encounter with Kabbalah as we have understood it here is a Judaism that is more democratic, pluralistic and open, both to the meaning and significance of its own tradition and to the tenets, practices and beliefs of other faiths. A Judaism that takes seriously the three “negations” of

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the Lurianic Kabbalah, the unknowing of Ayin, the contraction of Tzimtzum, and the deconstruction/revisionism of Shevirah and Tikkun need not follow Hegel into the “illusion of the last and final word.”

Temporary Anchors The demise of an absolute center does not necessarily entail that centers or anchoring points cannot, or need not, be established for particular purposes. Indeed, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has argued that language that was not provided with at least a temporary anchor (point de capitan) would foreclose the possibility of any sense whatsoever.22 Further, while the idea of an absolute center may be an illusion, relative centers can and must be posited for particular purposes and discourses; natural science, for example is one such discourse, theology is another. Indeed, it is clear that if we are to use language at all, our discourse cannot remain indefinitely fluid. For example, we may want to assert, with the Kabbalists that the everyday world and the Sefirot are each both reality and illusion, but if we then assert that “reality” is itself both reality and illusion, and so on ad infinitum, we will lose all possibility of making sense. If the flux in meaning is permitted to flow completely unrestrained nothing at all will be meaningful. However, this is not to say that each term in our discourse must be anchored and “selfsame.” It only suggests that at any given point in our discourse some of our terms must, at least temporarily, be anchored and relatively fixed in their sense. At any given time, there must be some anchor, some foundation for significance and meaning. However, the anchors need not always be the same ones. The Kabbalah, I believe, provides us with a metaphysics in which the anchors are themselves constantly shifting; at times, for example, God is a fixed term, an anchor, but at other times, the anchor is in man, or in language. At times the anchor is conceptualized as metaphysical, at other times it is axiological. As Wittgenstein points out, all such “anchoring” is rooted in a “form of life” or practice. However, we might say that the absolute is the potential for some form of anchoring, however arbitrary and temporary, and hence, the potential for meaning.

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Such a fluid anchoring is actually common to many forms of life and discourse. We are constantly participating in forms of life in which there are certain rigidly defined or unquestioned terms, beliefs, behaviors or axioms that in other contexts would not be adhered to. For example, in bringing a case before a court of law, engaging in various forms of competitive play, or engaging in certain religious practices and rituals, we participate in forms of life and language in which certain behaviors and axioms are rigidly adhered to and go unquestioned. Indeed, Judaism itself can be viewed in such Wittgensteinian terms, and its various laws, customs, beliefs, and objects of faith (including “God”) can be understood as fully dependent upon a participation in the “language game” and “form of life” that constitutes the Jewish religion.23 In this view (one that has been largely confirmed by history) a religion’s terms, beliefs, customs and axioms can be radically questioned once one steps outside the form of life within which they are based. Deconstructive thought attempts to “float free” from such axiomatic, often tacit, commitments, uncover them, and reveal the contradictions that are at their margins. However, actual life, religious or otherwise, must proceed within some tradition, one in which certain entities, ideas and principles are taken for granted. The so-called “transcendental object” had traditionally been conceived of as either the brute factual existence of the material world or as a constant in the mind of God. Kant shifted our perspective on this “object” when he spoke of it as a transcendental structure constituted by the forms and categories of human experience. Finally, Wittgenstein offered a nontranscendental alternative, in which the object is simply a node in a particular “language-game” or “form of life.” As one moves from the traditional view of meaning and objects towards the Kantian and then the postmodern view, one’s conception of philosophy and theology is radically transformed. One moves from the view that in doing philosophy we are ascertaining the essential structure of the universe (traditional metaphysics), to the belief that we are adumbrating the transcendental structures of consciousness (Kant), to the much more modest view that we are merely creating/participating in a language game and form of life (Wittgenstein). As Nelson Goodman suggests in Ways of Worldmaking,24 there are now a variety of different ‘worlds’ that are constructed around different, though not ultimate, centers or assumptions. In the postmodern world, theology would certainly be entitled

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to reflect upon spiritual experience, and in so doing create/explore a world, or worlds, with different versions of God at its center, but would have no special claim to absolute truth.

A Metaphysics of “Perspectives” The notion of theology as a creative construction, something akin to poetry or myth, may be satisfactory to some, and it may be all that we can legitimately hope for, but it is hardly satisfactory to those who desire a synoptic metaphysical view, one that embodies all perspectives and all possible centers. This, of course, is the very quest that postmodernism has declared to be impossible. It is of interest to note in passing that Derrida himself, in his later writings, has a rather positive view of the “impossible,” in equating it with the awaited Messiah of the Jewish prophetic tradition.25 This line of thought will, again, be subject to our consideration in Chapter 10. However, I would here like to explore another line of inquiry, by suggesting that an acceptance of the postmodernist attack on the possibility of a fixed foundation does not necessarily lead to an abandonment of the notion of synopsis. We might, as I believe the Kabbalists did, pursue a synoptic view of God, man and the world without appealing to an absolute foundation or center, but rather through an appeal to a multiplicity of perspectives. Indeed, as I have discussed in Symbols of the Kabbalah, for the Kabbalists, the Sefirot are both the constituent elements of the cosmos, and a series of perspectives or points of view upon the world. The entire world, and each of the Sefirot that constitute it, can be understood under the aspect (behinnah) of Chochmah (Wisdom), Chesed (Kindness), Din (Judgment), Tiferet (Beauty), etc. What’s more, each of the Sefirotic points of view are said to be comprised of each of the others, and each of them are further understood through a series of other metaphors, such as the Cosmic Tree, the Primordial Adam and each of his orifices (eyes, noses, ears, mouth), the Visages (Partzufim) of God, the names of God, the Five Worlds, the levels of the soul, the letters of the holy alphabet, etc., thereby yielding a metaphysics involving an almost indefinite series of perspectives. The Sefirot are the world’s elements, but unlike the elements of traditional metaphysics they are more like “lenses”26 than “things;” lenses, moreover, that change their character according to the perspective of one who looks through them,

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thereby revealing an infinite number of aspects. Here we should again recall Chayyim Vital’s account of the Kabbalistic Worlds: “If you consider …how someone born at a certain time will experience different things than someone born slightly beforehand (you will see) the upper worlds are unlimited in number.”27 The Kabbalist Moses Cordovero, who was an older contemporary of Isaac Luria in Safed, developed the doctrine of the behinnot, which was adopted by Luria and subsequent Kabbalists. Cordovero held that each of the Sefirot, the ten archetypes through which God emanates and structures the world, is composed of an indefinite number of aspects (behinnot) which relate it, in specific ways, to each of the other Sefirot. These aspects are conditioned by the possible perspectives taken by one who contemplates the Sefirot. Cordovero held that it was precisely in this seemingly subjective manner that the behinnot are part of the essential structure of the Sefirot themselves. Each aspect of each Sefirah is reflected in each aspect of each of the others in a chain that is indefinite if not infinite in its complexity. Echoes of the behinnot doctrine can be heard in the postmodern view that each perspective emerges through its association with, and position vis a vis other perspectives. As put by Roland Barthes (in the context of his discussion of Japanese haiku), the play of signification is like “a network of jewels in which each jewel reflects all the others so on to infinity, without there ever being a center to grasp, a primary core of irradiation.”28 The behinnot doctrine leads us to the view that the ultimate constituents of the world are not the things presumably within it, but rather the perspectives we can take upon it. On this view, philosophy and theology are not properly concerned with the nature and variety of things within the world, but rather with the points of view under which the world can be understood. By examining the categories of human perception and experience (the points of view or behinnot which can be taken upon all things) the Kabbalists felt confident that they were exploring the dimensions of both the cosmos and God. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, for the Lurianists the Sefirotic perspectives are continually being shattered and emended according to the dialectic that is expressed in the Lurianic notions of the Shevirah (the Breaking of the Vessels) and Tikkun ha-Olam (the Restoration of the World). As each new perspective evolves, it, like all of its predecessors, disintegrates, only to be re-integrated into a new point of view established by Tikkun.

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What, we might ask, would be the result if we were to substitute a “metaphysics of perspectives” for a “metaphysics of things?” Will this yield the same predicament as a metaphysics of entities? i.e. what we count as or label as a “perspective” will itself be open to interpretation and so on ad infinitum? I believe that this is true but unavoidable. However, there are several advantages that a metaphysics or ontology of perspectives has over a metaphysics of entities. In the first place, by focusing on perspectives, the impossibility of an ultimate ground or final interpretation is held clearly in view. Further, when we have difficulty defining a particular perspective, the indeterminacy of our discussion remains within the same level of discourse (perspectives) as when we began; whereas when we attempt to describe the world by enumerating the “entities” (bodies, experiences, ideas) that comprise it, the indeterminacy of our discussion moves us to another level of discourse (interpretation). In other words, “things” or “facts” are conditioned (and relativized) by perspectives or interpretations, whereas interpretations are themselves only conditioned by other interpretations. This suggests the possibility that perspectives and interpretations are more ultimate than entities or things. By elaborating a group of perspectives and detailing their relationships to one another we may not provide an exhaustive account of the world, but we do describe something akin to the manner in which the world is constructed, which in the postmodernist view is more significant than any particular depiction of the world itself. Still, “entity-talk” is not so easy to eliminate. Even Derrida, in his deconstruction of the signifier/signified distinction and his related deconstruction of the (transcendental) object, acknowledges that the signifier/signified distinction remains a requirement or condition for discourse. One must be able to distinguish between words and things, and moreover, use one’s words to name things, if one is to write or speak about anything at all. This begins to sound very much like the Kantian assumption of the transcendental unity of the “object” as a condition for all thought. Entities, instead of being foundational things or substances, become, in Derrida, regulative principles that support the possibility of language. In Defense of Systematic Theology As we have seen, deconstruction is radically skeptical of any attempts to construct a complete and coherent philosophical system. Postmodern literature is itself thematically concerned with the impossibility of the book,

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i.e. the impossibility of a total and living whole in which all parts are related and function together. As Taylor observes, Leibniz’s “book-like world, in which each part mirrors the whole, and all parts taken together form a coherent and comprehensible system,”29 the integrity of which is assured by a pre-established harmony, is, in the deconstructive view, entirely illusory. According to Marc Taylor, such an encyclopedic well-ordered ideal ended in the 19th century with Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Taylor, in Erring, suggests that the postmodern spirit implies the impossibility of writing coherent novels, framing coherent paintings, composing melodic and harmonious compositions, or proposing anything on the order of a systematic theology. When God, the ultimate author, is dead, and scripture, the ultimate book, unravels, there is no longer any possibility of providing a fully systematic and coherent, “Leibnizian,” account of the world. We should note that the attack, and it has been an attack, on systematic philosophy in the 20th century, by positivists, analytic philosophers, and postmodernists, has attained the status of a politically correct cliché, resulting in the very kind of closing off of ideas that thinkers like Derrida abhor. On postmodernist grounds alone, i.e. the deconstructionist call for freedom in the market place of ideas, systematic theology should be welcomed in postmodernist circles, precisely because it has been scorned and, in effect, marginalized (in part by the postmodernists themselves!). One might imagine a world, perhaps now or some decades into the future, in which, the self, history and the book, are generally regarded as untenable ideas (in much the same way as it is accepted today that astrology and alchemy are untenable pseudo-sciences). In that world some maverick, marginalized thinker writes a novel with a beginning, middle and end or some philosopher or theologian writes a treatise that purports to make sense of or lend significance to human experience, and within which life is conceptualized the struggle of a coherent and heroic self to overcome obstacles and resolve conflict in a quest for certain enduring values. Such a project would go against the philosophically correct dogma, but I have no doubt that some would find in it an inspiration, a breath of fresh air, particularly in a desert of a postmodern intellectual hegemony. Unlike Marc Taylor in his early, enthusiastic deconstructive “a/theology,” Derrida does not hold that the demise of philosophical theses (e.g., that God is dead, that the book has reached closure, that history has come to an end, that everything is about words and not things, etc.) follows

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from deconstructionist thought; in part because to do so would be to partake in the same absolutizing that “deconstruction deconstructs,” and in part because each of these theses and their terms are themselves subject to multiple interpretations. One cannot, for example, legislate a priori what future readers will understand by God, history, words, etc. The most that deconstruction can claim is that no system of thought (postmodernist or otherwise) can a priori assure, or legitimately declare, its own completeness and cut itself off from future interpretation, interrogation and critique. Deconstruction can claim that systematic philosophy does not achieve the results it once claimed for itself (to be absolutely, final and closed), that systematic philosophy (and history) is more akin to poetry and literature than was once thought, etc. However, deconstruction can hardly declare or legislate the end of systematic philosophy or theology any more than it can pronounce the end of any of the other ideas and institutions (God, the self, the book) that have come under its gaze. Deconstruction does not obliterate the Bible, Plato, Leibniz and Hegel; indeed the very existence of deconstruction is parasitic on a continued reading of these and other authors. (This, as we have seen, is one answer to our question of the connection between Kabbalah and Judaism: Kabbalah can be understood as a deconstructive reading of the Jewish religion). Further, the question that should concern us is not whether systematic thought survives postmodern critique but rather how systematic philosophy and theology should be read and understood in a postmodern world. The answer to these questions can, I believe, lead us to the notion of an openended system, a system that retains the semantics of an Absolute and the general structure of a synoptic theological vision, but which provides for its own transcendence by being open to deconstruction, revision, reinterpretation, and even demise. We are thus led to a system that implies the inadequacy of all systems and which suggests that such inadequacy is a necessary component of any effort at synopsis. We are led to a system that in its very efforts to be inclusive is necessarily non-exclusive. We are led to a system that recognizes its own dependence upon a tradition, and its reading (or creative misreading) of that tradition, and which realizes that its own survival is dependent upon how it will be read (and misread) in the future. The Lurianic Kabbalah is, I would submit, just such an open-ended system. The Lurianic theosophy embodies a systematic theological, ethical, and psychological understanding of God, cosmos, and the meaning of human life. Yet it is a theology that, by virtue of its own completeness, contains within

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itself certain destabilizing elements, e.g. Ayin (nothingness), Tzimtzum (Contraction/concealment), and Shevirat ha-Kelim, Breaking of the Vessels), which of necessity subject it to deconstruction, critique, and reinterpretation. For the Lurianic Kabbalah, the Sefirot, the constituent elements of the world, and thus all things and ideas, are continually and repeatedly subject to breakage, rupture, emendation and revision. This is ipso facto true of the Lurianic system itself. The Lurianic theosophy gives rise to a comprehensive and systematic theology that exists in coincidentia oppositorum with its own deconstruction and demise.

Deconstruction and Systematic Philosophy/Theology It is curious that those who are convinced of the Saussurian claim that there is no language, concept or experience outside of a system of differential signifiers, are often so strongly in opposition to systematic philosophy and theology. In Derrida, it is almost as if the defunct system of metaphysics has been displaced onto the system of language. In Derrida’s own understanding of the sign, it would seem that the only possible discourse, and hence, the only possible philosophy or theology, is systematic, as his view is that words and ideas only have meaning against the background of the diachronic and synchronic system of differences that constitutes language. While this is true of all discourse, it is particularly true of Derrida’s discourse, which is virtually incomprehensible unless one enters into and begins to comprehend the terms (trace, différance, writing, divided essence, constitutive outside, the supplement etc.) of his (non-system) system. Derrida does not consciously pursue the articulation of a philosophical system; indeed as the very term “deconstruction” suggests, his avowed goal is to undermine such systems by discovering the aporias or blind spots in the “margins” of texts that invariably betray the self-contradictions of systematic thought. Yet Derrida has, I would venture, produced a system in spite of himself. Indeed, in his own understanding of language, his discourse must participate in such a system (or systems), and to the extent that he has anything interesting or novel to say, produce, a system of its own. Now his system may be open, i.e. self-critical, dynamic, etc. but it involves a system of differential signification nonetheless, one within which each term is only comprehensible in its relation to each of the others and to the system of terms as a whole.

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However, it must be said that for Derrida, the structuralist “system” of linguistic differences is superseded and broken apart by the ‘spacing’ which disrupts systematic presence with succession in time and space, individuality, spacing within thought (the unconscious) and death.30 The system remains necessary for the articulation of the significance of its elements, but these elements are now, in effect, broken or exiled in a syntactic space. Now it is precisely this sense of “system” and its exile and rupture that is applicable to the theosophical Kabbalah. Karasick writes how, according to Sefer ha Bahir, the Kabbalah can only be properly studied as a whole, in effect, as a system in which each part is used to explain each of the others.31 The Lurianic Kabbalah presents us with a series of symbols, and terms (Einsof, Tzimtzum, Sefirot, Shevirah, Tikkun, Sitra Achra, Partzufim, Kellipot, Netzotzim, etc.) each of which can only be understood against the background of each of the others, and the system as a whole. The Kabbalah, like any other theory, is a system of differential signifiers, and must (at least initially) be understood as such, if it is to be understood at all. However, what differentiates the Lurianic Kabbalah from many other theosophical systems, and which places it in fruitful dialogue with Derrida, is that its very terms articulate the necessity of its own (and any system’s) incompleteness and potential demise.

The System that is Not a System: Multiple Perspectives in Kabbalah and Deconstruction We might say that the claim to ‘truth’ of postmodern thought, a claim that is in some sense analogous to the truth claims of earlier philosophies, is that truth must first involve the deconstruction of all dogmatics, the opening up of multiple perspectives, and the democratization of thought. This “truth” is in many ways diametrically opposed to the “truth” of traditional theology. The Kabbalah, as I understand it, attempts the seemingly impossible task of bridging the chasm between systematic theology and critical, deconstructive thought. It can succeed at this because its key terms (Ein-sof, Tzimtzum, Sefirot, Shevirah and Tikkun) articulate a systematic metaphysical and theological view of the world, God, humanity, the origin of things and the meaning of life, while at the same time being completely deconstructive in their effect, describing the very problems and conditions which give rise to difference and multiple perspectives, acknowledging the impossibility of defining essence, recognizing

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that truth involves a coincidence of opposing points of view, etc. notions that obviously render all systems problematic. By embodying this tension between system and critique in its key symbols, the Kabbalah provides a coherent but open and non-dogmatic description of the world, and by adopting the modes of “unknowing,” “multiple interpretations,” “shifting foundations,” the “coincidence of opposites,” “reconstruction and repair” (Tikkun) as its fundamental methods, the Kabbalah becomes a system that is not a system, a world-view that opens up rather than closes off possibilities, a religious outlook that embraces and celebrates difference. While the texts of the Kabbalah present us with a theosophical system, these same texts work to undermine the notion of systematic understanding, both by the content of their ideas and the very nature of their discourse. Again, as Karasick has noted, Kabbalistic texts present us with a fragmented, ruptured and incomplete conglomeration of words and images, abounding in contradiction, multiple readings, perspectives, semantic instability, absurdity and incoherence.32 Thus, the difficulties inherent in a text such as Vital’s Sefer Etz Chayyim actually enact the ideas implicit in the text’s symbols, i.e. that all revelation and understanding is concealed and partial (Tzimtzum), and that all concepts, theories, and discourse shatter in the face of the subject matter they are meant to encompass and express (Shevirah). Again, the theosophical Kabbalah is a system that is not a system, a system that is inherently incomplete, multi-perspectival, in continual rupture and revision, self-critical, unstable, and open to its own transcendence. Reflecting again on Derrida’s notion of the constitutive outside, we have seen that notion of system (in Derrida, the system of differences that is foundational for any discourse) penetrates the deconstructive critique of system, just as the deconstructive impossibility of system penetrates any attempt at systematization. The Kabbalah is a special case of this interpenetration or coincidentia oppositorum, and since it enacts this interpenetration in terms that are completely generalizable, it becomes representative of the system-which-isanti-system and anti-system-which-is-system.

The Urge to Philosophize: From Static to Dynamic Theology The movement in philosophy from a traditional, “representational” theory of language to a postmodern “use” theory points to the futility of all efforts to arrive at a general philosophical view of reality. If indeed, the

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meaning of a linguistic utterance is its use by a particular speaker/writer to a particular audience at a particular time, it makes no sense, given the multiple uses that words (and gestures explaining them) are put to, to attempt a general theory of any concept whatsoever, including such pivotal philosophical concepts as meaning, language, God, and world. Each of these terms will have particular uses in various “language games,” and it would be foolhardy to think that we can arrive at a sort of universal language game that will determine the significance of these terms per se or to provide an absolutely “deep” understanding of any of these concepts or terms. What counts as “deep” will be a function of how one chooses to use ‘deep’ in one’s discourse, as there is no neutral language game or point of view from which to make objective judgments regarding truth, depth, etc. Certain followers of Wittgenstein, having recognized this, believe that we should give up the urge to philosophize and theologize, as in their view, the act of philosophizing is akin to attempting to determine the shape of water. Another option is to view the postmodern “predicament” as simply setting a new ‘mobile’ philosophical stage to replace the old static one. Now, instead of aiming at stationary targets with fixed weapons, we are aiming at moving targets with weapons that are themselves in (unpredictable) motion, something that the Kabbalists certainly seemed to have intuitively understood. They knew all too well that the words of scripture and other writings (Torah, Zohar, etc.) were constantly changing meanings, and that the Sefirot—as elements of the created world—were continually changing their aspects. They were aware of the “sliding of the signifiers” long before this locution was introduced into postmodern thought. Once we recognize the continual “sliding” of both the signifier and the signified we are, I believe, left with at least several philosophical/theological alternatives, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive: (1) We might abandon the quest for “foundations and truth” and reconceptualize theology as a form of “creative proposal.” In this view philosophy or theology becomes a means of proposing new world-views, evaluating old ones, and creatively conceptualizing life in a manner that satisfies our theological urges, without laying claim to absolute truth. Philosophy and theology in this view have a use like any other mode of discourse: they become “language games” that set up their own rules, and create worlds in a manner akin to that of a novelist.

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(2) We might attempt to fulfill our philosophical urges through means and disciplines other than philosophy and theology; for example, through myth, religious practice (sans theology), art, or psychoanalysis. We might, in effect conclude that our theological urges stem from a place within the psyche that can better be satisfied with non-theological content. (3) We can determine to conduct our philosophizing and theologizing from a particular starting point, within the vocabulary of a certain tradition, all the while recognizing that there are other equally valid starting points and traditions. (4) We can choose to keep Kabbalistic discourse within the “form of life” and “language-game” of traditional Judaism, on the grounds that the only meanings for “Ein-sof” and other theological terms are those that derive from within the spiritual practices that are their original home, and, further, that there is no possibility of, or need to, justify such significance via a discourse that is exterior to traditional Judaism. (5) We can focus on a new mystery: instead of pondering the mystery of the cosmos, the world, or a transcendent God, we can focus on the great mystery of language and discourse, and attempt, along the lines of Wittgenstein or Derrida, to grapple with language as a foundation that permits us no foundation, or speak of a “différance” that is a nonoriginary origin; relating these to traditional and particularly mystical views of the world and God. In the process, we may not arrive at anything like an Absolute but we may nevertheless say something new and this ‘newness’ may provide a glimpse of the creative possibility within language that is somehow akin to the creation of the (a) world. (6) We can move beyond traditional foundationalism and arrive at a theological discourse that recognizes multiple and changing foundations, and whose “Absolute” becomes the dialectical relationship between an indefinite variety of equally valid, and often contrary points of view. (7) We can adopt a “neo-Hegelian” goal of attempting to generate a theological synopsis through a series of contrasting, ever changing, but

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mutually dependent, points of view, without privileging any single perspective or marginalizing any other. (8) We can accept the conclusion that no theological system, conclusion or even “opening” is possible, but nonetheless conclude that there is value in yearning for the impossible, even if it is impossible precisely because of our very yearning. As we will see in chapters Seven and Ten, this is akin to what Derrida himself later equates with the messianic, and which links him not only to the Kabbalah, but to the entire Jewish tradition. We will see that a yearning for this “impossible” itself opens up new possibilities. (9) We can attempt to articulate a systematic theology that takes full cognizance of the impossibility of this very task, and which contains in its very terms and principles the roots of its own deconstruction, transcendence and potential demise. I believe that the Lurianic Kabbalah provides within its network of symbols and ideas, a basis for each of these meta-theological possibilities: (1) The Kabbalah’s view of the infinite reinterpretability and changeability of the world, Sefirot, Torah, and Zohar, suggests that no single metaphor or perspective can lay hold of absolute truth; (2) its appeal to myth and its doctrine that the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm suggests that our theological urges may best be satisfied through the myths, symbols, and archetypes creatively generated by the human psyche; (3) its insistence on grounding the Kabbalah in Jewish law and religion, suggests the necessity of an anchoring in a single tradition, while its translatability into other traditions (e.g. the Christian Kabbalah) suggests the possibility of alternative starting points for a Kabbalistic world-view; however, (4) its embededness within Jewish scripture, life and law makes it difficult to comprehend outside of its deep connection with the Jewish tradition; (5) its linguistic mysticism, specifically, its notion that the world’s and God’s origins are to be found in language suggests a mode of theologizing that is very much akin to the postmodern focus upon language; (6,7) its insistence upon multiple perspectives, 33 its doctrine of a coincidentia oppositorum between apparently opposing perspectives, and its view that divine unity presupposes the world’s fullest differentiation, suggest an inclusive form of systematic theology that grows out of a dialogue between multiple points of view; (8) its

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view that not only the messiah, but God Himself, is that which is yet to come, and that God will in effect be completed, if not created, by humankind, suggests a certain yearning for the unknown if not the impossible, and, finally (9) the negative moments of Ayin, Tzimtzum, and Shevirah, as core elements in its “system,” assure that it is open to its own deconstruction, transcendence and demise. As I have indicated, these “meta-theological” perspectives are not mutually exclusive, and each, taken together, form an implicit basis for a “New Kabbalah.” Just as the “objects” of theological inquiry cannot be captured via a single metaphor or point of view, the process of theological inquiry cannot itself be understood from a single perspective. We run into problems when we insist that there must be a unique solution to our philosophical and theological dilemmas and then attempt to either force, or simply announce that solution. Such singular solutions result in a narrowing of our perspective; they are the philosophical equivalent of repeatedly traversing a single avenue or in the hope (and pretense) of getting to know an entire city. Our task of adumbrating a systematic Kabbalistic theology can only be approached obliquely, through a full consideration of all of the behinnot or aspects that apply to both the content and nature of our inquiry, and we must be willing to follow Luria in his insight that each of God’s constructions, and certainly our own, have their deconstruction and contradiction written into their very essence. In doing so, we might say that we move from the notion of providing a systematic theological book, to the idea of continual writing. But there seems to me to be a coincidentia here as well: the very act of writing and meditating on these ideas ad infinitum is the system, is theology and philosophy in action. In the following chapter we will amplify the notion that the Lurianic Kabbalah is both system and anti-system, and that its being one of these is in fact dependent upon its being the other. We will examine the Kabbalistic concept of coincidentia oppositorum, the notion that philosophical, theological and even psychological truths exist in a state of co-dependency with their presumed opposites or contradictions. The notion of the “coincidence of opposites” penetrates to the heart of the question of why theology and philosophy, as traditionally conceived, is logically impossible. We will see that it is this very impossibility that provides the opening to new forms of philosophy and mystical thought.

Chapter Six

The Doctrine of Coincidentia Oppositorum in Jewish Mysticism

T

he doctrine of coincidentia oppositorum, the interpenetration, interdependence and unification of opposites has long been one of the defining characteristics of mystical (as opposed to philosophical) thought. Whereas mystics have often held that their experience can only be described in terms that violate the “principle of non-contradiction,” western philosophers have generally maintained that this fundamental logical principle is inviolable.1 Nevertheless, certain philosophers, including Nicholas of Cusa,2 Meister Eckhardt3 and G.W.F. Hegel4 have held that presumed polarities in thought do not exclude one another but are actually necessary conditions for the assertion of their opposites. In the 20th century the physicist Neils Bohr commented that superficial truths are those whose opposites are false, but that “deep truths” are such that their opposites or apparent contradictories are true as well.5 The psychologist Carl Jung concluded that the “Self” is a coincidentia oppositorum, and that each individual must strive to integrate opposing tendencies (anima and animus, persona and shadow) within his or her own psyche.6 More recently, postmodern thinkers such as Derrida have made negative use of the coincidentia oppositorum idea as a means of overcoming the privileging of particular poles of the classic binary oppositions in western thought, and thereby deconstructing the foundational ideas of western metaphysics. 7 In this chapter I explore the use of coincidentia oppositorum in Jewish mysticism, and its singular significance for the theology of one prominent

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Jewish mystical school, Chabad (or Lubavitch) Hasidism. It is the achievement of Rachel Elior8 and other modern scholars of Jewish mysticism to have brought the philosophical use of the coincidentia doctrine by the Chabad Hasidim to our attention. After discussing Elior’s contributions to our understanding of the coincidence of opposites in Chabad thought, I will introduce two models through which we can begin to understand the Kabbalistic and Hasidic conception of coincidentia oppositorum in rational philosophical and theological terms. These models each rest upon and develop the Kabbalistic/Hasidic view that language (or representation in general) sunders a primordial divine unity, and is thus the origin of finitude and difference. The first, cartographic, model, draws upon the idea that seemingly contradictory but actually complementary cartographic representations are necessary in order to provide an accurate twodimensional representation (or map) of a spherical world. The second, linguistic, model draws upon Kabbalistic and postmodern views of the relationship between language and the world, and in particular the necessity of regarding the linguistic sign as both identical to and distinct from the thing (signified) it is said to represent. In the course of my discussion, I hope to provide some insights into the relevance of coincidentia oppositorum to contemporary philosophical, psychological, and especially, theological concerns. Coincidentia Oppositorum in the Early Kabbalah The Kabbalists use the term, achdut hashvaah, to denote that Ein-sof, the Infinite God, is a “unity of opposites,”9 one that reconciles within itself even those aspects of the cosmos that are opposed to or contradict one another.10 Sefer Yetzirah, an early (3rd to 6th century) work that was of singular significance for the later development of Jewish mysticism, says of the Sefirot, “their end is imbedded in their beginning and their beginning in their end.”11 According to Yetzirah, the Sefirot are comprised of five pairs of opposites: “A depth of beginning, a depth of end. A depth of good, a depth of evil. A depth of above, a depth of below. A depth of east, a depth of west. A depth of north, a depth of south.”12 The 13th century Kabbalist Azriel of Gerona was perhaps the first Kabbalist to clearly articulate the doctrine of coincidentia oppositorum. For Azriel, “Ein Sof …is absolutely undifferentiated in a complete and

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changeless unity…He is the essence of all that is concealed and revealed.”13 According to Azriel, Ein-sof unifies within itself being and nothingness, “for the Being is in the Nought after the manner of the Nought, and the Nought is in the Being after the manner [according to the modality] of the Being… the Nought is the Being and Being is the Nought.14 For Azriel, Ein-sof is also “the principle in which everything hidden and visible meet, and as such it is the common root of both faith and unbelief.”15 Azriel further held that the very essence of the Sefirot involves the union of opposites, and that this unity provides the energy for the cosmos. The nature of sefirah is the synthesis of every thing and its opposite. For if they did not possess the power of synthesis, there would be no energy in anything. For that which is light is not dark and that which is darkness is not-light. 16

Further, the coincidence of opposites is also a property of the human psyche: “we should liken their (the Sefirot) nature to the will of the soul, for it is the synthesis of all the desires and thoughts stemming from it. Even though they may be multifarious, their source is one, either in thesis or antithesis.”17 Azriel was not the only early Kabbalist to put forth a doctrine of coincidentia oppositorum. For example, the Kabbalistic Source of Wisdom describes how God’s name and being is comprised of thirteen pairs of opposites (derived from the 13 traits of God enumerated in Chronicles), and speaks of a Primordial Ether (Avir Kadmon), as the medium within which such oppositions are formed and ultimately united.18 Coincidentia Oppositorum in the Lurianic Kabbalah The concept of achdut hashvaah figures prominently in the Lurianic Kabbalah, which became the dominant theosophical and theological force in later Jewish mysticism. Chayyim Vital (1543-60), the chief expositor of Isaac Luria (1534-72) records: Know that before the emanation of the emanated and the creation of all that was created, the simple Upper Light filled all of reality…but everything was one simple light, equal in one hashvaah (a blending of opposites), which is called the Light of the Infinite.19

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While Vital’s account suggests a unity of opposites in the godhead only prior to creation, a close examination of the Lurianic Kabbalah reveals a series of symbols that are applicable to God, the world and humanity, and which overcome the polar oppositions of ordinary (and traditional metaphysical) thought. Indeed, each of the major Lurianic symbols expresses a coincidence of opposites between ideas that in ordinary thought and discourse are thought to contradict one another. For example, Luria held that the divine principle of the cosmos is both Ein-sof (infinite) and Ayin (absolute nothingness); that creation is both a hitpashut (emanation) and a Tzimtzum (contraction); that Ein-sof is both the creator of the world and is itself created and completed through Tikkun ha-Olam; the spiritual, ethical and “world restoring” acts of humanity; and, finally, that the Sefirot are both the original elements of the cosmos and are only themselves realized when the cosmos is displaced, shattered and reconstructed (via Shevirat ha-Kelim and Tikkun). A closer examination of two key elements in the Lurianic system, Tzimtzum (concealment/contraction) and Shevirat ha-Kelim (the Breaking of the Vessels) can provide further insights into the Lurianic conception of the coincidence of opposites. In the symbol of Tzimtzum (the withdrawal, concealment and contraction of the infinite that gives rise to the world) there is a coincidence of opposites between the positive acts of creation and revelation and the negative acts of concealment, contraction and withdrawal. For Luria, God does not create the world through a forging or emanation of a new, finite, substance, but rather through a contraction or concealment of the one infinite substance, which prior to such contraction is both “Nothing” and “All.” Like a photographic slide, which reveals the details of its subject by selectively filtering and thus concealing aspects of the projector’s pure white light (which is both “nothing” and “everything”), Ein-sof reveals the detailed structure of the finite world through a selective concealment of its own infinite luminescence. By concealing its absolute unity, Ein-sof gives rise to a finite and highly differentiated world. Thus, in the symbol of Tzimtzum there is a coincidence of opposites between addition and subtraction, creation and negation, concealment and revelation. For Luria, the further realization of Ein-sof is dependent upon a second coincidence of opposites: between creation and destruction, symbolized in the Shevirat ha-Kelim, the “Breaking of the Vessels.” Ein-sof is only fully actualized as itself, when the ten value archetypes that constitute the Sefirot

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are shattered and are subsequently restored by humankind (Tikkun ha-Olam). While Ein-sof is the source and “creator”20 of all, Ein-sof paradoxically only becomes itself, through a rupture which results in a broken and alienated world in need of humanity’s “restoration” and repair (Tikkun). For Luria, Ein-sof is propelled along its path from “nothing” (Ayin) to “something” (Yesh), through the creative and restorative acts of humankind; for it is only humanity acting in a broken and displaced world, that can undertake the mitzvoth, the creative, intellectual, spiritual and ethical acts that fully actualize the values and traits that exist in potentia within God. Indeed, the Sefirot, which are both the “traits” (middot) of God and the elements of creation, only become themselves after they are broken and then repaired by humankind. It is for this reason that the Zohar proclaims, “He who ‘keeps’ the precepts of the Law and ‘walks’ in God’s ways…‘makes’ Him who is above.”21 Thus, just as humanity is dependent for its existence upon Ein-sof, Ein-sof is dependent for its actual being upon humanity. The symbols of Einsof, Shevirah (rupture) and Tikkun (Repair) thus express a coincidence of opposites between the presumably opposing views that God is the creator and foundation of humanity and humanity is the creator and foundation of God. Elior on Chabad Hasidism: The Unification of Opposites as the Purpose of the World The doctrine of coincidentia oppositorum, which is an important if not dominant theme in the Kabbalah, achieves its fullest Jewish expression in the philosophy of Chabad Hasidim, where it becomes the governing principle for both God and the world. In her groundbreaking work,22 Rachel Elior points out that for Chabad, all things, both infinite and finite, involve a unity or coincidence of opposites. These Hasidim held that the very purpose of creation was the revelation of these opposites, precisely in order that they should be articulated and then overcome. One of the early Chabad thinkers, R. Aaron Ha-Levi Horowitz of Staroselye (1766-1828), a pupil of the first Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi, Schneur Zalman (1745-1813) held that “the revelation of anything is actually through its opposite,”23 and that “all created things in the world are hidden within His essence, be He blessed, in one potentia, in coincidentia oppositorum...”24 Schneur Zalman’s son, Rabbi Dov

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Baer, wrote, “within everything is its opposite and also it is truly revealed as its opposite.”25 According to Dov Baer, the unity of worldly opposites brings about the completeness (shelemut) of God on high: “For the principal point of divine completeness is that…in every thing is its opposite, and…that all its power truly comes from the opposing power.”26 Within the godhead, earthly opposites are united in a single subject. According to R. Aaron HaLevi: “He is the perfection of all, for the essence of perfection is that even those opposites which are opposed to one another be made one.”27 Chabad philosophy which developed contemporaneously with German idealism bears a striking resemblance to the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. It is interesting to compare Dov Baer’s or Rabbi Aaron’s pronouncements to Hegel’s claim that: every actual thing involves a coexistence of opposed elements. Consequently to know, or, in other words, to comprehend an object is equivalent to being conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed determinations.28

The coincidence of opposites that characterizes God, humanity and the world can be approximately understood by the simultaneous adoption of two points of view. As put by the founder of the Chabad movement, Schneur Zalman of Lyadi (1745-1813): (Looking) upwards from below, as it appears to eyes of flesh, the tangible world seems to be Yesh and a thing, while spirituality, which is above, is an aspect of Ayin (nothingness). (But looking) downwards from above the world is an aspect of Ayin, and everything which is linked downwards and descends lower and lower is more and more Ayin and is considered as nought truly as nothing and null.29

Indeed, Chabad philosophy understands the world in each of these two ways simultaneously: as both an illusory manifestation of a concealed divine essence and as the one true actualized existence. For Chabad, it is indeed simultaneously true that God is the one reality that creates an illusory world, and that the world, in particular humankind, is the one reality that gives actuality to an otherwise empty, if not illusory, God.30 This dual understanding is reflected in the activities of Tzimtzum, through which God creates a world by concealing an aspect of Himself, and Tikkun, through which humankind actualizes the values that were only potentialities within the Godhead.

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While the Chabad Hasidim generally speak as if the divine perspective upon the world is its “inner truth,” it becomes clear that in their view this truth is itself completely dependent upon its opposite, the perspective from which humanity and the material world are fundamentally existent and real. In this they were in accord with the early Hasidic leader, the Maggid of Mezritch (1704-1772), who held that while God is the foundation of all ideas, the very significance of divine thought is contingent upon its making its appearance in the mind of man. For the Maggid, God is the source of thought but actual thinking can only occur within the framework of the human mind.31 The Chabad view takes seriously, and attempts to spell out the full implications of the Zohar’s dictum: “Just as the Supernal Wisdom is a starting point of the whole, so is the lower world also a manifestation of Wisdom and a starting point of the whole.”32 For Chabad, the highest wisdom, and the fullest conception of the divine is one in which both perspectives (one beginning with God and the other with humanity) are included. Ein-sof is truly a coincidence and unity of opposites, and the fullest understanding and realization of the divine is one that includes each pole of the Zohar’s “dialectical inversion.” It is only by thinking in both directions simultaneously that one can grasp the original mystical insight that the divine is present in all things. One implication of the Chabad view is that a God who simply creates human beings (direction one) is far less complete than a God who is both creator of, and created by, humankind (directions one and two), and it is only the latter bi-directional thinking that captures what the Kabbalists designate as “the Infinite” (Ein-sof). According to Elior: Hasidic thought is strained to the ultimate stage in a dialectical way; just as there is no separate reality and no discriminative essence in the world without God, so also God has no revealed and discriminate existence without the world, that is, just as one cannot speak of the existence of the world without God, so too one cannot speak of the existence of God without the world.33

Dialectical Process in Chabad Thought Elior has argued that for Chabad, “divinity is conceived as a dialectical process comprising an entity and its opposite simultaneously,”34 as Ein-sof embodies the opposites of being” (yesh) and “nothingness” (ayin), emanation (shefa ve-atsilut) and contraction (Tzimtzum), ascent (ratso) and descent

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(vashov), revelation and concealment, annihilation and embodiment, unity and plurality, structure and chaos, spirit and matter.35 In addition, these Hasidim held that Ein-sof unifies divine and human perspectives on the world, and that the coincidence of opposites applies not only to God but to the world and humankind. Finally, each pole of these various oppositions is thought to be both necessary and determinative for its opposite. As Elior puts it, “The principle emerging from these concepts states that divinity possesses two opposing aspects that condition one another.”36 For Schneur Zalman, the truth of the opposite perspectives is necessary in order for both God and the world to actualize their unified essence. Schneur Zalman held that the very meaning of the cosmos involves a dialectical movement from non-being to being and back to nothingness. He writes, “The purpose of the creation of the worlds from nothingness to being was so that there should be a Yesh (Creation), and that the Yesh should be Ayin (Nothing).37 For Chabad, in order for Ein-sof to fulfill its essence as the infinite God, it must differentiate itself and actualize all possibilities in existence (Yesh) only to have them each return to itself in nothingness (Ayin). According to Rabbi Aaron Ha Levi, it is the basic divine purpose that the world should be differentiated and revealed in each of its finite particulars and yet united in a single infinite source. Rabbi Aaron states: ...the essence of His intention is that his coincidentia be manifested in concrete reality, that is, that all realities and their levels be revealed in actuality, each detail in itself, and that they nevertheless be unified and joined in their value, that is, that they be revealed as separated essences, and that they nevertheless be unified and joined in their value.38

We can interpret the process that Schneur Zalman and Rabbi Aaron describe in the following way: Ein-sof, which is initially actually nothing but potentially all things, differentiates and actualizes itself into each of the innumerable manifestations of a finite world. It does so precisely in order that these finite entities can actualize the Sefirotic values (e.g. wisdom, understanding, kindness, beauty, compassion, etc.) that are only divine abstractions prior to the world’s creation. By instantiating these intellectual, spiritual, ethical and aesthetic values, the entities of the finite world (i.e. human beings) negate their individual desire and will and “return” to Ein-sof (Ayin or “nothing”). From another perspective, humanity actually constitutes the source of all value, Ein-sof, and in this way achieves unity with the

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divine. For this reason, a world that is alienated from and then reunited with God is superior to one that had never been alienated or divided at all. There is thus a practical, spiritual and ethical dimension to the “coincidence of opposites” that finds its expression in the Chabad system of belief. Schneur Zalman implores his followers both to nullify (bittul) the self and matter in favor of the Godhead and to bring about the infusion of the divine will into the material world through religious worship and the performance of divine mitzvoth (commandments). According to Schneur Zalman: there are two aspects in the service of the Lord. One seeks to leave its sheath of bodily material. The second is the… aspect of the drawing down of the divinity from above precisely in the various vessels in Torah and the commandments.39

Further, “Just as one annihilates oneself from Yesh (Existence) to Ayin (Nothingness), so too it is drawn down from above from Ayin to Yesh, so that the light of the infinite may emanate truly below as it does above.”40 Again, there is a coincidence of opposites on the level of spiritual and moral action. One must annihilate one’s finite separate existence in favor of the infinite God, and in the process one is paradoxically able to draw down the divine essence into the vessels of the finite world. For Chabad, there is thus an “upper unification” (Yichud ha-elyon) in which the world and self are annihilated in favor of their re-inclusion within the godhead, and a “lower unification” (Yichud ha-tachton) in which there is an influx of divinity into the world. What’s more, each of these “unifications” is fully dependent upon the other. It is thus through a doctrine of the coincidence of opposites that Chabad is able to combine the opposing principles of mystical quietism and an active concern with the material world.41 Incidentally, I believe that through their doctrine of achdut hashvaah, the coincidence of the dual aspects of infinite and finite existence, the Chabad Hasidim are able to avoid the pantheistic implications that might otherwise attach to the view that there is nothing outside of God. Although Schneur Zalman and others in the Chabad tradition make such acosmic declarations as: “Everything is as absolutely nothing and nought in relation to His (God’s) being and essence,”42 “For in truth there is no place devoid of Him…and there is nothing truly beside Him,43 and ”although the worlds seem to be a Yesh to us (i.e. an existent entity), this is a total lie,”44 such pronouncements are only from one of two equally valid points of view—the supernal one. In

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Chabad thinking the traditional Jewish distinction between God and creation, is not discarded but is dynamically transformed into two “starting points” or “points of view,” which though dialectically interdependent, must at the same time remain distinct in order to fulfill the purpose of both God and the universe. Chabad is actually typically Jewish in its view that God’s presence and glory fills the whole earth, but that humanity must be distinguished from God and granted a measure of freedom, in order that it may return to Him through worship and mitzvoth. Metaphysically speaking, Chabad again bids us to think two opposite thoughts simultaneously; the thoughts (1) that God is all and there is nothing beside Him, and (2) that God and humanity are separate and distinct and humanity is implored to return to, and in effect constitute God, through divine worship and the performance of the mitzvoth. It is, I believe, the double movement of Chabad thought, its insistence on a coincidence between two opposing perspectives on the reality of God and humanity that differentiates it from most other forms of mysticism, and underscores its significance for philosophy and theology. While according to Elior, “The great intellectual effort invested in Chabad writings is meant to bring one as close as possible to the divine point of view, according to which every creature is considered as nothing and nought with respect to the active power within it,”45 a close reading of Chabad formulations as they are found even in Elior’s own writings suggests a much more subtle theology. The goal of Chabad thought, it seems to me, is to bring us as close as possible to simultaneously realizing both the worldly and divine points of view, thinking them together, and recognizing their complete interdependence; thereby providing us with an intimation of the fullness of divinity as it is manifest in the world and humankind. The Coincidence of Opposites in Other Traditions The coincidence of opposites is neither original to, nor the exclusive province of, Jewish Mysticism. Indeed, paradox and contradiction are notions that are common fare in the philosophies of China and India, where logic allowed for the possibility of a proposition and its negation both being true. In the west, similar notions flourished amongst the Gnostics in late Hellenistic times, who affirmed amongst other paradoxical ideas the notion that “God created man, and man created God.”46 The Neoplatonic philosopher, Plotinus, held that the “All” is comprised of contrary pairs that

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exist in coincidentia oppositorum.47 Later, the Christian theologian, Nicholas of Cusa (in his De Visione Dei, 48 1443) expressed the idea that contradictory assertions could both be true regarding the same object and that in God, all oppositions are reconciled. While the doctrine of coincidentia oppositorum has generally been associated with mysticism, a number of philosophers grappled with the notion that seemingly contradictory ideas were either each true in distinct realities (Kant), reconciled within the Absolute (Schelling), or dialectically implied by their opposites (Hegel). Freud held that there are no contradictions in dreams and the unconscious,49 and that the “law of noncontradiction” does not apply to the psychical agency he termed the “id.”50 Carl Jung regarded the “Self” as a coincidentia oppositorum, and made this notion a cornerstone of his psychology.51 In recent years, philosophers, notably Graham Priest,52 have developed dialetheistic logics which allow for the simultaneous truth of contrary propositions, thereby allowing a form of reason that runs afoul of Aristotle’s “law of non-contradiction.” Each of these traditions and thinkers can potentially provide useful comparisons with, and shed considerable light on, the coincidentia doctrine as it evolved in Jewish mystical thought. Wolfson, for example, has noted the affinities between Freud’s view that contradictory ideas are expressed by the same element in dreams, and the Chabad view that in dreams two opposites are actualized in a single subject.53 Here, however, I will resist the temptation to detail such comparisons and proceed to a consideration of the place of polar oppositions in postmodern philosophy. Derrida: the Overcoming of Polar Oppositions The overcoming of polar oppositions has been a major theme in postmodern thought, in particular the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida. Derrida argued that the entire history of western philosophy and religion is actually predicated upon radical distinctions between a wide variety of conceptual oppositions (God-world, subject-object, inside-outside, good and evil, etc.) and the privileging of one pole of each of these oppositions. He and other postmodern thinkers have called for a post-metaphysical consciousness in which traditional ideas and values become open to that which they were meant to exclude and in which we learn to embrace both poles of oppositions as well as all that does not fall neatly into the dichotomies that have dominated western thought for the past 2500 years.

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As Howells puts it, Derrida seeks to “to deconstruct the binary oppositions of Western thinking”54 and “evolve new concepts or models that would escape the traditional system of metaphysical oppositions.”55 Though Derrida sometimes writes as if he considers these oppositions useful tools, to be maintained until better concepts become available, it is clear that the overcoming of the various binary distinctions that form the core of Western metaphysics is a defining, if not the defining, characteristic of both deconstruction and postmodern philosophy and theology. God-world, subject-object, inside-outside, word-thing, good and evil, etc. are all distinctions which break down in postmodern thought. As we have seen, many of these distinctions also break down in the Kabbalah and we might regard the Kabbalistic symbols as pointing to new concepts that are vehicles for overcoming the basic binary oppositions in western metaphysics.56 Derrida invokes the notion of the “supplement” in his critique of a totalizing absolute or essence. The “supplement,” a notion which suggests there is always a “lack,” always something else, is designed to disrupt all binary oppositions: nature/culture, animal/human, child/adult, mad/sane, divine/human, without creating new integrative models for understanding the subject matters which these oppositions consider and classify. “Supplementarity,” by suggesting that there is always something beyond what one encompasses with one’s vision or refers to with one’s words,57 undermines the idea that anything can be fully present to consciousness, or that one can fully grasp the identity of anything. What something (anything) is, is in part constituted by that which at first appears “outside” of it, i.e., by that which it is presumably meant to exclude.58 Derrida borrows a concept from Gödelian mathematics to further unsettle the notion of an absolute identity and self-presence. He uses the term “undecidable” as a vehicle for the idea that there are certain aspects of, or terms in a text whose meanings are undecidable, and which serve to unsettle the text they appear in. These undecidable terms mean both one thing and its opposite, and neither one thing nor its opposite. For example, Derrida suggests that an act of freedom must be both regulated (i.e. follow a rule) and be unregulated, and neither regulated nor unregulated.59 Undecidables reveal aporias in thought and language; they do not, according to Derrida, resolve contradiction in Hegelian fashion by constituting a third, integrative term. Indeed, the ‘supplement’ is itself an “undecidable” in Derrida’s use of the term, as it is neither essential nor accidental, yet also both.

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The key symbols of the Kabbalah are “undecidable” in a sense close to that of Derrida’s. It is undecidable, for example, whether Ein-sof is nothing or everything, outside or at the center (Yosher vs. Iggulim), and transcendent or immanent within the human mind. It is undecidable whether Tzimtzum is creation or negation, knowledge or ignorance, good or evil, and whether it is each of these things or neither of them. Finally, it is undecidable whether the Breaking of the Vessels is a destruction of values or their origin, and whether the destruction of values is at once their origin.60 Derrida’s interest in oppositions coincides with his critique of ideals and “essences,” and his criticisms of the correlative idea that it is possible to arrive at the one “essential” perspective or truth about a given text, phenomenon or the world as whole. In this way he is not only opposed to the view that any particular perspective is absolute, but he is also opposed to any Hegelian or other effort to use oppositions to dialectically generate a comprehensive or “absolute” point of view.61 For Derrida, essence is always exposed to accidental variations that cannot be rationalized or explained through a definition that covers all cases. For Derrida, the accidental features of a given concept or thing are a necessary, indeed, an “essential” possibility for that thing.62 For Derrida, the “outside” of a particular text, concept or phenomenon, i.e. that which the concept is meant to exclude, is essential to the inside. One cannot, for example, understand a human being unless one locates the human within a differential matrix involving the inanimate, the animate, the concrete, the abstract and the immortal, as well as the specific bodily, emotional, intellectual and spiritual features that are present (accidentally) in one person, and which are illustrative of the necessary accidental features that are present in all persons. Thus a person is defined in her essence both by features (the inanimate, the immortal) that she does not possess and by those that she possesses only “accidentally.” For Derrida, the notion that what is “essential” and “inside” is conditioned by what is “outside,” “contrary,” and “accidental,” is both illustrated and conditioned by the idea that an “absence” (i.e. the past and the future) is constitutive of “presence” (the present). What is not now, i.e. the past and future, is absolutely necessary in order to make sense of what is now, and, as such, an absence is absolutely necessary to make sense of presence. There are numerous special applications of this principle. For example, the possibility of forgetfulness is part of the essence of memory;63 as a memory not subject to forgetfulness would, according to

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Derrida, be an “infinite self-presence,” and not a memory, which must be of something that is no longer present. Taylor, following Derrida, points out that traditional metaphysics typically sets up a binary opposition and then privileges one term of the opposition over the other.64 ‘Essence’ and ‘accident,’ or ‘identity’ and ‘difference’ are the most general of these binary oppositions, which are then specified in such further oppositions as being/privation, good/evil, purity/contamination, logical/empirical, inside/outside, meaning/sign, soul/body, and world/language. While “metaphysical grammar” privileges essence and subordinates accident, “deconstructive grammar” allows accident to penetrate and ultimately determine essence. In violating essence accident becomes a positive condition for the assertion of essence as essence. Derrida does not hold the nihilistic view that pure concepts (being, the world, man, goodness) are drowned or eliminated by otherness (their opposites or accidental features), only that they are necessarily permeable to them.65 A concept must retain a measure of its identity, otherwise the force of its contamination by or connection to its opposite is nil. We cannot reduce pure concepts, the poles of our binary oppositions, to their opposites. Although in the process of deconstructing certain words and ideas, certain equivalences may be asserted, we cannot simply conflate essence and accident, being and nothingness, God and man. Derrida does not hold that there is no value in or necessity for pure concepts. He only writes to instruct us that in using such concepts their purity is not what we originally thought it to be. The Kabbalists symbolized the permeability of all concepts in their doctrines of the Behinnot and the interpenetration of the Sefirot. As we have seen, these doctrines, as expressed by the Safedian Kabbalist, Moses Cordovero (1522-1770) assert that none of the Sefirot are “pure,” and that each Sefirah contains within itself an element of each of the others.66 Chesed (Kindness) for example, is actually composed of each of the Sefirot in combination with Chesed, so that it is composed of the Chesed of Chesed, the Gevurah or Din (Strength, Judgment) of Chesed, the Tiferet or Rachamim (Beauty, Compassion) of Chesed, etc. The doctrine of the interpenetration of the Sefirot anticipates the “monadology” of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz67 (1646-1716) as well as Nietzsche’s famous dictum that everything in the world is integrally related to everything else, and that each of the world’s concepts and values must be understood and developed in connection with each of the others.

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Cordovero, who was the leading Kabbalist in Safed prior to Isaac Luria, held there to be an infinite number of aspects (behinnot) within each Sefirah.68 Further, Cordovero held the (then) radical view that each of these “aspects” are dependent upon the point of view of the one who perceives or comprehends them. As such his theory anticipates postmodernist thinkers who regard reality itself to be a function of the constructions placed upon experience.69 In Cordovero, we find a doctrine of the permeability of essence that clearly anticipates that of Derrida. As we have seen, a number of Kabbalists, and the Chabad Hasidim, held that everything in the world exists in coincidentia oppositorum, that the infinite God (Ein-sof) as well as each of the archetypes of creation (the Sefirot) are as Azriel put it, a “union of opposites,” the poles of which are constitutive of each other. While Derrida is clearly skeptical of any ultimate union, his position is actually dialectical in a similar way. By holding that the outside is essentially constitututive of the inside, and that all essences (i.e. all concepts) are essentially permeated by the opposites that they are presumably meant to exclude, Derrida becomes part of a tradition which provides a counterpoint to the Platonic view that concepts must have clean boundaries that are uncontaminated by their opposites or by so-called accidental properties. This tradition, by invoking the notion of coincidentia oppositorum, or “mystical paradox,” holds that a proposition and its opposite can at the same time both be true. One implication of this view is that ideas have permeable boundaries, and that such permeability is essential to their very articulation as ideas. A number of authors have argued that Derrida is linked to mysticism through his approximations to apophantics or negative theology.70 I believe that he is linked to mysticism through his dialectics as well, via his views that the essential is necessarily permeable to the accidental, that identity is permeable to difference, and that each pole of the traditional metaphysical oppositions is penetrated, if not determined by, its ‘other.’ This overcoming of oppositions and polarities actually links deconstruction with a tradition that begins in ancient China and India, which finds its earliest occidental expression in Gnosticism, and reaches profound expression in the theosophical Kabbalah and Hasidism. It also links Derrida to Hegel, and despite differences on many critical points, to Carl Jung. Derrida’s dialectics differs from both that of Hegel and Jung in its refusal to strive after a totality (a metaphysical absolute in Hegel’s case and an individuated “Self” in Jung’s), but it shares with these thinkers a relentless

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pursuit of opposites that are to be discovered at the core of presumably pure concepts and ideas. We will have occasion to return to Derrida later in this chapter when we examine the demise of the signifier-signified distinction (the distinction between words and things). There we will see that the demise of this distinction (and the demise of its demise!) is critical to a contemporary philosophical understanding of coincidentia oppositorum. Understanding the Mystical Paradox We are now, after our brief survey of the coincidentia idea in Jewish mysticism and postmodern thought, in a better position to ask whether it is possible to rationally comprehend the paradoxes of Jewish mysticism, e.g. that God creates humanity and humanity creates the divine, that the world is both an illusion and reality, that Ein-sof is and is not identical with the world, that creation is itself a negation, that values must be destroyed in order to be actualized. Mystics of various traditions have generally held that such paradoxes are the best means of expressing within language, truths about a whole that is sundered by the very operation of language itself. Any effort, it is said, to analyze these paradoxes and provide them with logical sense is doomed from the start because logic itself rests upon assumptions, such as the laws of “non-contradiction” and “the excluded middle,” that are transcended by mystical experience. Hegel was perhaps the last great speculative philosopher to hold that the identity of opposites could be demonstrated rationally. His view that coincidentia oppositorum yields a logical principle was treated with such scorn by later generations of philosophers that the idea of finding a rational/philosophical parallel to the mystic quest became an anathema to academic philosophy. Even W. T. Stace, who was highly sympathetic to mysticism (and originally sympathetic to Hegelian thought) eventually came to the view that in trying to make a logic out of the coincidence of opposites, Hegel fell “into a species of chicanery.” According to Stace, “every one of [Hegel’s] supposed logical deductions was performed by the systematic misuse of language, by palpable fallacies, and sometimes…by simply punning on words.”71 Stace, who early on wrote a sympathetic, and later much maligned, book on Hegel’s system, gave up the idea that coincidentia

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oppositorum could be shown to be a rational principle, holding that “the identity of opposites is not a logical, but definitely an alogical idea.”72 It is thus with a certain trepidation that in the following sections, I offer two strategies or models for comprehending in rational terms how the overcoming, or simultaneous assertion of opposite, apparently contradictory, ideas can provide a more complete account of both particular phenomena and the “world as a whole” than the privileging of one pole of an opposition and the exclusion of the other. The first of these models is “cartographic” and the second “linguistic,” but each are founded broadly on the view that representation sunders a unified metaphysical whole. It is my hope that the model I offer can provide a degree of insight into the Kabbalistic/Hasidic view that both God and every actual thing in the world is a coincidentia oppositorum. Model 1: Lessons from a Two-Dimensional World The first model can best be introduced via an analogy, one that is similar to the one presented in Edwin Abbott’s 1884 book, Flatland.73 Our analogy will prompt us to temporarily adopt a perspective on the world that is less complete than our own. (In Kabbalistic terms, we will be compounding the effects of the Tzimtzum—the contraction and concealment which the Kabbalists held gives rise to both partial ignorance and the finite world.) The process of working out certain conundrums about the physical world from a more limited perspective than our own will, I hope, shed considerable light on certain metaphysical and theological questions that are difficult to resolve from within our actual epistemic situation. Imagine for the moment a world that is virtually identical to the world we live in, but for the fact that the inhabitants are unable to represent, or even conceptualize, anything in more than two dimensions. It is not necessary that we fully imagine ourselves into this world, only that we accept the fact that even though the inhabitants of this world live in a world of three dimensions, they can only conceptualize themselves within two (in much the same manner that we, for example, cannot conceptualize the curvature of spacetime, or the existence of extra dimensions that modern physics insists complement the three [or four] of human experience).

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One of the consequences of the inability to conceptualize experience in more than two dimensions (and the most important consequence for our current purposes) is that all representations of the spherical earth would be constructed in two-dimensions rather than three. In short, our “2D people” would have maps but not globes, and, however advanced their knowledge about their world, they would be continually faced with the epistemic problem of having to represent a round, spherical earth, on a flat, twodimensional plane. This is, in fact, precisely the problem we have in creating our own maps, with the exception that, unlike the ‘2D people,’ we have the capacity to represent the earth synoptically with a globe, and thereby immediately intuit the limitations of our two-dimensional cartographic projections. It has long been a principle of cartography that it is impossible to perfectly represent a spherical earth on a two-dimensional plane. Every cartographic “projection” of the whole earth suffers from one or more serious defects. In the so-called “Mercator” projection, for example, the lines of latitude and longitude, which are parallel on the globe, are kept parallel, but only at the expense of creating gross distortions in the size and shape of land masses near the earth’s poles. “Polar projections” solve this problem but distort the shape and size of land masses near the equator, and create the further problem of requiring two circular projections, two maps in order to represent a single world. As we discussed earlier, “interrupted sinusoidal” projections, create the impression that there are huge ‘gaps’ in the earth, which are arbitrarily but conveniently placed in the oceans, creating the socalled “flattened orange peel” effect. Like the Mercator projection, these maps suffer from the problem of non-continuity at the equator, and as with all cartographic projections, one is unavoidably left with the impression that the world is flat and bounded by an edge; children often wonder what lies past that edge, and the ancients speculated that one could perhaps fall off into an abyss. (Actually, the space beyond the edge of a full-world cartographic projection is an artifact of the means of representation, and from within the scheme of the map, strictly speaking, does not exist. One would imagine, however, that the 2D people might have various theories concerning this region of “non-being”). For us, each of the various two-dimensional projections of the world is a ‘perspective’ upon the three-dimensional earth: each is suited to a particular purpose, and all have the practical advantage of being amenable to major increases in size and detail without concomitant geometric increases in their

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bulk. Their limitations are, however, readily apparent to us precisely because we can compare them to the “perfect” representation of the threedimensional globe. Our two-dimensional counterparts however, have no such recourse to a “perfect model,” and we might imagine that their various maps would, for them, engender a number of scientific and philosophical puzzles, which they would seek to resolve through a variety of models and theories, just as our inability to see the world sub-species aeternae generates scientific and metaphysical theories designed to reconcile our various perspectives on a reality much broader than the earthly globe. One particular feature of the two-dimensional people’s descriptions of the world is that they would naturally be prompted by their projections into offering a number of interesting propositions about the world as a whole. For example, cartographers from the “2-D” world, might argue (and they would be correct in doing so) that each of their projections were complete maps of the world. Likely they would also realize that two (or more) of their projections were mutually corrective in that the distortions of the first were not present in the second, and vice versa. For example, the Mercator projection gives the misleading impression that the equator is non-continuous and that land masses at or near the poles are immense. The dual polar projection corrects for these defects, though it has deficiencies of its own (not the least of which is that it gives the impression of two earths as opposed to one), and these defects are in turn ‘corrected” by the Mercator projection. In considering their various projections, some of the 2-D people might be inclined to hold that one or the other of their maps were “true” and that the others were either false or imperfect approximations of their favored forms of representation. Others, less inclined to such dichotomous thinking, might hold, for example, that both their Mercator and polar maps were valid, that the world was both one and many, linear yet curved, rectangular yet circular, broken yet continuous at the equator, with parallel lines of longitude that are nevertheless widest at the equator and converge near the poles, etc. In short, their forms of representation might prompt them to utter a number of paradoxical, seemingly contradictory ideas about their world that their limited epistemic position would make very difficult or even impossible for them to express or resolve in any other manner. (Further, as I have suggested above, their limited forms of representation might prompt them into uttering such other propositions of variable merit, such as the world lays situated against the background of non-being, that the world changes with the perspective of the observer, that at certain points the world is both infinitely

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extended and minutely small, that there are as many “worlds” as there are perspectives, and that the idea of “one world” is not a given, but a construction or achievement.) Certain philosophers in the 2D world might argue (as certain 3D thinkers argue in our world) that the various propositions derived from maps are simply an artifact of language and representation, that the dichotomous thinking, arising in cartography, though necessary for practical purposes (i.e. map-making), leads to metaphysical conclusions that are neither justified nor necessary, or that the dichotomous expressions and points of view are permeable to, and actually dependent upon, one another. In short certain philosophers might hold (as do certain mystics and Wittgensteinians) that the world is inherently distorted through our efforts to represent it, and others might argue (as Neils Bohr did with respect to wave-particle physics) that in order to think about the world as a whole one would need to actually think that seemingly contradictory maps were both true (and complementary). The analogies with our own epistemic predicament can now be made clear. Like the 2D people, who have no synoptic means of representing the earthly globe, we have no synoptic means of speaking about or representing such totalities as God, man, and the universe. We have perspectives on all of these matters but no super-perspective from which we can gain a perfect, integrated point of view. Our conceptions of the world are of necessity expressed via a series of dichotomies, but on closer analysis, these dichotomies, though necessary, are seen, at least by certain mystics and philosophers, to be either misleading or “permeable” to one another and interdependent. In this view, creation is interdependent with negation; values are interdependent with their own abrogation; truth is interdependent with error; God is interdependent with humanity; good is interdependent with evil; language is completely interdependent with, and not fully distinguishable from the world, etc. Indeed, these are the very reciprocities that constitute the Kabbalistic/Chabad, and to certain extent, postmodern world-view. However, whereas the postmodern tendency is to avoid any hint of synopsis or totalization, the Kabbalistic/Chabad view is that such reciprocities between dichotomous conceptions, like the reciprocities involved in the 2D maps we have been discussing, point to a single, unified cosmos, which for the Kabbalists is a union of our necessarily partial perspectives upon it. Our failure to see or intuit this unified world is akin to the failure of our hypothetical 2D people to intuit the globe they live on; like them, we can only approximate a synoptic perspective through an extensive

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analysis of the reciprocity of our many partial and seemingly contradictory, points of view. The Coincidence of Opposites: From Analogy to Analysis Thus far I have provided an analogy that I hope renders plausible the idea that in order to understand God, humanity and the world as a whole, we must surrender our dichotomous thinking and think two or more seemingly contradictory thoughts at once. Here I would like to offer the beginning of an analysis of why such bilinear thinking is necessary in philosophy and theology. Elsewhere I have attempted such an analysis with regard to perspectives on the human mind in psychology,74 and I suggested that a synoptic view of the human mind can only be achieved once we recognize the mutual interdependence of such dichotomies as determinism and free will, objectivism and constructivism, facts and interpretations, individualism and collectivism, and public vs. private psychological criteria. Here I will suggest how a similar analysis is necessary with respect to certain metaphysical and theological ideas, and further that such an analysis is necessitated by the very nature of linguistic representation. As we have seen, a close examination of the major symbols of the Lurianic Kabbalah reveals that they each cut across, and are in effect “undecidable” with respect to one or more of the classic dichotomies of western metaphysics, and that they each express an understanding of one or more of these dichotomies as a coincidentia oppositorum. The most important example is the symbol Ein-sof, literally “without end,” a term the Kabbalist’s use to refer to the metaphysical ground of both God and the cosmos, and which cuts across the dichotomies of being and nothingness, universal and particular, origin and end, divine and human, personal and impersonal, and faith and unbelief. It is almost as if the Kabbalists invoke the term Ein-sof to point to a “metaphysical whole” that is unavailable to us in the same way that a three dimensional globe is unavailable to the hypothetical “3-D blind” denizens of “Flatland.” Just as the globe is a physical whole “prior” to its being sundered into an indefinite array of imperfect cartographic projections (maps), Ein-sof is a metaphysical whole prior to its being sundered into a variety of imperfect conceptual dichotomies that seek to represent God and the world. In each case, a primal,

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inexpressible whole,75 has been ruptured by the very system of representation that seeks to express it; the globe is ruptured by the system of representation that seeks to represent a 3-dimensional sphere on a 2-dimensional plane, and Ein-sof is sundered by the very system of representation (i.e. language) that seeks to speak of a unity, but which has dichotomy and distinction as the very condition of its expressing anything at all. In the case we have been examining, cartography, we have seen that it is the system of representation, the attempt to represent three dimensions on a two dimensional plane, that sunders the globe into a series of only partially adequate and seemingly contradictory maps. Is it possible that the metaphysical case follows the cartographic and that our inability to comprehend the world and cosmos as a unified whole is a function of our attempts at linguistic representation? Model 2: Overcoming the Distinction between Words and Things The Chabad Hasidim held that the Tzimtzum, the act of contraction and concealment, which creates all distinctions and brings the world into being, is a linguistic act; one that is inaugurated with the distinction between words and things. According to Schneur Zalman, the Tzimtzum is a revealing/concealing act in which the infinite, Ein-sof, contracts itself into language, specifically in the combinations of letters that comprise the socalled “ten utterances of creation.”76 Such contraction into language is both a concealment and revelation of the divine essence. The Tzimtzum inaugurates a distinction between language and the world that conceals the singular unity of Ein-sof but reveals a multitude of finite objects and ideas. These notions suggest the intriguing possibility that by undoing the Tzimtzum, by undoing language, i.e. by overcoming the distinctions between words and things and thus language and the world, we can return to the primal unity of Ein-sof, the infinite God. In this connection we should note that Schneur Zalman’s understanding of the Tzimtzum arising through language accords well with the view, suggested by Derrida, that the most fundamental dichotomy, one that inaugurates the history of western philosophy is the distinction between the signifier and the signified, i.e. between words and things. It can further be

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said that this distinction inaugurates all other distinctions and, as such, is the very foundation of language and complex thought. If words could not be distinguished from the things they refer to or represent, no distinctions, no ideas, no descriptions whatsoever could be expressed. For these reasons, the signifier/signified or word/thing distinction is a critical, even “foundational” “test case” for our consideration of the coincidence of opposites in philosophical theology. If this distinction can be overcome, if it can be shown that there is a coincidence of opposites between word and thing, then we will have arrived at an intellectual (as opposed to intuitive) vehicle for realizing the primal unity (between language and world, subject and object) that was sundered by creation. Such a vehicle is indeed provided by recent philosophers, including Wittgenstein and Derrida, who have suggested that in spite of the crucial role that the distinction between words and things plays in language and thought, this distinction is philosophically untenable. I will explore the reasoning that leads to this counter-intuitive conclusion below, but for now it is sufficient to comment that it rests on the observation that the very process of pointing to or referring to a thing involves an infinite regress of words that disambiguate what one is referring to, but only relatively and always within a further linguistic context. Interestingly, the Kabbalists themselves questioned the distinctions between language and both the world and God. Indeed, as we have seen, Moshe Idel has argued that Jacque Derrida’s now famous aphorism “There is nothing outside the text,” which in 1967 announced the collapse of the signifier-signified distinction, may actually derive from the Kabbalist R. Menahem Recanati’s dictum that there is nothing outside the Torah.77 Elliot Wolfson has argued that the “obfuscation between story and event” in both Sefer ha-Bahir and Sefer ha-Zohar led to a collapse between mashal and nimshal, signifier and signified: In the Kabbalistic mind-set, there is no gap between signifier and signified, for every nimshal becomes a mashal vis-à-vis another nimshal, which quickly turns into another mashal, and so on ad infinitum in an endless string of signifiers that winds it way finally (as a hypothetical construct rather than a chronological occurrence) to the in/significant, which may be viewed either as the signified to which no signifier can be affixed or the signifier to which no signified can be assigned.78

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While the Kabbalists may have intuitively understood that both the world and God are, to use Idel’s metaphor, “absorbed” by language, contemporary philosophers have offered reasons why this must be the case. It will be worthwhile to review the chain of reasoning that leads to the dissolution of the signifier/signified distinction in some detail. In doing so we will see that there is a coincidentia oppositorum not only between words and things (signifier and signified) but also between the view that the signifier/signified distinction is spurious and the view that this distinction is absolutely essential. Several considerations can be marshaled in favor of the idea that there is no absolute distinction between signifier and signified, i.e. between words and the things they presumably represent. The first of these is that one speaks and writes on the basis of all the other words and texts one has encountered and not through any presumed direct connection between one’s words and their objects, i.e. a “transcendental signified” or “thing in itself.” This follows from the view that a word’s meaning derives from its position within a highly complex linguistic system, a differential matrix in which each word is defined via its relationship to and contrast with other words. Further, many words do not have clear empirical referents (what, for example, are the referents of “superior,” “induce,” “good,” and “sad”), and even when one can point to an object in the world that a word is supposed to represent, one’s pointing is inevitably equivocal until it is clarified via other words. If I point to a banana and say “banana,” how does my listener know that my reference is not to “yellow,” or “fruit,” or “food’? Nothing guarantees that my pointing or use of a particular word or phrase means some unique state of affairs in a world that is somehow on the other side of language, and thus beyond all possible reinterpretation. One cannot delimit and control the meaning of ones words, as they are always potentially subject to an indefinite series of recontextualizations and reinterpretations as they are heard or read by various listeners and readers at different times. Words such as those that I am writing now can and will be understood against the background of other texts (e.g. Derrida, Wittgenstein) and ideas, and not simply as a de novo expression about the relational state of affairs between the fixed and clear notions of “words” and “things” A related consideration is the observation made by Nietzsche, and later by Umberto Eco,79 that there are no facts, only interpretations. Just as all presumed facts in science are “laden” with and constituted by one or another theory, what counts as a “thing” (any thing) is

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laden with and constituted by our use of language, the words we have available to us, and the purposes we have in speaking and writing. In discussing the relationship between words and things we must remember that “thing” itself is another word and derives its meaning from the place it has in our discourse. This is another perhaps concrete sense in which the signified (thing) is another signifier (word). One would have to, in effect, stop speaking, stop using language altogether in order to somehow grasp a “thing” that was “pre- or non- linguisticized,” and in such a case this nonlinguisticized x could no longer be said to be a thing. Certainly, one does not grasp a non-linguisticized thing with words. If signs and signifiers were truly distinct, and words attached themselves directly to objects, unmediated by other words, in a hypothetically prelinguisticized world, we would not be able to say anything at all, because such objects or “transcendental signifieds” would lie completely outside the matrix of signification. In such a case one could make a noise or a mark and point to a presumed object, but one would not be able to say what aspect of the thing one was pointing to, what kind of thing it was, and how it differed from other things. In fact, when we point to an object and make meaningful reference to it, we do so only because our pointing and reference carries with it the differential matrix of an entire language. Still, as Derrida and others have suggested, one could not use language at all without the very word-thing distinction that we have just attempted to deconstruct. One could not speak about anything whatsoever unless one assumed a distinction between one’s words and their subject matter. Indeed, the very deconstruction of the word-thing distinction is itself dependent upon the distinction it undermines. It is true that when we refer to purported objects, referents or signifieds, we are only using language to refer to something that is constructed by consciousness and language itself. However, as Marc Taylor has observed, consciousness understands itself as using language to refer to an object outside of itself, and in the process obscures from itself its own role in constructing such objects (this is a perfect human parallel to the Lurianic notion of divine self-concealment or Tzimtzum). As Derrida points out, even though the distinction between the signifier and the signified is specious, we could neither speak nor function without it. In order to say anything at all we must (at least temporarily) set up a distinction between what we are saying and what we are speaking about. (For example, we must speak about language or speak about consciousness constructing objects, etc.). Thus the identity of word and thing is a doctrine

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that can be written or uttered, but which can never be fully assimilated or understood. This is because the signifier/ signified distinction is a necessary assumption of language; without it we literally would not be talking about anything. Sense and nonsense, truth and error, reality and illusion, and what’s more all “subject matters,” e.g. science, history, psychology, etc. ultimately depend upon the signifier-signified distinction. Now, while one implication of the deconstruction of this distinction is that our belief in “meaning,” “truth” and “reality” is in a sense undermined, if we abandoned these notions altogether, we could neither speak nor think at all. We are left with the paradoxical conclusion that if language is to function at all, the two propositions “the signified is another signifier” and “the signified and signifier are distinct” must both be true. While on the one hand the very distinction between words and things is itself dependent upon the use of language, which as we have seen, cannot sustain this very distinction; on the other hand, in order to use language, in order to even think, we must assume the very distinction between words and things that our deconstructive analysis has overcome. We cannot identify a “thing” other than through an indefinite regress of words and sentences. Yet if we do not assume the distinction between things and words we could not use language at all. There is thus a coincidentia oppositorum not only between words and things but between the (second order) philosophical views that words are distinct from things and words are not distinct from things.80 Hegel taught that the history of philosophy is the history of developing a perspective opposing the last presumably all-encompassing one, finding arguments on each side, generating a new all-encompassing point of view, which is itself proven incomplete, etc. (Deconstruction, in effect, recognizes this as an infinite regress and thus refrains from the claim that there is any possibility of reaching an ultimate philosophical synthesis). The signifier/signified distinction is thus like the dual and multiple twodimensional maps that our 2D people must continue to use even after they have realized that the world exists in three dimensions and that their maps are reciprocally corrective and determinative, and point to an undifferentiated globe or whole. We might also say that that the realization that the signifier/signified distinction is ultimately untenable is as close as

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our intellect can come to conceiving the metaphysical “globe” or unity that underlies the multiplicities of the finite world. In recognizing the coincidentia oppositorum between signifier and signified we have an intellectual apprehension of a unified whole; a whole that unites the distinctions between language and world, and subject and object, and which is very much akin to the mystical union of opposites that is spoken of as Ein-sof in Jewish mysticism. Indeed, the Kabbalists held that Ein-sof (in at least one of its moments) is the primal, undifferentiated unity that is prior to the advent of the finitude and difference produced by Tzimtzum and language. In a logically later moment, Ein-sof is the union of opposite, even “contradictory” ideas. In comprehending the coincidentia oppositorum between words and things as well as the coincidence between the views that words can be distinguished from things and that they cannot, we begin to grasp how an integrated web of subject and object, and language and world, is implicit in each and every linguistic utterance or proposition. The deconstruction of the signifier-signified distinction provides us with a hint of a unitary whole that “antedates” language, or, put another way, restores the unity that had been sundered by language. However, as the very process of thought is predicated on the distinction between signifier and signified, our conception here is fleeting, as our deconstruction involves thoughts which necessarily again sunder the world into a multitude of entities and ideas, distinct from, and presumably represented by, words. As we have seen, the Jewish mystics sometimes followed the Jewish tradition in speaking of God or Ein-sof as the origin of all linguistic representation. The proto-Kabbalistic work, Sefer Yetzirah, for example, averred, “Twenty-two foundation letters: He engraved them, He carved them, He permuted them, He weighed them, He transformed them, and with them, He depicted all that was formed and all that would be formed.”81 On the one hand, the late 13th century Italian Kabbalist, Menahem Recanati, held that God “is nothing that is outside the Torah” and further that “the Holy One, blessed be He, is the Torah.” 82 Further, the Kabbalistic work Sefer Yichud held that one who writes a Torah scroll is credited with having “made God Himself.”83 Whereas in Sefer Yetzirah God fashions language as a tool for creating the worlds, in Recanati and Sefer Yichud Ein-sof is equivalent to language. Strictly speaking, “Ein-sof” should be used neither as a signifier nor as a signified, for to do so necessarily involves it in the very bifurcating, sundering process that it is meant to escape or transcend. To use “Ein-sof” as

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a word or to classify it as an object, however sublime or exalted, is to place it as one amongst others in a system of differences, and to have Ein-sof simply become the role that the term “Ein-sof” plays in, say, the language of Jewish mysticism. Ein-sof can only be used as a pointer, or, to use Heidegger’s expression, as a “formal indicator” of that which is unsundered, and which for that very reason cannot be pointed to or said. Even using Ein-sof as a pointer in this way runs the risk of having it become just another word or thing. We might therefore say that Ein-sof is no-thing (Ayin), and its (non) character is such that it can best be conveyed through non-representation or silence. As Sefer Yetzirah had importuned, “restrain your mouth from speaking and your heart from thinking, and if your heart runs let it return to its place.”84 We might also say with the Kabbalists and Schneur Zalman that Ein-sof is the Ayin (nothingness) that is logically prior to all distinctions resulting from the Tzimtzum, thought and language. While the Kabbalists and Hasidim often state that Ein-sof is itself a coincidentia oppositorum, I believe that it might initially be more illuminating to say that the coincidence of opposites is a logical echo of the primal unity, after that unity has been wrenched apart and dichotomized by thought and language. The recognition that each pole of a dichotomy is fully dependent upon its presumed opposite, and (perhaps more fundamentally) that words are fully interdependent with things, provides a sign or echo within thought and language of the primal unity that was sundered by thought and language itself. A philosophical comprehension of the coincidence of opposites is a means of undoing the bifurcating tendencies of the intellect and moving back in the direction of an original unity. For the Kabbalists, however, this return to the primal unity is all the more exalted for having passed through the dichotomies and multiplicities of a finite world; for such a restored unity is not simply a restoration of the original divine oneness, but is actually the completion and perfection of Einsof itself. According to the Kabbalists, it is incumbent upon humankind to recognize and even facilitate the distinctions within the finite world, while at the same time, through an appreciation of the coincidence of opposites, to comprehend the unity of all things. I believe that one implication of this view is that in disciplines as diverse as philosophy, psychology and theology, we must guard against a form of dichotomous “either/or” thinking that permanently excludes, and thus fails to recognize the necessity of, ideas and

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points of view that are seemingly contrary to our own. More positively, we must seek integration in our thinking by exploring the possibility that opposing ideas and points of view are actually complimentary to one another. Amongst the candidates for such complementarity are theism/ atheism, rational/irrational, being/nothingness, and freedom/necessity. From a Kabbalistic point of view, these and many other seemingly contradictory ideas are not only complementary but are fully interdependent. Indeed, it is the task of a theology which seeks to comprehend the “whole,” to articulate the manner in which presumably polar opposites are permeable to, and interdependent with, one another. In doing so, we participate in forging the “unity of opposites” that is said by the Kabbalists to constitute Ein-sof, the Infinite God.

Chapter Seven

The Torah of the Tree of Life

Kabbalistic Reflections on the Hermeneutics of Infinity

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ontemporary scholarship on the Kabbalah has focused considerable attention on the Kabbalist’s views of language and interpretation. One reason for this, as Moshe Idel has observed,1 is that there is an important affinity between the Kabbalistic conception of infinite layers of meaning in scripture and contemporary philosophical ideas regarding the infinite interpretability of both texts and the world. In this chapter, I will review some recent scholarship on Kabbalistic hermeneutics, and I will show how a careful consideration of Kabbalistic notions of “infinite interpretation” lead not only to a new understanding of the relevance of Kabbalah to contemporary thought, but also to a radical new understanding of the Kabbalah’s attitude toward “Torah” and religious life. Scholem: The Divine World of Language Gershom Scholem was perhaps the first modern scholar to note that for the Kabbalists, language plays a unique and foundational role in both the nature of the cosmos and the mystical ascent to the absolute. As Scholem observed, “the secret world of the godhead is a world of language.”2 Scripture, and its constituent elements, stories, phrases, names, and, especially, the very letters of the Hebrew alphabet, carry a wealth of significance that goes far beyond their literal or conventional meaning. The

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Zohar teaches that the cosmos, including the upper, divine worlds, is comprised of the “foundational letters” (Otiyot Yesod), which through an infinity of recombinations, produce everything that exists.3 Conversely, the interpretive, hermeneutic, process is one that penetrates beyond the superficial appearance and significance of the letters, and is itself a mystical act that brings one into proximity with the divine essence.4 According to the Kabbalists, it is the Torah which mediates the creative power of the holy letters, and the Torah itself is understood to be a changing organism whose very structure is transformed in response to alterations in the cosmos and the life of humankind. For the 16th century Safedian Kabbalist, Moses Cordovero, the Torah was originally a concatenation of divine letters, which as a result of the processes of creation and materialization, were combined into the names of God, divine predicates, and finally words and phrases referring to material objects and earthly events.5 According to followers of Israel Sarug, an early expositor of the Lurianic Kabbalah, the original Torah, the Torah that exists in the highest world of Atziluth, consists of all possible combinations of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.6 In this view, Torah is identical with the totality of linguistic possibility, i.e. all that can possibly be written and said, including that which is illogical, contradictory, or (from an ordinary linguistic perspective) completely senseless. According to the early 18th century Kabbalist, Rabbi Eliyahu of Smyrna, when God looked into the original Torah “He had before Him numerous letters that were not joined into words as is the case today, because the actual arrangement of the words depend on the way in which this lower world conducted itself.”7 For example, according to Rabbi Eliyahu, had Adam not sinned there would have been no death and hence no reference to death in the actual Torah. Eliyahu goes on to say that to this day the absence of vowels in a Torah scroll is an oblique reference to the time when the Torah was a heap of letters, yet unarranged. The notion that Torah is a changeable organism, subject to recombinations of its elements generating new meanings in response to changing circumstances, suggests a plasticity in textual meaning that goes far beyond even the most radical postmodern understanding of interpretive latitude and multiple textual significances. Scholem quotes from the 18th century Kabbalist Chayyim Joseph David Azulai: “When a man utters words of the Torah, he never ceases to create spiritual potencies and lights, which issue like medicines from ever new combinations of the elements and consonants.”8 According to Azulai, when an individual spends his entire day

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reading a single verse of Torah, certain unheard, inner linguistic elements in that verse alter in response to the demands of each new moment and new meanings are continually created. Rachel Elior appeals to the infinite interpretive possibilities that the Kabbalists saw inherent in the Torah text in support of her view that Jewish mysticism is an expression of creativity and infinite freedom.9 Infinite Interpretations Scholem points out that the plasticity of the Torah and the possibility of a manifold of interpretations is clearly present in various (especially later) strata of the Zohar.10 For example, Tikkune ha-Zohar offers seventy interpretations of the first five verses of Bereishit (Genesis). The idea that every verse of scripture, indeed every word and letter has seventy “faces” or aspects is found in Midrash Numbers Rabbah, and is itself based upon the Talmudic idea that each of the commandments given to Moses at Sinai were uttered in each of the seventy languages thought by the rabbis to correspond to the “seventy nations” of the world.11 Moses himself is said, in an early post-Talmudic mystical work, to have been “instructed in the Torah in all seventy languages.”12 The midrashic and later Kabbalistic view that there are seventy layers of meaning in scripture, corresponding to the seventy nations of the world, suggests that one should understand Torah and Kabbalah, as well as the world as a whole, from multiple cultural and linguistic perspectives. (Indeed, as we will see, the Zohar is critical of those who comprehend the Torah only from the perspective of Israel!). We might learn from this that each nation has its share in Torah, and that each culture has its share in, and perspective upon, the plenitude of meaning that constitutes the world and God. According to Scholem, an even more radical development of the principle of the plasticity of meaning in Jewish mysticism is to be found amongst the Kabbalists of 16th century Safed.13 This view is evident in Moses Cordovero’s affirmation that each soul that departed from Egypt has its own “special portion of the Torah” and his own special understanding “that is reserved to him.”14 It is also evident in Isaac Luria’s claim that with the advent of the Messiah each individual will read the Torah according to the interpretation associated with his soul root, and further, that in Luria’s own time this is precisely how the Torah was understood in the Holy land.15

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Interpretation, for Luria, is not only culturally and linguistically determined (the Torah’s 70 aspects) or subject to historical change (Cordovero’s theory of the recombination of letters), but is also individually, and we might therefore say, psychologically relative. Further, the ideal (i.e. interpretation in the messianic era and in the Holy land) is not that of a single correct understanding, but rather that of the widest possible interpretive dispersion and latitude. Idel on the Plasticity of Textual Significance In his book, Absorbing Perfections, Moshe Idel, details the manner in which the Kabbalists regarded the text of the Torah, and by extension, the text of the world, to be subject to an indefinite if not infinite, number of determinate interpretations. He points out that as early as the second half of the 13th century certain Kabbalists adopted the view that the Bible contains an infinite number of meanings, and he describes several factors adduced by the Kabbalists in support of their claim of “infinite interpretability.”16 Idel points out that the Bible’s lack of Hebrew vowels creates an indeterminacy in pronunciation and sense that leaves it open to a multiplicity of interpretative possibilities. The mid-thirteenth century Kabbalist, R. Jacob ben Sheshet of Gerona, held that every word in the Torah is subject to a change in meaning according to the manner in which it is vocalized.17 A slightly later, anonymous Kabbalist, expanded upon R. Jacob’s notion by holding that the vowels that are added by the reader to the words of the Torah are “form” and “soul” to the consonants, giving them “limit and measure” like “the hyle [primordial undifferentiated matter] that receives a peculiar form,” thereby producing a specific interpretation.18 The prohibition against writing vowels in the Torah scroll thus guarantees a hermeneutic freedom permitting unlimited interpretations of the scriptural text.19 Any particular vocalization or interpretation, grants form to the hyle, and thereby makes the reader a co-creator, with God, of the Torah, and ultimately, of the world.20 According to R. Bahya ben Asher, “The scroll of the Torah is written without vowels, in order to enable man to interpret it however he wishes…as the consonants without vowels bear several interpretations…”21 A similar view was put forth by the 14th century Kabbalist, R. Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati, who held that the Torah is written without vowels because it contains multiple aspects.22

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A second foundation for the Kabbalist’s “infinite” understanding of the text is that scripture is the embodiment of God’s infinite wisdom. A medieval midrash suggests that the infinity of the divine wisdom is paralleled by an infinity of significance within the Torah. R. Moses de Leon, the thirteenth century Castilian Kabbalist, thought by many to be the author of much of the Zohar, held that “in order to evince that this name [or He/God] is infinite and limitless, so the Torah is infinite and limitless.”23 Scholem makes note of a Kabbalist who held that “Since God has neither beginning nor end, no limit at all, so also His perfect Torah…has, from our perspective, neither limit nor end.”24 As we have seen, the Kabbalists appealed to the infinite number of letter re-combinations that are available to the interpreter of the Torah as a further justification for their conception of hermeneutic infinity.25 The notion that one could derive new interpretations, and even new words and meanings, by recombining the letters of the sacred text was familiar both to the medieval Ashkenazi Hasidim, and the ecstatic Kabbalists, most notably, R. Abraham Abulafia. According to Abulafia’s student, R. Joseph Gikatilla, through the mixture (‘eiruv), permutation and combination of the six consonants that comprise the first word of the Torah, bereshit, “the prophets and visionaries penetrated the mysteries of the Torah, and… no one is capable of comprehending these things but God alone.”26 Idel suggests that for Gikatilla “the semantic field of a given word” is a function of the various combinations that can be produced by that word’s consonants,27 a view that applied to sentences, paragraphs and whole texts, quickly generates an infinity of meaning that is clearly incomprehensible to a finite mind. However, as if this infinity was not enough, Gikatilla suggests that each letter contains a plethora of meanings and no one is capable of understanding the “thousands of thousands” of secrets embodied in even one letter of the Torah.28 In contrast to Aristotelian logic that is grounded in propositions, Abulafia’s Kabbalistic/textual “logic” utilizes separate letters in order to both expand interpretive possibilities and return the Torah to its original state as a series of letters that name God.29 Idel points out that for a number of Kabbalists each word in the Torah is a symbol for one or more of the Sefirot, the divine archetypes through which Ein-sof is manifest in the universe. The Zohar, for example, makes use of the idea that the same word corresponds to more than one Sefirah, thus yielding successively new interpretations of biblical verses, and revealing the infinite dynamic implicit in the Torah text. By regarding words and sentences as

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symbols of the archetypes of creation, the Kabbalists were able to provide content to the old Jewish idea that the Torah is God’s blueprint for creation.30 Idel describes several metaphysical ideas that inform later Kabbalistic and Hasidic notions of textual infinity. The first of these is the idea that like the precession of the observable stars and planets, the spiritual worlds change from moment to moment, thereby continually informing the Torah text with new meanings. According to Luria’s eminent disciple Chayyim Vital, “in accordance with these (celestial) changes are the aspects of the sayings of the book of the Zohar changing [too], and all are the words of the living God.”31 On this view, since no two moments are alike, no two interpretations of a text like the Zohar can ever be identical. An infinity of moments yields an infinite number of interpretations. A second metaphysical notion informing “infinite interpretability” is that the souls of different interpreters are each informed by a different source amongst the infinite worlds. Idel cites the 17th century Jerusalem Lurianist, R. Jacob Chayyim Tzemah, who held that the Torah is of infinite depth because it is read differently by each of the of the Tannaites (early rabbinic authorities) and Amoraites (later authorities) whose souls each emanate from a different spiritual world. According to R. Chayyim, this is the reason why the Talmud proclaims that each of two or more seemingly contradictory interpretations are “the words of the living God.”32 As we have seen, according to the Safedian Kabbalists, the Torah embodies a revelation that is intended to be different for each individual present at Sinai, and this leads to the idea that each Jew is provided a revelation and interpretation of Torah unique to himself. This is because, according to the Kabbalists, the soul of each Jew in every generation was present at Sinai. Idel cites R. Moses Chayyim Luzzato, a later (18th century) expositor of the Lurianic Kabbalah, who held that the multiple Torah meanings are like the many nuances of a flame that emerge from a hot coal.33 According to Luzzato the letters of the Torah point to the twenty two foundational letters on high, each of which is itself infinite in its meaning. Idel points out that for Luzzato the soul of each Jew was not only present at Sinai, but is actually present within the Torah, i.e. the reader is already present in the text. The student of Torah “enflames” the meaning that is inherent in the text by virtue of the relationship between his soul and the Torah itself, and such study, in effect, links the interpreter with the twentytwo supernal letters which are the Torah’s metaphysical ground. According to several Lurianists, including R. Naftali Bakharakh, the individual soul

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emerges from its correspondingly unique Torah interpretation (and not the other way around): “Out of each interpretation, the root of a certain soul of Israel emerged.”34 On the other hand, the Lurianists held (like Leibniz) that each soul contains or mirrors each of the others, thus providing the interpreter access to, and comprehension of the multitude of interpretations that differ from his own. According to Idel, it is the restoration and linkage of all the dispersed interpretations of Torah that provides a hermeneutical parallel to the Lurianic theory of Tikkun ha-Olam, the restoration and linkage of the dispersed sparks of the primordial Man, Adam Kadmon.35 As Idel puts it, “Three major entities tell the same story, or myth, of Lurianic Kabbalah in a parallel manner: the Torah, the souls of Israel, and ‘Adam Kadmon’ [the Primordial Man]. All three were scattered into particles, and all are supposed to return to their source.”36 Interpretation, in Idel’s view, parallels the performance of the mitzvoth and becomes an important aspect of Tikkun, the restoration and redemption of the world. Idel argues that by appealing to the interpretations that uniquely correspond to each individual’s soul, the later Kabbalah placed an increasing emphasis on the subjective contribution of the individual to the infinite fullness of meanings inherent in the Torah text. Kabbalah, Divine Intent, and Infinite Freedom It is thus clear that the Kabbalists, like contemporary postmodern philosophers, regard the text (in the Kabbalist’s case the text of the Torah) as being subject to an indefinite if not infinite number of interpretations. However, Idel holds that unlike contemporary criticism which rejects the notion that interpretation discovers anything like an “archive” embedded within the text, the Kabbalists held that the process of scriptural interpretation uncovers the manifold content of divine intent. In their interpretation of scripture, the Zohar, and even various signs within the physical world (for example, the “letters” that appear on the forehead of man), the Kabbalists, in Idel’s view, engaged in a process of discovering a meaning that is already present and which is in no manner arbitrary or dependent upon their own creativity or inventiveness. Idel further argues that while the Kabbalists regarded the text as having an indefinite plurality of meanings, they did not adopt the postmodern view that “readers and interpreters complete the meaning by bringing their own

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riches to the interpreted texts.”37 We will have occasion to question this view, but here I would point out that Idel contrasts this secular, “democratic” view of the text with the Kabbalistic view of multiple textual significances determined by a higher intelligence or divine author. Unlike postmodern literary theorists who mistrust the author, the Kabbalists operated with a faith and trust in what they understood to be the divine source of texts and their significance. As we have seen, Derrida, in Dissemination, makes reference to the Kabbalists’ methods of generating multiple meanings from scripture: “there exists a whole interpretation of spacing, of textual generation and polysemy, of course, revolving around the Torah.”38 Idel points out that, unlike Derrida, the Kabbalists did not conclude that ambiguity of the Torah text leads to an indeterminacy of meaning, the idea that it is in principle impossible to ascertain the true meaning of a text. Rather, the Kabbalists held that textual ambiguity leads to a multiplicity of determinate meanings, all of which were intentionally inserted by the divine author. According to Idel, the Kabbalist’s view here is decidedly different from Derrida’s conception of dissemination, which rests upon semantic ambiguity and undecidability.39 In short, for Idel, the Kabbalists differ from contemporary deconstructionists, in holding that there is a metaphysical (divine) ground for textual infinity. Several questions are raised by Idel’s attempt to distinguish Kabbalistic hermeneutics from contemporary deconstruction: (1) Do the sources fully support Idel’s thesis that Kabbalistic interpretations seek to uncover divine authorial intent? (2) Is there any practical difference between those who interpret a text under the assumption that they are uncovering an archived authorial meaning and those who do not? (3) Is it actually possible to interpret a text, or a phenomenon in the world for that matter, without implicitly assuming the presence of an archived or inherent meaning?40 I will take up each of these questions in turn. Several considerations within Idel’s own text belie his own point of view. As Idel himself acknowledges, the Lurianic concept of Tikkun suggests that the individual actually completes and emends God’s creation, and by extension God’s Torah. The act of interpreting sacred scripture not only uncovers hidden meanings, but actually completes the scriptural process. Idel himself makes this clear when he speaks of the popular Hasidic belief that a rebbe who expounds the Torah during the third Sabbath meal, is actually speaking (i.e. creating) divre Torah, words of Torah, even though he speaks in the vernacular (Yiddish).41 Further, in a process that mirrors the Lurianic

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notion that divine creation is completed by humankind, the rebbe’s “Torah” is dependent upon his audience; upon the manner in which each of his Hasidim hear his discourse. It is notable that Idel places this material in an appendix, thus marginalizing important data that would undermine his thesis that the Kabbalists trusted in a “strong author” whose intention and will determine the significance of the sacred text.42 In this Appendix Idel acknowledges that the notion that a Hasidic master is capable of generating “Torah” through his homilies on scripture undermines the idea of a transcendent God determining the meaning of scripture independent of any reader or expositor. It is here that he refers to the idea that the Torah of the rebbe is itself dependent upon the rebbe’s listeners, suggesting a far more “postmodern” view of Torah than Idel asserts is typical of the Kabbalah. Idel discusses the case of R. Israel of Ryzhin, the great-grandson of the Maggid of Mezritch, who held that the rebbe’s Torah discourse would never emerge without the potential for it being heard, understood and further explicated by his disciples. According to R. Israel, each of the Maggid’s students would hear and understand the Maggid’s “Torah” in a different way, as each heard according to one of the seventy facets of Torah that he possessed.”43 According to Idel, R. Israel implies that “only the interpretive skills of the recipients are able to disclose the richness that elevates the [rebbe’s] sermon to the status of Torah.” 44 Idel argues that this Hasidic view runs counter to the general Kabbalistic understanding of the infinite plurality of meanings, which was far more metaphysical and “logocentric.” The Hasidim were able to adopt a more interactive view of the generation of “Torah” because they (1) emphasized the essentially oral character of the rebbe’s discourse, which was always said in the presence of, and involved interaction, with his followers (Hasidim), and (2) tended to psychologize elements of Lurianic theosophy, which made them open to a more subjective, fluid, understanding of their rebbe’s “Torah” (and sacred discourse) in general. However, here as elsewhere, the Hasidim simply drew out what was already implicit within the Kabbalist’s original views. In holding that (1) there are as many interpretations of Torah as there are souls in Israel, and (2) the role of the individual is to restore, emend and complete God’s creation, the theosophical Kabbalists were only a step removed from the idea that the reader/listener of a sacred text/discourse is as much responsible for its significance, as its author. Indeed, for the Kabbalist, the distinction between God and humanity is largely illusory, and once this is understood, the author and reader of a sacred text in effect become two

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aspects of a single creating/interpreting reality. As Idel himself observes, for the Kabbalists: The status of the Torah as an independent entity—such as we find in the Talmudic and midrashic literatures—standing between man and God though separated from both, vanishes. Likewise, in most forms of Kabbalah man’s separate identity or self is jeopardized. The divine source of his soul, according to the Sefirotic Kabbalah, or of his intellect, according to the prophetic brand, endows the Kabbalist with strong spiritual affinities to the Godhead. These affinities authorize, as they facilitate, the emergence of pneumatic exegeses…The text becomes pretext for innovating farreaching ideas, which are projected onto the biblical verse.45

In writing that the reader “projects” his ideas onto the text, Idel stands outside the very model of Kabbalistic hermeneutics he has proposed, i.e. that of a strong divine author who determines the text’s multiple meanings. Even the view that the Kabbalist’s spiritual affinities to the godhead authorize the individual to complete the divine text shifts the locus of meaning away from a transcendent, divine author. Of course, the view that the reader completes the text need not permit any interpretation whatsoever—and we should reserve the right to say that at least some exegeses are simply “projections”— but once we adopt the overall viewpoint of the Kabbalah, in which humanity is not clearly distinguished from divinity,46 we can no longer, maintain a clear distinction between author and reader, and we (like the Hasidim Idel refers to in his Appendix) have moved very close to a postmodern view of textual meaning. As Idel writes, “The Hebrew Bible is viewed in some Kabbalistic discussions as an oper aperta par excellence, wherein the divine character of man finds its perfect expression even as it discovers God’s infinity reflected in the amorphous text.” Kabbalistic exegesis both discovers the “Torah’s infinite subtleties” and the “Kabbalist’s inner qualities.”47 Idel calls this “paradoxical,” but it follows perfectly well from Kabbalistic theology. Kabbalah, Dreams, and the Archive Idel points out that the notion that the Torah contains an infinite number of Kabbalistic interpretations was variously understood to mean that there is nonetheless (1) a proper interpretation characteristic of each given moment

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(Vital), (2) a single interpretation characteristic of each master reflecting his “source” in a higher world, or (3) an interpretation determined by the nature of the interpreter’s soul as it received the Sinaitic revelation. On none of these views is the interpreter given the latitude to freely invent his or her own interpretations. One way of viewing each of these so-called limitations on the interpreter’s freedom is that they are after-the-fact explanations that, in effect, salvage an “object” that is continually and subjectively reconstructed. To understand how this might be the case I will make a comparison between interpreting texts and dreams, a topic that we will see is not only interesting in itself but sheds considerable light on hermeneutics in general. Ken Frieden, who has written on dreams from a Jewish/postmodernist point of view, follows Derrida in suggesting that the interpretations that psychoanalysts and their patients place upon dreams are de novo constructions that nonetheless must be viewed as a process of uncovering an “archived” meaning pre-existing within the dream itself.48 The very concept of an interpretation of a dream or text requires the notion of an original datum or significance whose meaning is somehow revealed. When we interpret we necessarily believe that our interpretation is accountable to a datum; indeed, this is what we mean when we distinguish an interpretation from a free, creative invention. There is a similar “double-think” in the general relationship between words and the things to which they refer. As we have seen, Derrida argues that the signifier (words) always refers to another signifier and never to an actual signified or thing-in-itself. However, he holds that we could neither speak nor think, unless we acted as if our words actually refer to things that are independent of language. When the Kabbalists posit various metaphysical grounds for the infinitely varied interpretations of Torah, they are, in effect, following this pattern of assuming an archive, or more generally, a signified, that answers to each interpretation. Kabbalistically speaking, however, this assumption only makes sense if we remain under the illusion (an illusion created by the Tzimtzum) that Torah, God, humanity and the world are each separable, independent entities. Once this illusion is dispelled, we can recognize that the proposition that the interpreter creates his interpretations is equivalent to the proposition that he discovers them, as the distinction between subject and object, interpreter and text, creation and discovery dissolves. I will now explore these ideas in greater detail. For Frieden, no interpretation can be said to be intrinsically true.49 This is because any truth in the present will always be gauged against and dependent upon a future that

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confirms, alters or refutes the interpretation in question. Meaning is not an archaeological artifact waiting to be uncovered from a dream or a text, but is rather something that lies ahead, to be actualized by later interpretations. The meaning of a dream, a text, or the past in general is always dependent upon its present and future signification. For Frieden, meaning is not the sort of thing that can be “discovered,” but is rather something that is “made.” Because interpretation always involves language, interpretation “has little in common with an archaeological dig.” But is the metaphor of an “archeological dig” completely inapt? Freudian analysis involves an effort to expand the context within which a dream image or narrative can be interpreted and understood. Typically, this expansion involves a process of “free-association” on the part of the analysand, which can be said to metaphorically “unearth” memories and forgotten associations that provide the context for the dream’s interpretation. However, it is also possible to expand the interpretive contexts in other directions, e.g. through a Jungian analyst’s archetypal “amplifications,” or through an examination of the analysand’s current life situation, etc. with quite different interpretive results. The meaning of a dream, like that of any other signification, can only become fixed within a particular framework or context of interpretation. However, unless one provides such a framework the signification loses all possibility of being understood. As Taylor suggests, the sign does not ‘possess’ a multiplicity of meanings, but rather, in the context of its relationships, it generates the potential for such multiplicity.50 It is for this reason that every dream and every interpretation is itself open to reinterpretation.51 Frieden points out that recent analysts have re-focused their dreaminterpretative efforts from past causes to current effects and future possibilities. He argues that Freud implicitly recognized the futureorientation of dreams, an orientation that was clearly present in Midrash, Talmud, and Kabbalah.52 For example, according to both the Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 89:8), and the Talmud (Berakhot 55b) “all dreams follow the mouth…,” a phrase which suggests that the significance of a dream is dependent on the interpreter. Frieden points out that in the Midrash (Genesis Rabbah, 89:8) R. Eliezer is recorded as having scolded his students for interpreting a woman’s dream to signify that she will bury her husband, admonishing them “You have killed a man, for is it not written, ‘As he interpreted to us, so it was’?”53 Frieden points out that for the rabbis a dream's power lies not in the dreamer's images, but is rather an effect of the

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interpreter’s words.54 The Zohar is in complete accord with the Talmudic dictums that “a dream that is not interpreted is like a letter that is not read,”55 and that dreams “follow the mouth” i.e. that both the meaning and effects of a dream are dependent, not on the “dream itself” but upon the dream as it is interpreted.56 The reason for this, the Zohar explains, is that “every dream comes from a lower level and speech is superior to it [thus] every dream follows its interpretation.”57 According to Frieden, Freud’s relationship to the Jewish dream interpretive tradition is that of “denial.” Jewish dream interpretation is Freud’s suppressed precursor, present in his works by its systematic exclusion. While Freud well understood that the process of telling and interpreting a dream inevitably led to a degree of “secondary elaboration,” he categorically adopted the view that his method of “free association” yielded a singularly correct understanding of the latent dream. There is, I believe, a coincidentia oppositorum, a hermeneutic circle, though not a vicious circle, in the interpretation of dreams. Undoubtedly there is an event that occurs when one is asleep. Malcolm’s view that dreams are linguistically and logically dependent upon the dreamer’s waking discourse and thus, in effect, come into existence with the dream report,58 fails to recognize that the very notion of a dream requires that there is a dream event prior to its telling and interpretation. While in interpreting dreams, the aim is to discover the meaning of that original datum, as soon as we articulate the dream, place it into language, associate to it, review it with an analyst, consider it against the background of our conscious plans and desires, the original datum is transformed and the process by which we attempt to discover the dream’s original meaning becomes a creative one that reconstructs and transforms the dream itself. Thus, in the process of attempting to uncover the meanings of our dream we actually end up constructing and even re-creating them. However, we regard this creative process, especially when it proceeds in a manner that we find satisfying and “true” to the self, as a form of self-discovery. In interpreting our dreams we thus enter a hermeneutic circle in which the attempt to discover the dream’s meaning results in a creative/constructive interpretation that we experience as a form of self-discovery. Frieden points out that Freud’s own method of free association “calls for a further process of text creation.”59 In free-association the analysand, in collaboration with the analyst, produces an oral supplement to the original dream text. Freud himself entertains doubts as to whether the wealth of

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associations produced by the dreamer can actually all be counted amongst the dreamer’s latent dream thoughts, but he works on the assumption that they can be. In this way the phenomena of dream interpretation is completely akin to biblical exegesis in the Jewish tradition, which makes liberal use of later oral and written traditions as they are recorded in the Midrash, Talmud, and Kabbalah. In Judaism all of these additions or “supplements” are often referred back to the Torah, and are said to have been given to Moses at Sinai. Like the free associations generated by a dream, these supplements are said to have been latent in the Torah itself. Indeed, as we have seen, some such notion of “latency” is a necessary postulate of the interpretive process. Without it, one is not interpreting but simply going on one’s way. The assumption of "latency," i.e. the notion that our dream interpretations make reference to an original dream datum, is but a special case of the assumption of the signifier-signified distinction, the notion that our language is about something in an external world and not just about other words. In previous chapters we have argued that the signifier/signified distinction is a necessary illusion, one that is required for both communication and sense. Similarly, the interpretation-dream distinction is a necessary (if illusory) assumption for our working with, interpreting, and communicating our dreams. Frieden argues that dreams do not veil a single pre-existing meaning, but rather point to diverse possibilities of significance that depend upon the context in which they are later understood. However, this notion of the fluidity of dream meanings was rejected by both Freud and Jung. As Frieden points out, Freud held that secondary revision orders the components of a dream into a certain continuity or dream composition,60 but Freud refused to accept the notion that the dream work is creative; only once does he acknowledge that “we have no guarantee that we know [dreams] as they actually occurred.”61 He accepts dream reports as distorted but does not seem to be troubled by this, continuing to have faith in his method of uncovering a dream’s true meaning. Jung, in his archetypal interpretations of dream images, carried the dream-interpretive process in a creative direction, relying upon the analyst’s “amplifications” as well as the associations of the dreamer. However, in order to accommodate the requirement of latency, Jung turned to his notion of the collective unconscious to provide a guarantee that his and his patient’s interpretive leaps were grounded in material that was already present in the dream itself. In Jung’s view, both the analyst’s amplifications and the dreamer’s associations to lead to collective archetypes that underlie the dream’s imagery and narrative.

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The requirement of “latency” is both psychological and epistemological, as it is only by positing the dream as an initial datum to be interpreted that the creative process can be completed. Were we to hold otherwise, we would be in contempt of the very signifier/signified distinction that allows us to speak coherently about anything. This distinction, which breaks down in the face of a deconstructive analysis of representational language, is nonetheless a necessary postulate of communication. Just as we were led to the conclusion that in speech and writing our words are both about things and also only about other words, we are here led to the conclusion that dream interpretation is grounded both in the dream itself and in the interpretive process. This same conclusion holds for the meanings that are discovered in a scriptural (or other) text; the distinction between discovering and creating such meanings breaks down in the face of close philosophical analysis, yet the assumption that the meanings are inherent in the text is a necessary postulate of the interpretive process. Excursus: Deconstruction and Negative Mysticism If the notion of authorial intent versus creative interpretation does not clearly separate Kabbalistic from postmodern or deconstructive hermeneutics, what difference, if any, can be charted between these two forms of thought? They can, I believe, be distinguished on the grounds that deconstruction, unlike the Kabbalah, practices dissemination and dispersion of infinite meaning without any expectation of unity, or any belief that the disseminated text and its disparate interpretations will or can be unified in a single, integrated synoptic idea or vision. In this sense, deconstruction can be described as the inverse of mysticism. While mysticism sees unity in all things, the deconstructionist sees endless differences between them. The relentless pursuit of difference, and the insistence that all texts, events and things, are continuously recontextualized, and thus subject to reinterpretations without end, distinguishes deconstruction from any form of synopsis, absolutism and (it might be said) of mysticism and religion. Derrida’s efforts to put a halt to the (Hegelian) integrative dialectic, is an effort to maintain a democratic multiplicity of perspectives indefinitely, and to prevent any shutting down of the interpretive process. However, as we have seen, when we closely examine the deconstructionist use of difference, we see that it is inextricably bound to a vision, originally articulated by Nietzsche and later by Saussure that the

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understanding of any one thing is inextricably bound up with an understanding of all things. What defines a given term or thing for deconstruction, is its differences from everything else, i.e. its place in an infinitely complex and indefinitely extended system of differences that mark it as unique. Once we ask the question “Different from what?” we realize that to know one thing is to know an entire system, an entire world, and the distinction between deconstruction and systematic philosophy as well as unifying mysticism begins to break down. As we carry out the project of deconstruction, dissemination, and difference to its ultimate conclusion we are confronted with the interdependence of all things. There is, in effect, a reflection of each and every thing in each and every other thing, and these limitless reflections provide the only possible means of speaking about or referring to any thing. This notion which is, for example, present in Hegel’s “Absolute” and Leibniz’s monadology, is also reflected in the Kabbalistic doctrine of the behinnot (aspects), which holds that each aspect of the cosmos is reflected in each of the others. To paraphrase Jung: one pursues difference but ends with unity.62 The negative mysticism of deconstruction results in a profound route into and explanation of the positive mystical doctrine of the unity of all things. Language, thought, and difference (i.e. the system of differences), is what links everything together. This, in effect, is the postmodern equivalent of the unio mystica.63 Joseph Dan: The “Meaningless Text” A radical understanding of the Kabbalists’ views on the relationship between divine authorial intent and textual meaning can be found in the writings of the contemporary Israeli scholar Joseph Dan. Dan has argued that the widespread Kabbalistic practice of creating and interpreting divine names “is characterized by a consistent attempt to divorce language from meaning.”64 According to Dan, the Kabbalistic attitude towards divine names is such that these “names” (e.g. adonai, elohim, shaddai, etc.) do not refer to, or mean, the divine, but are actually the divine itself. Dan writes: …we can define a sacred name of God as that linguistic expression of the divine that is not communicative; it just is, representing in a linguistic form the inexpressible essence of God Himself. Such a concept represents the belief not only that God inspired scriptures and communicated His truth and wisdom to man, but that he Himself actually exists in the scriptures, in those phrases that are non-

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According to Dan, the entire edifice of midrashic and Talmudic interpretation does not decipher layers of significance in an underlying meaningful text, but is instead “superimposed on a text that is devoid of any original meaning.”66 According to Dan, in contrast to the midrashic tradition, which regards the Torah as an inexhaustible source of meaning, the mystic who identifies Torah “with the secret name of God actually treats the text as a huge blank scroll on which any meaning can be written.”67 On the one hand, Dan holds that the text so understood is devoid of any intrinsic meaning; on the other hand it is so intensely meaningful that like a semantic “black hole” no meaning can escape from it. There are two trends within Kabbalistic hermeneutics to be discerned here. The first regards the text as replete with an infinite manifold of meaning, reflecting divine authorial intent; the second regards the text as but a jumble of letters, names, or on some views, a single name of God, embodying the divine essence, but devoid of communicative meaning. The latter trend, as Dan suggests, provides an opening for regarding the Torah as a blank slate (one upon which any meaning can be written—or whose letters can be infinitely recombined) and thereby as a source of infinite meaning. In the “blank slate” view the Torah becomes both filled with and depleted of authorial intent; it is “filled with authorial intent” because the raw material of the interpretive manifold is the divine name, which in Dan’s interpretation is God Himself; it is “depleted of authorial intent” because the interpretive manifold becomes identical with the entire linguistic field (any and all interpretations or combinations of letters) and is completely unrestricted. In this way, the traditional theological and postmodern conceptions of infinite interpretability converge in coincidentia oppositorum. These ideas are worth exploring in some depth. If the Torah is regarded as a single name of God, and this name is considered to be identical both with God Himself and the entire linguistic field (i.e. all possible combinations of all letters, all their readings and all their interpretations) then it follows that God Himself (and thus the divine intent) involves infinite linguistic and interpretive freedom. Kabbalistically, Ein-sof becomes the entirety of all actual meaning, potential meaning and non-sense, the infinite creative and interpretive play of language, in all places and all times. In

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writing a novel or poem, interpreting a text (any text, not just Torah), articulating a philosophical theory or scientific discovery, etc. humanity is both exercising its absolute freedom and articulating the name, being and intent of God.68 Indeed, Dan points out that Scholem had regarded mysticism, as “an explosion of freedom of thought and expression within established religion.”69 While the freedom of the early Jewish (Hekhalot or Chariot) mystics consisted in their reliance on direct mystical experience, independent of any scriptural constraints, later Jewish mystics tended to denigrate their own experience and substituted “the claim that everything [they] saw and discovered has been known all along and is hidden within the ancient text.”70 However because that which is hidden in the ancient text is infinite, the latter Kabbalists safeguarded for themselves as much freedom as they would have had if they had not been constrained by scripture at all. It is for this reason that Rachel Elior has called Jewish Mysticism, the “infinite expression of freedom.”71 Torahs of the Trees of Knowledge and Life Isaiah Tishby, in his Wisdom of the Zohar, draws our attention to a fascinating distinction made in the latter strata of the Zohar, and which bears on the question of interpretive (and general) human freedom. The distinction the Zohar makes is between the “Torah of the Tree of Knowledge” and the “Torah of The Tree of Life.” Whereas the former Torah, the historical Torah in possession of Israel, is said to represent commandments, restrictions and limitations, the latter Torah represents freedom and is in effect an ideal, primordial and utopian Torah, one that is prior to the distinction between good and evil, and is thus untouched by the “Fall” and death. The Zohar informs us that the first set of tablets, shattered by Moses after Israel’s sin in the incident of the golden calf, were from The Tree of Life. Only the second set of tablets, given to Moses after Israel’s sin, contains the negative commandments that came to characterize the Torah of the Tree of Knowledge. With the breaking of the first tablets, the letters which had been engraved upon them “flew away.” However, those who possess mystical insight can perceive these letters beneath the new letters or “outer garments” of the second set of tablets, and thus have an intuition of the Torah of The Tree of Life.72 We read in the Zohar:

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism Moses brought down to Israel the Torah from these two tablets (i.e. from the secret recesses of divine wisdom), but [Israel] was not sufficiently worthy, and they were broken and fell…Why did they fall? Because the letter vav (i.e. the power of The Tree of Life) flew away from them…And he gave them others from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, from which originated the Torah [that contains] the forbidden and the permitted, life on the right and death on the left.73

The Zohar further indicates that originally when Israel stood at Sinai they laid hold to The Tree of Life,74 but “as soon as they [Israel] sinned, the first tablets of the law were broken—those tablets which [meant] complete freedom, freedom from the serpent who is the “end of all flesh.”75 Tishby points out that, according to the author of the Zohar’s Raya Mehemna, the Torah was itself transformed as a result of these events, from a Tree of Life to a Tree of Knowledge, the latter containing references to death and making rigid distinctions between the permitted and forbidden. Human sin actually resulted in a decline in the Torah’s status, from a Torah that was originally a Torah of eternal life and freedom to one of mortality and servitude. However, the advent of the Messiah will reverse this damage and decline in the Torah, and restore a Torah of life and complete freedom. Tishby writes: Here, apparently, we have the explicit idea that the written Torah we now possess, which was revealed in the second set of tablets, with all the practical commandments, and the distinction between the forbidden and the permitted and with, furthermore, all the limitations in the Oral Torah, resulted from the decline that set in as a consequence of Adam’s sin with the Golden Calf…Only at the time of perfect redemption will its hold be broken, and the freedom-giving domain of The Tree of Life be restored.76

Yet, according to Tishby, the Torah of the Tree of Life is not simply a part of the remote past or messianic future, but rather “exists all the time in the esoteric wisdom of the Kabbalah, side by side with the practical halakhic Torah of the Tree of Knowledge.”77 Indeed, the Zohar goes so far as to state that while the Torah of the Tree of Knowledge, the actual halakhic Torah, is the province of rabbinic scholars, the ignorant, the mixed multitude, and the wicked, the Torah of The Tree of Life is the inheritance of the mystics whose souls are pure and completely righteous.78 While the former perform commandments to place the peoples and gods of idolatry under their own power, the latter put tefillin on their heads “to bring all other gods (i.e. the

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sitra achra) under the control of the higher Shekhinah and to bring all the nations under the hand of the Lord, which is the lower Shekhinah.”79 Tishby interprets these and other similar passages as suggesting that those who follow only the (halakhic) Torah of the Tree of Knowledge are, by comparison to those who follow the Torah of The Tree of Life, unrooted, imperfect and motivated by concern only for themselves or the welfare of the people of Israel rather than a concern for bringing the entire world under the divine dominion.80 We thus see that underneath the letters of the actual, worldly Torah, is another, mystical, utopian Torah, one that transcends the power of the sitra achra, goes beyond mere selfish and parochial interests, and opens one to the possibility of infinite freedom and the transcendence of death. Further, such a mystical Torah, is not only the goal of Tikkun—the restoration to be completed in the messianic age—but is available to Kabbalists who can, as it were, even now read its text beneath the letters of the actual, earthly Torah scroll. Such an idea, which suggests that there might be a Torah of values (Sefirot) without restrictive law (halakha) has obvious antinomian implications, and is one reason why the study of Zohar and Kabbalah in general was forbidden to those who were not completely grounded and committed to the halakha.

The Significance of the Torah of The Tree of Life The material we have adduced with regard to the Torah that is accessible to the Kabbalists suggests that the Torah of The Tree of Life, the Torah of freedom that lies behind the historical Torah of specific narratives and laws, is the Torah that yields an endless dialectic and an infinite play of interpretation. It is the Torah that Moses Cordovero understood as the concatenation of divine letters that only later crystallize into words, phrases, narratives and laws;81 it is the Torah that the followers of Israel Sarug believed to consist of all possible combinations of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.82 Such a Torah is tantamount to the totality of the possibilities in language, and is thus not only a Torah of infinite interpretive possibility, but of infinite creative possibility as well. It is the Torah that can be understood rationally as well as mythically, intellectually as well as mystically.

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As the totality of possibilities inherent in thought and language, the Torah of The Tree of Life is the Torah that not only represents, but actually embodies Ein-sof, the infinite God. It is a Torah of infinite creativity and wisdom. It is both a meaningless blank slate and, as Joseph Dan has observed, so concentrated in significance that like a semantic “black hole” no meaning can escape from it. For such a Torah, free inquiry and dialogue transcend knowledge and law, and questions are more significant than answers.83 Is there then no content to the Torah of the Tree of Life? Is it simply an abstract representation of absolute creativity, absolute freedom? In order to answer this question we must recall that for the Kabbalists the Torah of The Tree of Life is something that is hidden, something that must be seen through the veil of the Torah of the Tree of Knowledge, the Torah of specific laws and narratives. The latter Torah, far from being expendable, is actually the necessary structural ground through which the disarranged letters of The Tree of Life are intuited. It is only through mystical insight, or revelation at the end of days that one Torah will, in effect, shine through the other. Why should this be the case? The answer to this, I believe, follows from the observation that the human spirit must be structured and limited in certain respects if it is to exercise its creative freedom. The individual must view things from a particular perspective, speak a particular language, and function within a particular culture, if he/she is to generate any significance whatsoever. The human soul can only perceive, create and understand by limiting the infinite, and functioning within the context of a given language and form of life. It is for this reason that a Torah which provides such a form of life is necessary. The Torah of The Tree of Life cannot stand on its own, but rather like Kant’s noumenal realm, must shine dimly through a structured, phenomenal world, serving as an ideal or inspiration, as well as the foundation for those in that world. The Torah of The Tree of Life, with its infinite freedom, endless creativity and limitless dialogue must be mediated through the specificities of a historical Torah, and/or (as its logic compels us to recognize) the specificities of other scripture, languages, cultures and traditions. We should recall here Cordovero’s claim that the primordial, eternal Torah, the one that is a combination of all the letters, takes different forms depending upon the call of each new place and time, and further, Vital’s dictum that in accordance with the changes “taking place at each and every moment” the sayings of the book of the Zohar [are also] changing, and all are the words of the living God.”84 Finally, we should

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recall the midrashic (and early Jewish mystical) suggestion that the Torah was uttered in each of the 70 languages of the nations and that Moses was himself “instructed in the Torah in all seventy languages.”85 The combined import of these ideas is that the historical Torah known by the Jewish people is but one of a number of possible Torahs that form in response to varied circumstances, for different peoples, in different languages, at different times. Presumably, the Torah of the Tree of Life constitutes a spiritual core that underlies each of the various historical manifestations of Torah. However, we are again faced with the question of whether such a Torah has any content other than the infinite creativity, dialogue and interpretive freedom apparently attributed to it by the Kabbalists themselves. Here I would suggest that the entire Kabbalistic enterprise is devoted to this very question, i.e., to uncovering the core values and spiritual dynamics that transcend the expressions of the Torah of a given epoch or location, and which have a universal application. Such values and dynamics are embodied in the system of the Sefirot and their vicissitudes, and, moreover, in the Kabbalist’s theosophical system as a whole. In this regard it is important to note that the Kabbalists themselves depicted the Sefirot in the form of a spiritual tree, and spoke of both the Torah and the Zohar as ‘The Tree of Life.’ Further, the greatest compendium of the Lurianic Kabbalah, written by Isaac Luria’s most important disciple, Chayyim Vital, bears the name: Sefer Etz Chayyim, the Book of The Tree of Life. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter, the spiritual dynamics of the Kabbalistic Tree can be understood as providing a system of specific values and ideas that both underlie the historical Torah, as well as the various “torahs” of other religions. In the final chapter of this book, I will attempt to outline the fundamental modes of consciousness and values that can be said to inform the Kabbalistic Torah of The Tree of Life. However, the full articulation of a Kabbalistic axiology and its connection to both the narratives and mitzvoth of the historical Torah and the various great religious traditions that lie beyond Judaism must await another day.

Chapter Eight

Beyond the Bounds of Language

Kabbalah and the Primordial Nature of Language

T

he postmodern concern with "writing" and "text" as critical to philosophy and theology can in many ways be understood as a contemporary reprise of centuries old Jewish mystical ideas. The Kabbalists struggled with the question of whether God and world could or should be distinguished from the text of the Torah (in its widest sense) long before Derrida made his famous pronouncement “There is nothing outside the text.” 1 The notion that language serves as the world’s foundation is a significant theme in both the ecstatic and theosophical Kabbalah.2 The Kabbalists, in effect, reversed the traditional view of the relationship between the signifier and the signified, a reversal that is apparent in their doctrines that the world is created and sustained through the 22 letters of the holy tongue, that the Torah is a blueprint or model for the universe, and that one understands the world by looking inside the Torah rather than via a direct apprehension of the world itself. For the Kabbalists, language is not a representation or copy of the cosmos; rather, the world of nature is derived from a linguistic original. Further, since this “linguistic original,” the Torah, is, as we have seen, highly malleable, the world is in a continuous state of transformation, incident to changes in the manner in which the words and letters of the Torah are

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ordered, interpreted and understood. By manipulating and interpreting the holy letters, humanity becomes capable of transforming the world. In both biblical and later sources we find two distinct notions of the relationship between language and creation: the first emphasizing divine speech, and the second focusing on divine writing.3 The view that divine speech is the origin of the world receives its impetus from the biblical account of creation, “and God said, Let there be light and there was light.” According to rabbinic exegesis of this account, the world was created through ten divine utterances (Pirke Avot 5:1), corresponding to ten phrases in Genesis where the components of the world are reported to arise through God’s words. However, the view ultimately developed that the language of the written Torah brings about and sustains creation. The Midrash (Midrash Tehillim 90:12) had spoken of a “Primordial Torah” which serves as a blueprint for the creation of the world. An even more radical view is evident in the Talmud, where we learn that Rabbi Ishmael advised Rabbi Meir, a scribe: be careful in your work for it is the work of God, if you omit a single letter, or write a letter too many you will destroy the whole world.4

In the proto-Kabbalistic work Sefer Yetzirah we find the doctrine that creation was modeled through the 22 letters of the Hebrew language: Twenty-two foundation letters: He engraved them, He carved them, He permuted them, He weighed them, He transformed them, and with them, He depicted all that was formed and all that would be formed.5

The view of Sefer Yetzirah is subsequently echoed in the Zohar, where we read: For when the world was created it was the supernal letters that brought into being all the works of the lower world, literally after their own pattern.6

In certain versions of the Shiur Qomah texts we find the view that the letters are the basic elements of the divine itself.7 According to Sefer haYichud, the letters of the Torah form the “shape of God.” The Torah for the Kabbalists is not only the name of God, but in naming God, it is also God’s form. In Elliot Wolfson’s interpretation, “The Hebrew letters are the matrix

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from which the divine shape is formed and in whose image Adam was created.”8 For the Kabbalists, the divine letters or Otiyot Yesod are both the middot or traits of God and the archetypes of the cosmos. This view complements one in which God and the world are said to be comprised of the combinations of the Sefirot. Menahem Recanati wrote of the connection between the written word and the divine Sefirot, “All the letters of the Torah, in their forms, in their conjunctions, and in their separations, and in inclined and twisted letters, in missing and superfluous, small and large, crowns of the letters, closed and open, and their order are the alignment of the ten Sefirot.” For Recanati, the Torah scroll is the “divine edifice hewn from the name of the Holy One, blessed be He.”9 The Hasidim reinforced the view that the world is created and sustained by divine writing and speech. Schneur Zalman of Lyadi, the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, mixes metaphors of speech and writing when he states For if the letters (which comprise divine speech) were to depart [even] for an instant, God forbid, and return to their source, all the heavens would become nought and absolute nothingness, and it would be as though they had never existed at all, exactly as before the utterance, “Let there be a firmament.” And so it is with all created things, in all the upper and lower worlds, and even this physical earth, which is the [inanimate] “kingdom of the silent.” If the letters of the Ten Utterances (Avot 5:1) by which the earth was created during the Six Days of Creation were to depart from it [but] an instant, God forbid, it would revert to nought and absolute nothingness, exactly as before the Six Days of Creation”.10

Philosophy and the Primordiality of Language The Kabbalist’s view that the language (the sign) is foundational for the things it refers to (the signified) receives contemporary expression in the writings of recent philosophers, notably Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Derrida. In the Grammatology Derrida writes “The so-called ‘thing itself’ is always already a representamen.”11 As we have seen, here as elsewhere, Derrida suggests the permeability and even dissolution of the sharp distinction between signifier and signified, between words and things. We have also seen (in Chapter Five) that Derrida’s claim that “there is nothing outside the text” receives support from the observation that the meaning of any given word or utterance can never be clarified and accounted for through

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a direct pointing to some object in the world, but instead requires that we place that word or utterance within a differential matrix of other words. We might say that our world is a world of meaningful objects, but that these objects are meaningful only to the extent that they participate in the system of differences that structure language. No object is significant or has an essence in and of itself, but only as part of a system of signification. If, for example, I say something in my hand is the mineral feldspar, I can say this only by virtue of a system of signification that classifies certain objects as minerals and differentiates them according to certain criteria. Outside of that system my holding up the object and saying “feldspar” makes no sense. For all anyone would know I could be holding this object up as an example of a color, or as an example of an ‘object’ in general, etc. The rock I hold is only feldspar because of the place “feldspar” has in our system of classifying minerals.12 Wittgenstein might say that the word “feldspar” only has meaning because of the “place we have prepared” for it in our “languagegame.”13 The objection that “feldspar” (or “gold” or anything else for that matter) is a “natural kind” loses force once we realize that it is our language and theory that define what is natural and what counts as a “kind.” One need only think of the various classificatory schemes found in the Talmud (its distinctions between kosher and non-kosher, for example) and how they differ from more contemporary modes of classification, to realize how dependent our experience of “objects” is upon the schemes we use to name and classify them. Derrida, following Saussure, holds that in language and experience there are no atomic meanings, but an original synthesis, within which individual terms and objects make sense only within the context of the reciprocal delimitations of a differential linguistic system. The individual units of meaning or experience do not and cannot exist outside of the system, while at the same time the entire system only exists by virtue of the articulated differences between its terms. While we can certainly experience ‘objects’ in the material world, we cannot experience them as objects, except within a context in which they are differentiated through a series of other linguistic terms. It is for this reason that the Kabbalists can hold that the world is comprised of linguistic elements. Put simply, for the Kabbalists, as for Derrida, the world is a world of significance, and significance is inevitably a function of language. As Derrida puts it, “From the moment that there is meaning there are nothing but signs.”14 We can’t speak of an object beyond language (the

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“transcendental object”) because once we attempt to do so we have already entered the linguistic order. Reality as Presented by Philosophy Derrida, Wittgenstein and other postmodern thinkers are thus skeptical of the claim that philosophical language can provide us with a view of reality that is more than “reality-as-presented-by-philosophical-language.” For example, when we point and exclaim “This!” we may believe that we are pointing to something beyond language, but even this simple act is already part of a complex language game. Philosophers and theologians have long been held in thrall by the notion that they can signify that which lies beyond signification, but in the postmodern view this is an illusion. It’s not that there is no thing-in-itself or experience beyond language, only that we cannot signify it; for the very act of signifying anything already engages us in theory, language, interpretation, etc. Once I say something about a “pure intuition” or even think something about it, this intuition or sensation becomes a part of a language. Consciousness is thus, for both Wittgenstein and Derrida, unable to penetrate to the pure ideality, which Husserl and other philosophers had thought they could describe. In the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein says “So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.”15 Jay Michaelson in his paper on “Nonsense Theology” expresses a similar urge in proposing a theology involving the simple utterance of a vowel, which he says might pass “Derridian muster.”16 Wittgenstein, however, holds that even “such a sound is an expression only as it occurs in a language-game.” In Michaelson’s case, the grunt or the “vowel” would be understood in the context of the language-game he has set-up regarding “nonsense theology.” Any gesture toward a transcendental signified is, like a move in the game of chess, only comprehensible as such within a context, a form-of-life/language game that provides it with sense. Derrida nonetheless denies that he is a linguistic idealist and provides an interesting explanation of what he means when he says “There is nothing outside of the text.”17 Derrida’s position is not to deny either “reference” or the “extra-linguistic” but rather to explore critically what these terms mean. He holds that what we ordinarily refer to as “reference” does not lead to anything completely extra-linguistic, but like all other words is in fact

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governed by the term’s place in the quasi-systems of linguistic, political, social and economic difference that govern its use. When we speak of “reality” or the “extra-linguistic” we are inevitably speaking of “reality” and the “extra-linguistic” as these are defined by a ruling, or other, discourse, politics, and praxis. We can make no claims to contact with the ‘things themselves’ that are not made within the context of some linguistic-culturalpolitical system. To use a Wittgensteinian metaphor, the terms “reality,” “extra-linguistic,” etc. only have meaning within the “language-game” and “form of life” within which they are used. Derrida warns us against taking our system for the ‘language of being itself’ as opposed to just one more human tongue. Philosophical Puzzles, Language Games and Forms of Life For Wittgenstein, the philosophical “puzzles” that we have about such things as the existence of God, mind and brain, freedom of the will, essence and accident, meaning, reference and logic, all arise when we think about terms and concepts embedded in our natural language, a language that is conditioned by our “forms of life.” When we reflect upon the terms and concepts that comprise such puzzles, we are not considering things that are independent of our customs, ways of speaking, and philosophizing. At first glance it seems as if there must be something to discover about God, freewill, and mind, but such discovery only leads us back to the “languagegames” we ourselves have created, and within which these terms are embedded. Further, our very investigation threatens to alter, redefine, and in a sense re-create the objects of our investigation. We can attempt to escape this dilemma through a “clear definition of terms,” or by focusing our attention upon something related to our problem that appears to be independent of our culture, language and conventions; for example, instead of asking about the nature of “mind,” we conduct a scientific study of the brain, or instead of puzzling about the existence of God, we focus our efforts on the fundamental particles of physics, or the origins of space and time in the “Big Bang,” all in the hope that such inquiry will shed light upon, and even answer our initial questions. Indeed, we can probably make a certain kind of progress in this manner. However, when we return to our initial queries, we find that to satisfy our philosophical cravings about such things as the relationship between brain and mind, the possibility of free-will, and

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the existence of God, we must attempt to answer them within the same culture and convention-bound language within which they originally arose, and we find that we are again chasing our own tails! What relevance, the theologians ask, is the “Big-Bang” to a traditional Jewish or Christian conception of God? How should we relate correlations between brain and behavior to the existence and nature of the mind or soul? We are left to conclude with Wittgenstein with regard to such matters that nothing that we can discover compels us to speak one way or the other. Postmodern thought, as exemplified by Wittgenstein and Derrida, moves through and beyond Kantian constructivism to a view in which the “transcendental object,” the world, is akin to a piece in the game of chess, deriving its significance from its role in the game, or, more broadly, from our language and way of life. The “object” no longer receives its significance from its position in a presumably objective reality, nor simply from the constructive acts of the human mind, but rather from its role in a “language game” and “form of life.” Language and the forms of life which it instantiates are equiprimordial; it is impossible to say which is the origin of the other. What can be said is that any term obtains its significance from the position is takes and the role it fulfills in a given practice. Within this analysis, the Jewish “God” has significance only because the word “God” [or its many Hebrew, Aramaic and Yiddish equivalents] functions in a certain way within the context of Jewish scripture, language and religious practice.18 Just as the ‘knight’ in chess has no significance outside the rules that constitute the game of chess, the Jewish “God” has no meaning outside the patterns, rules, discourse, and customs, which constitute the Jewish way of life. One can only intuit or create a new significance for “God” by placing the word “God” within a new linguistic practice. In this view any effort to get beyond or behind the language-game to a transcendent God as he is in Himself, simply places “God” in a new and different linguistic practice. This may create an illusion of “penetration” when it is really only a modification in the way in which the term “God” is used. One can no more get at the true significance of God through a philosophical inquiry outside of any religious system than one can get at the true meaning of the knight in chess by taking it off the chess board and meditating upon it. Just at the ‘knight’ receives its significance via the rules of chess and its difference from all the other pieces on the board, the term “God” receives its significance from the rules of religious discourse and its difference from all the other terms in that discourse.

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God “is” Language One possible way around the problem of having to somehow transcend the symbolic order as a means of apprehending God, is to hold that God is the symbolic order itself. We have already seen how various Kabbalists have held that God and the world are each equivalent to the Torah text, and are indeed “authored” and structured by the foundational letters (Otiyot Yesod) of the Hebrew language. Similarly, the postmodernist theologian, Mark Taylor in his book Erring, concluded that the divine is scripture or writing.19 According to Robert Scharlemann “there is a sense in which the word ‘God’ refers to the word ‘word’ and the word ‘word’ refers to the word ‘God.’”20 Word, according to Taylor, is what God means, and vice versa. This notion is highly Kabbalistic. The Zohar goes so far as to explicitly assert that God is identical to scriptural language: “The Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He are entirely one.”21 As we have seen, later Kabbalists put forth a linguistic ontology and metaphysics, holding that the world’s substance is comprised of letters in Hebrew (the holy tongue), that the world is created and sustained by divine speech, and that the name of an object is its essence or soul. Since God is the infinite all, creating, underlying and comprising all things, it follows that the essence of God, his “name,” can be nothing less than the totality of language itself, which the Kabbalist’s equated with Torah, in the widest sense of the word. As we have seen, according to the Kabbalist, R. Menahem Recanati, “the Holy One, blessed be He, is nothing that is outside the Torah, and the Torah is nothing that is outside Him, and this is the reason why the sages of the Kabbalah said that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the Torah.” 22 We can thus understand how Kabbalistically speaking, the word “word” refers to God and the word “God” refers to word. The Zohar tells us “The Torah is all one holy supernal name.”23 In contemporary terms we might say that the entirety of language names God. Let us explore this possibility in more detail. Recall that for Derrida the distinction between signifier and signified, between words and things, is a specious, but necessary distinction. It is specious because, as we have been arguing, there is no means of referring to, meaning or signifying any “thing” outside of the part which that thing plays in a given language game or practice. However, the word-thing distinction is also necessary because, as Taylor has pointed out, in using language, consciousness understands itself to be referring to an object outside of itself, and must in the process obscure from itself its own role in constructing the object. According to Derrida, this

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very “obscuring” gesture is absolutely necessary for communication. Even though the distinction between the signifier and the signified is specious, we could neither speak nor function without it. Even deconstruction is dependent on this very distinction in its deconstruction of it. (For example, we must speak about language or consciousness constructing objects, etc.). Thus the identity of words and things (or the world and language) is a doctrine that can be written or uttered, but never really be totally affirmed or completely understood. The necessary but unfounded distinction between the signifier and the signified is paralleled by the necessary but, according to Kabbalists, unfounded distinction between God and the world. According to the Kabbalists, the world itself is simply a divine aspect that God chooses to regard as independent of Himself. This illusion of independence is the result of the Tzimtzum, the contraction and concealment of the divine presence that gives rise to the letters of language and hence to the “objects” of the finite world. In much the same way that language must conceal its identity with the objects it names in order to give the appearance of an independent realm of ‘things’, God, in effect, conceals His identity with both language and the objects of the world in order to effect the appearance of an independent creation. Within the Tzimtzum, i.e. within the distinctions wrought by language, it is perhaps proper to regard God or Ein-sof as the great signifier and the world as that which has been signified or rendered meaningful. We must remember, however, that signification is not simply a labeling of a preexistent objective order, but is better conceived of as a granting of meaning or making significant. The process by which consciousness distinguishes between itself (or its own linguistic acts) from a signified world is the very process of creation. (In literature and art the author and artist perform a similar act of making that which was initially a part of consciousness take on an independent life of its own). In this view, divine creation via Tzimtzum and language is an act which renders a world meaningful. However, once we step outside the Tzimtzum, and speak from a standpoint from which the signifier/signified distinction has been dissolved, we can no longer distinguish between God, language, and the world, and thus can no longer speak of God as granting significance to a world, as if these are three different things. Indeed, from this perspective certain rather paradoxical conclusions emerge: one is that theological writing no longer reflects or describes the divine, but rather this very writing is the divine

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itself. The Zohar says that he who writes a Torah is credited as if he created the Holy One Himself.24 Hegel, whose philosophy totters on the brink between traditional metaphysics and non-referential “writing,” in effect held that his philosophy, his texts, not only described or mirrored the Absolute, but were the Absolute itself. I made a similar point about Luria in Symbols of the Kabbalah, where I described how Ein-sof emerges out of the very words of the Lurianic theological system. There is, as we have seen, a certain, and perhaps trivial, sense in which this must be true: “Ein-sof” is a word, the meaning of which only emerges within the context of the language game of the Lurianic Kabbalah, in much the same ways as the meaning of the knight (in chess) only emerges within the context of the rules of the game of chess. In this way Ein-sof emerges from the texts of the Lurianic Kabbalah in the same way that “Sherlock Holmes” emerges from the texts of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But is there a non-trivial sense to the notion that God emerges from the text? Is there something profound being said here, or are we simply saying little more than “one’s use of the word God emerges from the manner in which one uses it”? With respect to “Ein-sof,” I think that there is a special point to be made, one that is more profound than the trivial claim that “the use of a term fixes the use of that term.” The point is that the very notion of a signified object, any object whatsoever, emerges in precisely this manner: through its being established in its use by a certain discourse. Now, Ein-sof is said to be the foundation of all, the opening that establishes the possibility of all significance, all meaning, all being, all worlds. As such, from this perspective, Ein-sof is the signification process itself, the process of emergent meaning. Since anything and everything attains the status of ‘signified’ or object via the use of a word or words in the context of discourse, the emergence of “Ein-sof,” which is intended as a term covering this signification process, does so as well. But since “Ein-sof” is used to refer to the very signification process, when “Ein-sof” appears in discourse, it establishes a peculiar fusion of process and content, a linguistic event in which the very process of emergent meaning is highlighted by the fact that “emergent meaning” is here the very meaning which is emerging. We could say that Sherlock Holmes emerges only in the context of Sir Arthur Canon Doyle’s text, and this could be used as an illustration of primal signification and hence the creation of a (fictional) world. But when we say that “Ein-sof” or “God” has emerged from a text, there is a particular coincidence of content (i.e. God or Ein-sof) and process (the creation of

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meaning) that highlights the process we have been speaking of as foundational. This is the special point. It is not particularly remarkable if a fictional character emerges, or is created from linguistic/textual discourse: that’s what fiction is all about. But if the world, God, Being, and the Infinite are created out of the play of textual discourse, this tells us how deep and general this signification process actually is; for it suggests that this is the process by which all significance whatsoever is brought about. The Kabbalists call this signification process Ein-sof (the Infinite God). God, the world, man emerge in much the same way that characters emerge out of fiction. They are, in effect, like fictitious characters, things, events, and it is only in this way (by emerging through language like fictions) that they are real. Again, we are brought back to Tzimtzum, the notion that the world is created through an absence, a veiling, a concealment, (a fiction), or as Schneur Zalman sometimes puts it “a lie.” Indeed, the Lurianic view is that the world is an illusion and that this illusion is its very reality.25 Again, it might be said that even in the view of Ein-sof that I am describing here, the view that equates Ein-sof with the linguistic process, Ein-sof can be regarded as the “master signifier,” the origin of all signification, and, hence, the creator God of Genesis who “spoke” and thereby brought all the worlds into being. This is certainly an interesting point, one that both captures how the world was formed through “the ten utterances of creation,” and which seemingly penetrates the “linguistic prison” occasioned by the fact that “God,” “Ein-sof,” or any term we use to name a foundation or Absolute emerges and derives its meaning from the language game we have set up to determine its use. By calling this very signification (language game) process “Ein-sof” we have, it would seem, circumvented this problem, or rather identified our Absolute with the problem itself, and with this turn of the linguistic dial, transformed our problem into its own solution. But have we? Have we not simply created one more language game in which we have defined “Ein-sof” as the mastersignifier? And doesn’t our “Ein-sof” simply fall back into position as one more “linguistic idol” in a long series of philosophical efforts to speak or write the name of an unconditioned absolute? It would seem that our efforts to break out of the linguistic prison, while perhaps providing us with a momentary glimpse of the freedom we desire, are ultimately doomed; for once such efforts take spoken or written form, they are inevitably reconsumed by the linguistic “black-hole.”

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Penetrating the Linguistic Barrier There is certainly a strand within the Kabbalah that claims to penetrate the God of ordinary religious discourse to a God behind “God,” which presumably refers to a “deeper” reality beyond that of the “God” who appears in (more) ordinary discourse. As we have seen, Lyotard, Derrida and other postmodernists have radically questioned whether this is possible. Any discussion of Ein-sof involves placing the term “Ein-sof” in a new language game (i.e. that of Kabbalah) the rules of which declare that Ein-sof is “deeper” than the God of the Bible. However, it is only within this new language game that Ein-sof has any sense, or can be said to be “deeper,” the “origin,” the “foundation,” the “unknown,” etc. There is, according to this perspective, simply no getting outside all language games and no nonarbitrary means for saying that one such game (or system of discourse) is really deeper than another (or if it is claimed that there is such a means, the claim is valid only within another language game). We are forever caught in the circle of our own discourse and unable to arrive at a genuine foundation or transcendental origin. Wittgenstein would say that the desire to get out of this predicament is already a bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. We are like flies in a fly bottle. However, the bottle is not the linguistic trap we feel ourselves to be in, but it is rather the very desire to somehow get out of the ‘trap’ and to achieve an impossible discourse about how things really are, outside of any practice and interpretation (and thus outside of any discourse). We must, in this view, be freed from the trap of thinking we must do what simply cannot be done, or even coherently framed, and once we recognize this, the urge to philosophize and theologize (in anything like the traditional manner) will dissolve. Beyond the Symbolic Order: The Mystical in Kant, Wittgenstein and Derrida The urge does not dissolve so readily. In this light it is interesting that the very thinkers who articulated the constructivist and linguistic dilemmas regarding the transcendental object (Kant, Wittgenstein, Lacan, Derrida) each continued, in one way or another, to address and in some sense admit the very things that their original analysis had deemed impossible. Kant held

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that because all things were conditioned by the constructive categories of human experience, it is impossible to arrive at an apprehension of the “thingin-itself.” However, in his Critique of Judgment,26 Kant ultimately described a noumenal world of the “thing in itself” which he considered the realm of God, freedom, and ethics, and which he had earlier declared to lie beyond the limits of possible knowledge. Kant ultimately held that the very realm he had earlier declared to be unknowable is a necessary postulate for morality and religion. Similarly, Wittgenstein, who early on advocated the view that in philosophy one should say nothing other than that which can be clearly said, i.e., the propositions of natural science, felt compelled to refer to such things as the fact that the world exists, “feeling that the world is a limited whole,” and that which can be shown but not said, as the “mystical.”27 The psychoanalyst Lacan, who also held that we are all deeply embedded in the “symbolic order,” spoke of an “impossible real,” as an intrusion of a prelinguisticized trauma upon human subjectivity.28 Finally, Derrida, who was as aware of the “linguistic dilemma” as any philosopher, wrote in his later work of the “monstrous,” an apparent intrusion of a pre-linguisticized reality29 on our thinking and experience, and also of a “faith without faith” in an indefinite “impossible,” “totally other” that is “yet to come,” which lies beyond the horizon of all of our linguistic possibilities, and which he described as the “messianic.” In one sense, all of these efforts to hint at that which lies beyond language are doomed to fall back into yet one more linguistic system. We say we are reaching beyond language, yet in the very moment that we do so, we label that beyond (Ein-sof, the real, the impossible) etc. and we of necessity fall back into a language game once more. Even negative theology (God is not x, not y, not z, etc.) is subject to this inevitable falling back into language, for all the things that God is not are themselves known only as elements of a linguistic system. Is there a way of reaching beyond language that does not fall back into the “linguistic prison?” Transcending the Linguistic Boundary Before we attempt an answer to this question we should again note that even as postmodern thinkers hold that we can assign no significance to any linguistic term other than by noting its position within a discourse, or language-game, they rarely if ever hold that the objects of experience or the

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material world have no existence outside of language. We do not find in either Wittgenstein or Derrida a doctrine of linguistic idealism in which there are no objects other than linguistic ones. The postmodern view is simply that we can have no theory, provide neither meaning nor interpretation, nor even “talk” about objects except insofar as these objects’ names play a role within a linguistic system. Any effort to narrate or describe the “things in themselves” must of necessity be a part of a linguistic framework and for this reason we can only describe such “things-in-themselves” within the context of a given language game. It is not that there are no “things-beyondlanguage,” only that there are no direct linguistic references to them. Our problem, it would seem is a problem of language. Once we speak, once we write, once we get ourselves inside language we cannot use our speech, writing or text to get ourselves out of it. No move that I can make within this text, for example, can get me out of the text, can overcome the problem of “falling back” into one more linguistic system amongst others. This is like saying that no move I can make within the chess game can take me outside of that game or lead me to the origin of chess itself. Clearly we must go outside of the rules of chess in order to discover chess’s origins and foundations. By analogy it would seem that we must go beyond or outside the rules of language in order to discover the origins of both language and the objects to which language refers. The problem is that while we know what it means to go outside or beyond the game and rules of chess, we do not quite know what it means to go beyond the game of language. Certainly any philosophical or theological effort to do so ends up back within language (hence Michaelson’s urge to simply utter a single syllable in theology).30 The Way of Analogy The question remains whether it is simply self-contradictory to attempt to speak or write about that which lies outside the linguistic system or whether there might be, in spite of all that we have said, a way to go beyond language, without actually leaving language itself. There are several considerations that suggest that such an enterprise is not quite as absurd as I have heretofore suggested. In the first place, we do speak figuratively about things that formally speaking we cannot speak about at all, for example, “non-being” or the “state of affairs” of death. Here I am not referring to talk about an after life or the life in which the dead are said to have experiences

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because we have explicitly or surreptitiously endowed them with some form of life. Rather, I am referring to efforts to point to or speak about the state of non-being or death itself, by analogizing it, for example, to the state of affairs on the chessboard after the game has ended, and no further moves or options are possible. Similarly, we might refer to that which is beyond language by analogizing it to the space beyond the ‘edge’ of a Mercator (flat) map of the earth, a space that is a non-space and which lies outside of, and has no interpretation within, the map itself, but which nevertheless serves as a necessary presupposition of the map proper. While such space has no meaning or significance within the map or representational system, without it, or something analogous to it (e.g. the edge of the paper and the ‘space’ surrounding it) the map could not function as a map. In this way we can speak of, or at least point to, a “ground” of language that lies outside language itself.31 Thus, one way to speak about a pre-linguistic reality, or about an ultimate unspeakable, is by analogizing to unspeakables that are only relative. A second possibility is that one can provide a quasi-description about an unspeakable by describing its impact and effects upon speech, much as we can describe an inexperiencable like death by describing its effects upon experience, upon life. Indeed, this is the very position that Heidegger took up in Being and Time, wherein human experience was described as “beingtowards death.” Similarly, we may be unable to say anything substantive about Ein-sof, différance, etc. but nevertheless understand something about it, so to speak, in relief, by describing its effects upon our discourse and life. To say that God is the ultimate object of human thought, contemplation, love, faith, etc. may well be regarded as such a description via relief, indeed the entire Sefirotic system of the Kabbalah might well be regarded as such a description of Ein-sof in terms of its effects upon the world. Metaphor, Dream, Poetry, Science and Philosophy Derrida suggests that there are moves that can be made within language, within philosophy, theology and psychology, that initially break the rules of language, push beyond its boundaries and therefore at least momentarily, manage to catch a glimpse of the “real,” the “monstrous” or perhaps even the “thing in itself.”

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As we have seen, Derrida holds that when we think we are referring to the ‘extra-linguistic’ we are simply making a reference within a ruling system of discourse. This does not, however, mean that we are imprisoned by or in language, or that there is nothing beyond the language game that we happen to be engaged in. In fact, Derrida’s whole philosophy is centered upon a certain view of the extra-linguistic, as it is especially concerned with what is beyond the discourse that we happen to speak. However, for Derrida, the extra-linguistic is not what we think and say it is, but is rather precisely what we do not (as yet) think or say. In order to be extra-linguistic, in order to be beyond the current language-game, the extra-linguistic must actually be something different, something totally unexpected, new, and from the point of view of our current discourse, impossible. The extra-linguistic is that which disrupts the ruling discourse, and not that which underlies or confirms it.32 As we discussed in Chapter Four, Kabbalistically, it is only when the Vessels break that a glimpse of reality can be had. Deconstruction, in providing texts with new readings, challenging old traditions, and opening up normalizing institutions, exposes them all “to the trauma of something unexpected, something to come.”33 If we wish to go beyond language, we should not look for the place where our words meet and describe reality, but rather for the place where (our current) words don’t do these things. It is only through language that pushes against the impossible and the (as yet) unknown, that we can gain the slightest glimpse of the “real.” In such cases, it might be said that we, at least temporarily, go beyond the bounds of language and catch a glimpse of something that lies beyond the symbolic order. The dream, the metaphor, the poem, the creative insight, the new philosophical perspective, seem to go beyond language, and at least until these creations are interpreted, assimilated and “understood,” appear to “touch” the transcendental object in a way that ordinary, more routinized discourse cannot. This is why the extra-linguistic is not what we say it is, but rather what we do not (as yet) think or say. In the period immediately subsequent to the initial spark of creation, the new poet, philosopher, scientist, psychologist, artist etc. actually says what has not been said. He is revered by some (those who see an opening to a “real” beyond conventional discourse) and reviled by others (who argue quite correctly that the new thinking or art “doesn’t make sense). Ultimately the new way of speaking is assimilated into language, the philosopher, writer or artist is “tamed,” and a “school” is created which finally comes to be recognized and studied within

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the “civilized” context of the history of philosophy, art, psychology, literature, etc. I think that at least part of the attraction of Derrida’s own thought rests on similar grounds. When we first encounter Derrida’s interpretations of the trace, difference, khora, and the messianic we are forced beyond our routinized modes of discourse into an arena untamed by conventional language and ideas. However, as we have seen, Derrida himself says with regard to différance, it too is destined to be “superseded” by “enmeshing itself in a chain that in truth it never will have governed.”34 Indeed, each of Derrida’s notions were destined to become enmeshed within a newly structured philosophical and academic rhetoric, within which they became familiar and routinized, no longer capable of transporting us outside the bounds of the “ruling discourse.” This is one reason why in each generation we require new poets, artists, philosophers, scientists, writers, etc. to push beyond the “clearing”35 of understood meaning, and place us in touch, however briefly, with the extra-linguistic, the “real”. The Resurfacing of an Ancient Mode of Thought Every so often an idea or an entire mode of thought from the past resurfaces to provide a sense of “going beyond language” to those living in an era long after that mode of thinking was originally formulated. I believe that this is the case with the Kabbalah today. Lurianic theosophy has been hardly integrated into western thought. Its symbols and ideas burst through the boundaries of our own discourse as we strive to understand a system of thought that is both theistic and atheistic, that holds creation to be a species of negation, in which progression is dependent upon destruction, and the good conditioned by evil; and where this very system contains within itself the guarantee of its own transcendence and demise. The Lurianic system pushes beyond the conventional understanding of reason and sense, while at the same time providing us with a general model of how sense is constructed, broken, transcended and reclaimed. It might be said that both in its impact upon our customary modes of language and thought and in the model it offers of the cosmos, the Lurianic system provide us with a glimpse into the original world/linguistic creative process. I would suggest that our (re)reading the Kabbalah back into the tradition of western thought, although it is itself an event within language, provides us

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with another glimpse of an “extra-linguistic real.” This is because the marginalized and forgotten, like the creative and the new, intrudes upon and ruptures our normal discourse until such time that it is assimilated and normalized. The Kabbalah was marginalized and forgotten both within Judaism and the history of western thought. By reading the Kabbalah back into Judaism, and back into the texts of such thinkers as Hegel, Freud and Jung,36 we are effecting both a deconstructive and Kabbalistic reading, for that which is marginalized (as per deconstruction) is exiled or alienated (as per Kabbalah) and the return of the marginalized and exiled to the main body of the text is a ‘restoration’ that is fully analogous to an aspect of the Kabbalist’s Tikkun, through which light that has been exiled is returned to its heavenly source. This return of the forgotten, marginalized and exiled to the symbolic order is in some ways similar to the intrusion of an extra-linguistic real upon language. It is, however, only in the process of re-reading the Kabbalah (or other marginalized text) into our discourse that we catch a glimpse of something extra-linguistic. Once the return is affected, the Kabbalah will be rapidly assimilated to the symbolic order and the opening into an extra-linguistic reality will close. The Lurianic system can actually be understood as describing the movement from an extra-linguistic real into the symbolic order, and the articulation of that “real” in a newly revised symbolic frame. Recall that Einsof originally emanated the Sefirot as vessels, which were to contain further emanations of divine light. However, the Sefirotic vessels, which the Kabbalists conceptualized in linguistic terms as “letters,” were unable to contain the divine emanations, and were shattered; trapping sparks of divine light within their falling shards. Humanity’s divinely appointed task is to reassemble these broken shards in a manner that will contain and assimilate portions of the divine energy and return other portions to their original source. There is a constant dynamic in which vessels are created, irradiated, broken and emended, in much the same way that in human culture there is a continual dynamic in which symbolic structures are challenged by new events and ideas, shattered and revised. The Lurianic symbol of Tikkun, which is usually translated as “restoration,” also has a connotation of “emendation,” which coincides with the notion that the symbolic order must be adjusted in order to accommodate incursions from an extra-linguistic “real.”

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The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas offers another perspective on the pre-linguistic “real” through his concept of an absolute ‘other’ (l’infiniti), an “other” who “shatters the limits of our horizons.”37 Levinas speaks of the positive infinity of the infinitely other, an ‘other’ who is completely inassimilable to our anticipation. However, according to Derrida, Levinas is caught in an aporia of attempting to speak about (and as such anticipate) an ‘other’ which he has already declared to be beyond all speech, anticipation, and hence, representation. Levinas might at this point choose to abandon language altogether, but as Derrida puts it, by writing philosophy “he has already given up the best weapon, disdain for discourse.”38 According to Derrida, Levinas acknowledges the impossibility of his situation and avers that he must betray whatever it is he has to say.39 His notion of the “other” is much like the ladder, which Wittgenstein says must be discarded once we have used it in order to climb to our destination. Whenever we reach a point in our discourse or our writing, where we run up against and want to speak the unspeakable, we could run our words off the edge of the page or have the printer punch a large hole in the paper, or some such sign of a radical rupture with language. Acts Beyond Language There are those who argue that since no move that can be made within language can (even momentarily) grasp the non-linguisticized real, what is needed is a move beyond the text, something (to again use an analogy with chess) akin to the wind blowing the chess pieces off the board or a player swallowing his queen before it can be captured by his opponent. The problem of language exists only so long as we stay within language. The philosopher who tells us that everything we say or do is constituted by language is obviously inside language when he says this, and isn’t, for example, at that moment visiting the sick, having sex, or drowning at the bottom of a lake (each of which might be said to be extra-linguistic in an important sense). For the Kabbalah, the world may be created through a linguistic act, but it is restored via Tikkun, by acts, some of which at least are not linguistic, and it is participation in these acts (one could right now stop reading and make an on-line donation to UNICEF http://www.supportunicef.org/ or some other

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charity) that enable us to transcend language and gain a glimpse of an origin that is only pointed at, but not actually represented in the Lurianic system. The Kabbalist Azriel singles out one species of act in particular that he says is the point where the “nought” gives rise to the origin and foundation of the world: acts of faith.40 It is in acts of faith that a human being, in effect, makes the divine real. The Coincidence of Opposites: An “Echo” of the Linguistic “Big-Bang” Another possible route out of the “maze” of language rests on the insight that the world, as understood through and constructed by language, is a concealment or falling away from an original non-dual condition that exists prior to the separation of subject and object, word and thing, and each of the other dualities through which we cognize, represent and bifurcate the world. Recognizing the impossibility of directly apprehending such a non-dual state within language, this approach, which I discussed in Chapter Six, seeks an indirect apprehension of what can be called an “echo”41 of the primal unity present within our dualistic conceptions and language. This “echo” might be conceived of as a vestige of the linguistic big-bang that produced the distinctions between subject and object, word and thing, mind and matter in our “polarized world.” We intuit this trace or echo when we recognize the interconnection and interdependence of all things, and especially when we come to understand the dialectical interdependence of opposite notions such as word and thing, subject and object, free-will and determinism, atheism and theism, God and man, to name but a few of the dualities through which language polarizes our experience. In this view, the coincidentia oppositorum, the interdependence and ultimate equivalence of the fundamental dichotomies in our concepts and experience is an echo or trace of the “transcendental object,” the thing as it is in itself, “prior” to language. The rational, dialectical, explication of the various coincidentia between mind and matter, subject and object, word and thing, etc. is the vehicle for going beyond the bounds of language, and amounts to something like an informal “proof” for the primordiality of a unified, non-dualistic prelinguisticized point of origin. This dialectic provides a philosophical ground for the mystics’ quest for the distinctionless “One,” and is a rational

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explication of the Jewish mystical notion that Ein-sof is an “indistinguishable unity of opposites”. “Word and Object,” “Identity and Difference” I would like to examine again (this time from a slightly different angle of view) the coincidentia idea with respect to the polarities of “words and things” and “identity” and difference. As we have seen, Derrida and others have suggested that while on the one hand the “signifier-signified” or “word-thing” distinction is specious, on the other hand we could not use language at all without it. One cannot speak about anything whatsoever unless one assumes a distinction between one’s words and one’s subject matter. Indeed, the very deconstruction of the wordthing distinction that I articulated earlier in this chapter is itself dependent upon the very distinction it undermines. As we have seen, on the one hand the meaning of a given word or sentence can never be given by our pointing to a thing in the world, but must be disambiguated and ultimately rendered by an appeal to other words. The meaning of a word is given not by its attaching itself directly to objects but rather via its place in a systematic matrix of other words. On the other hand, in performing this deconstruction of the signifier-signified distinction one must refer to words, things and texts, and treat them, at least momentarily, as objects that exist independently of our speaking or writing about them. Indeed, all distinctions between sense and nonsense, truth and error, reality and illusion, and what’s more all “subject matters,” e.g. science, history, psychology, etc. ultimately depend upon the signifier-signified distinction, i.e. the illusion that signifiers gain their meaning and reference by referring to signified, i.e. objects, ideas, etc. in the world. If we were to abandon the word/thing distinction permanently, language could no longer function, and our words and sentences would be devoid of meaning. So we are left with the paradoxical position that if language is to function at all, the two propositions “the signified is another signifier” and “the signified and signifier are distinct” must both be true. Words mean what they do because they are disambiguated by explication by, and contrasts with, other words; yet we must function as if our words obtain their meanings through a direct reference to (non-linguistic) objects. There is thus a coincidentia oppositorum not only between words and things but between

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the (second order) philosophical views that words are distinguishable from things and words are not distinguishable from things. No doubt there are third, fourth, and higher order coincidentia as well which the mind is currently incapable of grasping. Hegel taught that the history of philosophy is the history of developing a view opposing the last presumably allencompassing point of view, finding arguments on each side, generating a new all-encompassing point of view, which is itself proven incomplete, etc. (Deconstruction recognizes this to be interminable and thus refrains from engaging in the synthetic moment of the philosophical quest). We should be aware that the concept of coincidentia oppositorum (CO) must also be applicable to itself. We might go so far as to say that there is a CO between the views that there is a CO and not a CO with regard to any and all philosophical dichotomies that we can think of. For example: (1) There is a CO between free will and determinism. (2) There is a CO between the views that there is a CO between free will and determinism and that there is no such CO between free will and determinism. Of course, here one begins to border on absurdity as one claims that in philosophy one is right because one is wrong and wrong because one is right. This may not be very satisfying to minds that are incapable of appreciating the ambiguous and paradoxical nature of the big picture, but the way of CO is that this just is (and is not) the case. This way hurtles us perilously (or delightfully) close to the originary state of affairs in which there is, as the Kabbalists proclaimed, an indistinguishable unity of opposites. Such a journey brings us beyond the distinctions that allow us to make sense within logic and language, and it is thus no wonder that as we approach the limit of our reasoning on these matters we reach a point where we can no longer make clear sense of it ourselves. As Stace pointed out fifty years ago, logic applies only to the realm of differences; it has no function or application in the realm of the “One.”42 The Dissolution of the Distinction between Identity and Difference I think that if one could show that there is a CO between identity and difference then one would be able to get a better handle on why there should

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be a CO between any two opposing ideas or things. This is because if I assert that A has such and such an “identity” I am typically asserting that it does not have an identity different from A, i.e. not A, and vice versa. Indeed, this is the general form of all propositions in classical logic: “If A, then not not A,” or as Bishop Butler put it “Everything is what it is and not another thing.” If it turns out, on the contrary, that being something means that in addition to being itself it must also be what is different from itself, we have in effect overcome the classical assumption about the relationship between “A” and “Not A” and entered into a logic of coincidentia oppositorum. We can begin by noting that what remains identical with itself is so by virtue of its difference from all other things, and moreover, from the position it has in an integrated system of meaningful distinctions. The knight in chess, for example, achieves its identity (i.e. it becomes itself) only by virtue of the position that it occupies within the context of the entire chess game (its starting position, the rules governing its motion, its relationship to the other pieces, how it figures in certain strategies, etc.). Thus, what is different from it constitutes its very identity or essence. Identity, at least in this case, is thus formed by difference, and not just in the sense of simple contrast (in the way “up” is defined in contrast to “down” or “bad” in contrast to “good”), but rather in the sense of a complex and systematic defining other. The same argument can be made, for example, with respect to location. A single location is meaningless in and of itself. Something cannot be located at point x unless we posit a whole host of other points that differ from, and are coordinated with, x. Indeed, an entire universe of points is necessary in order for anything to have or be a simple location. Derrida makes a similar argument with respect to a “present” experience or “the present” in time. The “present” has no identity apart from its ongoing connection with a future and a past. Just as “things” can only be identified through a regress of contextualizing words, identity can only be isolated and articulated through a coordinated series of differences or “others” that are, in an important sense, internal to the “identity” itself. What makes something itself (and hence different from all other things) is its necessary and defining participation in an overarching system of signification in which (as per Nietzsche and the Kabbalists) all things are inextricably related to and dependent upon one another. A thing cannot be itself (identity) until it is part of the community of all things (what is different). There is thus a sense in which the reference to one thing entails the existence of an entire world. Like Leibniz’s monads, each “thing” in this world contains or reflects each and every other thing.

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The objects identified in our world, e.g. gold, toothpaste, the Amazon River, are what they are only because they are situated and enmeshed within a system so complex as to constitute a (our) world. Indeed, one would need to be familiar with very significant portions of “our world” before one could make complete sense of any of these “identities.” According to the Zohar, the dependence of identity on difference transcends the world and is even applicable to God, for when Ein-sof is removed from His connection with the created world, “He has no name of his own at all.”43 There is thus an important sense in which identity is not only constituted by difference, but identified with, permeable and identical to it. In the same way, like a circle and its boundary, “A” is identified, permeable to, and in some sense identical to “not A”. However, if we reflect for a moment, not only is identity dependent upon difference, but difference is itself dependent upon its own transcendence in identity. This is because difference is dependent upon things holding their identities long enough for a difference to be asserted. There is a circularity operating here. A thing’s identity is established only by virtue of its difference from all other things, but such differences cannot be asserted unless things already hold their identities long enough to be distinguished. There is a second reason why difference is dependent on its own transcendence in identity. Difference itself cannot be asserted in the single case, but (like identity) is dependent upon a matrix of signification, a unified system of relations constituting a language (which is itself a superordinate “identity” or all-embracing “thing”). Such an integrated matrix or system is necessary in order for difference to be articulated as actual, specific differences in quality, quantity, location, etc. Thus the very notion of difference has as its necessary background a unified system of signification. Identity and difference turn out to be completely interdependent ideas. I am again here reminded of Schneur Zalman’s principle, “the revelation of anything is actually through its opposite,”44 and Reb Aaron’s “…the essence of His intention is that his coincidentia be manifested in concrete reality, that is, that all realities and their levels be revealed in actuality, each detail in itself, and that they nevertheless be unified and joined in their value.”45 There is a certain historical irony here, as difference was initially hailed by deconstructionists as a means of undermining all systematic absolutes. The

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irony is that difference, the great underminer of absolute identity and system, has an integrated, self-identical system as its fundamental presupposition! Deconstruction itself is deconstructed, as it is shown to necessarily be inclusive of its opposite, and it is precisely this play of opposites, included within and defining one another, that is the “echo” or “trace” of that which lies beyond the bounds of language. By intuiting the necessary relationships between all things, and the various coincidentia between opposing notions, in particular the interdependence between such fundamental polarities as words and things, identity and difference, “A” and “not A,” we have I believe, an indication or echo within language of the primal pre-linguistic unity, which the Kabbalists referred to as the distinctionless unity of opposites, the Infinite, Ein-sof.

Chapter Nine

Creation Ex Nihilo and the Impossible Messiah

Nothingness and Negation in the Theosophical Kabbalah

P

ostmodern thought can be characterized by its interest in paradox, subversion, inversion, absence, reversal and impossibility; in short by a preoccupation with "negation" in all of its variant forms. This is one reason why the role of “nothingness” and “negation” in Jewish mysticism has drawn the attention of contemporary scholars of Kabbalah and Hasidism.1 As Daniel Matt (who serves as our initial guide to the Jewish mystical conception of nothingness) has observed, the symbol of Ayin (Nothingness) serves to characterize not only the Kabbalists’ Absolute, Einsof, but their entire theosophical system; everything not only originates and returns to Ayin, but Ayin is also the motive force for both the world’s and humanity’s development. Indeed, as we have seen, the dynamics of the Lurianic system turn on three moments of “negation:” the original nothingness, Ayin, from which Ein-sof authors His own being; the Tzimtzum (Contraction) through which Ein-sof creates the world; and the Shevirah (Breakage) which shatters the status quo and sets the stage for the world’s redemption. As early as Sefer Yetzirah, we find the doctrine of creation out of nothingness: “He formed something actual out of chaos and made what is not

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(eino) into what is (yeshmo).”2 Later, certain Kabbalists held that “nothingness” itself has a positive role in creation. According to R. Joseph Ben Scholem of Barcelona [c. 1300], nothing is ever created or transformed unless the abyss of nothingness for “a fleeting mystical moment becomes visible.”3 For Ben Scholem, if God is to create the world ex nihilo, from nothing, there must be an element of negation or nothingness as part of His very essence. Indeed, it is this “nothingness” that the deity calls upon in creating the world. The 13th century Kabbalist David Ben Abraham ha-Lavan explained how God Himself is identified with nothingness. According to this Kabbalist, EinSof is a completely simple totality, beyond all categorization, distinction and description, and as such cannot be identified as any thing in particular. According to David Ben Abraham, Ein-Sof has more being than any other being in the world, but since it is simple, and all other simple things are complex when compared with its simplicity, so in comparison it is called “nothing.”4 As we have seen, the Zohar, the locus classicus of the Kabbalah, recites that when Ein Sof removes Himself from His connection with creation “He has no name of His own at all,”5 and for this reason is considered Ayin or nothingness, suggesting that Ein-sof is the negative pole of a union in which creation is the positive aspect. According to the Kabbalist R. Azriel of Gerona (early 13th century), there is a complete interdependence, and even equivalence, between being and nothingness in the godhead. For Azriel “the Being is in the Nought… [and] the Nought is in the Being.”6 According to Azriel, Ein-Sof as the unity of being and nothingness, is completely incomprehensible: Ein-Sof cannot be an object of thought, let alone of speech, even though there is an indication of it in everything, for there is nothing beyond it. Consequently, there is no letter, no name, no writing, and no word that can comprise it.7

The Kabbalists held that in spite of man’s incessant efforts to name God, He is inherently unnamable. Asher Ben David held that “the inner power is called ayin because neither thought nor reflection grasps it. Concerning this, Job said, ‘wisdom comes into being out of ayin.”8 The author of the Gates of Light, Joseph Gikatilla wrote that in its depths primordial being is boundless,

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but also Ayin, nothing, both because it is concealed, beyond comprehension, and the negation of every concept.9 The Kabbalists therefore adopted the “negative theological” belief that the divine can only be properly characterized in negative terms.10 In the early Kabbalah we find an identification of Ein-sof with ‘negation.’ Azriel, for example held “the philosophers are in agreement with these statements that our perception of Him cannot be except by way of negative attribution.”11 One Kabbalist went so far as to call God simply “No.”12 Since Ein-sof is identified with negation, one must direct one’s prayers to nothingness. According to Azriel, in prayer one must cast off all obstructions and lead each word of one’s prayer, and ultimately the self and the world back to its “nothingness.”13 This contact with one’s origins in nothingness provides the self with the “power for its own existence.”14 According to R. Joseph Gikatilla’s gloss on Psalms 130:1, “Out of the depths I call you YHVH” does not refer to the “depths” of human despair, but rather to the divine depths of Ayin from which God is called forth. In prayer, our passion is for Ayin.” Further, “Human beings must quickly grasp this Sefirah (the highest Sefirah, Keter or Ayin) to secure healing for every trouble and malady, as it is written: ‘I lift my eyes to the mountains, my help comes from ayin.’”15 As we will see later in this chapter, one way of understanding this is that the passion for nothing is a passion for the impossible, and it is just such a passion that brings renewal and healing. The Kabbalists showed a remarkable tendency to negate and invert the traditional order of discourse and reason. For example, Shimon Labis in Ketem Paz wrote, “Concerning everything that cannot be grasped its question is its answer.”16 Indeed, as we have seen, the Kabbalists occasionally regarded the Sefirot, the constituents of God and the world as “questions,”17 and therefore developed the foundation for an interrogative, as opposed to a propositional, metaphysics. A similar radical tendency is found in the Kabbalist Shem Tov ibn Gaon who recognized that the philosophers regarded the Kabbalistic doctrines as heretical, but responded by declaring “This is the principle upon which all depends: what the philosophers think is the site of rebellion is really the site of faith.”18 There is in the Kabbalah, not only a challenge to the “ruling discourse,” but a certain celebration of “unknowing” and the unknown. Moses de Leon wrote: “God, may He be blessed, is the annihilation of all thoughts; no thought can contain Him. Since no one can contain Him [with] anything in the world, He is called ayin. This is the secret of what is said: ‘Wisdom

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comes into being out of ayin.’” Further, “Anything sealed and concealed, totally unknown to anyone, is called ayin, meaning that no one knows anything about it. Similarly...no one knows anything at all about the human soul; she stands in the status of nothingness, as it is said (Ecclesiastes 3:19): ‘The advantage of the human over the beast is ayin.”19 By means of this soul, the human being obtains an advantage over all other creatures and the glory of what is called ayin. The Hasidim saw in Ayin a symbol of psychological meaning and transformation. For them, Ayin is the source of both power and wisdom. According to R. Livi Yitzhak, “the Nought is the most general category of all the wisdoms because it is a potential power that may receive [every] form.”20 For the Hasidim, what constitutes Ayin is a matter of one’s perspective or point of view. As we have seen, according to Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Lyadi, from an earthly perspective, “the tangible world seems to be Yesh and a thing, while spirituality, which is above, is an aspect of Ayin (nothingness),” but from the heavenly point of view, “the world is an aspect of Ayin…and is considered as nought truly as nothing and null.”21 Creation Ex Nihilo By identifying Ein-Sof with “Nothingness” the Kabbalists were able to attack the ultimate problem of origins (why is there anything at all?) from a perspective that does not already assume the existence of that which it purports to explain. In short, by identifying Ein-Sof with Ayin, the Kabbalists could speak of a deity who weaves all existence out of the depths of his own nothingness, as opposed to an already existing God who creates the world out of his own being, and about whom the question “whence?” could itself be proposed. Indeed, some of the early Kabbalists held that God even creates himself, presumably out of His own nothingness. For example, according to the author of the Fountain of Wisdom, “the Holy One blessed be he, was the first existent being. Only that which generates itself is called an existent being.”22 God, in effect calls upon his own nothingness in creating both himself and the world ex nihilo. There is thus a “nothingness” implicit in all things, and this nothingness is that thing’s participation in Ein-Sof. I would like to explore the Kabbalistic notion of Ayin and “creation from nothing” from a more philosophical point of view. Rather than reassert the negative theological dictum that God is beyond all human comprehension, I

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will endeavor to push our understanding of, Ein-sof, Ayin and “creation from nothingness” to the limit of what can be expressed in language. In this section, I will adopt an approach that I will come to critique later on, but which I believe can move us more deeply into our problem. I will begin on a personal note, with a description of some ideas about “nothingness” that were the catalyst to my own early interest in philosophy and theology. As I child I was for a time preoccupied with an idea that I would now express with the following words: How utterly improbable that anything whatsoever should exist at all, that there should even be a state of affairs called “nothing,” let alone the fullness of nature, the totality of the human world, my own body, and my awareness of existence. All of this appeared to me to be an extremely unlikely miracle, as it somehow seemed “logical” that absolute nothingness rather than “somethingness” should prevail. As such, I found myself attempting to imaginatively conceive of a complete and utter void. In my imagination I removed all objects in space, all stars and planets, galaxies and light, all matter, however ethereal. I was able to do this quite easily, picturing in my mind an infinitely extending black void. I soon realized, however, that this image was insufficient for my purposes, for even a black void was a state of affairs, one that, however monotonous and bland, was on this side of the miracle of creation. So I endeavored in my mind to remove even this black emptiness, to somehow peel it off, as if it were a skin or wallpaper covering the nothingness of utter non-being. To my dismay, this imaginative process invariably revealed a brilliant white light behind it, one that, however I tried, could not itself be peeled away, condensed, or otherwise eliminated. I eventually realized that the perfect void could not be imagined. But could it nonetheless be referred to in language? I took the problem up later after I had become a student of philosophy, and began to contemplate the nature of “non-being.” I began to think of a hypothetical “non-state of affairs” that I called “never having come into existence,” or “no state of affairs whatsoever,” which I likened to the non-condition of my own existence years prior to my birth, or the non-state of affairs that many believe to be one’s condition after death. Today I would say that such nothingness involves no space, no time, no consciousness, no being, no identity, no difference, no possibility, no significance, and no void. It is indeed “no state of affairs whatsoever;” a nothing without any possibility, which because it is nothing, does not participate in the miracle of creation. It is a thought

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experiment with the thinker removed. It is not described, a void where language ends or does not and cannot arise. It soon dawned on me that perhaps language was itself unable to refer to the nothingness I paradoxically sought to describe, as language, by its very nature, involves a differentiated system of terms that only have meaning through contrast with other terms. My “never having come into existence,” and “no state of affairs whatsoever,” were themselves significant terms in a language and could therefore neither really describe nor refer to the ‘x’ my mind was pressing against. The best that my words could do, I thought, was to lead me and perhaps others to the precipice where language ends, or to use Heidegger’s phrase, be a “formal indicator” of a non-idea. Perhaps I am now writing about that which would be better expressed with silence, but I believe that it is something on the order of this “non-state of affairs” that must be the “void” out of which “creation ex nihilo” took place. For the purposes of creation out of nothing, the Ayin of Ein-sof cannot “contain all possibility,” or “include nothingness as part of its infinity.” Einsof may indeed be and include such things, but when we conceptualize Einsof this way we beg the question of creation ex-nihilo by surreptitiously assuming the existence of the very being that must be created. One might, of course, say that God created the world out of Himself, or that he/she must have existed eternally in order to have “hovered over the void” and spoken the words that brought the world into being. But this is not creation out of nothingness, but is rather a simple transformation of an eternal substance. Similarly, one might be tempted to inquire regarding that which existed prior to creation, and might be equally tempted to assert “God”! However, if we are willing to posit the existence of a “state of affairs” prior to creation, we will be involved in the regress of asking what was present prior to that state of affairs, and so on. Eventually we will arrive at the question of how it is that no state of affairs whatsoever can give rise to states of affairs, which is tantamount to the well-known Heideggerean question “How is it that there is anything at all?” The Kabbalists recognized that there was a certain futility in any attempt to answer this question and posited a dilug or (unfathomable) leap between absolute nothingness and being. One can, of course, reject this whole line of thinking altogether, claiming that the questions we have just asked involve a misuse (or are an artifact) of language (Wittgenstein) or assume an ontotheological perspective on the possibility of “presence,” “truth,” and “essence” that itself must be deconstructed (Derrida). One could return to the

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argument that all I am doing here, all one can do here, is to use words in a certain manner, a manner that is defined via a system of linguistic differences that is itself set up by convention. One can speak of “God,” “void,” “creation” and “non-being,” “no state of affairs whatsoever,” but one is working under an illusion if one thinks that these words are in some way penetrating reality in some absolute way, as opposed to “penetrating reality” in the only way that is possible, i.e., in the way “penetrating reality” functions in our particular language game. However, I believe that there are other ways of looking at this question which, although they may not provide us with a completely satisfactory solution, may move the inquiry past the “linguistic stage.”

Representing “No State of Affairs Whatsoever” As we have just seen, one problem with addressing the question of creation from nothing stems from the alleged impossibility of referring to, representing or even indicating the non-state-of-affairs that is a requirement for even phrasing our question. I would suggest, however, that in at least a relative sense—in the context of a representational system—a non-state of affairs can be represented. Let me explain. As I discussed in Chapter Six, it is a well known principle of cartography that it is impossible to accurately represent a spherical earth on a two-dimensional flat plane. As a result, all “maps” of the earth are distorted in some fashion. Another, at least philosophically significant, cartographic principle is that all maps necessarily carry with them, or at least rest upon or within, a physical indication of the conditions of their own representation. One example of this is the white space at the edge of a rectangular (Mercator) projection of the globe, or the table or other background on which the map rests. As we saw earlier, a more graphic example is the white (or black) space that exists between the oceans and continents on maps that achieve accuracy in the size of land masses by a procedure that is similar to flattening an orange peel—with resultant gaps between flattened portions of the orange’s (or map’s) skin. These gaps, like the background surrounding the “edges” of all maps, have no interpretation within the maps themselves. They represent nothing. They are not, as the ancients might have thought, the “place” where one arrives when falls off the edge of the earth; they are not representative of the atmosphere or “outer space,” and they are most certainly not a region of

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cosmic emptiness or non-being that surrounds the world, or, in the case of the “orange peel,” projection, somehow infiltrates it. While they are “something” (white paper, a table, etc.) within the wider world, they are absolutely nothing, no-state-of-affairs whatsoever within the context of the map. As conditions of representation they represent nothing, but are nonetheless necessary for anything whatsoever to be represented. Such cartographic-conditions-of-representation are, to my mind, a very concrete, even visible, analog to the notion of “absolute nothingness.” Of course, this “nothingness” is something when we take a (wider) perspective outside the map’s system of representation. However, in the case of the actual, “real,” world we cannot take such a “wider” perspective on the whole, and we cannot readily represent the conditions of representation (or existence) for the whole of reality. Nonetheless, we can analogize to an “absolute nothing,” which from the perspective of our own world, is “no state of affairs whatsoever,” but which is nonetheless absolutely essential for our world’s existence. What I am suggesting is that we consider the background, non-interpretable “space” or “condition of representation” of our maps as finite analogs to the “non-state of affairs” or nothingness that is the empty background for the world’s creation. One is here immediately reminded of the midrashic phrase (Genesis Rabbah 68.9) “God is the place of the world.” Such “place,” like the background of a cartographic projection, is not in the world, but rather contains it. Derrida and Différance Interestingly, such cartographic-conditions-of-representation are also a concrete, visible analog to what Derrida points to with the word différance. As we have seen, différance, for Derrida, is what distinguishes phonemes, and ultimately words, from one another.23 It is also, concretely, the spacing between letters or words on a written page. As we have also seen, Derrida follows the French linguist, Saussure, in holding that a word’s meaning is a function of its place in a differential linguistic system. For example, the word “yellow” has meaning only insofar as it differs from “red,” “green” and virtually all other terms in the English language. While différance establishes phonemes, words and significance, it is not itself heard, written or understood. It is, for Derrida, “an order which no longer belongs to sensibility.” For our purpose, it is simply important to note that for Derrida,

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différance is neither a concept nor a thing, but is rather the condition for all concepts and things. For this reason, Derrida is able to say that différance is “older than being.” It is logically prior to all being and existence. While Derrida denies that there are any theological or metaphysical implications to his notion of différance I would suggest that différance and, moreover, the conditions-of-representation I have spoken above in connection with mapmaking, are candidates for, or at least analogs to, the Ayin, the “nothing whatsoever” or “non-state-of-affairs” that gives rise to all things. Signification as the Origin of Being An immediate objection to our analogy comes to mind; representation and even signification, it might be said, are patently different from (and dependent upon) creation, and thus isolating the conditions of representation is a far cry from explaining creation ex nihilo. Yet if we follow the Kabbalists (and arguably, Derrida as well), it is the very distinction between representation and creation that is at issue, and which in their thought, is dissolved. For the Kabbalists, who identify God with Torah (and therefore language), the process by which Ein-Sof creates itself from its own nothingness, must be metaphysically parallel (or even identical) to an act of human linguistic reference or signification. In becoming itself, Ein-sof performs a linguistic or representational act in which it affirms itself as a primal undifferentiated totality that is contrasted with the primal Nought. We might say that Ein-Sof, in its first manifestation, is a primal act of signification, a “primal affirmation,” the primal “yes” which stands out in relief against the background of an ageless “no.” (This is what the Kabbalists refer to in their distinction between Yesh (Being or “Yes”) and Ayin (nonbeing, or “No”). This “yes,” this scintilla of significance, is sufficient to set into motion a virtual explosion of signification, a “big bang” in the realm of meaning; for implicit in the “yes” of this infinite being are all the “yeses,” all the affirmations that could have, should have, or would have been. For just as a single significant word implies the existence of an entire language, or a single mathematical truth implies the existence of an entire mathematical system, an entire realm of meaning or what J. N. Findlay spoke of as a entire “firmament of values,” is entailed by the drawing out of Ein-Sof from the abyss of its own nothingness.24

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The reason for this virtually infinite expansion of possibilities does not simply rest upon the specifically infinite character of Ein-Sof, for a whole cosmos of meaning and significance would also be implicit if the first referent, the first thing were finite as well. If the first thing, for example, were Sherlock Holmes, John Kennedy or some other finite fictional or nonfictional character, these could not exist (or be significant) without a whole universe of value and significance to go with them. The point is simply that there simply can’t be just one significant thing, or even one referred to thing. The “big bang” of language and significance is inevitable. In and of itself, Ein-Sof is metaphysically unstable. Its very existence implies a world of values and possibilities. We can express this “big bang” schematically as follows: reference to or being x and not the nought ———> affirmation — —-> value/significance ——> matrix of value/significance ———> all possible values—-> value firmament ——-> (the Sefirot) The “primal yes” cannot be contained. We might even go so far as to suggest that God, in affirming “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh” (I will be that I will be), or in inscribing Himself as the primal letter, Aleph, must, in the process, say every possibility of language, thought and existence.25 The Impossibility of Nothingness Our struggle with the question of creation from nothing rests upon the assumption that in some “super-logical” or “super-metaphysical” sense it is possible for there to be a nothing out of which a something emerged. Our line of reasoning, however, would be faulty if, in fact, “nothingness” were somehow precluded even as a logical possibility. Indeed, our considerations thus far suggest the radical impossibility of there being “no state of affairs whatsoever,” once we know, as we do know, that there is at least one state of affairs. In such a case “states of affairs” fill all the possibilities. “No state of affairs whatsoever” cannot be thought, imagined or articulated, because such thought, imagination and articulation implicates at least one state of affairs which eliminates “nothingness” as a possibility, and further, given our reasoning in the previous sections, implicates an entire world!

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What then is the origin of a cosmos in which absolute nothingness is impossible? Our suggestion that a very human act of reference is the origin of all would seem to be a cosmic case of putting the cart before the horse; placing human consciousness, which is the endpoint of billions of years of cosmic history, at the beginning, somehow even prior to “the Big Bang” itself! With this account, however, we are tempted to ask what came before the big-bang and so on ad infinitum. The problem with this thinking is that it rests upon a linear, unidimensional conception of time that may itself be the source of our puzzlements regarding ultimate origins. Our problem may be analogous to our asking what is “before” the beginning of the earth depicted on a Mercator map. In that case, what is before the beginning on the left hand side of the map is actually the right hand side of the map, i.e. what appears to be the end of the map is actually “before” the beginning. We should again recall Sefer Yetzirah’s dictum regarding the Sefirot: “Their end is wedged in their beginning and their beginning in their end.” From a natural scientific point of view the “beginning” reads something like “empty space, hydrogen, the Big Bang, the formation of heavy elements, “ and the “end” is “the evolution of the human species culminating in the development of human language and thought,” and ultimately in the scientific apprehension of the beginning. However, from a Kabbalistic point of view, it is this very “end,” i.e. consciousness, meaning and language that loops around and serves as an origin for its own beginning.26 There is a sense in which the “Big Bang” itself is a human creation. One is reminded of the Kabbalistic dictum “each and every one [of the people of Israel] ought to write a scroll of Torah for himself, and the occult secret [of this matter] is that he made God Himself.”27 A human linguistic act, which is at the end of a linear account of the world’s origins, then gets folded (or curved) back to the beginning in a “bilinear” or “spherical” account of the world that indeed has no beginning and no end because, like the surface of a globe, it is totally continuous and self-contained. This is not to hold, with the idealists, that the world is somehow a creation (or “figment”) of the human imagination. Rather, there is a seamless transition between realism and idealism, as if they were each oceans on a great philosophical globe. There is an interdependence, a coincidentia oppositorum, between the view that the material universe brings about the world as it is perceived, spoken about and understood, and the view that the world as it is perceived, spoken about and understood gives rise to the multitude of distinct ideas and entities that comprise the material world. In

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the view I am expressing here, this is a complete circle, into which the “nonthing” that I have called “absolutely-no-state-of-affairs-whatsoever” would have absolutely no point of entry. Divine Forgetting, Forgetting the Divine The Kabbalists also developed an epistemological approach to Ayin that warrants our attention. Since the divine is unknown, unnamable, and identified with no-thing, the categories that pertain to it are absence rather than presence and forgetfulness rather than memory. According to David ben Judah ha-Hasid, “The Cause of Causes...is a place to which forgetting and oblivion pertain...nothing can be known of It, for It is hidden and concealed in the mystery of absolute nothingness. Therefore forgetting pertains to the comprehension of this place.”28 Rabbi David’s point seems to be that while for all other things one knows by remembering, i.e. by having one’s object of contemplation present before one’s mind’s eye, in the case of Ein-sof, the proper vehicle of contemplation is “forgetting,” an unintentional unknowing. One thinks one has something in mind, something to ask, something to say, and suddenly it has disappeared, and one realizes that one has forgotten. This experience, this mode of (un)awareness, this forgetting, is akin to what one must achieve in “contemplating” Ein-sof. The contemplation of Ein-sof is not the contemplation of a presence, but rather of a complete absence, a complete lack of knowledge; not a studied unknowing, but the absence of memory, an “I forgot,” and perhaps even a “Forget I,” a self-forgetting. A similar idea is present in the Kabbalists Ezra of Gerona and Azriel, who speak of the highest contemplation as afisat ha-mahashavah, the “annihilation of thought.”29 Creation ex nihilo, then, would be a reversal of this state of forgetfulness, a sudden recall or awakening to an existence that God or man had forgotten. Similar ideas are manifest in the modes of contemplation advocated by the second generation Hasidic leader, the Maggid of Mezritch. According to the Maggid, one forgets and one’s awareness returns to a pre-linguistic, preconscious state, which is epistemologically Ayin, nothing. For the Maggid, thought, which is linguistic, arises out of that which is pre-linguistic and preconscious. “Thought requires the pre-conscious, which raises thought to think. This pre-conscious cannot be grasped...Thought is contained in letters, which are vessels, while the pre-conscious is beyond the letters, beyond the

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capacity of the vessels. This is the meaning of: ‘Wisdom comes into being out of nothingness.’”30 It is in such a not-knowing state, that one makes contact with the absence/ayin that is both identical with the depth of one’s soul and Ein-sof. In a sense, one only gains wisdom by losing awareness and knowledge. Similarly, one achieves fulfillment of one’s self only by losing oneself. Forgetting, absence and unknowing are the proper modes of mystical contemplation. An extension of this is that the answer to one’s incessant questioning regarding the meaning of life is to forget about the problem. It is only through such forgetting that one can suddenly “remember” and thus find oneself “awake” to the world. Such an “awakening” is, on this account, an analog to the “creation out of nothing” that we have been seeking. Ayin and the Dissolution of the Self We can pursue these ideas a bit further via a consideration of the Hasidic doctrine of “bittul ha-yesh,” the nullification of the self. The Hasidim adopted a view of the “nothingness” and dissolution of the individual ego that was in many ways similar to the views of certain eastern (Hindu and Buddhist) mystics. The second Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Dov Baer (17731827), held that the goal of contemplation is to convert one’s “I” (Ani) into “nothing” (Ayin),31 a dissolution of the ego which is represented in the shift in the position of a single Hebrew letter (ANY > AYN). According to Dov Baer, in prayer and meditation one must forget oneself and regard oneself as ayin. In the process one achieves a state of consciousness that transcends time and the distinctions between life and death, in which the independent self is nullified, and all is seen to be part of God.32 By becoming Ayin, by forgetting, and by achieving a death of the ego-self, one, in effect, becomes the “nothing,” the vast emptiness that can contain the fullness of Ein-sof. Chabad teaching is that while the creation of heaven and earth was Yesh me-ayin, something from nothing, the task of the righteous is to reverse this process and “transform yesh back into ayin.” This is accomplished by "raising holy sparks" in everything one does, i.e. realizing the divine aspect (nothingness) in all created things. This, according to Dov Baer of Lubavitch, is a miracle greater than creation itself. It involves a turning away from, nullification or forgetting of the material world. There are thus two forms of forgetfulness that are important in the cosmic scheme. Divine

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forgetfulness (Tzimtzum) allows for the creation of finite things, whereas human forgetfulness permits their return to the infinite God. Différance as Numinous Earlier I discussed Derrida’s notion of différance in connection with the Lurianic symbol of Tzimtzum. Here I would like again to take up the relationship between différance and negative theology. According to Derrida, negative theology partakes in the same metaphysical gesture that inaugurates the entirety of Western philosophy, the privileging of presence, form and being. Negative theology is a means of affirming that on some higher or deeper level “God exists, or hyper exists, or exists-by-not-existing.”33 However, when Derrida says that différance does not name anything, that it is not a concept and has no being, but is nevertheless the most primordial gesture, older than God, older than being, he is simply, according to Caputo, making a grammatical, and somewhat platitudinous point regarding “how words and concepts are formed.”34 He is not waxing poetic (though who can say with any assurance what he is doing or what his words mean and imply) over a being that transcends being. Différance simply points to the “differential matrix” through which words and concepts receive their meaning. Derrida and Caputo wish to flatten our response to différance, but we need not concur with this wish. If différance is indeed the source of everything, or at least the matrix within which concepts and words have meaning, and thus prior to all concepts and things; if difference is at the origin of language, and, if, as Derrida affirms, there is no ultimate boundary between language and things, then difference is in itself quite numinous, even in its platitudinous, grammatical simplicity. Shall we not be in mystical awe of the gesture of différance any less than we are in awe of the existence of words, concepts, nature and things? And if we are rightfully in awe of the latter, why shouldn’t we be in that much greater awe of the non-existent matrix, gesture, or “gift” that provides these mere ordinary metaphysical entities the lebensraum to be themselves? One need not attribute a particular origin to the gesture or opening made by différance in order to appreciate its great moment. For our purposes, the gesture or act of reference and differentiation that inaugurates (or assumes) différance might arise from man or God, or be logically prior to each. To ask

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the question “from whence différance” might be analogous to asking “from whence possibility?” as if possibility might have its origin in something that was not itself possible. One might here say that the possible has its origins in that which generates all possibilities, but if “that which generates all possibilities” does indeed do so then it too must be part of the realm of possibility and so on ad infinitum. In looking for the origin of the possible we are attempting something impossible, and we might, through a slight terminological maneuver say we are looking for the impossible, and then declare the impossible to be the ground of all possibility, perhaps in Kabbalistic language equating the “impossible” with Ein-sof. (One wonders here that if Derrida is entitled to an “impossible” as the object of his futureoriented passion, why the theologians should not also be entitled to an impossible as the subject of their past-oriented quest for origins). Similarly, différance cannot have its origin in a thing that is itself susceptible to difference, i.e. anything that can be established, categorized, conceptualized or demarcated. What then can be said to generate all differences? What can we point to as the origin of the differential matrix that is not itself a part of that matrix? Nothing we can name, for once we name it, it can be contrasted with other concepts and things and it becomes a part of the very differential matrix that it has been brought in to explain. So one here wants to speak of something completely ineffable, unspeakable, unconceptualizable in order to seal it off from any hint of identity; one wants to speak of some absolute, allembracing “One” that is completely undifferentiated. Of course, the moment we speak about, name, or hint at such an impossible, unitary thing—the moment we even refer to this “One” or name it “Ein-sof”—we have entered the differential matrix and lost our purported origin. But isn’t this precisely the point, i.e. that the very human act of reference to Ein-sof leads into an explosion of possibilities, the full plenum of the world? So the “origin” is and is not the “impossible,” the “unnamable,” the “inconceivable,” the absolutely identical ‘One.’ At least we can begin to see how the negative theologians and the Kabbalists arrived at these ‘palimpsestic’ characterizations of Ein-sof, and how we might regard these very references and characterizations as the gesture that brings about the possibilities/difference matrix of a world. In a sense, we need look no further than our own quest for origins to find the origin we quest. For the very act of referring to the origin, of naming it is an exemplar or re-occurrence of the very act that necessitates the differential matrix that opens up the “space” for all language, thought and being.

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In one sense it is arbitrary whether we regard différance itself as the absolutely ‘primal container,’ or we regard différance to have its origin in some unspoken pre-differentiated and non-conceptual something that can only be gestured towards, perhaps in a monosyllabic meditation, but never referred to. In either case, however, différance suggests a numinosity, a wonder, an awe at the origin of all things.35 By coining a new term and proclaiming it beyond all concepts and being, but suggesting that it is the quasi-transcendental matrix that allows all things to emerge, Derrida has, despite all protestations to the contrary, inserted himself into the theological field. If all he wanted to say is that a condition for the operation of both concepts and words is that they be different from one another, then Derrida should have been content with Saussure’s purely linguistic claim that language is a system of differences amongst signs. Certainly, he would have had no inclination to utter such phrases as “différance is older than being.”36 Prophetic Judaism and the Passion for the ‘Impossible’ Late in his career Derrida put forth certain ideas regarding the messiah, the messianic and impossibility that are relevant to our understanding of Einsof as Ayin, as well as to the relationship and dialogue between deconstructive and Kabbalistic thought. Indeed, John Caputo in his book, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion argues that Derrida is “Jewish without being Jewish,” and that increasingly in his later works, Derrida proclaims a Messianic hope, which though impossible to fulfill, distills something that is central to Judaism (and all religion).” According to Caputo, Derrida manages to be “religious” while at the same time eschewing the particularities and parochialism which are the basis of historical faiths. Though an atheist by orthodox standards, Derrida nevertheless has an “absolutely private language” in which he continually speaks of God.37 Caputo holds that Derrida, the “leftist, secularist, sometimes scandalous, post-Marxist Parisian intellectual has his whole life been “setting a place for Elijah” and that the motivation for deconstruction is an overarching prophetic and religious aspiration towards transcendence.38 According to Caputo, deconstruction is a passion for the impossible, which by exceeding and transgressing the bounds of possibility, is “a passion to go precisely where you cannot go.”39 Only the pursuit of the impossible is truly

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religious. For Derrida, Jewishness, in its purest form involves an “openness to the future,”40 an openness and expectancy to what is not yet known, not yet thought, not even possible to think.41 Derrida’s “impossible” bears a striking resemblance to certain Kabbalistic understandings of Ayin. For the Kabbalists, Ayin refers not only to that which is unknown, but also to that which is forever unattainable. Moses de Leon states: When the emanation was emanated out of ayin ... all the levels [the Sefirot] were dependent on thought...That which...rests in thought is called Hokhmah [“wisdom”]. It has been said “What is Hokhmah? Hakkah mah.” This means that since you will never attain it, hakkeh, “wait,” for mah, “what” will come and be. This is the primordial wisdom emerging out of ayin.42

Here we can see a clear Kabbalistic anticipation of Derrida’s understanding of the messianic as a waiting and passion for the impossible. According to Caputo, it is the openness to the impossible that characterizes the core Jewish, prophetic experience from the time of Abraham, and which makes deconstruction a “Jewish Science.” Caputo writes, “deconstruction repeats the structure of religious experience,” especially the biblical, covenental experience of Abraham and the Jews.43 Derrida and Negative Theology As we have seen, Derrida was, early on, accused of borrowing features of negative theology, and of describing his notion of différance in a manner so as to suggest that it is the unnamable, unknowable God of apophatic mysticism. Caputo argues that while the ‘impossible’ situation of negative theology (i.e. of speaking about the unspeakable) was certainly attractive to Derrida, there is really a world of difference between negative theology and deconstruction. Caputo holds that Derrida’s religion has more in common with the Jewish prophetic tradition than with the Christian Neoplatonists and negative theologians. According to Caputo, Derrida’s religion is more messianic or eschatological than mystical. It is a passionate press into the unknown rather than a mystical quest for union with the one. Indeed, Derrida’s own religious course is, according to Caputo, one that brings

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deconstruction beyond an initial brush with negative theology to an engagement with prophetic passion.44 Deconstruction, according to Caputo, is actually in step with Abraham Joshua Heschel’s effort to rescue the God of the prophets from negative theology.45 Like Heschel, Derrida is interested in rescuing “faith” from “being.” “Faith” is always marked by difference, undecidability, and the other. It remains always faith and does not pursue metaphysical knowledge. Negative Theology in a New Key? While it can hardly be gainsaid that Derrida’s “messianism” accords well with prophetic Judaism, the comparison between deconstruction and negative theology is nevertheless highly instructive. Indeed, Caputo himself suggests that negative theology might tell a “better story about itself” than the one it inherited from Neoplatonism. It can do so by turning to the Biblical tradition and its ethical orientation to an “impossible” messianic future, instead of continuing to ground itself in the Neoplatonic metaphysical quest for an “unknowable” origin. Derrida’s interest in the impossible derives from its power to shatter conventional discourse, and bring about something new, rather than from its supposed place as the origin of all being. From a Kabbalistic point of view, we might say that Derrida orients himself in the Breaking of the Vessels, which shatters our fixed ideas and horizons, and, at least in his later writings, in Tikkun, which promises an as yet unknown emendation, rather than in the unknowable, ineffable origins of an abstract creator deity. If there is a value to negative theology, for example, in its constant effort to say what cannot be said, it is not on account of the negative theologians’ efforts to go beyond language, but rather on account of an event within language, an event that shakes up linguistic convention and leaves one open, not to some hyperontological experience, but to an experience of faith. For Caputo “faith” is the resolve to hold on, push on, to say “yes” in spite of the flux into an unknown, but with an expectation of something wholly (holy) other, and totally new. Derrida has, in effect, reversed the position of creation ex nihilo; instead of understanding it as the origin of the world (at the beginning) he sees it as an origin of faith (at the end), a faith that arises from the impossible ‘other,’ the totally new, the anticipated, yet unanticipated, unknown. For Derrida,

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“faith” has its origins in an impossible nothingness, yet to come. Derrida’s musings on faith comport well with the views of the 13th century Kabbalist, Azriel of Gerona, who writes: ...the place at which the Being is linked to the point where, from the Nought, it begins to have existence is called ‘faith’ (emunah). For faith is not related to a visible and apprehensible Being, nor to the invisible and unknowable Nought, but precisely to the place where the Nought is connected to Being.46

Caputo tells us that negative theology in its eloquent proclamation that it is lost for words, is not simply a theology about God, but is actually a prayer and a plea, addressed to God.47 For Derrida, the negative theologians are not so much describing a secret, hidden divine essence that they secretly have, but are rather passionately reaching out to an ‘impossible’ that they do not have. For Derrida, the secret of negative theology, of all esoterica for that matter, is that there is no secret, there is nothing as it were, beneath the text, hidden behind the name of God, other than the passion that we have for the future, for the impossible. In one sense, Derrida can be interpreted here as exploding the illusion, the fakery of negative theology and esoterica, but in another, deeper sense, he can be understood as explicating its power, and its roots in passion and faith. The contrast between mystical/theosophical and prophetic Judaism is one that is implicit in the Kabbalah. Many of the Kabbalists were radical messianists, without, however, abandoning a mystical and even an ontological/metaphysical view of God. To be sure, there is a dialectic at work between mystical quietism and prophetic activism in the Kabbalah, a dialectic that becomes one of the major dynamics in the Lurianic theosophy. In an age where Jewish theology does not quite know what to do with (and is at times even embarrassed by) Jewish Messianism, Derrida’s abstract messianism of the impossible, which links the messiah to pluralistic justice and democracy, and not simply, for example, to such doctrines as the “chosen people”, can be a valuable means of reincorporating the messiah into a “New Kabbalah.” In Derrida, the prophet Elijah, who in Judaism is the long-awaited herald of the messiah, becomes the “unforeseeable other for whom a place must be kept.” 48

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In On the Name Derrida suggests that we are all in effect negative theologians, and that nothing that is not at least “contaminated by negative theology” can be trusted.49 Negative theology involves a double movement of both negating God’s name, and negating everything except God’s name. According to Derrida, negative theology is placed in this double-bind because of its concern with the impossible. The problem, however, with giving God a name, is that in doing so we constrict, enslave, prescribe and designate God, such that God, if he is to truly remain God must “slip away” from such naming. Kabbalistically, we might say that by naming god we actually set the Tzimtzum in motion, causing God to contract and be concealed. Further, such concealment, negativity and impossibility is essential to God’s very nature, and is what prevents Him from becoming a finite, circumscribed being and us from becoming idolators. For Derrida the name of God points, and in the Husserlian sense, intends, its target without ever reaching its mark. It is like a small child reaching for, the moon. Because its object is completely unreachable, negative theology reverts to the hyper-essentialism of Neoplatonism.50 Caputo writes: For God is safe in the bottomless abyss of nothingness, this desert place, leaving but His trace in language, burning and scarring language as He leaves the world...51

This description could well have been written by a Safedian Kabbalist, who would naturally see language as the trace of God’s concealment from the world. As long as we are immersed in language, culture and history, negative theology can never fulfill its promise, complete its intention of providing a direct, full access to the hyper-essential God or thing-in-itself. Were it, per the impossible, able to do so, it would provide us with a face to face encounter with God, a fully illuminated and actualized presence, one that according to Derrida and Wittgenstein would completely dispense with the need for faith, religion and even passion, for each of these are predicated upon passion for what is not only unknown, but impossible to know. Once the unknown is eliminated and God is revealed in His full presence, the need for religion vanishes. As Wittgenstein put it, “if there were evidence [in matters of religious faith] this would in fact destroy the whole business.”52

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But there is a further, and on Derrida’s view a more important, implication of the belief (or “knowledge”) that one has in fact been face to face with the promise, with the thing in itself, or God. Such a belief/knowledge will inevitably result in absolutism, the idea that one knows (as opposed to has faith) in the object of one’s religious belief. Such an absolutism, such a “knowledge” is already, to a large degree present, in certain fundamentalist strains of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is for this reason that Derrida tells us that negative theology is necessary and why Derrida is mistrustful of any discourse that is not “contaminated” with negative theology, that is not tempered with a healthy respect for the unknown. The unknown is what saves us from a dangerous absolutism that threatens to destroy respect for differences in religion, culture and ideology. The Lurianic Kabbalah, in its three negative moments of Einsof, Tzimtzum and Shevirah, has the effect of deconstructing all absolutes, dogmas and idols. As we have seen, Ein-sof, as the source of infinite possibility, logically entails an infinite respect for difference, the unknown and the non-dogmatic. Caputo argues that Derrida’s thought leads us to a generalized negative theology, in which non-predication becomes a characteristic of all epistemological efforts. Drawing on Foucault, who takes a non-predicative view of human nature (in which we can say what human’s are not but not what they are) Caputo speaks of an extreme nominalism in which ethics, politics, democracy, justice cannot be defined except in negative terms. The effect of this is not to undermine knowledge, but on the contrary, to keep future knowledge open to the possibility of dreaming of something to come. This leads to a generalized “non-determinable faith in the impossible.”53 For Derrida, the “secret” which impels our interest and passion has no semantic content. It is not “unconscious” or “deep.” It is not a single truth, but rather evokes a passion for multiple readings,54 some of which are theological, others of which are not.55 There is, for Derrida, “nothing but the text,” and the multiple readings we provide it. There is no access to a hidden authorial or divine intent, for even if we were to ask God point-blank what he/she meant and we received an answer, this too would be subject to a multiplicity of interpretations. Derrida’s passion for the impossible is reminiscent of Kant’s thought and desire for the transcendental object, i.e. freedom and God; notions that could not be comprehended by or manifest in any possible experience, but which were regarded by Kant as necessary regulative ideas. Only, unlike Kant,

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Derrida does not go so far as to posit the transcendental as something regulative (God’s law, ethics) or real (the “noumenal reality”). For Derrida, the impossible object of human passion is completely non-regulative, unreal and unknown. To prevent us from positing it as a God, a heavenly realm, or a future state on earth, Derrida continuously refers to it as the impossible. Messianism and Apocalypse Derrida speaks of an apocalypse and a messianism without vision, truth, or revelation.56 For Derrida the apocalypse, the messianic is an awaited for event that emerges from the abyss that always lies beneath the surface of the “ruling discourse.” While the ruling discourse itself pretends that it tolerates and even encourages invention, such invention is permitted only within the context of certain institutions, political structures, linguistic and artistic conventions, etc. Derrida refers to such “inventiveness” as belonging to the “order of the same.” For Derrida the “event” or “other” that brings about invention can neither be calculated nor programmed, and except in a certain radical sense of the term, cannot be awaited, or prepared for. This is because such ‘invention’ is always, from the perspective of the ruling discourse, impossible. Derrida, however, calls ‘deconstruction’ the preparation for what is totally other. It is, in effect, a prayer and expectation, an openness to what is impossible, unimaginable and unbelievable.57 Kabbalistically, it is a preparation, a passion for, the shattering of the very structures through which one has come to understand and live one’s life; it is an expectation for the Breaking of the Vessels. What is awaited can only be understood, by the criteria of our pre-Shevirah discourse, as utterly “monstrous.”58 Derrida acknowledges that once a given monster arrives we will eventually succeed in domesticating it, but in doing so our old structures will themselves be altered, as “we transform the field of reception.”59 On some level, what Derrida is speaking of here is a paradigm shift, along the lines described by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but Derrida is more focused on a shattering of understanding (the actual Shevirah) than he is on the new framework that develops in its wake.60 He is not speaking so much in Schelling’s or the Kabbalah’s terms of human invention acting as a finite supplement completing God’s creation, but rather about a bending and breaking of the rules of theology, philosophy,

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culture, art, and language which results in something different, unanticipated, and new.61 The Non-meaningful as Divine One way of understanding Derrida’s notion of the impossible messiah is to reflect on the possibility that the messiah or even God might be nonmeaningful or even meaningless. The opposition between meaningful and meaningless is yet another polarity that calls for a “bilinear” or dialectical reunderstanding. We can become stuck in our insistence that the ‘real,’ or ‘God,’ or ‘the absolute,’ ‘life’ and even dreams, must have a meaningstructure that corresponds to the meaning structure of language. This insistence has at least two sources. On the one hand it grows out of the same drive that propels the representational theory of meaning, which assumes that a meaningful language pictures a meaningful world. On the other hand, the insistence upon meaning is driven by the fear that the “dream,” “real,” “absolute,” or “God,” might turn out to be without meaning or meaningless. That these things might be non-meaningful suggests to us that our lives are senseless and arbitrary, and that the world is a chaotic abyss. Chaos, we think, could hardly be divine, and as Taylor and Bloom have argued, our efforts at writing are all defenses against such chaos, meaninglessness and death. But why should there not be a chaotic and meaningless aspect to divinity, i.e. a meaningless aspect that complements the order and reason that we, as part of the divine plenum, bring into the world? One might even say “Thank God” that there is an arbitrary, unpredictable, (as yet) meaningless real, that such things as dreams and trauma root us out of our comfortable interpretations and insert something unpredictable into our encounters and understanding of ourselves and our world. Without the unpredictable and the meaningless, the world would simply be what we want, intend, and think it to be. It would be as if life were simply a function of our desires, acts, and thoughts, rather than an interaction between those desires/acts and the fortune, good and bad, that happens to come our way, and which arguably provides us with the opportunity to create. Judaism has traditionally rejected the idea that there is anything arbitrary, coincidental or non-meaningful in the acts of God. The arbitrary, the coincidental, and the meaningless (the “tohu and bohu” prior to creation ) is, for the most part, repressed in Jewish thought, only to return in such Kabbalistic notions as God’s ‘evil’ aspect

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(Sefer ha-Bahir), the “Other side’ (Zohar, Luria), and the ten crowns of evil (the ten ‘counter-Sefirot’). The notion that we should be open to that which is (seemingly) arbitrary and meaningless provides an additional perspective on the Zohar’s claim that “there is no true worship except it issue forth from darkness, and no true good except it proceed from evil.62 The Messiah Cannot Come In Ordinary Time Derrida holds that the advent of the Messiah involves a perpetual waiting and that this advent would be destroyed by its absorption in time as we commonly understand it. Can this be provided with anything other than a purely negative interpretation? The great Torah and Talmudic commentator, Rashi held that the biblical account of creation is an atemporal description from which we can neither infer “before” nor “after.”63 It was only with the fall that Adam and Eve became mortal, finite and temporal beings. All “events” prior to that time (which we might equate with the beginning of human historical consciousness), occurred/existed in an atemporal, archetypal, spiritual realm, which, with the advent of consciousness and sin, was inclined so as to coincide with another plane of being, that of finite space, time and corporeality. Similarly, we might argue that Messianic time, the advent of the Messiah, the apocalypse, is itself atemporal, archetypal. We cannot expect the Messiah to arrive, like “a beggar on the street of Jerusalem,” in our time, without a radical transformation that again tilts the plane of an archetypal world in such a manner that it coincides with our own. A transformation in human consciousness, as radical as that which occurred when humanity became self-aware and began marking time and history must occur in order to provide the framework for the coming of the messiah. We have no, and can have no, clear knowledge of what this transformation might be, though, perhaps we can speculate, anticipate and perhaps even move toward it. Perhaps it is something akin to a recognition of the divine in everything, of the holiness and infinite value of each singularity on earth and the cosmos. Perhaps it is something that will follow upon the transcendence of individual recognition, an end to the master-slave dialectic. Or perhaps it is something completely different. According to Caputo, “The whole order of venir and a-venir belongs to an other messianic time and an other language, so that nothing coming (venue) could ever actually occur or come about, or have occurred or have

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come about, in ordinary time. The Messiah’s “coming” can never actually correspond to an actual-historical appearance in ordinary time.”64 The reason for this is that in order for the Messiah to function as messiah, he must always be looked forward to as a promise and never actually arrive. Perhaps then “Messiah,” or its advent is simply a form of consciousness that can occur at virtually anytime, or perhaps, as Derrida suggests, just as creation is in the non-temporal past - and thus has no place in actual time, the messiah is in the non-temporal future. Perhaps the messiah, like death, is, as Caputo puts it, the “futural possibility of an impossibility,” one that, as Heidegger avers, awakens our freedom and authenticity. Derrida, like Levinas, takes the waiting (for the Messiah) as a call for a future justice. Those who heed the call, we might say, live in Messianic time.

Chapter Ten

Kabbalah, Forms of Consciousness and the Structure of Language

H

aving explored the relationship between the Kabbalah and postmodern thought; having, as it were, passed Jewish mysticism through the sieve of Derrida and deconstruction, and, having “deconstructed” aspects of deconstruction itself, we must now inquire about the nature of the Kabbalah that emerges from this undertaking. Others who have brought contemporary thought into dialogue with Jewish mysticism have understood the Kabbalah as a welcome intrusion of the emotional and non-rational into an overly intellectual and constricted religious outlook (Scholem), as representing archetypal ideas and tendencies of the collective unconscious (Jung), and as a system of hermeneutical reading strategies that resist closure, specifiable meaning and totalization (Bloom, Karasick). While each of these perspectives is of considerable interest and value, the approach that I will take here is to understand the Kabbalist’s symbols as pointing and giving rise to forms of consciousness or modes of understanding that are latent in the psyche, and which are, in effect “born” out of these symbols as a result of a dialectic with contemporary thought. In this chapter I take up the task of comprehending the Kabbalah as a form of “rational mysticism,” and the Kabbalistic symbols as vehicles for altering not only our ideas about ourselves, the world, and the divine, but for transforming our very modes of consciousness, thought and reflection. This chapter looks both backward and forward; backward inasmuch as it takes a few steps towards revealing aspects of the “Torah of the Tree of Life”

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that, as we saw in Chapter Seven, is thought by the Kabbalists to underlie the actual “Torah of the Tree of Knowledge;” and forward inasmuch as these same steps are taken in anticipation of the “messianic” which, as we saw in Chapter Nine, Derrida speaks of as the unforeseeable ‘other’ who lies beyond our discourse, expectations, and forms of life. I will begin with a discussion of the philosophical and historical warrant for understanding the Kabbalists’ symbols in rational, philosophical terms, and then proceed to a discussion of the implications of these symbols for contemporary consciousness and thought. Finally, I will show how the entire Lurianic system reflects the structure of language and is thus enacted in all human writing and speech. Kabbalah and Reason The Kabbalah has often been contrasted with the legal, rational and philosophical tradition in Judaism. Isaac Luria and his followers denied that they themselves engaged in anything resembling a rational or intellectual pursuit. According to Luria’s greatest disciple and expositor, Chayyim Vital: The secrets of the Torah and her mysteries are not revealed to human beings by the power of their intellects, but by means of divine vitality that flows from on high, through God’s messengers and angels, or through Elijah the prophet, may his name be a blessing.1

According to Vital: There is no doubt that these matters cannot be apprehended by means of human intellect, but only through Kabbalah, from one individual to another, directly from Elijah…or directly from those souls that reveal themselves in each and every generation to those who are qualified to receive them.2

According to Luria’s recent biographer, Lawrence Fine, the Kabbalists themselves held that Kabbalistic knowledge could be attained in three ways: through (1) direct revelation via visions and divine inspiration, (2) oral transmission from master to pupil, or (3) textual exegesis.3 As Fine points out, the last of these methods had a “democratizing” effect on the Kabbalah, as the meanings discovered via textual interpretation were (at least theoretically) open to anyone. However, the Kabbalists did not

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believe that rational reflection could yield the insights that they had attained through non-rational means. Certain authorities, for example, Jacob Emden (1697-1776),4 went so far as to hold that when the Lurianic Kabbalah was committed to writing, its true meaning was lost. For Emden, “the esoteric sense of the Kabbalah alone is true, and it cannot be written in any book.”5 Nevertheless, certain amongst the Kabbalists (e.g. Azriel, Cordovero) held that Kabbalistic truths could accord with philosophical insights. In his book on Hasidism, Moshe Idel speaks of the “philosophization of Kabbalah, including Lurianic Kabbalah” in the writings of such authors as R. Abraham Kohen Herrera and R. Joseph Rofe’ del Medigo who, under the impact of medieval and Renaissance philosophy, interpreted Kabbalistic theosophy in Neoplatonic terms.6 Later Jewish thinkers, notably Shlomo Maimon, and Moses Mendelssohn held that the Kabbalah’s symbols actually obscured its underlying philosophical meaning. Mendelssohn held that the lack of philosophical terminology in ancient Hebrew prompted the Kabbalists to use metaphors and analogies which obscured the Kabbalah’s rational sense.7 Recently, Rachel Elior has argued, that the Chabad Hasidim, in their rejection of all literal interpretations of the Lurianic symbols, endeavored to provide the Kabbalah with a philosophical sense. According to Elior, these Hasidim retained “the Lurianic terminological system, although emptying it of its original meaning and replacing it with a philosophical position.”8 Elsewhere, I have argued that the early Chabad Hasidim, who were contemporaries of the German Idealists, understood the Lurianic Kabbalah in a manner that brings it very close to certain aspects of Hegelian philosophy.9 Thus, in spite of the Lurianists’ own rejection of rational and philosophical methodology, there is significant warrant within the Jewish mystical tradition for considering the Lurianic symbols and doctrines in rational, philosophical terms, and for opening a dialogue between philosophy and Kabbalistic theosophy.10 Forms of Consciousness/ Modes of Understanding In holding that Kabbalistic symbols emerge as forms of consciousness I am indebted to and in partial accord with Wolfgang Giegerich’s view that today the meanings of myths and symbols are “born out of them” as “logical” truths.11 It is important to note from the outset that for Giegerich the truth that is “born” out of myths and symbols is not an idea or articulable

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content, but rather a “logic” or form of consciousness. Giegerich, however, holds the radical view that in the process of being born as a form of consciousness or mode of understanding the symbol dies as a symbol. For Giegerich, humanity (and by this he apparently means western, “enlightened” humanity) has moved beyond the symbolic and mythical consciousness that gave rise to religion, and for this reason it is no longer possible for one to authentically live a spiritual and psychological life within the orbit of religious symbolism. Giegerich’s argument begins with an idea that is already nascent in Jung: So long as a symbol is a living thing, it is an expression for something that cannot be characterized in any other or better way. But once its meaning has been born out of it, once that expression is found which formulates the thing sought, expected or divined even better than the hitherto accepted symbol, then the symbol is dead, i.e. it possesses only an historical significance.12

Giegerich points out that for Jung “the symbol is only the unfinished embryonic form of a given meaning.” According to Giegerich, the symbol remains “unborn” until it is provided a better, non-symbolic expression. It is at this point that it dies as a symbol and is born to a “better formulation of what it is about.” With the birth of meaning out of the symbol, the symbol becomes “demythologized and desacralized,” losing its mystique. On the other hand, the symbol’s meaning is now, finally understood, not as a specific content but, rather, as a form of logic and subjectivity. Giegerich, following Hegel, understands the transition to modernity as one in which dialectical consciousness is born precisely as a result of the demythologization and desacralization of symbolic meaning. While those who have a nostalgia for myth, the sacred and traditional religion see the death of the symbol as a loss, Giegerich sees it “ultimately as a gain, a progress.” He writes “It is thus precisely the meaning’s destination to die as symbol and thereby be born out of its initial enveloped form of mere pregnancy.” However, according to Giegerich, Jung made the mistake, especially in his later years, of believing that one could return to the old symbolic (premodern, pre-consciousness) mode of existence, and Jung’s work has in fact been used to justify those who attempt to hold themselves and others enthralled within a renewed mythological/symbolic aura and mystique. For Giegerich, however, the old (unborn) symbols can only function this way

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today because “they now have the status of (spiritual) drugs used to benumb consciousness or give it its highs.”13 Those, for example, who today attempt to live within the symbol of God as the all-embracing father (or mother), have abrogated their role as modern, conscious, adults, who are responsible for their own lives and who exercise the power of reason. (Giegerich tells us that “to still preach religion in all earnest –instead of seeing, appreciating, and studying it strictly historically [is]…like squeezing an adult into a crib.)14 One need not follow Giegerich to his conclusion that the birth of modern consciousness has resulted in the death of symbols and the spiritual traditions that are founded upon them to recognize the value of his approach.15 While it is true that some symbols, for various reasons, at some point cease to stimulate spiritual experience and interpretive possibilities, and thus die, others continue to be a source of seemingly endless experiential and hermeneutic appeal; the expulsion from Eden, the exodus from Egypt, and the death of the suffering messiah, are several that come readily to mind. Giegerich’s contribution, I believe, derives from his insight that a contemporary approach to myth and symbol should neither involve a reimmersion in them qua symbols, nor simply view them as metaphors for philosophical and psychological ideas, but rather understand them as embodying entire forms of logic and consciousness which only become fully manifest over time. Giegerich’s view that mythological symbols are reborn as dialectical consciousness accords well Levi-Strauss’ view that the original purpose of myths and symbols is to reconcile oppositions and contradictions that cannot be reconciled by ordinary thought.16 Leibniz, Van Helmont and the Kabbalah The notion that Kabbalistic symbols can and have been interpreted as forms of consciousness and modes of understanding and that the Kabbalah could be (and in fact was) an impetus to modern modes of open, scientific inquiry receives support from Alison Coudert’s studies of the Kabbalah and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)17 and Francis Mercury Van Helmont (1615-1698).18 Coudert argues that Leibniz, one of the key figures of the enlightenment, was deeply influenced by the Lurianic Kabbalah, especially by the idea of Tikkun ha-Olam, the notion that human beings have the power to perfect creation and impact upon and alter the course of the world. Coudert argues that the concept of Tikkun was a very liberating idea, one that

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provided a rational/spiritual justification for science and the emerging freeinquiry of the enlightenment. According to Coudert, Van Helmont was a progressive, scientifically minded thinker, who nevertheless took a deep interest in the Kabbalah, and who in fact grounded his enlightenment mentality in his understanding of Lurianic ideas. Along with his friend and associate, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, Van Helmont translated (into Latin) and edited the two volume compendium, Cabala Denudata, which for over two centuries was the main source for knowledge of the Kabbalah outside the Jewish world. Coudert points out that Van Helmont had an intimate intellectual exchange with both Leibniz and John Locke (1632-1704) and discussed his Kabbalistic interests with each of them. Indeed, Coudert cites manuscripts which indicate that Leibniz not only discussed Kabbalah with Van Helmont, but also took dictation from him, and served as a ghost-writer for Van Helmont’s Kabbalistic work, Thoughts on Genesis. Coudert argues that Leibniz was influenced by the Kabbalah in his conception of the “monads” that he took to be the constituent elements of reality, as his monads bear a striking resemblance to the Kabbalist’s own archetypal elements, the Sefirot. Like the Kabbalists, Leibniz conceived of his own fundamental elements as sources of physical and psychic energy that have their origin in God and which are infinitely reflected in one another. Coudert further argues that Leibniz’s conception of the “best of all possible worlds” is not the naïve idea about this world that was mocked by Voltaire, but rather reflects the Lurianic view that through acts of Tikkun ha-Olam humanity has the opportunity to improve upon and perfect creation. Like Van Helmont, Leibniz maintained a strong interest in reconciling diverse religions as a means of effecting this perfection. Coudert points out that Van Helmont spent a period of five months working intensively with John Locke, and that the pair entered into an exchange of ideas and worked together on various mechanical inventions (e.g. a machine for polishing stones). All of Van Helmont’s books were in Locke’s library and Coudert argues that Locke himself could well have been influenced by Van Helmont’s progressive interpretations of Kabbalistic symbols. Today we tend to read intellectual history through categories that make a clear demarcation between science and the “occult.” However, the sharp distinction between rationalism and mysticism does not reflect the way in which thinkers like Leibniz, Van Helmont, and Isaac Newton, thought about

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themselves, and it is thus important to examine the interactions between mystical and rational thought during the early years of the enlightenment. If Coudert is correct, Van Helmont and Leibniz had already extracted modern forms of consciousness from Kabbalistic symbols in the 17th century, or in Giegerich’s terms, these symbols were at that time already on their way to being reborn as rational modes of understanding. According to Coudert, the Kabbalistic symbol of Tikkun provided the enlightenment with a religious mandate for the reform and improvement of the world, and thus served as one important impetus to modernity.19 Ein-sof and the Open Economy of Thought Today it is possible to understand each of the major symbols of the Lurianic Kabbalah as heralding new forms of consciousness that are both relevant and vital to modern (and postmodern) life and thought, and to comprehend the Lurianic system as a whole as a metaphor for human language and creativity. For example, Ein-sof, the Infinite, which for the Kabbalists is both the metaphysical ground and result of all finite existence, can today be understood as inaugurating an “open economy” of thought.20 The Infinite (Ein-sof) cannot be truly infinite if it is identified with any particular traits, system, or point of view, but rather must embody an infinitely open, and ever-expanding totality of investigation, dialogue, and interpretation. Religion, in this sense, becomes opposed to all doctrine and dogma, and is identified with an Absolute characterized by infinitely open inquiry. The idea that a religious or spiritual perspective on the world should involve an “open economy” of thought runs contrary to traditional religions’ claims to provide its adherents with the one certain pathway to truth and salvation. Nevertheless, within the Jewish tradition at least, such openness is implicit in the biblical ban against graven images, a ban against limiting the divine to any single representational form. Further, infinite openness follows from the mystical view of God in general, and the Kabbalistic view of God in particular. Mystics the world over, and the Kabbalists in particular, have affirmed that the Absolute they experience in states of mystical ecstasy and union is beyond anything that can be circumscribed, categorized or understood; such an Absolute is even distinguished from “God” by the Kabbalists, lest one think for a moment that it can be defined and limited.

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The whole point of the Kabbalist’s ‘negative theology’ is that Ein-sof is completely illimitable and indefinable. Ein-sof can be conceived of as the place where all intellectual, artistic, spiritual and ethical endeavor lead, but not a place or entity that can in any manner be said to have an end (indeed the literal meaning of Ein-sof, is “without end). The Kabbalistic notion that Tzimtzum, Ein-sof’s withdrawal and concealment from the world, is essential to its very existence, provides further symbolic foundation for the notion that ‘truth’ or the ‘divine’ can never be grasped or known with any certainty. Indeed, the notion of divine concealment assures that the thought, quest and debate about ultimates will continue ad infinitum. A God who is fully revealed is no longer a God who encourages, or even permits, thought and inquiry, and, paradoxically, is in serious danger of becoming a mere idol. An open economy of thought and experience is further rooted in the Lurianic symbols of Kellipot and Birur, symbols that form part of the broader Kabbalistic understanding of Tikkun ha-Olam, the “restoration of the world.” To see why this is the case it is necessary to inquire into the significance of the divine light entrapped in the Kellipot, the “husks” of the Other Side. We should recall that this light was originally destined to fill vessels which represent intellectual, spiritual, ethical, emotional and aesthetic values, but that with the “Breaking of the Vessels” this light, in the form of divine sparks, was captured in the husks, alienated from its divine source and rigidly held in place. We can understand this entrapment and alienation of divine light as symbolizing a certain rigidity in thought, faith, ethics, emotions and taste. In short, the Kellipot represent a rigidity or dogmatism in intellect, and a constriction in experience and behavior, what in recent philosophy has come to be known as a “closed economy” i.e. of thought, faith, emotion, etc., one that is no longer open to change in response to dialogue and experience. The symbol of the Kellipot suggests that such a dogmatic, closed economy is the source and sustenance of much that is negative and destructive in human affairs. On the other hand, the process of Birur (extraction), in which divine light is liberated from the Kellipot, and which the Kabbalists held to be necessary for Tikkun ha-Olam, produces a continual emendation of the world through an open economy of ideas, experience, action and interpretation. The form of consciousness implicit in the symbols of Ein-sof, Tzimtzum, and Kellipot, accords well with Derrida’s views on messianism. Derrida writes that a view of the messiah within which it is possible that the messiah

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can actually come, be realized and recognized in time, is a view that paradoxically negates the concept of the messiah as an ideal, a justice, and a good that we do not have, but which we expect, hope, and wait for. A messiah that actually comes and is recognized will, of necessity embody the authoritarianism and dogma of a faith that divides truth from error, and believers from infidels. Similarly, a God, who reveals his (or her) truth to a select group, who can be known in some absolute way, is a God who closes off possibilities of thought, faith, emotion and behavior, and ultimately leads one to dogmatism and idolatry. The God of the Kabbalah, a God who is infinite (Ein-sof), concealed (Tzimtzum) and continually subject to emendation (Shevirah and Tikkun), is a God who (like Derrida’s “messiah”) inaugurates a completely open economy of thought, experience, and being. Otiyot Yesod: Infinite Interpretation The Kabbalist’s understanding of language and Torah, embodied in the symbol of the Otiyot Yesod, the foundational letters of creation, gives rise to a form of consciousness which understands the world as a text subject to indefinite, if not infinite, interpretations.21 As we have seen, the Kabbalists engaged in inquiry and speculation regarding the relationship between language, mind, and the world long before the “linguistic turn” in 20th century philosophy. Various Kabbalistic and Hasidic authors held that the world is created and sustained through divine speech and writing, that an act of writing or speech is the ‘primordial point’ that brings about the possibility of both “God” and “world,” that the substance of the world is composed of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, that the name of an object is the vessel for its essence or soul, and that God is identical to the Torah. Nearly all the Kabbalists held that both scripture and the world are subject to an indefinite if not infinite variety of perspectives and interpretations. As we have seen Moshe Idel refers to R. Moses Chayyim Luzzato’s explanation of the multiplicity of Torah meanings, which are like the many nuances of the flame that emerge from a hot coal: So too is the case with the Torah that is before us, whose words and letters are like a coal…and whoever is preoccupied and busy with it enflames the coals, and from each and every letter a great flame emerges, replete with many nuances, which are the information encoded in this letter…All the letters we see in the Torah point to the twenty-two letters found on high…there are six hundred thousand interpretations

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to all the Torah, divided between the souls of the six hundred thousand [children of] Israel…This is the reason why though the Torah [as a whole] is infinite, even one of its letters is also infinite, but it is necessary to enflame it and then it will be enflamed, and so too the intellect of man.22

As we have also seen, according to R. Chayyim Vital: At every hour of the day the worlds change, and each hour is not the same as the next. If you consider the movements of the constellations and the shifts in their position, how in one moment they are different, and how someone born at a certain time will experience different things than someone born slightly beforehand (you will see) the upper worlds are unlimited in number. You have to come to some kind of intellectual middle ground because a human mind cannot understand it all. With this you'll understand how the worlds change (with) the garments of Ein-sof, and, according to these changes, the statements in Sefer ha-Zohar change.23

The Kabbalistic notion that scripture, text, and cosmos change their meaning and/or reveal ever new depths of significance in response to changing inquiries and circumstances suggests a latitude of inquiry, interpretation, and dialogue that is far greater than is typically associated with traditional religious thought. Such interpretive latitude reinforces the open economy of thought, and promises to transform our conception of religion, and God. The Unity of Opposites The Kabbalists held that Ein-sof and the Sefirot embody a unity of opposites, and that the cosmos as a whole manifests opposing and even contradictory aspects that are reconciled in God. As early as Sefer Yetzirah we learn that the nature of the Sefirot is such that “their end is imbedded in their beginning and their beginning in their end.24 Later, in the 13th century, the Kabbalist Azriel of Gerona held that the essence of the Sefirot is a “synthesis of every thing and its opposite,”25 and he stated further that Einsof itself embodies a coincidentia oppositorum between “being and nothingness”26 and “faith and unbelief.”27 The Zohar explicitly propounds the paradoxical view that just as God creates humanity, humanity can be said to create God, stating, “He who keeps the precepts of the Law and walks in God’s ways… makes Him who is above.28 Finally, the entire Lurianic theosophy is predicated on a set of equivalences and interdependencies

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between such opposites as concealment and revelation, creation and destruction, the infinite and the finite. These ideas lead to a mode of understanding which involves the complementarity and necessary interdependence of opposite and even “contradictory” ideas. Like the physicist Neils Bohr, who once declared that the opposites of deep truths are also true,29 the Kabbalah leads to a mode of thought in which contrasting, even apparently contradictory ideas in philosophy, psychology and theology can be embraced as complementary perspectives on a whole that can only be understood if one thinks from opposing starting points at once. The Kabbalists, and the Hasidim who inherited the Kabbalistic tradition, engaged in a form of dialectical thought in which apparently contrary or even contradictory assertions were each held to be windows onto truth. As we have seen, the Chabad Hasidim made the coincidence of opposites a central concept in their theology. Rabbi Dov Baer, the son of Schneur Zalman, the first Lubavitcher rebbe, held that all things contain and are revealed through their opposites.”30 Further, according to Chabad philosophy all things are concealed within the divine essence in a state of coincidentia oppositorum.31 The “coincidence of opposites” and the adoption of a logic that does not exclude the truth of formal contradictions, expands possibilities of inquiry and interpretation, and permits one to consider the complementarity of points of view that traditional religion and philosophy have regarded to be mutually exclusive. For the Kabbalists, God, the world, and the human psyche are a coincidence of opposites; each is both reality and illusion, simple and complex, male and female, hidden and revealed, nothing and all, creator and created, good and evil, etc. Further, even these descriptions contain their opposites, such that “reality” is both reality and illusion, “illusion” both illusion and reality, and so on, in coincidentia oppositorum ad infinitum! The Kabbalists go so far as to suggest that the world is an illusion, resulting from the occultation or concealment of the Infinite God. Yet for them, it is this very illusion which is yesh, existence, and is the completion and perfection of God Himself. For the Zohar, both God’s “supernal wisdom” and the “lower world” are a “manifestation of Wisdom, and a starting point of the whole.”32 According to Schneur Zalman, it depends upon one’s perspective whether the material world is real and the heavens an illusion, or the opposite:33 It is only by understanding the world and the heavens in each of these two ways simultaneously, each as existing and each

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as an illusion, and through comprehending each of these perspectives as necessary for the other, that one arrives at a genuine intuition of the whole. As we have seen, such “bilinear,” dialectical thinking, in which presumed opposites are in coincidentia oppositorum is fundamental to Kabbalistic thought. Contemporary psychologists have suggested that such thinking may also be at the core of what we commonly understand as wisdom.34 For the Kabbalists, the mystical, “higher” ranges of thought are absolutely necessary for making sense of our ordinary, “lower” ways of seeing and experiencing, and vice versa. Kabbalistic thinking is perhaps best understood in musical harmonic, or “counterpoint” terms. There is a melody line, for example, that is theistic, that exists in counterpoint with one that is atheistic; a line in which God creates humanity, in counterpoint with one in which humanity creates God; a line in which the past is the cause of all that is present and future, and one in which the future constructs both the present and the past. For the Kabbalah, a true view of the world must involve thinking two or more, seemingly incompatible thoughts at once; it is the simultaneity of these thoughts that brings about beauty, harmony (Tiferet) and truth. The widest conception of thought and the closest approach to the divine involves a series of dialectical inversions within which being and nothingness, reality and illusion, value and disvalue, etc. are unstable, alternating or “iridescent.” The absolute is not fixed, but is maximally dynamic. “Bilinear thinking” is necessary not only in matters of theology, but, in philosophy and psychology as well. Many of the concepts that puzzle us in these disciplines, e.g. mind, freedom, truth, reality, are best understood in bilinear, iridescent terms. The Kabbalistic concept of coincidentia oppositorum suggests a program for dialectical reconciliation in philosophy, theology and other fields of thought.35 This program suggests that apparently contrary or even contradictory positions in philosophy (e.g. realism and idealism, materialism and phenomenology, essentialism and nominalism, the descriptive vs. the causal theory of reference) are actually interdependent points of view, and that the various schools or paradigms in psychology (e.g. biological, behavioral, psychoanalytic, humanistic, systems) are grounded in contrasting philosophical assumptions that are themselves conceptually and

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experientially interdependent. On this view, the seemingly interminable debates on philosophical (and even certain psychological) issues reflect the deep dialectical nature of the subject matters within which they arise. Because language and (language-informed) experience bifurcates a single reality into polar oppositions between words and things, mind and matter, subjective and objective, etc. particular philosophical positions arise that seize hold of only one pole of any given opposition. We thus have materialists (who are opposed to idealism), objectivists (opposed to subjectivism), atheists (who are opposed to theism), determinists (opposed to the doctrine of free will), etc. The philosophical program suggested by the Kabbalists’ doctrine of coincidentia oppositorum is one that seeks to uncover and demonstrate the reciprocal dependencies between philosophical positions that are generally thought to be mutually exclusive. In finding such reciprocities we not only demonstrate the futility (and essential contestability) of any one-sided philosophical or theological position, but, as we saw in Chapter Six, come as close as reason will allow to the primal, undifferentiated unity that “lies behind” our dualistic conceptions. On Reason and Authority At this point I have outlined three forms of consciousness or modes of understanding that emerge from a philosophical consideration of Kabbalistic symbolism. However, a question immediately arises in connection with my interpretation of Ein-sof as an “open economy of thought and reason” that I must now address. Given my “liberal” understanding of Ein-sof, what room is there for authority or even for particularity in religious life? If God represents a completely open mind, why should we remain Jews, and if the Kabbalah leads to completely open thinking, then doesn’t this understanding of the Kabbalah undermine the very Jewish religion, which is its original home? An answer to these questions requires an appeal to the very notion of the “coincidence of opposites” that we have just examined. There is, in my view, a coincidentia oppositorum or interdependence between reason and authority in our understanding of ourselves and the world. Indeed, this very coincidentia is of paramount importance to an understanding of an open

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economy of thought as the form of consciousness that is “born” out of the symbol of Ein-sof. Reason, in the view of a number of philosophers from Hegel to Wittgenstein and Derrida, does not function in a vacuum. In fact, the notion of reason that we operate from and within is culturally and linguistically conditioned and is, to a lesser or greater extent, variable from one cultural or historical setting to another. Although there are many commonalities as well, the “logic” of Aristotle is in many ways quite different from the reasoning of the Talmud, or that of the Buddhist “logicians.” What counts as a reasonable argument is learned within a particular cultural context and is conditioned by the agreed upon rules of a particular linguistic and thought community, which exercises authority over what counts as a valid argument, inference or objection. Even if one resists, or rebels against, the rules of reasoning within one’s community, one must address, position oneself in terms of, and even initially adopt the rules one is resisting in order to make headway with one’s arguments. Further, when we reason in matters of philosophy, and particularly theology, our discourse has no content unless our reasoning occurs within, or against, a particular tradition, and the cultural, linguistic, and rational authority that it embodies. Thus reason is dependent upon tradition and authority for both its procedure and content. On the other hand, tradition and authority, especially as it is experienced and understood in our own time, is only acceptable to the extent that a given adherent assents to its principles and chooses to remain within its orbit. Any religious tradition or authority in the modern world must meet the challenges posed by competing communities of thought and discourse. Further, each tradition is inevitably beset by the potential for multiple interpretations of its principles, as well as by questions that inevitably arise (e.g. the existence of evil) for which the tradition cannot provide adequate answers. In contemporary society, traditions retain their authority only to the extent to which they can satisfy yearnings and standards that lie beyond themselves, and a tradition runs the risk of collapsing if it does not provide an experience, fulfill a need, or offer a depth of understanding that is unavailable elsewhere in the free marketplace of culture and ideas. While in the past religious authority has been able to isolate itself from external challenges, today it is becoming increasingly clear that cultural, religious and theological authority must seek a justification in a form of reason that is independent of itself. Thus tradition and authority have become dependent upon reason for their continued justification.

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There is thus a coincidence of opposites between reason and authority. One must reason within a particular language, tradition and authority, but one can only do so effectively if that tradition is open to external critique, multiple interpretations, rational justification, emendation and even demise. We cannot simply be open-minded in a vacuum, one that is free of cultural, linguistic and authoritative assumptions and constraints, but if we are not willing to take the ultimate risk that the tradition within which we think may be surpassed and face demise, then we run the reverse risk of engaging in idolatry, by restricting our consciousness and thus failing to regard the world or God as truly infinite. As we have seen, another Kabbalistic mode of understanding, based upon the symbol of the “Breaking of the Vessels” provides an opening to the possibility that Jewish mysticism will itself be radically reconstructed and even transcended. My argument in this book is that Judaism in general, and Jewish mysticism in particular, provides a context in which one can fulfill both the “reason” and “authority” that are necessary for each other’s fulfillment and completion. Ayin: “Unknowing” and the Intuition of the “Non-Dual” Ein-sof (the Kabbalist’s Absolute/Infinite) is paradoxically both everything and nothing (Ayin). It is said to be completely unknowable, ineffable and unsayable, and also to be that about which everything is said. Ein-sof, as Ayin, is precisely that which is impossible to know, as it lies behind and before the subject-object, word-thing-distinctions which make knowledge and description possible. As such, the Kabbalist’s absolute lies completely outside the realm of “thinghood,” conceptualization and comprehension and is thus clearly not the sort of thing that can or cannot be “cognized.” All experience, according to the Kabbalah, from our perception of everyday objects to our intuition of “higher worlds” is in its specificity, a construction of the human mind, and, as such, “the world” exists and has its character and definition only “from the point of view” of humankind. The discrete things that make up the world are the necessary byproducts of the Tzimtzum, the rupture between subject and object, words and things, mind and matter, that sets into motion all distinction, finitude and experience For these reasons, the appropriate mode of understanding Ein-sof involves a deconstruction or “forgetting” of conventional knowledge and indeed an “unknowing.” As we have seen, according to David ben Judah ha-

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Hasid, the epistemic act which leads to a comprehension of God is akin to forgetting rather than knowing.36 According to the Maggid of Mezritch, who succeeded the Baal Shem Tov as the leader of the nascent Hasidic movement, intuiting the divine involves a forgetting in which one returns to a preconceptual, pre-linguistic, pre-conscious state. Such “unknowing” complements our first three modes of understanding in that it frees us from the view that there must be a truth, meaning, or answer to our theological and philosophical questions, and opens us not only to bi-linear/dialectical thought, but also to the possibility that there is an unknowable “remainder” that cannot be encompassed by thinking at all. While linguistic or propositional knowledge of Ein-sof may be impossible, the Kabbalah prompts us to consider other paths of intuiting the pre-linguistic, non-dualistic condition that is referred to as Ein-sof. The Kabbalists themselves held that the most readily accessible route to such understanding is through our participation in the mitzvoth, the divine commandments that permit us to bind ourselves to the meanings and values (i.e. the Sefirotic, axiological structure) of both God and the revealed universe, and to thereby transcend our egoistic predicament. Since, in the Kabbalistic view, the Sefirotic structure is somehow inherent in Ein-sof even prior to the Tzimtzum (i.e. prior to creation), by fulfilling the mitzvoth we help to realize, and thus cleave to, the divine essence. A second route is through a mystical experience of “no-mind,” one that suspends the dualities of thought and language that give rise to the objects of mind and the world. In such mystical moments one might be said to cleave (devekut) to Ein-sof itself, the distinctionless unity that is the source and substance of all distinctions. A third route to the “pre-linguistic” is through an experience of that which is unassimilable to our forms of discourse, i.e. an experience of what Derrida refers to as the “monstrous” and Lacan speaks of as the “real,” an experience that is so jarring, so traumatic that we cannot tame it through language and accommodate ourselves to it in thought. Such an inarticulable experience may well be at the origin of creative discovery, religious conversion, and prophesy. In this work I have suggested a fourth, rational route, one that intuits the trace of the primal non-dualistic unity that is present in our dualistic, polarized world, a sort of “echo” of the linguistic “big-bang” that produced the distinctions between subject and object, word and thing, mind and matter. We intuit this trace or echo when we recognize the interconnection and

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interdependence of all things, and especially when we become aware of the coincidentia oppositorum, the interdependence and ultimate equivalence of the fundamental polarities of our experience and world-views. The tracing of the various coincidentia between mind and matter, subject and object, word and thing, free-will and determinism, to name but a few of the polarities or antinomies of human experience, undoes these polarities and provides evidence for a unified, non-dualistic condition that precedes experience and thought, thereby providing a rational—philosophical ground for the mystics’ quest for the distinctionless “One.” Tzimtzum: Concealment and Contraction The symbol of Tzimtzum suggests a form of consciousness in which “contraction,” “withdrawal” and “concealment” become major modes of apprehension, creativity and ethics. We have just seen that according to certain Kabbalists a prime means for apprehending Ein-sof is through the process of “forgetting.” Interestingly, the Lurianists held that the world itself was created through a divine concealment, in effect suggesting that God forgets himself (i.e. a certain region within God is concealed from and “forgets” itself) in order to create the world. For Luria and his followers, the cosmos as we know it is the result of a contraction, concealment or negation of the one, all-encompassing reality. The world is not a something created from nothing but rather a species of nothingness resulting from the concealment of the one true reality. The result of the divine Tzimtzum (contraction/concealment) is the illusion of difference, individuality, materiality, and freedom. Yet, from another perspective, in accord with the principle of coincidentia oppositorum, this “illusion” is most “real” and the foundation of the world and the completion of God Himself. Tzimtzum is the foundation for all distinction, difference, separateness and finitude. It is both achieved through, and gives rise to language, and (as we have seen) it is the origin of the distinction between words and things. Tzimtzum is also the source of estrangement, exile and alienation.37 The Lurianists held that as a result of the Tzimtzum our world is both the full spelling out and differentiation of the holy potential within Ein-sof, and an illusory estrangement from the absolute, non-dual “one,” As such, the

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Kabbalists placed supreme value on the differentiation and expression of all aspects of the finite world, while at the same time recognizing and seeking to establish a unity with the divine that overcomes this differentiation. In the end, the Kabbalists seek a unity and singularity of purpose that encompasses and yet preserves difference. According to Chayyim Vital: Everything was created for the purpose of the Highest One, but all do not suckle in the same way, nor are all the improvements (tikkunim) the same. Galbanum (an ingredient in incense, which by itself has a foul odor), for example, improves the incense in ways that even frankincense cannot. That is why it is necessary for there to be good, bad, and in-between in all these worlds and why there are endless variations in all of them.38

Similarly, as we have seen, according to the Chabad thinker, Rabbi Aaron ha-Levi “...the essence of His intention is that that all realities and their levels be revealed in actuality, each detail in itself, and that they nevertheless be unified and joined in their value.”39 Such a celebration of unity in diversity, fully understood, includes a deep respect for differences in ethnicity, culture, gender, species, etc. with a concomitant recognition that each finite entity, in its particularity, is an essential manifestation of a unified, singular whole. Our respect for the other’s difference is again expressed through a self-contraction. In imitatio dei, we are enjoined to contract ourselves before others so that they (like creation itself) can blossom and fulfill their own being and potential. Indeed, it is in this manner that we fulfill the commandment of Leviticus 19:2: “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy." According to the Kabbalistic/Hasidic tradition, we are further enjoined to contract ourselves before God (bittul ha yesh, “self-nullification”) as the means through which we can apprehend and cleave to Him. The Shattering of All Horizons The symbol Shevirat ha-Kelim, the “Breaking of the Vessels” suggests a mode of consciousness in which each of our ideas, emotions, systems and structures are continually shattered in the face of that which they cannot adequately contain. The Kabbalists thus implore us to recognize the value of deconstruction (and reconstruction) in a continual unraveling and revision of our concepts of self, world and God. The symbols of Shevirah (rupture) and

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Tikkun (emendation restoration) are said by the Lurianists to apply to all things, events, and times. The dynamic implicit in these symbols is one in which humanity, the world, and even God himself are in a continual state of revision. The Kabbalists held that such revision is a defining characteristic of Ein-sof itself, and that the very idea of Ein-sof is such that the divine can only be realized in a ruptured world that is emended and restored through the ethical, aesthetic, spiritual and intellectual acts of humankind. The dialectic of rupture/emendation complements the notions of divine infinity, unknowability, contraction and “infinite interpretation,” and further reinforces a conception of theology that is in stark contrast with religious dogma. There can, of course, be no dogma in a system of thought that by its own principles must continually be subject to revision and transcendence. The Breaking of the Vessels thus suggests that in philosophy and theology we must produce a system that is not a system. The Kabbalists recognized the transitory nature of all things, including their own conceptions of the Torah, the world, humankind and God, yet they were unwilling to abandon the ideal of a comprehensive account of reality and humanity’s role within it. While the Lurianic Kabbalists, for example, regarded the theosophical dynamic of Ein-sof (the Infinite), Tzimtzum (contraction), Sefirot (value archetypes), Shevirah (rupture) and Tikkun (emendation/restoration) as a synoptic system capable of accounting for creation and humanity’s destiny, the very nature of their system was such that it remained open to its own deconstruction and transformation. Such a transformation occurred with the psychologization of the Lurianic Kabbalah in Hasidism in the 18th and 19th century. The current work, by placing the Kabbalah in dialogue with postmodernism, is written in the spirit of yet another such transformation The Kabbalistic “system” (like the world itself) has its origin and support in a continually shifting series of foundations. There is not one anchoring point or foundation for metaphysics, epistemology and theology, but a whole series of anchors, each of which (depending upon one’s point of view) are base or superstructure, cause or effect. The notion that the world or our knowledge about it has a single foundation and support is grounded in a linear form of thinking that is completely alien to the dialectics of Kabbalistic and Hasidic thought. Further, the very notion that the world could have its foundation in fixed structural elements goes against the grain of Kabbalistic thought. This is because, for the Kabbalists, the structural elements of the world, the Sefirot and the Otiyot Yesod (foundational letters)

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are themselves in constant transition, are comprehensible only from a series of perspectives, and are continually breaking apart, being reassembled, and re-signified through the cognitive, ethical and spiritual activities of humanity. Ein-sof itself encompasses these multiple foundations, and it is a grave error to identify Ein-sof as the “foundation of the world” in ordinary, linear terms. Indeed, the mind has a tendency to slip back into linear thinking as a means of securing a foundation for its own meaning and existence, and we are thereby inclined to say such things as “the whole world rests on a foundation in God.” However, to do so violates the very form of consciousness that provides us with the best hope of intuiting Ein-sof or “God” to begin with. The doctrine of Shevirat ha-Kelim (the Breaking of the Vessels) has numerous philosophical and psychological implications. The Kabbalists held that the Shevirah or “breakage” occurs in all things at all times, and that the idea of “broken structures” is relevant not only to the cosmos as a whole but to the lives of individual men and women. The Shevirah is the driving force of an indefinitely extended Kabbalistic dialectic and is, as we have seen, an important analog and precursor to contemporary deconstruction. Indeed the dialectic described in the Lurianic Kabbalah—of emanation (Sefirot), deconstruction (Shevirah) and restoration (Tikkun)—is reflected in several of the models that 20th century philosophers have utilized in comprehending history, advances in sciences, human psychological development, transitions in the arts, and individual psychodynamics.40 The symbol of Shevirat ha-kelim further suggests a mode of understanding that is decidedly against all “modes” and “methods.” There is much in Kabbalistic texts that pushes the bounds of sense and indeed appears to the modern reader as nonsensical. However, a Kabbalistic view suggests that theological, philosophical and psychological inquiry cannot always proceed according to a prescribed plan or method, governed by strict rules of sense and rationality. Indeed, it is arguable that the purpose of these pursuits is not to clearly demarcate a boundary between sense and nonsense, but rather to push the bounds of sense by violating the so-called rules of significant discourse. This is accomplished through the introduction of new metaphors and forms of expression, which open up new horizons of experience. In this view, the purpose of Kabbalistic inquiry is not to arrive at ultimate knowledge, but rather to expand experiential and interpretive possibilities. In the process, the clear boundaries of sense are shattered and new, creative modes of thought appear.

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The symbol of the Sefirot suggests a form of consciousness in which all experience involves an intuition of value. For the Kabbalists, who hold that the Sefirot are the “elementary particles” of creation, the world is essentially a world of meaning and values rather than of matter and things. Each individual, each soul, and indeed each moment is comprised of a unique constellation of value and significance. However, because of a rupture and alienation resulting from the Shevirah, and which is inherent in the very nature of experience and language, the world as we know and experience it (what the Kabbalists refer to as the world of Assiyah or “Action”) is comprised of broken, constricted and obscured values that must be liberated, repaired and restored. The process of restoration (Tikkun ha-Olam), which consists of the spiritual, intellectual, creative and ethical acts of humankind, restores the broken vessels and thereby (paradoxically) constitutes these very values. This is because, for the Kabbalists, it is only in a broken world in need of restoration and repair, that acts of value, i.e. wisdom, knowledge, kindness, compassion, etc. can have any real significance, and thus only in a world where these values are broken that they have the chance to be actualized. The entire Kabbalistic system, beginning with Ein-sof (the Infinite) and moving through, Ayin (Nothingness), Tzimtzum (Contraction/Concealment), Sefirot (Archetypes), Shevirah (Rupture) and Tikkun can also be understood as a cartography of values, a catalog or road map to the meaning and value of both life and the world. Each point along the way of the Lurianic system (and here I am including not only the Sefirot, but each of the Lurianic symbols) define values, which taken together comprise the “Good,” and the Absolute (Ein-sof). The Kabbalah thus provides us with an axiological system that encompasses ethics, aesthetics, spirituality, intellect, wisdom, and all other forms of meaning and value.41 Tikkun: Restoration and Redemption For Luria and his followers every act and every encounter that an individual has in life is an opportunity for Tikkun, the repair and restoration

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of the world; and all experience must be understood in the context of this opportunity. The Hasidim developed this theme in their view that there is a spark of divinity in all things, a spark that is at once the true reality of the things it informs, and an exiled aspect of the light of Ein-sof. The purpose of human existence is for the individual to raise (highlight, understand, develop) these divine sparks, both within him/herself and the objects he/she encounters in the world. An individual, as he or she proceeds through life, encounters objects, people and events that are uniquely suited to aid him/her in raising the sparks within his/her own soul. Conversely, each encounter provides the individual a unique opportunity to raise the sparks in those people, things and events, which he/she encounters on life’s path. The events in an individual’s life constitute the unique opportunities for Tikkun for that individual, defining that individual’s potential identity in the process. For the Jewish mystics, the holy sparks inherent in all things derive from the ten Sefirot, each of which is said to instantiate a divine value. Amongst these are the values of wisdom, understanding, loving-kindness, beauty, glory, etc. Thus, the processes of Tikkun ha-Olam and the raising of the sparks amount to the realization of intellectual, spiritual, and ethical values in each of one’s encounters. The realization of these values not only constitutes the raison d‘etre and redemption of the world, and the meaning of an individual’s life, but is also, on the Lurianic view, the perfection of Einsof itself. The contemporary Kabbalist, Adin Steinsaltz, has said that the world we live in is the worst of all possible worlds in which there is yet hope, and that, paradoxically, such a world is the best of all possible worlds. This is because, according to Steinsaltz, it is only a world on the brink of disaster and in need of radical repair that can lead humankind to maximize the spiritual, ethical, aesthetic and intellectual acts that bring about the world’s redemption, and moreover, realize the very elements of the cosmos itself. Our world is constructed from the shards of broken and displaced values: wisdom, knowledge, love, justice, beauty, etc. that were the original elements of an ideal world that is forever lost. It is for this reason, according to Chayyim Vital, that our world is for the most part evil. In the view of Luria and Vital, it is the charge of humanity to reassemble and reconstruct the broken shards into a new, redeemed world. Each human act, event and encounter either facilitates or hinders this repair. According to the Lurianists, each of the

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Kellipot contains within itself an entrapped and alienated spark of divine light. As such, another way of understanding the Kabbalist’s theory of worldredemption is that all being is in exile from itself and that overcoming this exile and alienation is the fundamental task of humankind via Tikkun haOlam.42 Paradoxically, this goal of redemption is not achieved through anything resembling a final assumption or realization of values; rather it arises only when one fully enters into the open economy of thought, infinite interpretive possibilities, and openness to deconstruction, emendation, and change that is characteristic of the earlier moments of the Kabbalistic dialectic. “Kabbalah Consciousness” What, then, is “Kabbalah Consciousness” (if we can use a phrase that is accurate but unfortunately “new age” in its connotation)? Kabbalah consciousness simultaneously involves two phases. The first is informed by an open economy of thought, an openness to multiple if not infinite interpretation, “bilinear thinking,” an “unknowing” intuition of non-duality, contraction as a means of knowing and creating, and the shattering of dogma. The second phase is informed by an intention to highlight, actualize, promote, restore and emend values in the world. The first phase of this consciousness is largely deconstructive, though it paves the way for the second, reconstructive, axiological phase. This second, reconstructive phase, would be premature, partial, rigid and ultimately pernicious, were it to proceed on a non-deconstructive foundation of unilinear thinking, fixed consciousness and dogmatic belief. Indeed, it is only by virtue of the first, deconstructive phase of the Kabbalah that the second, redemptive phase can be achieved at all, as the very values that the Sefirot and Tikkun announce and establish (wisdom, knowledge, understanding, kindness, judgment, compassion, etc.), are only fully actualized when one adopts the forms of consciousness of “Phase I”. Only an open-minded, contracted (nonimposing), bilinear, and non-dogmatic form of consciousness can give rise to the wisdom, understanding, knowledge of Tikkun ha-Olam and be genuinely open to an “other” (whether this be another soul or the world at large) in a way that will lead to a kindness, compassion, etc. that does not place a constricting demand on the other’s being.

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Understood in this way Kabbalah Consciousness establishes a path that leads not only to a theoretical understanding of self, God, and world, but opens one’s potential to engage in the world’s restoration, emendation, and redemption. The consciousness I am describing is equally applicable to philosophy, theology, ethics, science, and psychology, and forms the basis for a genuinely scientific, spiritual and therapeutic attitude and world-view. It is a consciousness that allows “all realities and their levels [to] be revealed in actuality,” and results in their being “unified and joined in their value.” 43 The Lurianic Metaphors, Creativity and the Structure of Language As we have seen, the Kabbalists held that the creative process is embodied in the progression of the Sefirot. It should therefore come as no surprise that in the Lurianic Kabbalah, which from one perspective is a theosophical account of the world’s creation, from a another perspective provides a foundation for a theory of human language and creativity. By explicating how the symbolic matrix of the Lurianic Kabbalah accounts for both human creativity and language, we can both gain insight into human psychology and deepen our understanding of the Kabbalah itself—its capacity to reveal the hidden nature of the world and God.44 We will see that each of the forms of consciousness and modes of understanding derived from the Kabbalists’ symbols are operative during the creative process, and, more fundamentally, present within each and every act of writing and speech. To understand this it will be helpful to restate the Lurianic myth in purely abstract terms: (1) A primal nothing/being, energy or “Absolute” (Ayin/Ein-sof) (2) initiates a contraction or self-negation (Tzimtzum), (3) which gives rise to an imagined and alienated realm (ha-Olamot), (4) within which a created, personal subject arises (Adam Kadmon). (5) This subject encompasses basic structures (Sefirot), (6) which are inherently unstable, leading to their being displaced and deconstructed (Shevirat ha-kelim).

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(7) This leads to a further alienation of the primal energy from its source (kellipot, Sitra Achra), (8) and a rending apart of opposites, resulting in the antinomies and perplexities of the world. (9) As a result of spiritual, intellectual, and psychological acts (birur), (10) the ideas and values of the world are restored in a manner that enables them to structure and contain the primal energy in a more complete and spiritually fulfilling manner (Tikkun ha-Olam). The Nature of the Creative Process We are now in a position to understand how the Lurianic theosophy is both a theory of human as well as divine creativity. To begin, just as Ayin, nothingness, expresses the character of Ein-sof prior to creation, nothingness characterizes the human subject in the initial moment of creativity. In this moment, the psyche is Ayin, empty or ignorant, experiencing a lack that signals the desire for creative work. At such an instant one stands before an infinite plenum of possibility, one that is analogous to the emptiness/fullness which the Kabbalists equate with Ein-sof, the infinite God. As we have seen, the Zohar suggests that there is indeed a connection between nothingness (Ayin), infinite possibility (Ein-sof), desire (ratzon) and the primal will (the Sefirah Keter). Thus, prior to creating, one experiences a lack (an Ayin or void) and a desire which engenders a will to generate and fulfill. However, the first act in the creative process is paradoxically to restrict one’s field, i.e. to limit one’s creative aspiration or range of inquiry, to narrow the possibilities, and focus on a limited task, in much the same way that, in creating and revealing itself to a world, Ein-sof performs an act of Tzimtzum, contraction, limitation and concealment of its own infinite potential. Having constricted one’s field in a human act of Tzimtzum, one has an initial flash of insight (analogous to the Or Ein-sof—the infinite light— bursting forth from the Primordial Man), and selects the values or tools for one’s inquiry. In expressing one’s initial insight and then creating an initial “draft” one enters a positive moment in the creative process, just as Ein-sof enters a positive creative moment by emanating the Sefirot in the “World of

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Points.” However, as we have seen, the Sefirot in this world are fragile, disjoint and unstable, and while they are meant to serve as the vessels for containing the divine light they must first undergo a processes of rupture and emendation before they can fulfill their role. Like the Sefirot, one’s initial “draft” is invariably inadequate for expressing or containing the subject matter of one’s creation. There is thus a partial shattering of one’s hypothesis, idea, or creation, in much the same manner as many of the original Sefirot were shattered with the “Breaking of the Vessels” (Shevirat ha-Kelim). The result of this shattering is that the energy or notions produced by one’s initial efforts are partially obscured and lost to one’s endeavor or inquiry, in a manner analogous to the entrapment of the sparks (netzotzim) by the shards of the broken vessels which form the “husks” or Kellipot that obscure the divine creative light. Just as humanity is enjoined to extract (Birur) sparks of divine light from the “husks,” the individual faced with the failure of his initial creative efforts must proceed to both recover what remains of his creative insight and reorganize his work or inquiry in a manner that is more suitable to the project at hand. This latter process is perfectly analogous to the Lurianic act of Tikkun, in which the lights recovered from the husks are emended and reorganized as restored Sefirot and Partzufim (divine visages) of the World of Tikkun, and the process of creation is finally complete. In Kabbalistic terms, the completed work becomes one piece in the overall re-creation and restoration of the world. However, there is no real end, as the entire process repeats itself ad infinitum. Along the way there is a dialectical progression in which an initial lack or creative urge (Ayin) surveys a field of infinite possibility (Ein-sof), constricts and focuses itself (Tzimtzum), posits an initial hypothesis or creative effort (Sefirot), which proves inadequate to its subject matter and breaks apart (Shevirah), only to be recovered and revised (Tikkun). In the process ideas that are initially clearly defined, are torn asunder, and come to include that which was originally thought to contradict them or lie outside their scope. Language, the Vehicle of Creation and the Substance of the World The Lurianic metaphors are not exclusively, or even primarily, linguistic. However, the Jewish tradition in general, and the Kabbalistic tradition in particular, understood divine creativity in linguistic terms, and both the early

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and later commentators on Luria’s system provided linguistic interpretations of the Lurianic symbols. As we have seen, Schneur Zalman of Lyadi, the first Lubavitcher rebbe, proffered a linguistic account of the Tzimtzum, the divine act through which the infinite G-d, Ein-sof, conceals and contracts itself into a world. According to Schneur Zalman, in Tzimtzum, Ein-sof contracts and invests itself in the combinations of letters that comprise the “ten utterances of creation,”45 i.e. the phrases in the book of Genesis in which the world is described as having been created by divine speech. According to Schneur Zalman, the Tzimtzum operates through the letters’ “combinations of combinations, by substitutions and transpositions of the letters themselves and their numerical values and equivalents.”46 For the Alter Rebbe each substitution and transposition of words and letters involves a contraction and concealment of the divine light and life. According to Schneur Zalman, the Sefirot or “vessels," which contain the divine light are the five “final” letters in Hebrew, i.e. the letters whose “roots” always terminate a word, and which cannot be followed by any other letters.47 Luria’s interpreters also elaborated a second theosophical symbol, Shevirat ha-Kelim, the Breaking of the Vessels, in linguistic terms. As put by Moses Chayyim Luzzato all the stages of extended Light are also represented by combination of letters. These are the functioning lights from which everything comes into being. Since they were unable to endure the abundance of Light, the combination of letters became disarranged and were severed from each other. They were thus rendered powerless to act and to govern. This is what is meant by their ‘shattering’.48

In Luzzato’s view the Breaking of the Vessels is a shattering or disruption of linguistic coherence and meaning. The reverse or correction of this process, Tikkun ha-Olam, the Restoration of the World, involves a re-creation of meaning and significance. According to Luria’s student and early expositor, Chayyim Vital, the restored world of Tikkun will be a world filled with meaning and significance in which the lights that constitute the reconstructed Sefirot of Tikkun, are emanated as phonemes and letters pouring forth from the mouth of Adam Kadmon.49 Vital emphasizes that these letters/lights are bound together in significance by being emanated through a "single orifice, 50 for as the letters rush out of the mouth of Adam Kadmon they strike and bump into one another, fusing together and giving birth to the restored vessels. Vital tells us

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“each letter, as we know, is a dead or meaningless entity, but you put them all together and there is light and significance.”51 For Vital the world prior to tikkun (the World of Points) is a formless and essentially meaningless realm in which the primordial letters are completely separated from one another. It is only after tikkun that they are united in significant discourse. Thus the process of tikkun is one through which humanity renders the world meaningful.52 The Lurianic Theosophy as a Model of Linguistic Meaning We have seen how the Lurianic “myth” can be understood as a model of human creativity.53 Having demonstrated that at least some Kabbalists understood the Lurianic theosophy in linguistic terms, we are now in a position to explore the idea that the Lurianic dynamic is echoed in every act of language, and that it indeed reflects the very structure of writing and speech. I will argue that each time we write or speak we, in effect, set the Lurianic dynamic in motion. In the moment just prior to speech or writing, we have said or written nothing, yet the whole universe of discourse is potentially before us. This “moment” is aptly symbolized in the Lurianic equation of Ayin (nothing) with Ein-sof (the infinite). A person takes up a pen and is about to write, or takes a breath and is about to speak. In that moment it is possible for him or her to write or say virtually anything. Recall Sefer Yetzirah’s dictum that the permutations of primordial letters potentially constitute all that is or could be: “Twenty-two foundation letters: He engraved them, He carved them, He permuted them, He weighed them, He transformed them, and with them, He depicted all that was formed and all that would be formed.”54 A person about to speak or write has before him each of the infinite permutations of primordial sounds or letters as possibilities for discourse. Imagine, for a moment, that we are approached by a complete stranger and we intuit that he or she is about to open his/her mouth in speech. Most likely he/she will utter something routine and predictable, asking us for the time or for the directions to a nearby location. But just possibly he may utter something completely novel, something of poetic beauty or great philosophical moment; he may well say something that has perhaps never been said by anyone before in the history of the universe (he may tell us, for

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example, that “the Jew’s are the acorns of Shakespeare’s oaks”) and say this in any of a number of the world’s languages. He may say something completely nonsensical—stringing phonemes together that (presently) have no sense in any language. When we think about it for a moment we realize that an individual about to speak has before him or her an infinity of great magnitude. The number of sentences, paragraphs and discourses that can be constructed in English, indeed in any language, has to be amongst the largest of infinities, as such a linguistic infinity would ipso facto make reference to and be descriptive of all states, numbers, conditions, interpretations, etc. that could exist in any other infinity.55 To take one example, a mere numerical infinity is obviously expressible using just a small subset of the propositions available to any English speaker, i.e. those propositions that describe numbers. Indeed the possibilities of linguistic expression may well be coextensive with the entirety of all existing and imaginable states of affairs and their interpretations. Now there are certainly states of affairs, e.g. in worlds in other galaxies, that no one has ever perceived or understood; but at least in principle these could be described in language. Putting aside for the moment the question of whether there are states of affairs that are completely inexpressible in language, it is clear that a person who is about to speak or a writer who is about to write finds him or herself on the threshold of an infinity of such immense magnitude that one might be tempted to say that he or she is on the threshold of the Absolute, in a manner that is analogous to the position of God “prior” to his uttering the words (the so-called “ten utterances of creation) that gave rise to the world. The speaker on the threshold of speech has thus far uttered nothing, yet he or she has before him/her the possibility of all things. 56 In that moment he participates in the dialectic of nothingness and infinity that characterizes Ein-sof, the Kabbalists’ infinite godhead.57 Once speech or writing has begun, a selection is made, a specific route is taken, untold possibilities are excluded and a limited idea begins to take form. In this act, as Schneur Zalman suggests, we have a perfectly human parallel to the divine Tzimtzum or contraction. Indeed, Tzimtzum operates throughout the sentence, progressively contracting and specifying its significance, each word excluding whole realms of potential meaning until the period, the punctuation that marks the (temporary) end to the Tzimtzum, specifies (as much as possible) the expression’s content. Each word, and

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particularly each mark of punctuation, serves as a vessel for containing and limiting a sentence or other meaningful utterance. Recall that for Luria, the first product of the divine Tzimtzum is Adam Kadmon, the Primordial Man. With this idea, Luria signals the fact that the contraction of the divine can only specify meaning for a knowing human subject. I will have more to say about the role of language in the emergence of the human subject in a moment; but here I want only to point out that it is with speech and writing, and the consequent expression of a point of view, that the human subject emerges, a subject who asserts a proposition, asks a question, issues a command, etc. Just as a-human-subject-in–general (Adam Kadmon) emerges with the divine Tzimtzum, a particular human subject emerges in the process of speaking and writing. As a linguistic expression is completed, a specific content, idea and value is asserted, questioned, commanded etc. Such assertions, questions, or commands obviously take the form of audible phonemes or letters of written language.58 This phase in the process of speech or writing is analogous to the emergence of the Sefirot in the Lurianic theosophy. The Sefirot are, in effect, the content of God’s divine speech and writing. Here we should recall that the Kabbalists not only regarded the Sefirot to be the content or elements of all creation, but typically followed Sefer Yetzirah in drawing an equivalence between the Sefirot and the 22 foundational letters. Sefer Yetzirah had suggested that the very term Sefirah is related to root words connected with language: books (Sepharim), text (Sepher), and story (Sippur).59 Vital held there to be two basic metaphors for the description of celestial events, the form of the human body (which he took to be the equivalent of the Sefirot embodied in the Primordial Man) and the shape of written letters.60 For Vital, whatever can be described in terms of the Sefirot and Adam Kadmon can also be described in terms of the shapes of the Hebrew letters that comprise the divine name. Vital states: “All ten Sefirot, including each and every single world, when considered as a whole, are like an aspect of a single Divine Name, YHVH.”61 We can say that Kabbalistically, in positing a specific thought content, value or communication, a linguistic expression passes from the negative stage of contraction embodied in the Tzimtzum into the positive linguistic stage of the Sefirot and Otiyot Yesod. Both the foundational letters and the Sefirot comprise what is actually written or said, the words on paper or the speech embodied in sound. Indeed, the Kabbalists held that the progression of the Sefirot represented the development of thought and speech in the divine and human mind.

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According to their view, Keter (the highest Sefirah, which they equated with Ayin, nothingness) represents the will or desire, and Chochmah, the concealed representation or thought of that desire. The third Sefirah, Binah is an internal, inaudible voice, which becomes audible speech only with the sixth Sefirah. Tiferet:62 As put by the Zohar: “If you examine the levels (Sefirot) [you will see] that it is Thought, Understanding, Voice and Speech, and all is one, and Thought is the beginning of all... actual thought connected with Ayin (Keter, will).” 63 However, what is said cannot be completely delimited, circumscribed or understood; it splinters into an indefinite variety of ambiguities, passes over into its opposites, is displaced and found to be incomplete. This is apparent from the ambiguities, misunderstandings, deceits, and multiple interpretations that are ubiquitous in language. Here we have a finite linguistic analog to the next phase in the Lurianic theosophy, the failure of the Sefirotic vessels to contain the full measure of divine light, and the resultant Breaking of the Vessels (Shevirat ha-Kelim), the displacement and shattering of the Sefirot, and the dispersal of their broken shards throughout the worlds. A linguistic expression is understood differently by each of its listeners and is often multivalent and ambiguous even for the speaker or writer him/herself, who finds both that his/her idea cannot be fully specified or contained by letters and or sounds, and that these same letters and sounds, convey far more than he or she originally (consciously) intended to say. This ambiguity, or “sliding of the signifier,” is in effect the rupture and thus opening of the linguistic expression to that which is outside itself. Even before it is completed, the expression breaks asunder and becomes alienated in each of the subjects who hear or read it, in much the same manner as the shattered sparks from Adam Kadmon and the Sefirot become alienated in husks (Kellipot) and come to be embodied in individual souls. This rupture, in which communication between subjects is limited or blocked altogether, is symbolized in the Lurianic theosophy by the turning of the masculine and feminine aspects of the cosmos (the Partzufim), from a face to face (panim el panim) to a back to back (acher v’ acher) position, a turning which is said to occur incident to the Breaking of the Vessels. While such a radical rupture may not be the fate of all, or even the majority of, communications, there is always a threat of failed communication, miscommunication, and overcommunication, as language overflows and “breaks the vessels” of letters and speech within which it was originally contained. As Derrida has insisted,

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this potential for rupture is actually part of the very possibility of language itself. The meaning of a sentence, which was constricted and delimited in an act of articulation and punctuation (Tzimtzum) must now be restored and emended through acts of interpretation which actually complete the sentence’s meaning, much as humanity’s tikkun is said to complete the creation that was initiated by Ein-sof. It is such acts of interpretation that restore communication, and, in Lurianic terms, result in the re-turning of the conjugal “face to face” relations between masculine and feminine divine aspects, the Partzufim. The ambiguity and temporary loss of significance that is potentially immanent in all communication is disambiguated and recovered by a reader or listener, who restores, but also restructures and emends the communication via interpretation. However, the possibility of multiple interpretations creates an experience of significance that actually reverses the limiting process (Tzimtzum) through which the linguistic expression was initially created. In this manner the reader or listener performs an act of Tikkun, which re-expands the original contracted meaning, yielding a myriad of possibilities and associations, potentially connecting the expression to an entire language and to the potentially infinite plenum of meaning (Ein-sof) with which the speaker began. There is thus in language a coincidentia oppositorum between the infinite and the finite, with the infinite becoming finite only to return to a new, more fully actualized, infinitude. The Kabbalists were acutely aware of the nearly limitless expansion of significance that is potentiated through acts of understanding and interpretation.64 Azulai (1570- 1643), for example, held that each time an individual reads a given verse of Torah the combination of its linguistic elements change in response to the call of the moment.65 As we have seen, the Kabbalists adopted from the Midrash the idea that every passage, phrase, and letter in the Torah has 70 aspects or faces, corresponding to the 70 nations that were said to inhabit the world, a number which the Zohar regards as symbolizing the inexhaustibility of divine meaning,66 and the Safedian Kabbalists went so far as to hold that there are aspects of meaning to the Torah corresponding to the number of “primordial souls” that are present in each generation.67 Certain Kabbalists even held that the Torah itself was originally given as an incoherent scramble of letters and that these letters rearranged themselves in response to historical events. The Lurianic Kabbalist, Israel Sarug, held that the Torah manifests itself in different ways

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in different levels of spiritual and material existence, and that at the highest level (the world of “Atziluth”) it exists as all possible combinations of Hebrew letters. In this way the Torah is said to correspond to the set of all possible conceptual, and linguistic worlds68 and, thus, to the limitless possibilities inherent in human writing and speech. 69 Expanding this conception of the Torah, to the whole of language, we might say that as a linguistic expression is understood and interpreted it potentially breaks asunder into a myriad of interpretive possibilities but ultimately (re)establishes itself within the infinite context of human language and becomes a part of the “great human conversation,” ultimately merging with the infinite possibilities of language itself. We can now see how the writing or utterance of a single sentence traverses the Kabbalistic dynamic of Ayin, Ein-sof, Tzimtzum, Adam Kadmon, Sefirot, Shevirah and Tikkun. In short we can understand a linguistic expression as being structured by “moments” of emptiness or lack (Ayin), infinite possibility (Ein-sof), focus and contraction (Tzimtzum), the emergence of a subject or point of view (Adam Kadmon), the positing of an initial idea and/or value (Sefirot, Otiyot Yesod), rupture, dispersal and alienation of significance (Shevirah, Kellipot), restoration, reinterpretation (tikkun) and, ultimately, infinite expansion (return to Ein-sof). Each time we write or speak we have the potential to bring into play the entire process of world creation. Put another way, we might say that the Lurianic “basic metaphor,” the dynamic expressed by the Lurianic myths, is not only descriptive of cosmic creation, but is coiled up and contained in the smallest units of significance that are uttered by a speaking human subject. The Emergence of the “Linguistic Subject” Our analysis, however, is not yet complete; we need to say something more about the emergence of the human subject in the context of our Lurianic model of language. Where precisely is the human subject in the dynamic we have just described, how does it evolve, and how is that subject accounted for in the Lurianic myth? After all, sentences don’t utter themselves; there is always a subject that is connected to them, either as speaker or listener, writer or reader. Without such subjects, the letters or sounds that constitute a sentence would be dead marks on a page or meaningless vibrations in the air.70 This is a question of profound

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significance, one which, as we will see momentarily can be answered in part, through an analysis of the emergence of the linguistic/psychological subject in the context of the Lurianic metaphors. The Kabbalists concerned themselves with the origin of the subject in their consideration of the development of God’s “I”. For example, during the 13th century there emerged among many Kabbalists, an account of how the Sefirot progressively reveal the identity of God.71 This theory was based on an esoteric reading of the first words of the book of Genesis: Bereshit bara Elohim (In the beginning God created...) which were interpreted to make mystical reference to the Infinite’s creation of His own subjectivity, via the transformation from the nothingness (Ayin) of the first Sefirah, Keter, to the individuated selfhood (Ani, or “I”) of the final Sefirah, Malchut. The explanation involves an analysis of the emergence of a grammatically hidden subject (in Hebrew the subject of a verb is often hidden or understood in the conjugation of the verb itself) and the emergence of the divine “I” ( “ANI” ) through a rearrangement of the letters in the Hebrew root for nothingness “AIN.”72 However, without resorting to this kind of esotericism, we can readily see how the Lurianic scheme can account for emergence of a human subject in the utterances of language: (1) For the Kabbalists, the primal subject, Einsof, is Ayin, nothingness. Human subjectivity, because of its capacity to alter its perspective and focus itself on any and all things, is, unlike all other beings (which have determinate identities), no-thing. As “no-thing,” the subject is nothing in-itself, yet free to posit and desire anything. In the moment before speech, the human subject is both Ayin and everything, not yet individuated or defined, yet open to infinite possibilities. This undefined subject is purely “transcendental,” meaning that it is not (yet) yours, mine or that of any specific individual, but is rather subjectivity per se. (2) However, with the first breath of speech, and the contraction of infinite possibility into an arena of focused interest, a primordial subject emerges, symbolized in the Primordial Man, Adam Kadmon, who at this stage encompasses all humanity, but who carries little, if any, mark of individuality. (3) It is only with the contraction of possibility via the Tzimtzum, and emergence of specific thoughts and values, i.e. when we hear what a specific man or woman has to say, that an individual ego emerges. This subject, which corresponds in Lurianic theosophy to the stage of the Sefirot prior to their having been displaced and shattered, is a superficial, uncomplicated ego; one that has yet

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to be broken or misunderstood. As we have seen, such a simple subject or ego cannot endure, as it is immediately destined to be alienated from its own words. In this moment we have arrived at the stage of the “broken subject,” which corresponds to the Lurianic Shevirah, or “Breaking of the Vessels.” What was once a straightforward communication is now broken into and obscured by (mis)understandings in the minds of other subjects, as well as (in what might actually amount to the same thing73) in the individual’s unconscious. (5) An “unconscious subject,” emerges, corresponding to the Lurianic stages of Sitra Achra (the “Other side’) and the Kellipot (the “husks”), the stage in which the divine light is entrapped and obscured by the shards of the broken Sefirotic vessels. (6) It is only when one’s words become a part of a dialogue with others, and one’s meanings are restored, emended and expanded both for others and oneself that a more comprehensive, engaged, creative and conscious subject emerges. This stage corresponds to the Lurianic process of Birur (extraction of the divine sparks from the husks), and the reconstruction of the Sefirot in the World of Tikkun. With the expansion of one’s consciousness afforded by a fuller comprehension of the multiple significance of one’s words, we are again afforded a glimpse into the infinite, and the opportunity to transcend an individual point of view in favor of a perspective based in a wider humanity and God. (7) The conscious, manifold subject thus returns to the infinitude of Ein-sof and the no-thingness (freedom) of Ayin, but in the process, after having said something significant, the individual has now traversed a portion of the world, raised a spark, and completed a piece of creation.

Notes

Introduction 1. See, especially, S. Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors: Jewish Mystical Themes in Ancient and Modern Thought. Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson, 2000, Chs. 6, 7, and 8. 2. L. Wittgenstein, Culture and Value. Ed. G. H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe, trans. Peter Winch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, p. 13e. 3. See R Chatterjee, Wittgenstein and Judaism: A Triumph of Concealment. New York: Peter Lang, 2005, Chatterjee goes so far as to argue that Wittgenstein was self-consciously Jewish in thought and belief but managed to conceal this fact from both those around him and his readers. While I do not think that Chatterjee has marshaled sufficient evidence to prove this point, the comparison between Wittgenstein’s practice and Talmudic modes of argument is quite apt, and Wittgenstein’s preoccupation with language and interpretation might be said to be quintessentially Jewish. 4.

Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors, Ch, 7, pp. 241-288.

5. J. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. F. Lawrence. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987: S Handelman, The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982. 6.

Thomas J.J. Altizer. Email to the author, January, 2000.

7. H. Miller, Email to the author, June 12, 2007. Miller continued, “I think it was 16th, but maybe some other century, and I'm not sure Luria was mentioned, whom I know about by way of Harold Bloom. The word ‘heretical’ is important here, and it was not a ‘last’ meeting, but one years before either of

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism them died. I don't think Derrida spent a lot of time reading the Kabbalah. If he had, he would have written about it, no doubt brilliantly.”

8. Rötzer, F. Französische Philosophen im Gespräc, Munich: Klaus Boer Verlag 1986. pp. 67-87. English translation downloaded from http:// www.lake.de/sonst/homepages/s2442/reb.html. Trans. “PK”, 1995. 9. See, for example, J. Derrida, Dissemination. Trans. B. Johnson. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981, pp. 343-345. On Derrida and Judaism, see G. Ofrat, The Jewish Derrida. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2001), and J Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Derrida’s relationship to Judaism and the Kabbalah will be discussed in detail in Chapters 2 and 3. 10. J. Derrida, Circumfession: Fifty-nine Periods and Periphrases. In G. Bennington and J. Derrida, Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. 11. J. Derrida. A Silkworm of One’s Own. In his Acts of Religion, Edited with an Introduction by Gil Anidjar, New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 311-355. Original article published in 1996. 12. Y. Liebes, Christian influences on the Zohar, in his Studies in the Zohar, Studies in the Zohar, Trans. A Schwartz, A Nakache, and. P. Peli. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993, pp. 139-162. 13. See G. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition. New York: Schocken, 1965.The impact of Greek philosophical thought on Jewish mysticism is evident, for example, in the pre-Kabbalistic work, Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Formation), written in Palestine in the 3rd to 6th centuries C.E.. (A. Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation, Rev. ed. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1997). Sefer Yetzirah later became the subject of numerous commentaries by the Kabbalists themselves. 14. H. Bloom, Kabbalah and Criticism. New York: Continuum Press, 1975, p. 53. 15. Quoted in Chatterjee, Wittgenstein and Judaism, p. 26. 16. These are, of course, all complex and vexing problems that can only be treated cursorily in this introduction. With respect to creation (Tzimtzum), the Lurianists held that God could not create a world without first concealing or withdrawing his infinite presence, thereby introducing negation and evil into the world. With respect to redemption (Tikkun), they held that humanity’s efforts to perfect the world, depend upon the overcoming, and hence the existence, of evil. 17. L. Wittgenstein, The Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. Trans. D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1961, 6.54, p. 151.

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18. Y. H. Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, p. 118. 19. J. Derrida, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression.” Trans. E Prenowitz, Diacritics, 25 (1995), p. 9-63, p. 45. 20. For example, see D. Lehman, Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man. New York: Poseidon Press, 1991. 21. See especially Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors, Ch. 6: “Hegel and the Kabbalah”, pp. 185-240. 22. Derrida’s most clearly focused critique of Hegel is in J. Derrida, Glas, trans. J. P. Leavy and R. Rand. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. Original French version, 1974. 23. Cf. C. Howells, Derrida: Deconstruction from Phenomenology to Ethics. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 199, p. 185 24. J. Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass. London: Athlone Press, 1987. Original French edition, 1972. 25. See Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors, Ch. 6. 26. One such prejudice which Derrida discusses was Hegel’s own attitude towards the Jews and Judaism. In Glas, Derrida shows how in castigating the Jews for living a religion of law as opposed to love, Hegel is himself guilty of prejudice and hatred. 27. M. Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/theology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, pp. 98-99.

Chapter 1 1. Derrida’s reception by philosophers in the British and American analytic tradition, even those who are generally sympathetic to his outlook, has been generally quite cautious. Richard Rorty, for example, questions whether Derrida’s thought is the foundation of a new philosophy or, like the thought of Wittgenstein, an ironic and at times comic effort to critique previous philosophy. Rorty asks whether Derrida belongs to a tradition that seeks to dissolve philosophical problems, or to a tradition that seeks to establish transcendental conditions for language, thought and the world. While most of the time Derrida appears to be “deconstructing” other thinkers and texts, at other times, e.g. in his notions of “trace,” “différance,” etc. he sounds as if he is making a transcendental argument regarding the possibility of all language.

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism (Rorty: “Two Meanings of ‘logocentrism’: A reply to Norris, p. 113. Redrawing the Boundaries: Analytic Philosophy, Deconstruction and Literary Theory. Ed. Reed Way Dasenbrock (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1989), 204-216. Reprinted in R. Rorty, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2: Essays on Heidegger and Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 107-118. Further, Rorty is unclear whether Derrida’s concerns are simply comical, ironic, and aesthetic or are rather those of a radical anti-institutional thinker with a public mission. For Rorty, Derrida’s “anti-foundationalism” and critique of “logocentrism” are not particularly original. Derrida appears to make the claim that all philosophical projects of self-validation involve inherent strains and contradictions. However, at times Derrida appears to make a stronger claim, that the entire discourse of the west, or philosophy in general, is inundated with such tensions Ibid, p. 109). However, Rorty points out, antifoundationalism in philosophy is 150 years old, and most philosophers nowadays are anti-foundationalists. The basic point, which Derrida acts as if he has discovered, is that knowledge is a matter of asserting sentences, and that “one cannot validate a sentence by confronting an object but only by asserting other sentences” (ibid. p. 110). This point, according to Rorty, is nothing new, and has been made by philosophers as varied as Wittgenstein and the pragmatists. Indeed, for Rorty, Derrida’s use of differánce and iterability are merely abbreviations for the Wittgenstein-Pierce idea that “meaning is a function of context” and that there is nothing to prevent an “endless sequence of contextialization” from altering the significance of any utterance (ibid. p. 125). Rorty implies that the project of deconstruction actually allows a form of foundationalism back in through the rear door. For Rorty: “the only thing that can displace an intellectual world is another intellectual world; a new alternative, rather than an argument against an old alternative” (ibid. p. 121). There is no neutral ground from which to mount an attack against such things as logocentrism, and Derrida’s and his followers’ efforts to depose of metaphysics without offering a replacement smack of the very elitism and foundationalism that they are arguing against. For Rorty, refutation is a mark of unoriginality, and a philosopher who merely “deconstructs” without offering something in its place has actually offered very little. Yet Rorty also holds that Derrida does not make arguments but rather speaks another language-game, again exhibiting some ambivalence as to whether Derrida is simply deconstructive or also creative and constructive in his intent. I think that Rorty’s inability to pin Derrida down can actually be understood as a strength that follows from Derrida’s non-dichotomous philosophy. The same questions that Rorty asks about Derrida and deconstruction could also be asked, for example, in reference to Buddhism. Is it a purely negative teaching that prompts our detachment from all things and ideas, or is it a

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positive doctrine that enlightens us about the true nature of all things. One would here be inclined to say “neither and both” with respect to both Buddhism and deconstruction. Derrida is both purely deconstructive and constructive, Wittgensteinian and Hegelian, wholly ironic and deeply serious. Each of these categories, like all other conceptual distinctions, dissolves in deconstruction’s wake. 2. See, for example, S. Handelman, The Slayers of Moses: the Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982, and Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Trans. Frederick Lawrence. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987). 3. See J. Derrida, Circumfession: Fifty-nine Periods and Periphrases. In G. Bennington and J. Derrida, Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 155. 4. Florian Rötzer, Französische Philosophen im Gespräch, Munich 1986, pp. 67-87,p 74 (Klaus Boer Verlag, ISBN 3-924963-21-5). 5. For example, see comments by J. Caputo, and M. J. Scanlon. Introduction: Apology for the Impossible: Religion and Postmodernism. In God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, edited by J. D. Caputo and M. J. Scanlon. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999. 6. See H. Coward and T. Foshay, Derrida and Negative Theology. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. 7. M. Idel, Absorbing Perfections. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. 8. E. R. Wolfson, Assaulting the Border: Kabbalistic Traces in the Margins of Derrida, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, September 2003, Vol. 70, No. 3, pp. 475-514. 9. A. Karasick, Of Poetic Thinking: A ‘Pataphysical Investigation of Cixous, Derrida and the Kabbalah, Doctoral Thesis, Concordia University, April 1997. 10. For an account of these various threads in the recent history of ideas see Hans Berten, The Idea of the Postmodern: A History (New York: Routledge, 1995). 11. J-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984. 12. The term “logocentrism” has several related meanings in Derrida: (1) the privileging of one pole of a dichotomy over another, (2) the privileging of speech over writing, and (3) the privileging of “presence” (as in speech) over absence (as in writing). 13. J. Derrida, Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1979.

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14. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 218. 15. Taylor, Erring, p. 6. 16. G. Scholem. Kabbalah. Jerusalem: Keter, 1974; G. Scholem. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, New York: Schocken, 1941; G. Scholem. Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah. Trans. R. J. Z. Werblowski, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. 17. I. Schochet, Mystical Concepts in Hasidism. In Zalman, S, Likutei AmarimTanya. Brooklyn: Kehot, 1983, pp. 810-94. 18. L. Jacobs, The Uplifting of the Sparks in Later Jewish Mysticism. In Jewish Spirituality: From the Sixteenth Century Revival to the Present, ed. Arthur Green. New York: Crossroads Publishing Company, 1987, pp. 99-126. 19. D. W. Menzi, Z. Padeh, Trans. The Tree of Life: Chayim Vital’s Introduction to the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, trans. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1999. 20. Moshe Idel has stated “There can be no doubt that Lurianic Kabbalah is one of the most complex intellectual systems ever produced by a Jewish author— indeed, as Gershom Scholem has correctly asserted, by any human mind.” See M. Idel, Messianic Mystics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999, p. 170. Cf. D. Biale, Gershom Scholem’s Ten Unhistorical Aphorism in Kabbalah: Text and Commentary. Modern Judaism, 5, 1985, pp. 67-93. Scholem’s point, however, is that the Lurianic Kabbalah is more “hidden and occult” than nearly any other system of thought. 21. Azriel, The Explanation of the Ten Sefirot, in Joseph Dan, The Early Kabbalah, texts trans. by Ronald C. Kieber. New York: Paulist Press, 1966, p. 94. Cf. G. Scholem. Origins of the Kabbalah. Trans. R.J. Zwi Werblowski. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Originally published, 1962, p. 423. 22. Moses Luzzatto, General Principles of the Kabbalah, trans. Phillip Berg (Jerusalem: Research Centre of Kabbalah, 1970), p. 64. 23. Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/theology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. 24. On Hillman, see J. Hillman, Re-visioning Psychology. New York: Harper Perennial, 1977; T. Moore, Ed. In A Blue Fire: Selected Writings by James Hillman, introduced and edited by Thomas Moore. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991; and, S. Drob, The Depth of the Soul: James Hillman’s Vision of Psychology, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 39(3), 56-72. 25. The Sefirot, as they are “restored” in the “World of Tikkun” are reorganized into “visages” (Partzufim) that bear the impressions of archetypal humanity— the Holy Old Man (Attika Kaddisha), The Father (Abba), The Mother (Imma),

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the Youth (Zeir Anpin), and the Maiden (Nukvah). For a description of the Partzufuim, see S. Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah, pp. 179-82. 26. In Erring, pp. 8-9, Mark Taylor enumerates 41 such binary oppositions. 27. Taylor, Erring, p. 10. 28. Ibid, p. 11. 29. This is the view of the 13th century Kabbalist, Azriel. See G. Scholem. Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 441-2 30. R. Gasche, Deconstruction as Criticism, Glyph 6, 1979, p. 193. Quoted in M. Taylor, Erring, p. 111. 31. Taylor, Erring, p. 13. 32. G. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah. Trans. R.J. Zwi Werblowski. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). Originally published, 1962, pp. 441-2. 33 Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, Trans. Ralph Manheim, (New York: Schocken, 1969), p. 76. 34. Taylor, Erring, p. 25. 35. Ibid, p. 72. 36. Ibid, p. 15. 37. This view, which is implicit in the Lurianic Kabbalah, is fully articulated in Hasidism, where, for example, the Maggid of Mezritch writes that while the source of thought is in God, actual thinking can only occur within the human mind. See R. Schatz Uffenheimer. Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought. Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1993, p. 207. 38. As expressed in the Lurianic symbol of Tikkun ha-Olam. 39. When he (man)”, says the Maggid of Mezritch, “considers himself as nothing and makes himself small, God also contracts himself...and then he will certainly acquire wisdom.” Maggid, Dov Baer of Mezritch, Maggid Devarav Yaacov, 86. Quoted in M. Rotenberg, Dialogue With Deviance, New York: University Press of America, 1993, p. 73. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev (1740-1809) held that “A person must fear God so much that his ego is totally nullified. Only then can he attach himself to Nothingness. Sustenance, filled with everything good, then flows to all universes…” (Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, Kedushat Levi, Bereshit p. 5. Translated in A. Kaplan, Hasidic Masters, New York: Maznaim, 1984. p. 73.) 40. Taylor, Erring, p. 32.

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41. H. Miller, Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth Century Writers. New York: Atheneum, 1969, p. 3. 42. R. Aaron Ha-Levi, Sha’arey ha-Yichud veha-Emunah, IV:5, quoted in R. Elior. Chabad: The Contemplative Ascent to God, in Jewish Spirituality: From the Sixteenth Century Revival to the Present, ed. by Arthur Green. New York: Crossroads, 1987, pp. 157-205, p. 167. 43. Sefer Etz Chayyim 1:1; p. 32, Menzi and Padeh, The Tree of Life, p. 102. 44. S. Drob, “The Mystic as Philosopher: An Interview With Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz,” Jewish Review, Vol. 3, No. 4, March, 1990, p. 14. 45. Now, we may need to distinguish an absolute universalism from a relative, “tentative” or “floating” one. This is because the claim to universality is always made from within a perspective (i.e. from within Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Marxism, feminism, etc.) and such claims run the risk of re-establishing an absolutist position that excludes difference. Obviously, we must be vigilant about this; allowing ‘difference’ to challenge any of our absolutist claims, and recognizing that the ‘absolute’ as seen from our point of view may differ greatly from how it is seen from the perspective of others. This, however, does not mean that we can do without a universal ethic altogether; we simply must be open to the probability that our ethic will be inadequate, as we continue to use, refine, and criticize it. Kabbalistically, this means that we must continually be open to the Shevirah, the possibility of “rupture,” at the core of each of our ideas, beliefs and practices. Any theory or practice that is not open to its own transcendence that is not truly open to difference, fails to accord with the Kabbalists’ insistence that the “Breaking of the Vessels” is timeless, i.e. present in all things and on all occasions. 46. Taylor, Erring, p. 54. 47. Ibid, p. 60. 48. R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History: With Lectures, 1926-28, edited by Jan Van der Dussen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. 49. J. Derrida, Of Grammatology, Trans. G. C. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1974, Ch. 1. Cf. Howells, Derrida, pp. 60-61. 50. Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 24. 51. A. Karasick, Of Poetic Thinking: A Pataphysical Investigation of Cixous, Derrida and the Kabbalah, Doctoral Thesis, Concordia University, April 1997. 52. Ibid, Of Poetic Thinking, p. 5. 53. H. Bloom, Kabbalah and Criticism. New York: Continuum Press, 1975. 54. Karasick, Of Poetic Thinking, p. 6.

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55. Ibid, p. 17. 56. Ibid, p. 13. 57. Taylor, Erring, p. 151. 58. Ibid, p. 153. 59. Ibid, p. 153. 60. Ibid, p. 154. 61. G. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, Trans. Ralph Manheim. New York: Schocken, 1969, p. 112. 62. See K. Friedan, Freud’s Dream of Interpretation, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990. 63. M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences, trans. A.S. London. New York: Random House, 1970, p. 304. 64. Taylor, Erring, p. 181. Taylor is here quoting Roland Barthes’ Image-MusicText Trans. S. Heath. New York: Hill & Wang, 1967, p. 146.

Chapter 2 1. Hillis Miller, personal email communication 6-12-07. 2. In an email message to the author, dated 6/12/2007 Miller wrote, “What Derrida told me, if I remember correctly, was that Levinas looked him in the eye and said, ‘Jacques, you know what you remind me of? A heretical Kabbalist of the 16th century!’ (I think it was 16th, but maybe some other century, and I'm not sure Luria was mentioned, whom I know about by way of Harold Bloom.). The word ‘heretical’ is important here, and it was not a ‘last’ meeting, but one years before either of them died. I don't think Derrida spent a lot of time reading the Kabbalah. If he had, he would have written about it, no doubt brilliantly.” 3. J. Derrida, “There is No ‘One’ Narcissism (Autobiophotographies). An interview broadcast in the program prepared by Didier Cahen over FranceCulture, "Le bon plaisir de Jacques Derrida," on March 22, 1986 and published with the title "Entretien avec Jacques Derrida" in "Digraphe" 42 (December 1987); http://www.hydra.umn.edu/Derrida/narc.html (downloaded February 19, 2006). 4. J. Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other or the Prosthesis of Origin. Trans. Patrick Mensah. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 53. 5. Cited in Ofrat, The Jewish Derrida, p. 17.

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6. Derrida, Circumfession: Fifty-nine Periods and Periphrases. 7. J. Derrida, “A Silkworm of One’s Own” (1996). In his Acts of Religion, edited with an Introduction by Gil Abidjan. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 311355, p. 343. In addition, Derrida’s writing on the Akedah, Abraham’s call to sacrifice his son Isaac is a reflection on a perennial Jewish theme (J. Derrida, The Gift of Death, Trans. David Wells. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 49). 8. Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other, p. 53. 9. H. Cixous, Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint. Trans. Beverley Bie Brahic. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 10. Derrida, Circumfession: Fifty-nine Periods and Periphrases p. 170. 11. Derrida, “A Silkworm of One’s Own,” p. 343. Note that Derrida’s meditation on the tallith includes extensive quotations from Shlomo Ganzfried’s (Hungary 1804-1884) brief compendium of Jewish law, the Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh. 12. Ibid, p. 343, pp. 327-8. 13. Ofrat, The Jewish Derrida, p. 10. 14. These will be discussed below. For now, two examples: in Dissemination, Derrida writes, “The Kabbalah is not only summoned up here under the rubric of arithmosophy or the science of literal permutations…it also cooperates with an Orphic explanation of the earth” (Derrida, Dissemination, p. 342); in Writing and Difference he writes of the three major elements of the Kabbalah as “negativity in God,” “exile as writing,” and the “life of the letter” (J. Derrida, Edmond Jabes and the Question of the Book, in Writing and Difference, Alan Bass, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Originally published as “Edmond Jabes et la question du livre.” Critique, no. 201, January, 1964). 15. Wolfson, Assaulting the Border. 16. Idel, Absorbing Perfections. 17. Wolfson, Assaulting the Border, p. 474. 18. Wolfson points out that Derrida’s preoccupation with “circumcision” is based on an analogy with writing, inasmuch as in circumcision one’s body is in effect engraved with one’s proper name, one’s individuality, one’s difference as a Jew, and with the covenant between the Jewish people and God. 19. Wolfson, Assaulting the Border, p. 478. 20. Ibid, p. 479, n.9.

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21. Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 145. 22. Wolfson, Assaulting the Border, p. 480. 23. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida. 24. Wolfson, Assaulting the Border, p. 481. Wolfson cites J Derrida, Politics of Friendship. Trans. George Collins. London: Verso, 1997, pp. 173-4. 25. Wolfson, Assaulting the Border, p. 481n. 26. Ibid, p. 484. 27. Ibid, p. 485 28. Derrida, Edmond Jabes. 29. Edmond Jabès (1912-1991) was an Egyptian born Jewish writer and poet who, writing in French, became interested in pushing the boundaries of the “sayble”, and made numerous refrences to Kabbalistic ideas. 30. Quoted in Wolfson Assaulting the Border, p. 485. 31. Ibid, p. 486. 32. Ofrat, The Jewish Derrida, p. 31. 33. Handelman, The Slayers of Moses. 34 Wolfson, Assaulting the Border, pp. 489-90. 35. Wolfson here cites J. Derrida, Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas, in Writing and Difference, Alan Bass, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, pp. 79-153 (Wolfson, Assaulting the Border, p. 490.) 36. Wolfson, Assaulting the Border p. 497. 37. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 158. 38. Derrida, Edmund Jabes, pp. 76-77. 39. Wolfson, Assaulting the Border, p. 505. 40. D. Shapiro, M. Govrin, and J Derrida, Body of Prayer. New York: Cooper Union of the Advancement of Science and Art, 2001, p. 63. Quoted in Wolfson Assaulting the Border, p. 506. . 41. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 441-2. 42. Derrida, Dissemination, p. 244. 43. J. Derrida, The Gift of Death, Trans. David Wells. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 49). Cf. E. Wolfson, Assaulting the Border, p. 505.

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44. E. Wolfson, Assaulting the Border, p. 507. In a similar vein, Wolfson points out that both Derrida and the Kabbalists utilize the figure of “the trace,” but whereas for the Kabbalists, “the trace is a demarcation of the negative presence of absence…for Derrida it is the sign of the wholly other that is neither a presence nor an absence” (Assaulting the Border, p. 476). 45. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp 78-9. 46. Ibid, p. 83. 47. Ibid, p. 83. 48. Ibid, p. 76. Cf. Derrida, Dissemination, p. 343. 49. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 77. 50. Ibid, referring to Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976, p. 156. 51. In Of Grammatology, p. 158, Derrida writes “There is nothing outside of the text,” or “there is no outside-text” (il n’y a pas des hors-texte). 52. See Derrida, Writing and Difference, pp. 76-77. 53. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 122. 54. Ibid, p.123. Idel further points out that Recanati’s contemporary, the Provencal philosopher, Gersonides (R. Levi ben Gershom-also known as the Ralbag) wrote, “Behold, the book that God wrote is the existence in its entirety, that is caused from Him…Existence is compared to a book because just as a book points to the ideality from which it was, in the same manner the sensible world points to the law of the intelligible universe, which is the [ideality of] God, from which the sensible world is.” 55. Ibid, p. 128. 56. Ibid, p. 124. 57. Ibid, p. 124. 58. Ibid, p. 124. 59. Ibid, p. 124. 60. Of course, Derrida is free to argue, and indeed does argue, that equating textual significance with God involves a duplication of entities when one is all that is necessary. There are not two things that are equivalent here, text and God, but only one thing, text, which is infinitely interpretable. One is in turn, of course, free to interpret Derrida’s text in theological terms, but there is little in Derrida’s own writings that would require such an interpretation. Further, while the infinite plurality of meanings may be said to have some of the characteristics of God as he is traditionally conceived, but, minus serious

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argument, it appears to be lacking many others: will, purpose, etc. Here it might be said that by being the source and embodiment of all significance whatsoever such a God most certainly embodies will, purpose, even love for his creatures, as each of these are significances subsumed by Him at the purveyor of all significance. 61. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 125. 62. Derrida, Circumfession, pp. 190-91. cf. p. 154. Ofrat translates the French as “I am the end of Judaism” and “I am the last Jew; I merely demolish the world on the pretext of creating truth.” Ofrat, The Jewish Derrida, p. 9. 63. E. Weber, Questions au judaisme (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1996), p. 78. Quoted and translated in Ofrat, The Jewish Derrida, and p. 9. 64. Weber, Questions au judaisme, p. 77, quoted in Ofrat, The Jewish Derrida, p. 12. 65. Ibid, Weber, pp. 76-7. 66. Ibid. 67. Derrida, Circumfession, p. 62. 68. Ibid, p. 70. 69. Ofrat, The Jewish Derrida, p. 49. 70. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, p. 112. 71. On the connection between these figures and the Kabbalah, see Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors, pp. 82-84, 185-240. 72. Derrida, Edmond Jabes, p. 74. 73. Ibid, p. 67. 74. Ibid, p. 72. 75. Ibid, p. 67. 76. Ibid. 77. J. Derrida, Dissemination, p. 168. 78. Derrida, Edmond Jabes, p. 67. 79. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 158. 80. Ibid, p. 67. 81. Ibid, pp. 76-77. 82. Ibid, p. 76, as quoted by Derrida. 83. Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 311, note 3.

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84. These themes will be discussed in detail in Chapter 8. 85. Bass, Introduction, Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. xvi. 86. Derrida, Edmund Jabes, p. 66. 87. Derrida, Dissemination, p. 168. 88. Ibid, pp. 343, 345. 89. Ibid, p. 343. 90. Ibid, p. 345. Wolfson, following Idel, holds that in all likelihood Derrida’s source for R. Levi Isaac’s meditations on the “white letters” was Gershom Scholem’s On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (pp. 81-82), which was first published in 1969 (Wolfson, Assaulting the Border, p. 476). 91. Derrida, Dissemination, p. 345. 92. Ibid, p. 345. 93. Ibid, p. 344. 94. Ibid, p. 344. 95. J. Derrida, The Eyes of Language: The Abyss and the Volcano. In J. Derrida, Acts of Religion. Ed. Gil Anidjar. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 191-227. 96. Ibid, pp. 226-7. 97. Wolfson, Assaulting the Border, p. 477. 98. Derrida, Circumfession, pp. 110-11.

Chapter 3 1. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 449-50. 2. Zohar 148b, Zohar III, 113a. H. Sperling, M. Simon, and P. Levertoff, trans. The Zohar. London: Soncino Press, 1931-34, Vol. IV, p. 21. 3. Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 402. 4. M. Luzzato, General Principles of the Kabbalah. Trans. Phillip Berg. Jerusalem: Research Centre of Kabbalah, 1970, pp. 42, 51. 5. S. Zalman, Likutei-Amarim-Tanya Bi-lingual edition. Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1981). Shaar ha Yichud VehaEmunah 7, p. 319. 6. Ibid.

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7. Gematria is the hermeneutic method whereby the meaning of a word or scriptural passage is derived (and hence altered) by considering the numerical value of the Hebrew letters in that word or passage and then either interpreting that number or finding other linguistic expressions that have the same numerical value and substituting them for the word or passage in question. 8. J. Derrida, Différance, in his Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982, p. 11. Original French edition, 1967. 9. Ibid, p. 4. 10. Ibid, p. 5. 11. Ibid, p. 6. 12. Ibid, p. 6. 13. Ibid, p. 13. 14. Ibid, p. 13. 15. Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, pp. 142-3. 16. It has been argued that Derrida’s use of the term “trace” belies a metaphysical way of saying that the significance of any term in speech and writing, (or event or experience) is dependent upon context; what has gone before and what comes after. Derrida speaks as if there is some kind of entity (though he calls it a non-entity) called the ‘trace’ that embodies an ‘absence’ (past and future) in every presence. One could certainly hold that this is simply a new way of speaking that has no special claim over any other discourse. Wittgensteinians might add that it is a way of speaking that misleads us into believing we have discovered a new entity or form, but which really has no result other than to bewitch our intelligence. My own view is that Derrida’s way of speaking indeed has a use, because it highlights the radical temporality of all experience and representation, and in a wider sense the inescapable facts of tradition, of being born into a discourse, and of living towards a future that conditions our subjectivity and experience. Further, the notion of the trace provides a general framework within which the unconscious can be understood. For example, Lacan makes the point that we are born into an unconscious-language and that our “presence” in the world is already constituted by an unconscious past. Once we speak in a new way, create a new notation, term or ‘entity’ we can begin to see connections and create ideas we hadn’t previously considered. 17. Derrida, Différance, p. 21. 18. Ibid, p. 2. This is close to the Lurianic formulation of Tzimtzum as the unfolding (or in Sarug’s terms) folding of existence.

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19. Ibid, p. 22. 20. Ibid, p. 26. 21. Despite Derrida’s disclaimers that differánce is neither theological nor metaphysical, his thoughts here can provide us with certain insight into the problem of naming a theological absolute. For the Kabbalists, this is the problem of naming Ein-sof. Once an absolute is named it becomes an object like everything else to be contrasted with all other things, and it loses its place as an absolute beyond all language and being. However, we might look at this matter from a somewhat different angle and say that the very naming of Einsof (indeed the very naming of anything) carries with it and thus brings about the entire system of differences, and with it the origin of all possibilities, ideas and worlds. Once it is named, Ein-sof, the ageless, unknowable, unnamable place/space of all, explodes into a plethora of finite concepts and beings. In this way the act of naming inaugurates the differential matrix which is both language and the world. 22. Ibid, p. 6. 23. Ibid, 24. Ibid, p. 7. 25. W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy. London: Macmillan, 1960. 26. Translation downloaded from http://www.lake.de/sonst/homepages/s 2442/reb.html. The German transcript of this interview is found in Rötzer, Französische Philosophen im Gespräc, pp. 67-87. 27. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, Ch. 2. 28. Further, the mystic’s “experience” of unity might be regarded as prior to the act, moment or gesture (whether it is called differánce, Tzimtzum, creation, etc.) that gives rise to multiplicity. Indeed, the Kabbalists hold that once multiplicity arises through the Tzimtzum and is later reinforced with the Shevirah (the “Breaking of the Vessels”) division, alienation, and exile pervade the world. 29. Moses Cordovero, in his doctrine of the behinnot (aspects), holds that each of the Sefirot (the archetypal constituents of God, man and world) are composed of each of the others. 30. Derrida, Différance, p. 7. 31. Ibid, p. 8. 32. The Midrash, Genesis Rabbah 68:9, recites: "God is the place of the world, but the world is not God's place."

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33. In his comprehensive account of the Lurianic Kabbalah, Sefer Etz Chayyim, Luria’s disciple, Chayyim Vital discusses how the Tzimtzum brought about the existence of space: know that before the emanated things were emanated and the created things were created there was a supernal light that was simple, without composition or external relations, and it filled the whole of existence. There was no empty place, ether, or void. Everything was filled with the infinite light. There was neither beginning nor end. All was one simple light in perfect equanimity. This was called Or Ein Sof (the Light of the Infinite God). When it arose in His simple will to create the world and emanate the emanations, and to bring to light the perfection of His acts and names, then He contracted Himself into the central point that was in the middle of His light. He contracted Himself into this point and then retreated to the sides encircling this point. Then there remained an empty space or ether, an empty hollow (or void). (Chayyim Vital, Sefer Etz Chayyim, I:1, p. 22. Trans. Rabbi Joel Kenney. This passage in Vital is discussed and translated somewhat differently by David Ariel, in his book The Mystic Quest (Northvale, NJ Jason Aronson, 1988), p.106ff. Se also, Menzi and Padeh, The Tree of Life, p. 1. For more on Tzimtzum as the origin of space and time see Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah, Ch. 3. 34. Derrida, Edmond Jabes, p. 67. 35. J. Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins. Trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Nass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, pp. 55 ff. (French original, 1990). 36. There is a paradox here as from a Kabbalistic point of view the process of undoing creation would result in the unchecked flow of God’s light throughout the worlds, while from a biblical point of view, it would be the opposite, the withdrawal of divine light. 37. Derrida’s view here is paralleled by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s arguments against the possibility of a “private language”. L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan, 1953, pars. 243-64. 38. Howells, Derrida, p. 49. 39. Derrida, Différance, p. 15. 40. Ibid. 41. The question may arise in the minds of those who like Descartes think of consciousness as an absolute, as to whether differánce is somehow secondary

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism to consciousness. For Derrida, consciousness, to the extent that it is identified as an absolute presence to oneself (as in Descartes “I think therefore I am”) is no more primordial than presence itself, which as we have seen is constituted by that which it is not, i.e. by what is absent, past and future, in short by the very system of differences that allows what is present to be significant in any way. Similarly ‘consciousness’ has no significance except to the extent that it is already inscribed in a linguistic/conceptual system. This is not only the case because “consciousness” is itself a concept which is significant only by virtue of its place in the differential linguistic matrix, but also because the very experience or gesture to which “consciousness” presumably refers, or for which it is made to answer, i.e. presence to oneself, is itself already infused with absence, past, future, etc. and is therefore, on Derrida’s view, divided and alienated from itself. Consciousness is thus hardly the “absolutely central form of Being” that we might assume it to be, but is rather an “effect” of a system dominated by differánce as opposed to presence. Derrida, like Nietzsche and Freud before him, has unseated consciousness from the assured center of the philosophical universe. For Nietzsche and Freud, as well as Derrida, consciousness is a function of differential dynamic forces. For each of these thinkers, consciousness not only differentiates and defers, but is a function of the capacity inherent in language to differentiate and defer (e.g. pleasure).

42. Scholem. Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 443. Cf. Scholem, Kabbalah. p.88. An early Kabbalist, the author of Ma’arkhelut ha-Elohut went so far as to say that Ein-Sof cannot be identified with God or serve as an object of religious thought. 43. Scholem, Major Trends, p. 12. 44. Derrida, Différance, p. 9. Interestingly, while Derrida regards differánce as prior to and constitutive of being and beings, he does not consider the obvious converse that without more than one being one could not assert any difference whatsoever. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid, p. 18. 47. I have discussed the extensive parallels between Lurianic Kabbalah and psychoanalysis in Kabbalistic Metaphors, Ch. 7. 48. Derrida, Dissemination, p. 168. 49. Quoted in Derrida, Edmond Jabes. p. 68. 50. Elior, Chabad, p. 80. 51. Howells, Derrida, p. 15. 52. Ibid, p. 16.

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53. Nor does the meaning of what I write become fixed at the end of a sentence, paragraph, chapter or book. Even the final period at the end of this book does not create closure on what I am now saying, as this sentence, and the entire work, can and will be placed in the context of other things I and others have written, and so on ad infinitum. What I say here is, at least potentially, subject to recontextualization by everything else I subsequently write or utter, or for that matter, by anything else that is written or uttered by others, whether in response to my words or simply because someone may utilize them in understanding my words. The possibility of reinterpretation and (mis)understanding is thus infinite, inevitable and essential. Until the moment when humankind arrives at the mythical last word, the final punctuation in the “great conversation” that comprises the developing spirit of humankind, what has been said will continue to be subject to recontextualization and new understanding. 54. G. Scholem, The Meaning of the Torah in Jewish Mysticism, in his On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, p. 76. 55. Scholem, The Meaning of the Torah, p. 73, and Idel , Absorbing Perfections, p. 89. 56. See Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah, Ch. 3. 57. J Derrida, Khora, Trans. Ian McLeod in On the Name, ed. T. Dutoit. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995 (Original French version, 1993). 58. J. Derrida, Faith and Knowledge: the Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone. In Religion, Ed. J. Derrida and G. Vattimo, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966, p. 22. Cf. discussion in Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 155. 59. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 156. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid, p. 185. 62. Derrida, Edmond Jabes, p. 67. 63. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 61. 64. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 441-2. 65. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p 186. Caputo’s reference here is to Nietzsche’s Will to Power. He also makes a comparison with Nagarjuna’s “play of the moon beams on ten thousand ocean waves.” 66. Derrida, however, seems to have faith that the opening of possibilities will result in increased justice, pluralism and democracy, i.e. “good possibilities.” The problem, however, is that when good possibilities are opened, bad ones typically come in their wake, i.e. the chaotic, the impulsive and arbitrarily

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism violent acts that plague an open society, the economic opportunism that follows on the heels of an open economy, etc.

67. Quoted in Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 248.

Chapter 4 1. The “Breaking of the Vessels” is described in detail in Chayyim Vital’s Sefer Etz Chayyim 2:2, “The Breaking of the Vessels.” In addition a detailed description of the Shevirah is presented in Luzatto, General Principles of the Kabbalah. A good synopsis is available in Schochet, Mystical Concepts, p. 874-5 2. The Lurianists held that the Shevirah is implicit in the biblical account of creation, Genesis I, 2: “the earth was empty and void.” See Luzatto, General Principles, p. 69. 3. Luzatto tells us, “It is necessary to bear in mind the principle that all things existing in the world exemplify that which occurred in those “Kings.” Luzatto, General Principles, p. 90. (The “Kings” refer to the “kings of Edom” (Genesis 36:31) who reigned and died before there reigned any king over Israel, and which were taken by the Lurianists as a veiled reference to the Breaking of the Vessels) 4. According to Idel, Scholem’s analysis Tzimtzum and Shevirat ha-kelim as symbols of historical redemption is purely speculative and totally unsupported by the Lurianic texts. In spite of this, Scholem’s view has been taken to be ‘fact’ by some of Scholem’s followers. M. Idel, Messianic Mystics, p.179-80. 5. Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah, Ch. 7. 6. It is interesting, however, to speculate as to whether Eden, or the world, as it was initially created by God, contained finite entities in the way we understand (and experience) them today. After all, it was only after leaving Eden that Adam and Eve become mortal, and thus truly finite. Nevertheless, I am aware of no Kabbalist who suggests that the Tzimtzum occurs only after Eden. In general, the Kabbalists equated the fall from paradise with the Shevirat ha-Kelim. 7. Sefer Yetzirah I: 7. Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, p. 57. 8. This midrashic notion is clearly one source for Luria’s symbol of Shevirat hakelim.

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9. I. Tishby and F. Lachower, The Wisdom of the Zohar, Trans. D. Goldstein, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, Vol. I, pp. 289, 305, note 83. 10. Luzzato, General Principles, p. 64. 11. See, for example, J. Derrida, Deconstruction and the Other, in R. Kearney ed., Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984, p. 123; also J. Derrida, Points…Interviews, 1974-94. Ed. Elizabeth Weber Trans. Peggy Kamuf et. al. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995, p. 386-7, where Derrida writes that the “future is necessarily monstrous: the figure of the future, that is, that which can only be surprising, that for which we are not prepared, you see, is heralded by species of monsters. A future that would not be monstrous would not be a future.” (pp. 386-7). 12. See J Miller. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954-1955. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. Lacan speaks of “the essential object which isn't an object any longer, but this something faced with which all words cease and all categories fail, the object of anxiety par excellence.” (p. 164) 13. J. Hillman, Inter Views: Conversations Between James Hillman and Laura Pozzo on Therapy, Biography, Love, Soul, Dream, Work, Imagination and the State of the Culture. New York: Harper & Row, 1983; cf. J. Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld. New York: Harper & Row, 1979, and S. Drob, The Depth of the Soul: James Hillman’s Vision of Psychology, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 39, No. 3, 56-72 (1999). 14. When Breuer and Freud first engaged neurotic symptoms in hysterical patients, and Freud took an interest in dreams, these symptoms and dreams and their associated affects (evoked both in their patients and themselves) were highly traumatic, so traumatic that Breuer fled from psychoanalysis altogether. But soon the early psychoanalysts began assimilating this trauma, and Freud and his followers were making confident interpretations of symptoms and dreams. As psychoanalysis gained in prestige and was, assimilated by the medical establishment (especially in the United States), it became more and more focused on adaptation and less interested in drives, dreams, death and the unconscious, those aspects of the psyche through which it is continually possible for something surprising and traumatic to appear. 15. Bloom, Kabbalah and Criticism, p. 39. 16. Ibid, p. 41. 17. M. Buber, I and Thou. Trans. R. Gregor Smith. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958. 18. Ibid, p. 16.

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19. E. Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Trans. A Lingis. Pittsburgh: Dusquesne University Press, 1969. 20. I believe that another genre which sheds light on the Breaking of the Vessels is the “occult.” This is because much of the attraction to those ‘arts’ and ‘sciences’ that are excluded by academia, astrology, the tarot, UFO’s, ESP, mysticism, the Kabbalah, is the result of their being excluded from the ruling discourse. What these arts and disciplines have to say has no place, and indeed ‘makes no sense’ within established reason, science and common sense, and for precisely this reason they retain the potential of bringing one into contact with something outside the symbolic order, and, paradoxically, into contact with something real. Of course, one can become so immersed in the language of dreams, astrology, or Kabbalah, that these subject matters become one’s ruling discourse and thus they too can become a self-enclosed symbolic system. (One hopes to have a Kabbalah, for example, that maintains what Derrida might call an “open economy,” but this unfortunately has generally not been the case). We can conceptualize astrology, tarot, the occult in general as alternatives to the ruling discourse, and, as such, as invitations to an intrusion from the “real.” The real has been described as “an answer where there has been no question;” it can also be understood as an intrusion of the irrational. The occult “disciplines,” which lie outside the ruling discourse are, from one perspective irrational, but they are also attempts to acknowledge and even rationalize an unknown that one ordinarily simply denies. While on the one hand these occult disciplines are “illusory sciences,” they can also be understood as the only “sciences of the real,” as they consider phenomena that have no place in the illusory constructed reality of conventional discourse. For the occult sciences there is indeed a great deal “more in heaven and earth than [the scientist’s] theories can account for” and it is this irruption from the unknown that is often the subject matter of occult thought. 21. See Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors, Ch. 6 22. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 96. 23. J. Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. Trans. Peggy Kaman (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 170. Quoted in Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 144. 24. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 115.

Chapter 5 1. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.

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2. J. Derrida, Signature Event Context, in Margins of Philosophy, Trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, pp. 307-330. 3. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, p. 145. 4. Chayyim Vital, Sefer Etz Chayyim, p. 29a. Menzi and Padeh, The Tree of Life, p. 63. 5. J. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, p. 320. 6. Menzi and Padeh, The Tree of Life, p. 64. 7. G. Scholem, The Meaning of the Torah in Jewish Mysticism. In On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism. Trans. R Manheim. New York: Schocken, 1965, pp. 32-86, p. 76. 8. This is the case, to at least some extent, even in the so-called exact sciences. Many scientific ideas of theoretical merit, and even practical utility, went unrecognized simply because they were promulgated by individuals who were not in a position to be heard and recognized by a relevant community, or who stood outside the social group which at the time regulated a particular science. Conversely, much of little practical or theoretical merit has been accepted simply because it issued forth from a recognized authority. 9. For a full discussion of the evidence regarding the origin and publication of the Zohar see Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, Vol. I, pp. 13-30. 10. J. Derrida, Limited Inc. (inc. "Afterward"), ed. Graff, trans. Weber, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998, p. 236. 11. According to Sefer Yetzirah, the Sefirot are composed of a number of binary pairs, including “A depth of good (and) a depth of evil.” (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah 1:5, Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, p. 44.) The Zohar recites, “There is no true worship except it issue forth from darkness, and no true good except it proceed from evil” (Zohar , II: 184a, Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. IV, p. 125). According to Schneur Zalman, “Earth and heaven are…merely fantasies for it is imagined that there is a world, but in truth there is only simple unity,” (S. Zalman, Boneh Yerushalayim, p. 54, sig. 50, as quoted in R. Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God: The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad Hasidism. Trans. J.M. Green. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1993, p. 108), and “although the world seem to be a Yesh [i.e. an existent thing] to us, this is a total lie.” (Schneur Zalman, Torah Or, fol. 86b, as quoted in R. Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God, Trans. J. Green, Albany State University of New York Press, 1993, p. 55) We will have occasion to discuss several of these notions in Chapter Six. 12.

See discussion in Howells, Derrida, p. 36.

13. As we have seen in Chapter 3, Derrida is at pains to deny the connection between difference and negative theology, a denial that seems rather odd

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism given Derrida’s own warnings against the possibility of an author circumscribing the significance of his/her own words.

14. On Recanati’s view that God and the world are equivalent to the Torah text. see Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 123. These themes will be considered in greater depth in Chapters 6 and 8. 15.

According to the Zohar, “The Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He are entirely one” (Zohar, II, 60a, Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. 3, p. 188), and one of Luria’s followers, Israel Sarug, held that the Torah, at the highest level in the world of “Atziluth” exists as all possible combinations of Hebrew letters (Scholem, On the Kabbalah, p. 75).

16. R. Aaron Ha-Levi, Sha’arey ha-Yichud veha-Emunah, IV:5, quoted in Elior, Chabad, p. 167. 17.

Drob, Adin Steinsaltz, The Mystic as Philosopher, p. 14.

18. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, par. 18. 19.

G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Ed. Peter C. Hodgson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. See pp. 84, 99, 288.

20.

Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors, pp. 185-240.

21. For discussions regarding the complex relationships between Hegel and deconstruction, see S. Barnett, S. Hegel After Derrida. London and New York: Routledge. 1998. 22. Lacan calls the most significant of these anchoring points “the name of the father,” the “phallus” or the “paternal metaphor.” Such an anchor brings a certain law and regularity to behavior and discourse, and prevents the individual from lapsing into psychosis. It is worth noting that Lacan’s anchoring point is virtually identical to the traditional notion of God as a universal Father. J. Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses, 1955-1956. J-A. Miller (ed.), New York: Norton, 1993. 23. S. Drob, Judaism as a Form of Life, Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, 23, 4, 1987, pp. 78-89. 24. N. Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985. 25. On Derrida’s views of the Messiah and the messianic, see J. Derrida, Spectres of Marx, and the useful discussion in Caputo, Prayers and Tears, pp. 117-151. 26. R. Raphael Afilalo describes the Sefirot as “filters”. R. Afilalo, Kabbalah Dictionary: Translation and Explanation of Terms and Concepts in the Kabbalah, Kabbalah Editions, 2005, p. 23. 27. Sefer Etz Chayyim, p. 29a. Trans. Joel Kenney (personal correspondence).

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28. R. Barthes. Empire of Signs. Trans. R. Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982, p.78. The characterization of all “signification” in this manner is Taylor’s, in Erring, p. 172. 29. Taylor, Erring, p. 75. 30. H. Staten, Wittgenstein and Derrida. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984, p. 60. 31. A. Karasick, Of Poetic Thinking, p. 18. 32. Ibid, p. 13. 33. Interestingly, the notion of “multi-perspectivism” has been adopted by those contemporary scholars of the Kabbalah, who follow Moshe Idel in holding that no single methodology or point of view can reveal the true nature of the Kabbalah or, for that matter, any religious phenomena (Idel, Kabbalah, New Perspectives, p. 29). I would argue that Idel’s approach to his subject matter mirrors the subject matter itself. For a discussion of Idel’s multi-perspective methodology and “variegated phenomenology” see E. Wolfson, Structure, Innovation and Diremptive Temporality: The Use of Models to Study Continuity and Discontinuity in Kabbalistic Tradition. Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, Vol. 6, No. 18 (Winter 2007), pp. 143-167.

Chapter 6 1. See Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, esp. Ch. 5, Mysticism and Logic. 2. See Nicholas of Cusa, Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings. H. Lawrence Bond, tr., New York: Paulist Press, 1997; J. Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa on Learned Ignorance: A Translation and an Appraisal of De Docta Ignorantia. Minneapolis: Arthur J. Banning, 1985. 3. M. Eckhardt, Breakthrough: Meister Eckhardt's Creation Spirituality in New Translation, Introduction and Commentaries by Matthew Fox, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY, 1980. 4. G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Logic. Trans. William Wallace. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. 5. N. Bohr, “Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics. In Mortimer J. Adler, ed., Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. 1990), Vol. 56, pp. 337-55.Bohr wrote; “In the Institute in Copenhagen, where through these years a number of young physicists from various countries came together for discussions, we used, when in trouble, often to comfort ourselves with jokes, among them the old saying of the two kinds of truth. To the one kind belonged statements so

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism simple and clear that the opposite assertion obviously could not be defended. The other kind, the so-called “deep truths,” are statements in which the opposite also contains deep truth” (p. 354).

6. For example, Jung, in Psychology and Alchemy, p. 186, writes "The self is made manifest in the opposites and the conflicts between them; it is a coincidentia oppositorum.” C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 12. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. Originally published, 1944. 7. Amongst the oppositions to have come under the deconstructive gaze are word and thing, knowledge and ignorance, meaning and nonsense, permanence and change, identity and difference, public and private, freedom and necessity, God and humanity, good and evil, spirit and nature, mind and matter, etc. 8. See Elior, Chabad, and R. Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God: The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad Hasidism. Trans. J.M. Green. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1993. 9. Scholem translates achdut hasvaah as a “complete indistinguishability of opposites,” Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 88. 10. See Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 312. According to Elior (The Paradoxical Ascent to God, p. 69) the term achdut hashvaah connotes “two contradictions within a single entity.” It is “the divine element that encompasses contradictions and reconciles their existence.” 11. Sefer Yetzirah 1:7. Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, p. 57. 12. Sefer Yetzirah 1:5. Ibid, p. 44. 13. Azriel, The Explanation of the Ten Sefirot. 14. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 423. 15. Ibid, pp. 441-2. 16. Azriel, The Explanation of the Ten Sefirot., p. 94. 17. Ibid, p. 94. 18. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 332-3. 19. R. Chayyim Vital, Sefer Etz Chayyim (Warsaw, 1891), “Sha’are haHakdamot.” Quoted in Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God, p. 68. 20. Zohar III, 113a. Sperling, Simon and Levertoff, The Zohar, Vol. 5, p. 153. 21. Ibid, Idel translates this passage as follows: “Whoever performs the commandments of the Torah and walks in its ways is regarded as if he made the one above.” Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 187.

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22. Elior’s major works in this area include Chabad: The Contemplative Ascent to God, in Jewish Spirituality: From the Sixteenth Century Revival to the Present, ed. by Arthur Green. New York: Crossroads, 1987; and The Paradoxical Ascent to God: The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad Hasidism. Trans. J. M. Green. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1993. 23. Rabbi Aharon ha-Levi, Sha’arei ha-‘Avodah, II:10, as quoted in Elior, Paradoxical Ascent to, p. 64. 24. Ibid, II; 29, as quoted in Elior, Chabad, p. 162. 25. Rabbi Dov Baer, Ner Mitzvah ve-Torah Or, II, fol. 6a, as quoted in Elior, Paradoxical Ascent, p. 64. 26. Ibid. 27. Rabbi Aharon ha-Levi, Avodat ha-Levi, Va-yehi, 74, as quoted in Elior, Chabad, p. 166. 28. Hegel/Wallace, Hegel’s Logic, par. 48, Zusatz 1, p. 78. 29. Schneur Zalman Likutei Torah, Devarim, fol. 83a, as quoted in Elior, Paradoxical Ascent, p. 137-8. 30. The Chabad view is implicitly present in Azriel’s view that there is a coincidence between faith and unbelief, and the Zohar’s precept that “He who “keeps” the precepts of the Law and “walks” in God’s ways… “makes” Him who is above,” and finally, in the Lurianic notion that Ein-sof both creates, and is itself completed by, humankind. 31. Schatz Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, p. 207. 32. Zohar 1:153a. Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. 2, pp. 89-90. 33. Elior, Paradoxical Ascent, p. 62. 34. Ibid, p. 25. 35. Ibid, According to Elior, these coincidentia appear in the Lurianic Kabbalah, but presumably apply only to the heavenly realms. In Chabad they apply to the earthly and human realms as well (p. 25-6) 36. Ibid, p. 25. 37. Schneur Zalman, Likutei Torah, Leviticus, p. 83, quoted in Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent, p. 137. 38. R. Aaron Ha-Levi, Sha’arey ha-Yichud veha-Emunah, IV:5, quoted in Elior, Chabad, pp. 167-8. 39. Schneur Zalman, Torah Or, p. 49, quoted in Elior, Paradoxical Ascent, p. 134.

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40. Ibid, p. 58, quoted in Elior, Paradoxical Ascent, p. 150. 41. Elior, Paradoxical Ascent. p. 31. 42. Schneur Zalman. Igeret Ha Kodesh, Ch. 6, Likutei-Amarim-Tanya, Elior, Paradoxical Ascent. p. 150. 43. Schneur Zalman, Likutei-Amarim-Tanya, Chapter 35, Elior, Paradoxical Ascent p. 159. 44. Schneur Zalman, Torah Or, Tisa, fol. 86b, as quoted in R. Elior, Paradoxical Ascent, p. 55. 45. Elior, Paradoxical Ascent, p. 56. 46. K. Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism. Trans. R. M Wilson. San Francisco: Harper, 1987, p. 93. 47. Plotinus, The Six Enneads. Stephen McKenna, trans. The Great Books of the Western World. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Press, 1952, Vol. 11, p. 311. 48. Nicholas of Cusa, The Vision of God. Intro. E. Underhill. Escondido, Ca: The Book Tree, 1928. 49. S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1964, Originally published, 1932) Vol. 5, p. 596. 50. S. Freud, New Introductory lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1964, Originally published, 1932) Vol. 22, pp. 1-183, p. 73. 51. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, p. 186. 52. See G. Priest, In Contradiction: A Study of the Transconsistent. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 (originally published 1987). G. Priest, What Is So Bad About Contradictions? Journal of Philosophy 95 (1998): 410–426. 53. E. Wolfson, Oneiric Imagination and Mystical Annihilation in Habad Hasidism. ARC, The Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University, Vol. 35 (2007), pp. 131-57. 54. Howells, Derrida, p. 82. 55. Ibid, p. 33. 56. The Kabbalistic symbol Ein-sof overcomes the distinctions between being and nothingness, God and the world, and theism and atheism; Tzimtzum overcomes the distinctions between concealment and revelation, and reality and illusion, the Sefirot overcome the distinctions between unity and

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diversity, permanence and change and subject and object, the Otiyot Yesod (foundational letters) overcome the distinction between language and the world, and words and things, and Shevirat ha-Kelim overcomes the distinctions between creation and destruction, life and death, etc. 57.

Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 144.

58. An interesting effect of the supplement is that because one cannot circumscribe the world with one’s speech or experience, the supplement makes desire both possible and necessary; for desire is precisely a reaching towards that which one does not—yet—have. A similar set of ideas is expressed in the Lurianic symbol of the “Breaking of the Vessels.” According to Luria, an excess of divine light that the Sefirot were unable to contain resulted in their shattering, and ultimately in the alienation of sparks (netzotzim) of divine light in the Kellipot or “husks.” The imprisonment of these sparks in the Kellipot and the shadow world of the “Other Side” assures that that the concepts and values that were represented by the Sefirot as they were originally emanated in the “World of Points” are not (and at least until the completion of Tikkun ha-Olam) “self-present,” integrated and whole. At the same time, these sparks provide humankind with its spiritual desire; as its mission on earth is to discover these sparks, liberate them from the husks, and “raise” them in the service of human, and ultimately divine, values, all in order to complete humanity, the world and God. 59. J. Derrida, Force of Law. In Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice. Ed. D. Cornell, M. Rosenfeld, D. Gray Carlton. New York, Routledge, 1992, pp. 36-67, see pp. 22-23. 60. I have attempted to explicate these paradoxes in Symbols of the Kabbalah, but such explication cannot, for example, determine how, for e.g., Tzimtzum is to be read in any given context As will be seen later in this essay, Tzimtzum is neither and both with respect to various binary oppositions (creation/negation, knowledge/ignorance, good/evil). 61. My own understanding of Kabbalah and Hasidism does and does not accord with Derrida’s critique of essence. However, this topic leads us too far astray from our purpose in the present context. 62. See Derrida, Signature, Event, Context, Margins of Philosophy, pp. 307-330. Also, Staten, Wittgenstein and Derrida, pp. 16 ff. 63. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 98. 64. Taylor, Erring, 8-9. 65. Staten, Wittgenstein and Derrida, p. 18. For example, Derrida argues that “memory” is necessarily permeable to “forgetfulness”, as a perfect memory would not be memory at all but “infinite self-presence” (Derrida, Dissemination, p. 109).

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66. Moses Cordovero, Or Ne’erav VI: 2, 35a, in I. Robinson, Moses Cordovero’s Introduction to Kabbalah: An Annotated Translation of His Or Ne’erav. New York: Ktav, 1994, p. 119. Cordovero tells us “each of the [Sefirot] is made up of [all] ten.” (ibid., p. 120). 67. Leibniz and the Kabbalah will be discussed in some detail in Ch. 10. 68. Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 114, referring to M. Cordovero, Pardes Rimonim 5:5. 69. There are, according to Cordovero, six main behinnot, and these involve aspects which are both hidden and manifest within any given Sefirah, as well as properties that are both “essential” and “relational”. Of particular significance are those behinnot that enable a given Sefirah to receive “light” from the Sefirah above it, and those which enable it to pass light onto the Sefirah below. Scholem is correct in pointing out that in this aspect of the behinnot doctrine Cordovero is close to a dialectical mode of thinking within a Kabbalistic framework (Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 115). 70. On Derrida and negative theology see, Coward & Foshay, Derrida and Negative Theology. Derrida and negative theology will capture our attention in Chapter 9. 71. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, p. 213. 72. Ibid. 73. E. Abbott, Flatland. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. 74. S. Drob, Fragmentation in Psychology: A Dialectical Solution. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Fall, 2003), pp. 102-123. 75. In spite of the Jewish mystics’ recognition that concepts are “permeable” and conditioned by their opposites, that ideas indefinitely open to interpretation, and that there is even a “subjective” element in all things, they continued to take seriously the notion that there is indeed a single world, which is a manifestation of a single, absolute God. In providing a philosophical basis for the Kabbalistic/Hasidic view that God or Ein-sof is a coincidentia oppositorum , I hope to render plausible the notion that the overcoming of opposites enables us to think of the world (as opposed to experiencing it) as a unified whole, an idea that is clearly rejected by most postmodernists. (I would suggest that this idea [that there is a singular world and that this can be thought] exists in coincidentia oppositorum with the postmodernist view that thinking the world whole is impossible. 76. Zalman, Likutei Amarim-Tanya, p. 319 (Shaar ha Yichud VehaEmunah 7). 77. Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 122. 78. E. Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, p. xii.

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79. U. Eco, Kant and the Platypus, Essays on Language and Cognition. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997, p. 48. 80. No doubt there are third, fourth, and nth order coincidentia as well which the mind is probably incapable of fully grasping. 81. Sefer Yetzirah 2:2, Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah., p. 100. 82. M. Recanati, Introduction to the Rationales of the Commandments, as quoted and translated in Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 122. 83. As quoted and translated in Idel. Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 188. 84. Sefer Yetzirah. I. 8. As translated in Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, Vol. 1, p 234. Cf. Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, p. 66.

Chapter 7 1. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 124-8. 2. Scholem, Meaning of the Torah, p. 36. 3. Zohar I: 29b-30a: Letters were imprinted on the fabric of the Whole, on the upper on and the lower fabric…’The heavens’ are the totality of twenty-two letters. The letter he produced the heavens…The letter vau produced the earth…” Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. I, p. 114. 4. For a discussion of the Kabbalah’s linguistic mysticism, ontology and metaphysics see Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah, pp. 236-262. 5.

Scholem, Meaning of the Torah, p. 71.

6. Ibid, p. 73. 7. Ibid, p. 74. This idea is repeated by the Hasidic master Pinchas Koretz, a contemporary of the Baal Shem Tov, who wrote “the holy Torah was originally created as an incoherent jumble of letters” (. p. 76). 8. Ibid, p. 76, quoting H. J. D. Azulai, Dvarim ‘Ahadim, Livorno, 1788, 52 c-d. 9. R. Elior, Jewish Mysticism: The Infinite Expression of Freedom. Trans. Y. Nave and A. Millman. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007. 10. Scholem, Meaning of the Torah, p. 57. 11. Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 88b. See Scholem, The Meaning of the Torah, p. 62.

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12. Othiyot de Rabbi Akiva, Jerusalem, 1914, Quoted in Scholem, The Meaning of the Torah, p. 63. 13. Scholem, Meaning of the Torah , p. 64. 14. Moses Cordovero, Derisha he-inyane Malakhim, quoted in Ibid, p. 65. 15. Isaac Luria, Sefer Ha-Kavvanoth 53b, quoted in Scholem, The Meaning of the Torah, p. 176. 16. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 83. 17. J. Ben Sheshet, Sefer ha-Emunah ve-ha-Bittahon (The Book of Faith and Belief), Ch. 5, cited in Ibid, p. 84. 18. Ibid, p. 84-5. 19. In ritual (as opposed to interpretive) practice the actual vocalization (and thus reading) of the Torah text is quite fixed by tradition, and does not offer nearly the latitude suggested by the Kabbalistic commentators. 20. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 85. 21. Rabbi Bahya ben Asher Commentary on the Pentateuch (Numbers 11:15), cited in Ibid, p. 86. 22. R. Menahem Recanati, Commentary on the Torah, fol. 40b, cited in Ibid, p. 87. 23. M. De Leon, Book of the Pomegranate, Moses de Leon’s Sefer ha-Rimmonim. Ed. E. R. Wolfson. Brown Judaic Press, 1988, p. 326. Cited in Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 88. 24. G. Scholem, Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, p. 410, as cited in Ibid, p. 89. 25. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 89. 26. R. Joseph Gikatilla, The Gate of Vowels, fols. 39b-40a, quoted in Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 89. 27. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 90. 28. R. Joseph Gikatilla, The Gate of Vowels, fols. 39b-40a, Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 89. 29. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 91. Interestingly, Hegel was later accused of utilizing a logic grounded in single words and ideas as opposed to full propositions. 30. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 92. 31. Chayyim Vital, Sefer Etz Chayyim: I I 5 fol. 15a, quoted in Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 101.

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32. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 94-5, citing R. Jacob Chayyim Tzemah , Sefer meqor Chayyim, fol. 16b. 33. Ibid, p. 97, referring to R. Moses Chayyim Luzzato, Qelah Pitheii Hokhmah, fol. 2a. 34. R. Naftali Bakharakh, Emekh ha-Melekh, fol. 42a, quoted in Ibid, p. 98. 35. Ibid, p. 99. 36. Ibid, citing M. Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism (New York: Horizon, 1960; reprint Humanity Books; 1988), p. 121, and Bruce Lincoln, Myth Cosmos and Society (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1986). 37. Ibid, p. 103. 38. Derrida, Dissemination, p. 378. 39. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p 87. 40. As will be explained, this question is but a corollary to a wider question of whether one can use language without assuming the sign/signified distinction, i.e. a distinction between one’s words and what one’s words are about. 41. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, Appendix, p. 476. 42. It is particularly surprising to find this material in an appendix as it constitutes what Idel himself says is the fourth of the four factors that he (ibid., p. 93) says are the metaphysical foundations for the Jewish mystical conception of textual infinity. Idel discusses the first three of these factors (which better support his overall thesis that the Kabbalist assumed a “strong” author) in the body of Chapter 3 of his book. 43. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 476. 44. Ibid, p. 477. 45. Ibid, p. 107. 46. In the Lurianic Kabbalah this is evident in the symbols of Tzimtzum (which implies that the metaphysical distinction between God and finite humanity is an illusion) and Tikkun ha-Olam (which suggests that humanity must complete both creation and God Himself). 47. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 107. 48. K. Friedan, Freud’s Dream of Interpretation. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990. 49. Ibid, p. 3. 50. M. Taylor, Erring, p. 173.

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51. Friedan, Freud’s Dream of Interpretation. p. 4. 52. Ibid, p. 8. 53. Ibid, p. 57. 54. Ibid, p. 57. 55. See Zohar I, 199b. Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. II, p. 258. Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, Vol. 2, p. 822. 56. Zohar I, 183b: “Since the dream contains both falsehood and truth, the word has power over it, and therefore it is advisable that every dream should be interpreted in a good sense.” Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. II, p. 199. 57. Zohar I, 183a-b. Ibid, Vol. II, p. 199. 58. N. Malcolm, Dreaming. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959. Malcolm’s view, however, is really just an obvious example of the dissolution of the signifier/signified distinction: because one is always defining the “dream” with words, one can never actually point to the dream itself. 59. Friedan, Freud’s Dream of Interpretation, p. 20. 60. Ibid, p. 29. 61. S Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams. Trans. James Strachey. New York: Avon Books, 1965, p. 550 62. C.G. Jung, Seven Sermons to the Dead. in Robert Segal, ed. The Gnostic Jung. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, p. 181-193; pp. 185, 193. 63. One is here reminded of the Buddhist critique of “essence”, in particular Nagarjuna’s doctrine of sunyata, “emptiness”. According to Nagarjuna all things are dependent on something other than themselves and are thus “empty” and without their own unique, inviolable essence. This doctrine, which is put in service of the view that there is no ultimate truth, paradoxically expresses an ultimate truth, one that in many ways comes full circle to the Hindu conception of a unitary absolute, Brahman, who might now be conceived as the interconnectedness and fullness of all “dependent origination”. 64. J. Dan, “The Name of God, the Name of the Rose, and the Concept of Language in Jewish Mysticism,” in his Jewish Mysticism, Vol. III: The Modern Period. Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson, 1999, pp. 131-162, p. 143. 65. Ibid, p. 143. 66. Ibid, p. 148. 67. Ibid, p. 148.

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68. I hold in reserve the question of whether other forms of symbolic expression such as art and music are to be included here, but there is good reason to believe that Kabbalistically these too (particularly music) articulate Torah and the name of God. The Kabbalists understood music (cantillation) to be embedded within the Torah text (the cantillation marks) and thus part of the hermeneutical process. Given the Torah’s explicit bar against graven images, the place of representational and figurative art in this scheme is more problematic, and would require a separate study. 69. Dan, “The Name of God”, p. 175, referencing Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, pp. 5-31. 70. Ibid, p. 176. 71. Elior writes, “The Kabbalistic tradition regards the holy text as an open semantic unit that does not attest to a fixed subject matter dictating a single truth…This idea is unique to Jewish mysticism and epitomizes the freedom embodied in the infinite meanings of the divine word.” Elior, Jewish Mysticism: The Infinite Expression of Freedom, p. 37. 72. Scholem, Meaning of the Torah, p. 69; referencing Zohar I 26b (Tikkunim), II 117b, III 124b, 153a, 253a (Raya Mehemna), Tikkune Zohar 56, 60, Zohar Hadash 106c. The Zohar sometimes speaks of this as the Torah that had been given to Adam prior to the expulsion from Eden. In Zohar I, 117b-118a, we read that R. Jose “entered a cavern, at the farther end of which he found a book hidden in the cleft of a rock. He brought it out and caught sight of the seventy-two tracings of letters which had been given to Adam the first man, and by means of which he knew all the wisdom of the supernal holy beings, and all those beings that abide behind the mill with turns behind the veil among the supernal ethereal essences, as well as all that is destined to happen in the world until the day when a cloud will arise on the side of the West and darken the world. R. Jose then called R. Judah and the two began to examine the book. No sooner had they studied two or three of the letters than they found themselves contemplating that supernal wisdom. But as soon as they began to go into the book more deeply and to discuss it, a fiery flame driven by a tempestuous wind struck their hands, and the book vanished from them.” Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. I, pp. 366-7. In this passage the Zohar suggests that the wisdom of the primordial scripture is vouchsafed for the days of the Messiah. 73. Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, Vol. III, p. 1103; referencing Zohar I 26b (Tikkunim); Tikkunei ha-Zohar, Tikkun 40,80b. Cf. Zohar I, 28b (Tikkunim), Zohar hadash, Tikkunim 110a. 74. Zohar I 63b. Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. I, p. 207.

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75. Zohar I 63b. Ibid, Vol. I, p. 207; see also, Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, p. 1103; also, Zohar I 37b, 52b-53a (Sperling and Simon, Vol. I, p. 165), and Zohar 131b. II: 45b. Zohar Hadash, Ruth 83b-83d. 76. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, Vol. III, p. 1104. 77. Ibid, Vol. II., p. 1105. 78. Zohar III, 124a-125a (Raya Mehemna); 153a (Raya Mehemna); Zohar Hadash, Tikkunim, 106c-107b, as discussed in Ibid, Vol. III, pp. 1097-99, 1106. 79. Ibid, Vol. III, p. 1106, citing Zohar Hadash, Tikkunim, 106d-107a, Zohar II, 118b-119a (Raya Mehemna). 80. Ibid. 81. Scholem, Meaning of the Torah, p. 71. 82. Ibid, p. 73. 83. Perhaps it was the respect for such infinite inquiry that prompted the Kabbalist, Shimon Labis to write in his work Ketem Paz “Concerning everything that cannot be grasped its question is its answer” [D. Matt, Ayin: The Concept of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism, in Lawrence Fine, ed., Essential Papers on Kabbalah. New York: New York University Press, 1995, p. 67-108, p. 96, note 37.] Indeed, as I pointed out in Symbols of the Kabbalah, the Kabbalists occasionally regarded the Sefirot, the divine attributes which comprise the world as “questions” and therefore developed the foundation for an interrogative as opposed to a propositional metaphysics. The Zohar, for example, equates the Sefirot with certain “questions” that provide an indication of the Sefirah’s level and the nature of God. Binah, which the Zohar connects with the primordial “mother” and the “beginning” of creation, is spoken of as the question “Who?” (Mi? in Hebrew). Malchut, the last Sefirah, at the end of the emanative process, prompts a contemplation of the cosmos as a whole, and is called “What?” (Mah?). For the Zohar this “What?” pertains to “these” (eleh) Sefirot, and when the letters comprising the Hebrew terms for “What are these?” (Mah Eleh) are rearranged we arrive at “Elohim”, the revealed God of the bible. It is thus questions, not answers that lead us to the living, creator God. See Zohar I:2a, Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. 1, p. 6, and discussion in Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, Vol. I, p. 294-5. 84. Chayyim Vital, Sefer Etz Chayyim: I I 5 fol. 15a, quoted in Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 101. 85. Othiyot de Rabbi Akiva, Jerusalem, 1914, Quoted in Scholem, Meaning of the Torah, p. 63.

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Chapter 8 1. Derrida, Of Grammatology , p. 158 2. For a discussion of linguistic mysticism in the Kabbalah, see S. Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah, Ch. 5: Otiyot Yesod: The Linguistic Mysticism of the Kabbalah, pp. 236-262. 3. E. R. Wolfson, “Erasing the Erasure: Gender and the Writing of God’s Body in Kabbalistic Mysticism” in his Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 49-78, p. 52. 4. Talmud, Tractate Eruvin, 13a. 5. Sefer Yetzirah 2:2, Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, p. 100. 6. Zohar 1:159a; Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. 2, p. 111. 7. See Wolfson, Erasing the Erasure, p. 56. 8. Wolfson, Erasing the Erasure, p. 60. 9. Ibid, p. 59. 10. Schneur Zalman, Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah, Chapter 1; Zalman, Likutei Amarim-Tanya, p. 287. 11. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 49. See discussion in Staten, Wittgenstein and Derrida, p. 58, and Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 17. 12. One might argue that “feldspar” is a natural kind independent of any human classificatory scheme, but even “natural kind” is a term that receives its meaning via its place in a system of (in this case) philosophical concepts. 13. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, par. 31. 14. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 50. 15. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, par. 261. 16. Jay Michaelson, “Derrida and Nonsense Theology.” http:// www.metatronics. net/lit/derrida.html. 17. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 158. 18. Drob, Judaism as a Form of Life. 19. Taylor, Erring, p. 104. 20. R. Scharlemann, The Being of God When God is Not Being God: Deconstructing the History of Theism,” in T. Altizer, et. al. Deconstruction

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism and Theology. New York, Crossroad, 1982, p. 101. Quoted in Taylor, Erring, p. 104.

21. Zohar, II, 60a, Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. 3, p. 188. 22. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 122. 23. Zohar, III, 36a, Sperling, Simon and Levertoff, The Zohar, Vol. IV, p. 395: see also, Zohar III, 80b (Ibid, Vol. V, p. 92) 24. The full citation is “each and every one [of the people of Israel] ought to write a scroll of Torah for himself, and the occult secret [of this matter] is that he made God Himself.” (quoted in Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 188) 25. I am not here arguing that that material things are “fictional” in the sense that they don’t exist, but rather that the world we live in, including the various genera of nature and the entities of “science” are a cultural and linguistic construction superimposed upon something might be thought of as a “meaningless substrate”. (However, even talk about a “meaningless substrate” is part of a linguistic construction). We live in what we might be spoken of as an all-encompassing narrative, written by our culture and the wider history of humanity. This narrative is one definition (albeit a limited one) of the “absolute,” humanity, world, and God. 26. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment. Trans. W. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987. 27. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, 6.44. 6.55, 6.522. Cf. Wittgenstein’s speculations about the self and God, L. Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914-16. G. H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe, ed., G.E.M. Anscombe, trans. New York: Harper & Row, 1961, p. 73e ff. 28. Lacan speaks of the real as “the essential object which isn't an object any longer, but this something faced with which all words cease and all categories fail, the object of anxiety par excellence” (See Jacques-Alan Miller. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954-1955. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998, p. 164). 29. Derrida identifies the monstrous with the unpredictable future: “the future is necessarily monstrous: the figure of the future, that is, that which can only be surprising, that for which we are not prepared, you see, is heralded by species of monsters. A future that would not be monstrous would not be a future.” J. Derrida, Points…Interviews, pp. 386-7. See also, J. Derrida, Deconstruction and the Other, p. 123. 30. Michaelson, Derrida and Nonsense Theology. 31. Indeed, this is what Derrida does when he speaks of differánce as a nonsensible “play”, one that is not itself ontological or linguistic but which is

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nonetheless necessary for being and language to unfold. The notion that there are conditions of representation for language which nevertheless lie outside language will be explored more fully in Chapter Nine. 32. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 17. See J. Derrida, Back from Moscow in the USSR, trans. Mary Quaintance, in J, Derrida: Politics, Theory and Contemporary Culture. Mark Poster, ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, pp.197-235. 33. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p.18. 34. Derrida, Différance, p. 7. 35. See R. Rorty, Unfamiliar Noises: Hesse and Davidson on Metaphors, in his Objectivism, Relativism and Truth, Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, Vol. I, pp. 162-172. 36. See Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors, Chs. 6, 7, and 8. 37. Levinas, Totality and Infinity. 38. J. Derrida, Violence and Metaphysics, in Writing and Difference, Alan Bass, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, pp. 79-153, p. 116. 39.

Ibid, p. 116.

40. Cited in Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 423. 41. The Hebrew word reshimu (trace) might be appropriate here, but I have used “echo” in part to distinguish it from the use of the term “trace” in Levinas and Derrida. 42. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, pp. 270 ff. 43. Zohar III 225a, Raya Mehemna, Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, Vol. I, p. 259. 44. Quoted in Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God, p. 64. 45. Elior, Chabad, p. 167.

Chapter 9 1. See D. Matt, Ayin: The Concept of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism; Joseph Dan, The Paradox of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism, in Jewish Mysticism, Vol. II: The Modern Period, pp. 63-69; Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God. 2. Sefer Yetzirah, 2:6, see Matt, Ayin, p. 70. Kaplan translates this verse as follows: “he formed substance out of chaos and made nonexistence into existence” (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, p. 105.)

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3. Commentary to the Sefer Yetzirah, p. 5. col. A, as quoted in Scholem. Major Trends, p. 217. Scholem points out that this work is ascribed to R. Abraham ben David, but he holds that the true author is R. Joseph Ben Scholem. 4. David ben Abraham ha-Lavan, Masoret ha-Berit, as cited in Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 95. 5. Zohar III 225a, Raya Mehemna, Tishby, Wisdom of The Zohar, Vol. I, p.259. 6. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 423. 7. As quoted in Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar. Vol. 1, p. 234, referencing Rabbi Meir Ibn Gabbai, Derekh Emunah, Berlin, 1850, p. 4a. 8. Bahya ben Asher on Genesis 1:2, as quoted in Matt., Ayin, p. 75. 9. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah (Warsaw, Orgelbrand, 1883), 424a-b, as quoted in Ibid, 10. The Jewish Neoplatonist, Philo of Alexandria, was the progenitor of negative theology. The Kabbalists, however, apparently knew nothing of Philo. 11. Azriel of Gerona, Explanation of the Ten Sefirot (Perush ‘Eser Sefirot), Dan, The Early Kabbalah, p. 90. Azriel is referring to Maimonides (The Guide for the Perplexed, I; 58). 12. David ben-Judah he-Hasid, The Book of Mirrors: Sefer Mar’pot ha-Tsove’ot, S Matt, ed. Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1982, p. 261, as cited in Matt, Ayin, p. 95n. 13. Azriel of Gerona, Sod ha-Tefillah (The Secret of Prayer), as cited in Ibid, p. 80. 14. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 416. 15. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah 103a, citing Psalm 121:1, as quoted and cited in Ibid, p. 85. 16. Shimon Labis, Ketem Paz I: 91a, as quoted in Ibid, p. 96 n.37. 17. See Zohar I:2a, Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. 1, p. 6, and discussion in Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, Vol. I, p. 294-5. 18. Shem Tov Ibn Gaon, Treatise on the Ten Sefirot, Qiryat Sefer 8 (1931-32), p. 401, as quoted in Matt, Ayin, p. 76. 19. Moses de Leon, Sheqel ha-Kodesh, 23-24, as quoted in Ibid, p. 77. 20. R. Levi Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi, fol. 6a-6b, quoted Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 141.

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21. Likutei Torah, Devarim, fol. 83a, Translated and quoted in Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God, p. 137-8. 22. M. Verman, The Books of Contemplation: Medieval Jewish Mystical Sources. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992, p. 55. 23. Derrida, Differánce, p. 4. 24. On the “value firmament,” see J. N. Findlay, Values and Intentions (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1963). Some Kabbalists, Schneur Zalman of Lyadi among them, hold that what we are here calling the “primal affirmation” is the Or Ein Sof (the light of the infinite) rather than Ein Sof itself (or “himself”). Perhaps, on this view, the term Ein Sof would be reserved for the primal negation, Ayin, “that which the mind cannot comprehend nor the mouth speak”, or for an even earlier condition that transcends both being and nothingness. Schneur Zalman speaks of a revelation or manifestation prior to the Tzimtzum, in which Ein Sof, in a manner which is crudely analogous to a man revealing something to himself in thought, produces His “light”. See Immanuel Schochet, Mystical Concepts in Hasidism. In Zalman, Schneur, Likutei Amarim-Tanya, pp. 810-94, p. 830, note 13.) The difficulty with this point of view is that it has God engaging in a “private revelation” and this defeats one of his main motives for creating a world, i.e. to know himself through his manifestation to an “other”. 25. This suggests that somehow the whole cosmos follows logically, or is “deducible” from the existence of God, or even from the existence of only one of the world’s elements. This idea, I believe, was considered (and at times apparently adopted) by Hegel. It also seems to follow from Nietzsche’s dictum that each thing in the world is inextricably connected with each and every thing else. Saussure’s notion that the significance of any sign is dependent upon its difference from all other signs and significances provides further warrant for this idea. In the Kabbalah the doctrine of “aspects” (Behinnot) which was adopted by Moses Cordovero and others suggests that each of the world’s elements is comprised of “reflections” of each of the world’s other elements, a notion that supports the hypothesis that everything is in everything and that we could discover all things by knowing one thing (exceptionally) well. Perhaps this line of thought goes too far. For example, while it is reasonable to suppose that in order for one to adequately identify “John F. Kennedy” one must, as it were, “bite off” a pretty big chunk of the cosmos as we know it, it is by no means clear that John F. Kennedy would not remain precisely who he is (or was) even if many of the world’s details or facts were quite different than they actually are or were. In the case of the Absolute, we might equally assume that many of the world’s details could be different without changing the world’s, and, in particular, Ein-sof’s character, but is unclear whether any of the world’s values could so differ without a

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism concomitant significant alteration in our conception, and even the very nature of God.

26. This leads us back to the “conditions of representation” as primordial for both map (and now) world. (We should here note Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle as well as Wiggins’ interpretation of quantum mechanics, which in effect declare that the phenomena investigated by physics are not completely independent of the investigators and their instruments). 27. Sefer ha-Yichud. Cited and translated in Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 188 (MS Milano-Ambrosiano 63, fol. 1141). 28. David ben Judah ha-Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, p. 227, as quoted in Matt, Ayin, p. 81. 29. Ibid, p. 82; Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 46 30. Dov Baer, Or ha-Emet, Matt, Ayin, p. 87. 31. Ibid, p. 86. 32. Ibid. 33. Caputo, Prayer and Tears, p. 7. 34. Ibid, p. 8. 35. As we have seen, within the Kabbalistic system differánce is best equated with the Tzimtzum, the process of concealment/contraction that brings distinction and finitude into the worlds. However, even this ‘stage’ in the development of Ein-sof can hardly, even on the Kabbalists’ own account, be equated with the biblical God. 36. Derrida, Differánce, p. 22 37. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. xviii. 38. Ibid, p. xix. 39. Ibid. 40. Derrida, Archive Fever, p 34, 45; cf. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, pp. xx, and 269. 41. Caputo then asks “If so, then is not deconstruction very Jewish, albeit without God?” (Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. xx.) 42. Moses de Leon, Sheqel ha-Qodesh, 25-26, as quoted in D. Matt, Ayin, p. 79. 43. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 21. 44. Ibid, p. xxiv.

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45. Ibid, p. pp. 5-6. See Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets, 2 Volumes New York: Harper Torch books 1962, 1969. 46. Azriel of Gerona, as quoted in Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 423. 47. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 32. 48. J. Derrida, Ulysses Gramophone, in his Acts of Literature, Ed. F. Attridge. New York: Routledge, 1992, pp. 294-5. 49. J. Derrida, On the Name, Ed. T. Dutoit. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995, as quoted in Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 42. 50. Ibid, p. 44. 51. Ibid, p.45. 52. L. Wittgenstein, Lectures & Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, Ed. Cyril Barrett. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, p. 56. 53. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 64. 54. Ibid, p. 109. 55. Ibid, p. 111. 56. P. Fenves, ed., Raising the Tone of Philosophy: Late Essays by Immanuel Kant, Transformative Critique by Jacques Derrida (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, p. 167, as cited in Ibid, p. 71. 57. Ibid, p. 73. 58. Ibid, p. 74. See, Derrida, Deconstruction and the Other, in R. Kearney ed., Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers, p. 123; Derrida, Points…Interviews, 1974-94, p. 386-7. 59. Derrida, Points…Interviews, p. 401. 60. See Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 74. 61. At times Derrida seems to be focusing on the ‘breakage’ itself as opposed to the invention that it heralds, at other times upon an invention that is so radically different from what is as to be impossible, and still at other times he holds that no invention is possible that does not begin with a repetition of the same, but with a difference. 62. Zohar, II: 184a, Sperling, Simon and Levertoff, The Zohar, Vol. IV, p. 125. 63. Rashi to Genesis 2:1. 64. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, p. 79.

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Chapter 10 1. Vital, Chayyim, Introduction to Etz Chayyim, as quoted and translated in L. Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and his Kabbalistic Fellowship. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 99. 2. Fine, Physician of the Soul, p. 99. 3.

Ibid, p. 99 ff.

4. Jacob Emden was a noted rabbi, authority on Jewish law, and Kabbalist, who engaged in a variety of disputations, the most famous of which involved the accusation that the great Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschuetz was a secret “Shabbatean,” i.e., devotee of the false messiah Shabbatai Sevi. Emden was also amongst the first to question the antiquity of the Zohar. 5. Quoted in M. Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995, p. 35. Idel indicates that the passage is quoted in Emden’s name in. R. Pinhas Hurwitz, Sefer ha-Berit, p. 292. 6. Ibid, p 233. 7. Ibid, p. 41. 8. Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God, p. 85. 9. See Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors, Ch. 6. 10. Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah, Ch. 1. 11. See W. Giegerich, The End of Meaning and the Birth of Man: An Essay about the State Reached in the History of Consciousness and an Analysis of C.G. Jung’s Psychology Project, Journal of Jungian Theory and Therapy, 6, 1, 2004, pp. 1-65; W. Giegerich, The Soul’s Logical Life, 3rd Revised Edition (Peter Lang, 2002), and W. Giegerich, D.L. Miller, and G. Mogenson, Dialectics & Analytical Psychology: The El Capitan Canyon Seminar, New Orleans: Spring Journal Books, 2004. My critique of several elements of Giegerich’s thought appears in S. Drob, Giegerich and the Traditions: Notes on Mythology, Hermeneutics, Psychology and Religion, Journal of Jungian Theory and Therapy, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2005 (online edition: http://www.junginstitute.org/journal/JungV7N2p61-74.pdf, downloaded Feb 1, 2006). 12. C. G. Jung, Psychological Types, In Collected works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 6 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971, 1976), par. 816. 13. Giegerich, The End of Meaning, p. 13. 14. Giegerich, The End of Meaning, p. 22. Support for Giegerich’s position is, for example, to be found amongst those committed to an intense “Kabbalistic”

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spirituality and who find that, in order to remain enveloped in its “truth,” they must reject historical scholarship and insist that the Kabbalah is, the source of all the world’s philosophical, and even scientific, wisdom and knowledge. From a modernist perspective, such individuals have immersed themselves in a symbolic, imaginative construction and have divorced themselves from reason and shielded themselves from all criticism. 15. I have discussed my differences with Giegerich in Drob, Giegerich and the Traditions. 16. According to Levis-Strauss, because all cultures organize thought and knowledge into binary oppositions, all cultures require myth and symbols to reconcile the contradictions that are engendered. Levi-Strauss writes that myth “provides a logical model capable of overcoming contradictions.” Claude Levi-Strauss, The Structure of Myth, in Structural Anthropology, Trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest. New York: Allen Lane, 1958 1963. Originally published in the Journal of American Folklore LXVII (1955), pp. 428-44. 17. A. Coudert, Leibniz and the Kabbalah. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1995. 18. A. Coudert, The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought of Francis Mercury Van Helmont (1614-1698). Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 1998. 19. Review of Allison Coudert’s The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614–1698) The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Winter 2004), pp. 185-90. 20. My discussion here draws upon a fuller discussion in S. Drob, "The Only God Who Can Save Us (From Ourselves):" Kabbalah, Dogmatism, and the Open Economy of Thought,” www.newkabbalah.com. For a discussion of Ein-sof and the open economy of thought in the context of psychotherapy see: An Interview with Sanford Drob on Kabbalah and Psychotherapy, www.newkabbalah.com. 21. See Chapter 8 of this volume, and Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah, Ch. 5, Otiyot Yesod: The Linguistic Mysticism of the Kabbalah, pp. 236-262.) 22. R. Moses Chayyim Luzzato, Qelah Pithei Hokhmah (Maqor, Jerusalem, 1961). Fol. 2a. Quoted in Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 97. 23. Sefer Etz Chayyim, p. 29a. Trans. Joel Kenney (personal correspondence). 24. Sefer Yetzirah I: 7. Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, p. 57. 25. Azriel, The Explanation of the Ten Sefirot. In Dan, The Early Kabbalah, p. 94. 26. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 423.

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27. Ibid, p. 441-2. 28. Zohar III, 113a. Simon and Levertoff, The Zohar, Vol. 5, p. 153. 29.

Bohr, Discussion with Einstein, p. 354.

30. Rabbi Dov Baer, Ner Mitzvah ve-Torah Or, II, fol. 6a, cited in Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God, p. 64. 31. Elior, Chabad, p. 163 ff. 32. Zohar 1:153a. Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. 2, p. 89-90. 33. Schneur Zalman Likutei Torah, Devarim, fol. 83a, quoted in Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God, pp. 137-8. 34. See, for example, V. P Clayton. Erikson’s theory of human development as it applies to the aged: Wisdom as contradictory cognition. Human Development, 18 (1975), 119-228, and D. A. Kramer & D. S. Woodruff. Relativistic and dialectical thought in three adult age groups. Human Development, 29 (1986), 280-90. 35. I have attempted to suggest such a program for psychology in my paper, S. Drob, Fragmentation in Psychology. 36. David ben Judah he-Hasid, The Book of Mirrors, cited in Matt, Ayin., p. 81. 37. See Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah, pp. 120-154: Tzimtzum: A Kabbalistic Theory of Creation; cf. Chapter 3 in this volume. 38.

Sefer Etz Chayyim 1:1; p. 32; Menzi and Padeh, The Tree of Life, p. 102.

39. R. Aaron Ha-Levi, Sha’arey ha-Yichud veha-Emunah, IV: 5, as cited in Elior, Chabad, p. 167. 40. As I have discussed in Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah, pp. 294-32. 41. While this chapter provides the beginning of such a Kabbalistic axiology, its full articulation must await another day. 42. Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah, pp. 363-412; 43. Rabbi Aaron Ha-Levi, Sha’arey ha-Yichud veha-Emunah, IV: 5, quoted in Elior, “Chabad”, p. 167. 44. I am indebted to Zev bar-Lev for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this section. 45. Zalman, Likutei Amarim-Tanya, p. 319 (Shaar ha Yichud VehaEmunah 7). 46. Ibid, 47. Ibid, p. 299 (Shaar ha Yichud VehaEmunah 5). 48. Luzzato, General Principles of the Kabbalah, p. 64.

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49. In other places Vital says that these lights are emanated from the forehead of Adam Kadmon. 50. The lights and vessels emanated in tikkun are completely connected with one another. They are called Akudim (striped or bound together), alluding to Jacob's dream of "striped, spotted and blotched sheep". The Torah uses the word Akudim to mean both striped and bound. 51. Chayyim Vital, Sefer Etz Chayyim 2:2, The Breaking of the Vessels. (Translation from working notes of my study of this work with Rabbi Joel Kenney.) 52. Here we should also note that in a process that parallels these linguistic events, the Sefirot and Partzufim (divine personalities), which from another perspective are also said to constitute the cosmos, come to be unified in such a manner that each Sefirah is contained within each of the others and each successive Partzuf comes to be the “soul” of one of the others. 53. In previous works I have shown how the Lurianic metaphors are implicit within the theories of such thinkers as Hegel, Freud, and Jung (see Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors, Chs. 6, 7, and 8), as well as theories of human development (e.g. Piaget) and scientific progress (e.g. Kuhn) (see Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah, Ch. 7). These theories have this basic metaphor as their content in part because they are theories about the activities of the human mind, and in part because they are the product of human cognition, creativity and inquiry. 54. Sefer Yetzirah 2:2, Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, p. 100. 55. It may not, however, be the largest of infinities, because while it may include descriptions of non-linguistic acts, things and events, it does not include them in and of themselves. For example, the sum total of everything that can be said or written in every language does not include the complete mental state of an artist prior to commencing a painting, or the painting itself, though it would include descriptions of these things in virtually infinite detail. 56. One might here be inclined to counter that in the moment before speaking anything can be said, but in point of fact, for the vast majority of us, what we actually do say is governed by a set of capacities and tacit rules that drastically limit our possibilities of speech. Indeed, this is one reason why many are inclined to say that the genius and even the “madman” are, much closer to God, than the cleric. What comes out of the mouth of the latter is most often totally routine and predictable, whereas what emerges from the mouth of the genius or madman is often totally surprising and new. Before speaking, the madman’s field is wide open. His or her speech lies outside the boundaries established by the ruling discourse, and for this reason his speech touches upon, what Lacan refers to as the “real,” that which has not (yet) been circumscribed and routinized by ordinary linguistic convention. The moment

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism before the madman speaks provides us with an intimation of Ein-sof, the infinite possibility before God spoke and created the world.

57. We might suppose that before God said “Let there be light…” he could have said anything. God was on the threshold of speech, and virtually any and every possibility lay open before him, and from these endless possibilities, of worlds that exist or could exist between the extremes of darkness and light, life and death, he chose to speak and form our world. But was He really on the threshold of infinite speech before uttering His biblically recorded words? After all, without creation, what is/was there for God to say? Indeed, it is only after creation that it even make sense to say that “prior to speaking anything can be said,” for if there is not yet any thing (even any idea) how can one say anything. If Ein-sof is to be a true infinite, a meaningful infinite, an all inclusive infinite covering every possibility and every actuality, the possibilities and actualities that he is must have somehow been prefigured prior to his choosing to create the world. Perhaps this is why a midrash recites that God looked into a primordial Torah, which served as the “blueprint” for the world. It is thus not a God prior to creation that can represent Ein-sof (the Infinite) in the moment before speech, but only a God (or humanity) contemplating the whole of a vastly infinite created world. We are here reminded of Sefer Yetzirah’s dictum that “the beginning is wedge within the end” (Sefer Yetzirah I:7; Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, p. 57), and the Zoharic view that God Himself, the creator of humanity is, paradoxically, created by human endeavor (Zohar III, 113a. Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. 5, p. 153). 58. The Kabbalists, in contrast to the Biblical tradition, often, but not always — see below--, placed an emphasis on the written letters as opposed to spoken language. 59. Sefer Yetzirah 1:1, Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, p. 5. 60. Vital draws an equivalence between the Sefirot and the letters when he writes: “There is yet another way to describe by analogy, which is to depict these higher things through the shape of written letters, for every single letter points to a specific supernal light.” Sefer Etz Chayyim 1:1; p. 28 (Joel Kenney, working trans.). Also see, Menzi and Padeh, The Tree of Life, p. 54. 61. Sefer Etz Chayyim 1:1; p. 28, Menzi and Padeh, The Tree of Life, p. 59. 62.

Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, Vol. I, p. 292.

63. Zohar, I, 246b. Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, Vol. 1, p. 326. Compare Sperling & Simon, The Zohar, Vol. 2, p. 382. 64. See Idel, Absorbing Perfections, Chapter 3: “Text and Interpretation, Infinities in Kabbalah.” 65. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Is Symbolism, p. 76.

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66. Midrash, Numbers Rabbah xiii, 15, see Scholem, The Meaning of the Torah, p. 62. 67. Scholem, On the Kabbalah, p. 65. Referring to Sefer ha-kavvanoth (Venice, 1620), 536. 68.

Scholem, On the Kabbalah, p. 75.

69. A similar view regarding the Torah’s plasticity is attributed to the founder of the Hasidic movement, Israel Baal Shem Tov. Ibid, p. 76. 70. The question arises if a computer, programmed with the rules of English grammar and sentence construction along with a complete vocabulary that enabled it to adequately generate English sentences could ever be on the threshold of speech in the way a human is? This is an important philosophical question. Searles and others have argued that the computer has simply manipulated signs, and not understood or generated meanings (see J. Searles, Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program? Scientific American 262, Janauary, 1990, pp. 26-31 ). I would point out that before we would assign the function of language to a computer it would not only have to generate sentences but provide them with interpretations as well, e.g. it would have to be able to say something like the sentence “Walter Payton’s seeds from Mars are digging a hole to China” (which I would guess has never before in the history of the universe been written or said) and then form the interpretation that this sentence is from a proposed (and awful) movie script about a 22nd century man named after a 20th century football player, who purchases a lemon that was grown on Mars and that unbeknownst to him was implanted with seeds, that when disposed of, sprout into Martians who develop an underground colony on earth and conspire to take over the world. The computer would have to, as I have just done, create this interpretation spontaneously, without, for example, having it “canned” in its memory banks, and it would have to be able to generate an indefinitely large number of alternative interpretations of the same sentence and link them to whole realms of knowledge, life and culture. It would have to do all of these things, without being subject to the arguments of the Chinese Room, i.e. that it was just flashing sentences according to programmed instructions without really understanding them - i.e. in the same way that a non-speaker of Chinese, inside a room filled with the right manuals, might appropriately respond to Chinese questions by following a “response program” but who could not thereby be said to understand Chinese. (In Kabbalistic terms, in order to be a comprehending subject of language, a computer would have to participate in Ayin, Ein-sof, Tzimtzum, Sefirot, Shevirah and Tikkun, i.e. select from an infinitude of possibility, and then expand upon, and in effect re-infinitize what was selected through analysis and interpretation). When a man or a woman opens his or her mouth to begin speaking we assume that we are not before a computer generating sentences according to a

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Kabbalah and Postmodernism linguistic program but rather before a thinking sentient being who can not only generate propositions but provide us with and/or understand many alternative interpretations of what he or she is about to say. We thus see that the whole question of interpretation is actually already written into the “threshold of speech,” into the Ayin/Ein-sof dialectic. This is a beautiful example of how Tikkun is already a part of and the very completion of Einsof.

71. Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 110. 72. This process is described in my Symbols of the Kabbalah, pp. 194-6. 73. The unconscious significance of one’s words involves not only one’s identifications with others (parents, authority, etc.) but also meanings that one’s words carry simply by being the words of an other’s (i.e. society’s) language.

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Index

-AAaron ha-Levi, 111, 133, 247 Abraham ha-Lavan, 206 Abramowitz, Z., xv absolute, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 24, 29, 35, 39, 40, 54, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 86, 102, 104, 105, 106, 110, 113, 114, 115, 117, 125, 127, 132, 140, 141, 143, 152, 158, 175, 178, 182, 190, 198, 204, 209, 210, 212, 215, 216, 219, 227, 238, 241, 244, 246 Absolute, 7, 12, 14, 15, 40, 63, 82, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 121, 126, 139, 173, 189, 190, 205, 236, 244, 250, 253, 258 absolute nothing (cf. no state of affairs whatsoever) , 212 Absorbing Perfections (Idel), 161 Abulafia, A., 59, 162 accident (vs. essence) , 13, 97, 142, 185 achdut hashvaah (cf. coincidentia oppositorum, coincidence of opposites), 31, 130, 131, 137 Adam and Eve, 228 Adam Kadmon (cf. Primordial Adam), 8, 26, 46, 113, 164, 253, 256, 259, 260, 262, 263 affirmation, 13, 31, 77, 213, 214 alienated, alienation, 27, 29, 43, 48, 55, 56, 62, 63, 69, 84, 90, 93,

133, 137, 197, 237, 246, 250, 252-54, 260, 262, 264 Alter Rebbe (cf. Schneur Zalman), 67 Altizer, T. J. J., xiv, 3, 265 Amoraites, 163 analytic philosophers, 120 anchors, 115, 248 antinomies, 7, 9, 246, 254 apocalypse, 226, 228 apophantics, 20, 52, 143 aporias, 122, 140 archetypal, 26, 28, 45, 46, 92, 94, 169, 171, 228, 230, 235 archetypes, 11, 17, 31, 35, 66, 67, 93, 95, 101, 118, 127, 132, 143, 162, 171, 182, 248 archive, 167 atheism (cf. unbelief)2, 33, 34, 35, 52, 53, 63, 89, 157, 199 audience, 106, 108, 125, 166 Austin, J. L., 105, 106, 108 authority, 21, 24, 70, 108, 242, 243, 244 Avir Kadmon (Primordial Ether), 131 axiological, 10, 36, 115, 245, 250, 252 Ayin, cf. Nothing, nothingness, 6, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32, 36, 63, 73, 76, 90, 104, 115, 122, 128, 132, 133, 134-7, 156, 205-8, 210, 213, 216, 217, 220, 221, 244, 250, 253, 254, 255, 257, 260, 262, 263

Kabbalah and Postmodernism

324

Azriel of Gerona, 26, 32, 52, 89, 130, 131, 143, 199, 206, 207, 216, 223, 232, 239 Azulai, Abraham, 33, 159, 261

-BBahya ben Asher, 161 Bakharakh, R. Naftali, 163 Barthes, K., 118 basic metaphor, 10, 28, 262 behinnot (aspects), 118, 128, 142-3, 173 being, 8, 10, 25, 26, 31, 36, 41-4, 50, 52, 56, 57, 62, 63, 64, 67, 69, 70, 72, 75-81, 85, 86, 87, 90, 95, 109, 110, 113, 121, 131, 133-7, 142, 146, 147, 149, 150, 157, 175, 181, 190, 193, 194, 202, 205-10, 212, 213, 214, 217, 218, 219, 220, 222, 224, 228, 238, 239, 241, 252, 253, 256 Being, 52, 60, 70, 71, 80, 131, 190, 194, 206, 213, 223 Being and Time (Heidegger), 194 being is grammar, 60 Berakhot (Tractate), 169 bible, 2, 89, 121, 161, 167, 191 biblical, 5, 17, 81, 87, 91, 93, 162, 167, 171, 181, 221, 228, 236 Big-Bang, 186, 199 bilinear thinking, 5, 94, 149, 215, 227, 241, 252 Binah (Understanding), 92, 260 binary oppositions, 22, 30, 31, 129, 140, 142 Birnbaum, D., 111 Birur (extraction), 28, 101, 102, 237, 254-5, 264 bittul ha yesh (nullification), 34, 247 Bloom, H., 5, 42, 52, 98, 99, 227, 230, 265 blueprint, 84, 163, 180, 181 Bohr, N. 129, 148, 240

Book of Questions (E. Jabes), 51, 56, 59, 83 Boston University, xiv Brahman, 35, 46 Bratslav, Nachman of, 51 Breuer, J., 97 broken shards, 197, 251, 260 Buber, M., xiv, 99, 100 Buddha, 6, 35 Buddhist, 35, 75, 217, 243 Butler, B., 202

-CCabala Denudata (Knorr von Rosenroth), 235 Caputo, J., xv, 23, 51, 86, 88, 89, 90, 102, 103, 218, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 228 cartography, cartographic, 86, 88, 130, 145-50, 211, 212, 250 Chabad (cf. Lubavitch), xiv, 37, 130, 133-9, 143, 148, 150, 217, 232, 240, 247 double movement of thought, 138 chaos, 24, 136, 205, 227 Chesed (Kindness), 92, 117, 142 chess, 184, 186, 189, 193, 198, 202 Chochmah (cf. Wisdom), 65, 92, 94, 117, 260 chosen people, 36, 223 Christian, xiv, 3, 35, 37, 38, 39, 114, 127, 139, 186, 221, 235 Chronicles, Book of, 131 circumcision, 4, 49, 50, 55 "Circumfession" (Derrida), 49, 55, 61 city of thought, 112 Cixous, H., 42, 49, 50 coincidence of opposites (cf. coinidentia oppositorum), 59, 128, 129-50, 151, 156, 240 coincidentia oppositorum, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 25, 59, 66, 84, 105, 122, 124,

Index 127, 128, 129-50, 152, 154, 155, 170, 174, 199, 200, 201, 202, 215, 239, 240, 241, 242, 246, 261 logical echo of primal unity, 156 Collingwood, R., 39 comedy, 36 Conan Doyle, A., 189 concealment (cf. Tzimtzum), 9, 10, 26, 31, 38, 40, 57, 58, 63, 65, 66, 76-9, 82-4, 88, 93, 95, 104, 122, 132, 136, 145, 150, 153, 188, 190, 199, 224, 237, 240, 246, 254, 256 conditions of representation, 212-13 constitutive outside, 122, 124 contraction (cf. Tzimtzum), 10, 26, 31, 40, 57, 61, 63, 65, 66, 76, 79, 88, 93, 99, 104, 115, 132, 135, 145, 150, 188, 246, 247, 248, 252, 253, 254, 256, 258, 259, 262, 263 contradiction, xiii, 7, 9., 16, 21, 27, 42, 105, 113, 124, 128, 129, 138, 140, 144, 234, 240 Cordovero, M., xv, 25, 59, 66, 95, 118, 142, 143, 159, 160, 161, 177, 178, 232 Coudert, A., 234-6 counterpoint, 143, 241 creation, 39, 83, 84, 93, 136, 182, 205, 208, 216, 255 creation ex nihilo, creation from nothing, 208, 210-14, 213, 222 creative process, 254 Critique of Judgment (Kant), 192

-DDa’at (Knowledge), 92 Dan, J., xv, 173-8 David ben Judah ha-Hasid, 216, 245 Davidson, D., 97

325 De Visione Dei (Nicholas of Cusa) , 139 death, 6, 14, 18, 24, 33-6, 48, 49, 55, 68, 82, 89, 94, 96, 100, 123, 159, 175, 176, 177, 193, 194, 209, 217, 227, 229, 233, 234 death of the "kings," 94 deconstruction, xv, 3, 4, 11, 13, 14, 20-4, 30, 32, 33, 35, 38, 40-3, 46, 50, 51, 53, 55, 58, 59, 64, 73, 83, 90, 92, 93, 96, 101-4, 113, 115, 119, 121, 122, 123, 127-8, 139, 140, 143, 153, 155, 165, 172, 173, 188, 197, 200, 220-26, 230, 244, 247, 248, 249, 252 deconstruction "deconstructed," 204 deep truths, 129, 240 democratization of thought, 123 derash, 61 Derrida, J. xiv-xv, 1, 4, 15, 20, 22, 23, 29, 30, 48, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 73, 103, 182, 221, 225, 227, 230, 237 apocalypse, 226 archive, 44 as Kabbalist, 1, 3, 48 Austin, J. L. 105, 108 being, 70 beyond logic, 72 binary opposites, 139, 142 Caputo, J 89 Cixous, H. on, 49 coincidentia oppositorum, 129, 143 Cordovero, M. 143 creation ex nihilo, 222 deconstruction is ethics, 101 différance, 68, 212 dreams, 168 Ein-sof and, 80 extra-linguistic, 195 faith, 223 Freud and, S. 2, 3, 12, 45, 823, 97-8. 134, 169-71, 197 future, 12

326

Kabbalah and Postmodernism

Derrida, J. (cont'd.) Hegel, G.W. F., xiv, 2, 3, 11, 12-15, 43, 53, 57, 59, 61, 82, 102, 110, 112-15, 12021, 126, 129, 135, 139, 141, 143-44, 254, 172-3, 189, 201, 232-33, 243 Hillman, J. and, 97 impossible, 117, 219, 222, 225, 227 Jabes E. and, 51 Jewish background of, 48 Judaism and, 49 Kabbalistic hermeneutics, 52, 165 Kabbalistic influence or convergence?, 52 Khora, 85, 87 Lacan, J. and, 96 Levinas I. and, 52, 100, 198 linear discourse, 6 linguistic idealism, 184, 193 literal and metaphoric, 40 Logocentrism, 78 Messiah, 220, 228, 237 messianic, messianism, 83, 127, 222 abstract messianism, 223 metaphysics, 11, 30, 122 monstrous, 96, 97, 194, 245 mysticism, 73, 78, 191 mysticism involves presence, 73 name of God, 224 negative theology, 71, 88, 221, 224, 225 non-truth is truth, 83 permeable concepts, 142 postmodernism and, 20 presence, 202 reason, 243 Saussure, 183 secret, 225 signifier-signified distinction, 14, 151, 153, 187, 200 structuralism, 123

Derrida, J. (cont'd.) substitutions, 109 supplement, 140 systematic philosophy, 120 tallith, 49 theology, 220 thing as representamen, 182 thing divided, 74 trace, 69, 74 transient insight, 75 tropological mysticism, 42 Tzimtzum and, 76, 81, 150, 218 unconscious, 70 undecidables, 140 Viens, 102 Wittgenstein and, L. 184 Wolfson on, 50, 52 words and things, 9 writing, 72, 77 Descartes, 78, 85, 108 description via relief, 194 determinism, 9, 149, 199, 201, 246 devekut (cleaving), 245 diachronic, 122 dialectic, dialectical, 12-15, 30-3, 38, 40, 64, 79, 91, 100, 102, 112-14, 118, 126, 135, 136, 143, 172, 177, 199, 223, 227-8, 230, 233-4, 240-1, 245, 248, 249, 252, 255, 258 dialectical inversion, 30, 135 dialetheistic logic, 139 dialogic circumstances, 106 dichotomous thinking, 7, 147, 148, 149 différance, 14, 30, 52, 56, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 75-7, 80-2, 86, 87, 88, 89, 96, 110, 122, 126, 194, 196, 212, 218, 220, 221 differential matrix, 77, 80, 141, 152, 153, 183, 218, 219 dilug, 210 Din (Judgment), 65, 92, 99, 117, 142 Diogenes, 54 Dissemination (Derrida), 57, 60, 165 divided essence, 122

Index divine light, 8, 26-8, 43, 66, 97, 99101, 197, 237, 252, 255, 256, 260, 264 divine milieu, 32 dogma, dogmatism, 53, 114, 120, 236-8, 248, 252 double-think, 168 Dov Baer, R. 134, 217, 240 dream, dreams, 44, 79, 96, 97, 100, 139, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 195, 227 dualities, 30, 199, 245

-Eecho, 9, 57, 156, 199, 204, 245 Eckhardt, M., 129 Eco, U., 53, 152 ecstatic Kabbalists, 162 Eden, 58, 93 ego, 5, 34, 35, 46, 96, 99, 217, 263 Ein-sof (The Infinite), 26, 27, 28, 46, 65, 71, 79, 81, 83, 85-8, 99, 100, 111, 144, 155-6, 189, 191, 194, 204, 217, 236, 239, 244, 248, 251, 253, 261, 263 all and nothing, 136 archetypes, 162 as "great signifier", 188 as "master signifier", 190 as condition or metaphor, 88 as goal, 237 as person about to speak, 257 Ayin (nothing), 63, 73, 76, 205, 206 beyond being, 86 catharsis of Din, 99 Chabad conception, 135, 136 coincidence of opposites, 25, 135, 155 completion of,, 261 concealed from itself, 77 concealment as revelation, 132 creates itself, 213 creation ex nihilo, 210

327 Ein-sof (The Infinite) (cont'd.) creative process, 254 devekut (cleaving), 245 différance, 90 emerges from Lurianic system, 189 evolving, 15, 132 faith and unbelief, 89 forgetting, 216, 244, 246 Hegel, G. 12 Hegelian Absolute, 113 hidden and visible, 32, 52 holy letters, 67 holy potential, 246 humanity and, 28 immanence, 35 impossible, 219, 245 language, 150, 155 limitation of,, 94 Lurianic theosophy, 25 meaning and non-sense, 174 metaphysical whole, 149 moments of,, 40 neither signifier nor signified, 155 open economy, 236, 242 perfection of,, 156, 251 referring to, 219 space and time, 66 Torah embodies, 178 Tzimtzum (contraction) and, 66, 80 undecidable character of, 141 union, unity of opposites, 9 16, 130, 143, 200, 239 unknowing, 217 unknown, 102 world and, 203 Yesh (All) and Ayin (Nothing), 30 Eliezer, Rabbi 169 Elijah the prophet, 100, 220, 223, 231 Elior, R.. xv 130, 133, 135, 138, 160, 175, 232 Eliyahu of Smyrna, 159 Emden, J. 232

Kabbalah and Postmodernism

328

emendation (cf. Tikkun), 10, 15, 28, 31, 35, 38, 40, 45, 79, 92, 94, 95, 100, 103, 112, 122, 197, 222, 237-8, 244, 248, 252, 253, 255, 261 emergent meaning, 189 Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Hegel), 120 entity-talk, 119 Eranos Conference, 54 Eretz Yisrael, 44 erotic, 92 Erring (M. Taylor), 24, 29, 36, 120, 187 essence, 13, 37, 59, 67, 72, 83, 111, 123, 128, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 140, 141, 142, 143, 150, 159, 173, 174, 183, 185, 187, 202, 203, 206, 210, 221, 223, 238, 239, 240, 245, 247 essentialism, 9, 224, 241 ethical, 8, 11, 14, 23, 28, 40, 83, 94, 95, 102, 110-11, 121, 132-3, 136-7, 222, 237, 248, 249, 250, 251 evil, 8, 27, 30, 31, 38, 58, 83, 101, 108, 112, 130, 139-42, 148, 1756, 196, 227, 240, 243, 251 exile, exiled, 27, 28, 43, 44, 55-7, 6263, 91-5, 105, 123, 197, 246, 251-2 exodus, 234 expulsion from Eden, 93, 234 extra-linguistic, xiii, xv, 96, 184, 195, 196, 197, 198

-Ffaith, 9, 23, 28, 31-3, 36, 52, 63, 64, 89, 116, 131, 149, 165, 171, 192, 194, 199, 207, 222-5, 237, 238, 239 Fichte, J. 134 fiction, 39, 82, 108, 190 Findlay, J. N., xiv, 214

Fine, L. 231 flood, 93-94 fluid foundationalism, 116 fly bottle (Wittgenstein), 6, 191 forgetfulness, 84, 141, 216, 217 forgetting, 216, 217 formal indicator (Heidegger), 156, 210 forms of consciousness, 10, 230, 232, 234, 236, 242, 252, 253 forms of life (Wittgenstein), xiv, 24, 116, 185, 186 forms of representation, 7, 88, 147 Foucault, M., 45, 225 foundation, 15, 17, 20, 25, 27-9, 32, 35, 36, 45, 59, 65, 71, 92, 104, 109, 110, 113, 115, 117, 126, 133, 135, 151, 155, 162, 178, 180-1, 189, 190, 191, 199, 207, 237, 246, 248, 252-3, 257 foundational letters, 40, 159, 163, 187, 238, 248, 259 Fountain of Wisdom, 208 fragmentation, 22, 27 frankincense, 247 free association, 171 free-will, 9, 149, 185, 199, 201, 246 Freud, S. 2, 3, 12, 44, 82, 83, 97, 99, 139, 169-71, 197 Frieden, K., 168-71 fundamentalism, 225

-GGalbanum, 247 Gasche, R. 31 Gates of Light (Gikatilla) 206 Genesis, 67, 89, 94, 160, 169, 181, 190, 212, 227, 235, 256, 263 Genesis Rabbah, 169, 212 Gevurah (Power), 142 Giegerich, W. 232, 233, 234, 236 Gikatilla, J. 162, 206, 207 Gnostics Gnosticism, 138, 143

Index God, xiii, 2, 6, 8, 12, 16, 24, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 66, 73, 78-83, 87, 8995, 105, 109, 110-112, 117-18, 121, 123, 125, 126-42, 145, 14850, 155, 157, 159, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 173, 174, 178, 179, 181, 182, 185-92, 199, 208, 210, 211, 224 All and Nothing, 5 and différance, 80, 88, 89 as father, 234 attributes of, 104 coincidence of opposites, 31, 32, 130, 133, 134, 136, 138, 143, 239, 240 concealment of, 66, 77, 224, 240 constructing, 11, 45 contraction of, 66 creation ex nihilo, 208, 210 creation, 58, 67, 93, 95 creator and created, 12, 134-5, 138, 144, 181, 215, 239, 241 crisis within, 61 death of, 18, 24, 89, 120 deconstruction and, 247 Derrida and, 57, 62, 73, 75, 77, 220, 226 Derrida and "negativity" within, 57 description via relief, 194 development of, 263 différance and, 218, 221 dissolution of, 33 distance from humanity, 8 divine intent, 225 divine letters, 159 eclipse of, 63, 102 Ehyeh asher ehyeh ("I will be what I will be"), 214 Ein-sof and, 149 emergence of, 80 emptiness/fullness, 254 existence of, xiii, 2, 6, 7, 185

329 God (cont'd.) forgets Himself, 246 full presence, 79 humanity actualizes, 28 identity with Torah, humanity, and world, 54, 168 imitatio dei, 247 inexpressible, 173 infinite, 25 Jabes on, 83 Kant on, 192, 225 khora and, 86 language, 110, 127, 152 language games and, 116, 126, 186 Leibniz on, 235 letters, 181, 182 light of, 93 linear thinking and, 249 Lurianic theosophy, 16 masculine and feminine aspects, 27 meaningless, 227 name of, 174 naming, 224 negative attributes, 72, 207 negative theology, 89, 208, 218, 224 negtion, 206 non-spatial, non-temporal, 66 nothing (Ayin), nothingness and, 207, 224 nothing apart from, 137 open economy and, 236, 238, 239, 242 origin in "the book", 62 perfecting, 110 place of the world, 76, 212 place of world, 212 plenitude of meaning, 160 representing, 148 revelation as limitation, 67 rupture within, 58, 63 Sefirot and, 118, 207, 245, 259 shifting anchors, 115 text and, 167

Kabbalah and Postmodernism

330

God (cont'd.) theologians, 100 thought, 135 threshold of speech, 258 Torah, 180, 213 Torah as name of, 174 transcendental objects in mind of, 116 unity of opposites and, 131 unknowing and, 245 unnamable, 206 values, 133 words of living, 163 world, 22, 30, 52, 54, 87, 151, 203 writing, 238 Gödelian mathematics, 140 godhead, 24-5, 76, 78, 81, 104, 132, 134, 137, 158, 167, 206, 258 good, 7, 22, 24, 30, 31, 32, 37, 38, 58, 108, 112-13, 130, 139, 140, 141, 142, 148, 152, 175, 196, 202, 227, 238, 240, 247 Goodman, N. 116 Gornish, H., xv Grammatologie, Grammatology (Derrida), 42, 54, 182

Hegel, G. W. F., Hegelian, xiv, 2, 3, 11, 12-15, 31, 43, 53, 57, 59, 61, 82, 102, 110, 112-15, 120, 121, 126, 129, 134, 139, 140, 141, 143-4, 154, 172-3, 189, 197, 201, 232-3, 243 Heidegger, M., 22, 53, 156, 194, 210, 229 Hellenistic thought, 5 heretical, 1, 3, 48, 64, 207, 265 hermeneutics, 4, 8, 9, 40-42, 52, 58-9, 62, 64, 158, 165, 167, 168, 172, 174 Heschel, A. J., 222 Hillman, J. 29, 96, 97, 100 Hindu, 35, 217 Hod (Splendor), 92 holy land, 160, 161 holy potential, 111, 246 How to do Things with Words (Austin), 105 Howells, C., 140 human condition, 8, 43 humanism, 34 husks (cf. Kellipot), 27, 101, 237, 255, 260, 264 Husserl, E., 23, 108, 184 hyle, 85, 161

-H-IHabermas, J. 3, 4, 49, 265 haiku, 118 halakha, halakhic xv, 17, 18, 176, 177 Handelman, S., 3, 49, 52 Hasidic, Hasidim, Hasidism, 9, 25, 31, 34, 36, 37, 52, 53, 57, 58, 73. 83, 101, 130, 133, 135-7, 143, 145, 162-3, 165, 166-7, 182, 205, 216, 208. 217, 232, 238, 240. 245, 247-8, 251 Hebrew, 18, 26, 49, 60, 84, 158, 159, 161, 167, 177, 181, 186, 217, 232, 238, 256, 259, 262, 263 Hecht, S., xiv

I and Thou (Buber), 99 Idea of History (Collingwood), 39 idealism, 9, 134, 193, 215, 241-2 idealists, 215 Idel, M. xv, 2, 20, 50-5, 151, 152, 158, 161, 162, 163-7, 232, 238 identity and difference, 30, 201, 204 idolatry, 176, 238, 244 illusion, 19, 34, 39, 43, 79, 83, 84, 96, 109, 115, 144, 154, 168, 171, 184, 186, 188, 190, 200, 211, 223, 240, 241, 246 immortality, 6, 7

Index impossible, impossibility, 3, 10, 11, 19, 34, 51, 58, 71, 79-80, 82, 88, 95, 102, 106, 117, 119-20, 12324, 127-28, 146-47, 165, 186, 191, 192, 195, 198-99, 205, 207, 211, 214-15, 219-227, 229, 244, 245 indeterminacy of meaning, 33, 165 indistinguishable unity, 200-01 ineffable, 71, 73, 219, 222, 244 inexpressible unity of all things, 9 infinite interpretability, 10, 12, 33, 55, 158, 160-61, 163, 174 inverse of mysticism, 172 Isaac of Berditchev, 53, 60 Islam, 225 Israel of Ryzhin, 166

331 Kant, I, Kantian, xiv, 45, 116, 119, 186, 224 Karasick, A. 20, 41-42, 123-124, 230 Karo, J., 25 Kelim, 26-27, 66 kelipah, kellipot, 7, 27, 101, 123, 237, 252, 254-55, 260, 262, 264 Kenney, J., xiv Keter (Crown), 207, 254, 260, 263 Khora, 65, 81, 85-88 Kierkegaard, S. 53 kings who reigned and died in Edom, 94 Knorr von Rosenroth, 235 Kohen Herrera, R. Abraham, 232 Kuhn, T., 226

-L-JJabes, E. 51, 56-59, 62, 77, 83 Jacob ben Sheshet, 161 Jacob Chayyim Tzemah, 163 Jerusalem, 163, 228 Jewish law, xiv, xv, 28, 127 Jewish Science, 221 joy, 36 Judaism, xiv, 2, 5, 8, 17, 22, 35, 36, 37, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56, 83, 114, 116, 121, 126, 171, 179, 197, 220, 222-23, 225, 227, 231, 244, 265 Jung, C. G., Jungian, 2, 3, 96, 129, 139, 143, 169, 171, 173, 197, 230, 233 justice, 23, 63, 102, 103, 223, 225, 229, 238, 251

-KKabbalah as infinite expression of freedom (Elior), 175 Kabbalah Consciousness, 252-53 Kant, 53, 116, 139, 178, 191, 225

Lacan, J., xv, 96, 97, 98, 100, 115, 191, 245 lack, 59, 73, 95, 140, 161, 216, 232, 254-55, 262 ladders (Wittgenstein), 8, 75 language games (Wittgenstein) , xiv, 116, 125-26, 183-86,191-92, 195 law of non-contradiction, 139 Leibniz, G. 120, 121, 142, 164, 173, 202, 234, 235 "Let there be a firmament," 182 Levinas, E. 1, 3, 48, 52-53, 64, 100, 198, 229 linguistic, xiii, xiv, 3, 6-7, 9, 19-20, 22, 26-27, 33, 42, 46, 51, 55, 58, 62, 63, 67-68, 77-79, 84-85, 9596, 98, 101, 105-106, 110, 112, 123, 125, 127, 130, 145, 149, 150- 52, 155, 159-60, 173-74, 180, 183-184, 186-93, 195-200, 204, 211-13, 215, 216, 220, 222, 226, 238, 243-45, 255-63, linguistic idol, 190 linguistic prison, 190, 192 Linguistic Subject, 262 Livi Yitzhak, 208

Kabbalah and Postmodernism

332

Locke, J. 235 logic, logical, xiv, 9, 40, 63, 72-73, 83, 89, 91, 129, 138, 142, 144, 156, 162, 178, 185, 201, 202, 209, 214, 232-34, 240, 243 Logocentrism, 78 logos, 22, 39, 46, 85 love, 97, 99, 194, 251 Lubavitch (cf. Chabad), 130, 217 Luria, I. 2, 10, 15, 18, 25, 26, 27, 37, 43, 45, 57, 59, 65, 66, 76, 79, 81, 84, 92-95, 99, 101, 105, 118, 128, 131, 132, 143, 161, 163, 179, 189, 228, 231, 246, 250, 251, 256, 259, 265 Lurianic Kabbalah, 3, 8, 9-13, 15-16, 20, 24-25, 28, 29, 30, 32, 35, 38, 39, 40, 44, 56, 58, 62, 65, 67, 71, 74, 75, 76, 79, 83, 91-93, 96, 9899, 101, 102-105, 107, 109, 112, 115, 118, 121-23, 127-128, 13132, 149, 153, 159, 163, 164-66, 179, 189-90, 196-97, 199, 205, 218, 223, 225, 231-239, 248-51, 253-55, 257, 259-63 Luzzato, M. 95, 98, 163, 238, 256 Lyotard, J.F. 21, 28, 38, 191

-MMaggid of Mezritch, 135, 166, 216, 245 Maimon, Shlomo, 232 Malchuth (KIngship), 92 Malcolm N., xiv, 170 Mallarme, S. 53 map, mapping Cf. cartography, mercator) , 86, 87, 88, 112, 130, 146, 148, 194, 211, 212, 215, 250 marginalized, 2, 13, 23, 37, 89, 120, 197 marrano, 49 mashal, 151 master narrative, 21, 28

material universe, 5, 215 materialism, 9, 241 Matt, D., xv, 205 meaningless, meaninglessness, 33, 112, 174, 178, 202, 227, 257, 262 meditation, 2, 49, 55, 220 memory, 141, 216 Mendelssohn, Moses, 232 Mercator (cf. map, cartography), 87, 146, 147, 194, 211, 215 messiah, messianic, messianism, 2, 12, 13, 23, 29, 51, 60, 63, 83, 86, 100, 102, 110, 117, 123, 127-28, 160-61, 176-77, 192, 196, 205, 220-223, 226-29, 231, 234, 237 metaphor, 10, 97, 98, 194 metaphysical “globe”, 155 metaphysical grammar, 142 metaphysical void, 27, 29, 87 metaphysics, 5, 11-14, 30, 31, 36, 41, 42-43, 54, 69, 71, 104, 108-09, 114-117, 119, 122, 129, 140, 142, 149, 187, 189, 207, 248 Michaelson, J. 184, 193 midrash, xv, 2, 95, 160, 169, 171, 181, 261 Midrash Tehillim, 181 Miller, H., 1, 3, 35, 265 mimesis, 45 Mishna, xv mitzvoth, 17, 18, 28, 83, 110, 133, 137-38, 164, 179, 245 modes of understanding, xiv, 1, 8, 10, 230, 234, 236, 242, 245, 253 "Monolingualism of the Other" (Derrida), 48 monstrous (Derrida), 96-7, 100, 192, 194, 226, 245 Moses de Leon, 107, 162, 207, 221 Mt. Sinai, 27 multiple interpretations, 59, 121, 124, 243, 244, 260, 261 multiple perspectives, xiii, 114, 123, 127

Index multiplicity of determinate meanings, 165 music, 241 mystical experience, xiii, 8, 17, 73, 74, 144, 175, 245 mysticism, 1, 19, 42-43, 48, 53, 73, 129, 138, 172, 175 mysticism of ideas, 1 mystics, 144, 236 myth, 10, 11, 23, 28, 41, 85, 117, 126, 127, 164, 232-34, 253, 257, 262

-Nnatural kind, 183 negation, 12, 31, 35, 84, 113, 132, 138, 141, 144, 148, 196, 205, 206, 207, 246, 253 negative theology, 72, 89, 218, 219, 221-5 Neoplatonists, 221 Netzach (Victory) , 92 netzotzim (cf. sparks), 27, 123, 251, 254 255 New Kabbalah, 10, 16, 128, 223 Nicholas of Cusa, 129, 139 Nietzsche, F., xiv, 18, 20, 39, 89, 142, 152, 172, 202 night of the soul, 97 nihilism, 35 nimshal, 151 no state of affairs whatsoever (cf. nothingness), 209, 210 nominalism, 9, 225, 241 Non-Dual, 244 non-originary origin, 30, 126 non-rational, 230, 232 nonsense, 112, 154, 184, 200, 249 Nonsense Theology (Michaelson), 184 Nothing, cf. Ayin, 5, 44, 56, 132, 136, 152 nothingness, 6, 8, 25, 32, 35, 73, 86, 90, 104, 122, 131, 132, 134-37,

333 142, 149, 156, 157, 182, 205-10, 212-17, 223, 224, 239, 241, 246, 250, 254, 258, 260, 263 Nought, 131, 206, 208, 213, 223 Numinous, 218

-OOfrat, G. 50, 51 Olamot (cf. Worlds), 26, 27 One, xiii, 6-9, 11, 20, 31, 35-37, 49, 54, 57, 68, 74, 83-87, 96, 105-06, 116, 119-21, 133, 135, 137, 141, 143, 146, 147, 152, 153, 155, 158, 168, 182, 183, 186-87, 189, 199, 200, 201, 207, 208, 210-12, 215-16, 218-19, 227, 234, 244, 246, 247 ontotheology, 52, 72 open economy, 10, 15, 236-39, 24243, 252 opposites (cf. coincidence of opposites), 9, 10, 13, 25, 30-32, 36, 58-59, 62, 93, 124, 128-35, 137-39, 142-44, 151, 155-56, 200-01, 204, 239, 240-42, 244, 254, 260 Or Ein-sof (Light of the Infinite)f, 26, 254 origin, 31, 43, 57-59, 62-63, 67, 71, 76-77, 80, 81, 84-86, 89, 94, 101, 109, 123, 130, 141, 149, 155, 181, 186, 190-91, 193, 199, 215, 218-20, 222, 235, 245-46, 248, 263 Other Side (cf. Sitra Achra), 27, 101, 237 Otiyot Yesod (cf. Foundational Letters, twenty-two foundational letters), 17, 26, 40, 159, 182, 187, 238, 248, 259, 262

Kabbalah and Postmodernism

334 -P-

panim el panim (face to face), 27, 260 PaRDeS, 61 Partzufim (Visages), 27, 28, 45, 92, 117, 123, 255, 260, 261 penetrating reality, 211 permeability of concepts, 32, 58, 14243, 148, 157, 182, 203 peshat, 61 pharmikon, 56 philosophy, philosophical, xiii-xv, 118, 20-23, 30, 33, 36, 38, 40-43, 45-47, 50, 53, 58-59, 62, 64, 6872, 78, 91, 98, 106-09, 109, 11114, 116, 118-30, 133, 134, 138, 139, 140, 144, 147, 149-51, 154, 156, 158, 172-73, 175, 180, 18486, 189-196, 198-99, 201, 20809, 215, 218, 226, 231-32, 234, 237-38, 240-43, 245, 246, 248, 249, 253, 257 Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein), 105, 184 philosophical puzzles, 185 Philosophy of History (Hegel), 110 Pirke Avot, 181 plasticity of meaning, 160 Plato, xiv, 23, 85, 87, 108, 121 Plotinus, 138 poesis, 41, 45, 63 poetry, 43, 117, 121 point de capitan (Lacan), 115 political, 8, 14, 89, 185, 226 positivists, 120 postmodern, postmodernism, xiii-xv, 1, 2, 4, 11, 13, 15-15, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 38, 40, 42-44, 47, 54, 55, 59, 64, 92, 96, 98, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 114, 116-18 , 120, 121, 123, 124, 125, 127, 129, 130, 139, 140, 144, 148, 159, 164, 166, 167, 172, 173, 174, 180, 184, 192, 230, 236, 248

prayer, 2, 17, 35, 49, 52, 53, 63, 81, 207, 217, 223, 226 Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida (Caputo), 220 pre-linguisticized, 68, 153, 192, 199 presence, 2, 4, 5, 13, 15, 18, 22-23, 33-34, 43, 56-57, 60, 63, 65, 69, 70, 73, 77-79, 82, 93, 109, 123, 138, 140, 141, 165, 166, 188, 210, 216, 218, 224 Priest, G., 139 primal “yes”, 213 primal signification, 189 primal will, 254 Primordial Adam, Primordial Man (cf. Adam Kadmon), 8, 26, 117, 164, 254, 259, 263 Primordial Ether (See Avir Kadmon), 131 privileging, 6, 12, 22, 23, 30, 109, 127, 129, 139, 145, 218 prophesy, xv, 245 psyche, 93, 126, 127, 129, 131, 230, 240, 254 psychoanalysis, xv, 3, 33, 44, 97, 126, 241 psychology, xiii, xiv, xv, 1, 8, 9, 33, 38, 139, 149, 154, 156, 194, 196, 200, 240, 241, 253 pure concepts, 142, 144 pure intuition, 184

-RRachamim (Compassion), 92, 94, 142 Rashi, 228 rational mysticism, xiv, 2, 8, 10, 230 Raya Mehemna (Zohar), 176 real, 4, 41, 44, 45, 47, 61, 86, 94, 96, 97, 98, 100, 101, 135, 190, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 212, 226-27, 240, 245, 246, 250, 255 reality, 8, 12, 21, 29, 31, 37, 45, 46, 51, 52, 53, 54, 58, 62, 66, 86, 87, 96, 105, 109, 111, 113, 115, 124,

Index 131, 134-38, 143, 144, 147, 154, 167, 184, 185, 186, 190-92, 194, 195, 197, 200, 203, 211, 212, 226, 235, 240, 241-42, 246, 248, 251 reality as presented by hilosophy, 184 Reason, 113, 231, 242, 243 Recanati, M 53, 54, 110, 151, 155, 161, 182, 187 redemption, 39, 250 reference, 23, 56, 60, 61, 68, 77, 78, 94, 107, 109, 152, 153, 159, 165, 171, 184, 185, 195, 200, 202, 213, 214, 215, 218, 241, 258, 263 relativism, 37 remez, 61 reshimu (trace), 74, 75, 77 restoration (cf. Tikkun), 10, 28, 29, 31, 33-34, 39-40, 45, 83, 92, 93, 95, 100, 110, 133, 156, 164, 177, 197, 237, 248-50, 253, 255, 261, 262 revelation, 26, 27, 31, 51, 57-58, 61, 63, 66, 67, 84, 102, 107, 124, 132, 133, 136, 150, 163, 168, 178, 203, 226, 231, 240 Rofe’ del Medigo, R. Joseph, 232 Rorty, R. 20, 98, 100, 109 Rousseau, J. 108 ruling discourse, 23, 96, 100, 195, 196, 207, 226 Rusansky Drob, L., xv

-SSafedian Kabbalists, 163, 261 Sarug, I. 159, 177, 261 Saussure, F. de 46, 67, 68, 172, 183, 212, 220 Schelling, F. 134, 139, 226 Schneur Zalman of Lyadi, 67, 76, 78, 84, 133-34, 136, 137, 150, 156, 182, 190, 203, 208, 240, 256, 258

335 Scholem, G. xv, 2, 25, 32, 44, 52, 5354, 56, 59, 60-62, 91, 102, 108, 158, 159, 160, 162, 175, 230 Scholem, Joseph Ben, 206 scriptural network, 32 secondary revision (Freud), 171 secret, 49, 63, 158, 174, 176, 207, 215, 223, 225 secular, 4, 32, 34, 37, 165 Sefer Etz Chayyim (Vital), xv, 124, 179 Sefer ha Bahir, 123 Sefer ha-Yihud, 155, 181 Sefer Yetzirah, 27, 94, 130, 155, 156, 181, 205, 215, 239, 257, 259 Sefirot, 6, 7, 11, 12, 17, 26-28, 31, 32, 35-36, 39, 42, 45, 60, 66, 67, 74, 92, 94, 95, 98, 101, 113, 115, 117, 118, 122, 123, 125, 127, 130-32, 142, 143, 162, 177, 179, 182, 197, 207, 214, 215, 221, 228, 235, 239, 248, 249, 250, 251-56, 259, 260, 262, 263 Sefirotic, 93, 117, 118, 194, 197 self-actualization, 34 self-nullification, 247 semantic “black hole,” 174, 178 Shekhinah, 92, 177 shells (cf. Kellipot), 27, 101 Shem Tov ibn Gaon, 207 Sherlock Holmes, 189, 214 Shevirah, Shevirat ha-Kelim (Breaking of the Vessels, cf. broken shards) 6, 11, 12, 17, 28, 29, 31-33, 36, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 56-58, 75, 79, 90, 91-104, 115, 118, 122, 123, 124, 128, 132, 133, 205, 225, 226, 238, 247-49, 250, 255, 256, 260, 262, 264 Shimon Bar Yochai, 107, 108 Shiur Qomah, 181 sign, 77, 122, 130, 142, 156, 169, 182, 198 signifier, signified, 9, 14, 44, 46, 60, 63, 78, 110, 119, 122, 123, 125, 130, 144, 150, 151-55, 168, 171,

336

Kabbalah and Postmodernism

172, 180, 182, 184, 187-89, 200, 249, 260 signifier/signified distinction, 9, 119, 152, 154, 171, 172, 188 signifier-signified distinction, 60, 144, 151, 154, 155, 171, 200 Sitra Achra (cf, Other Side), 27, 101, 123, 177 254, 264 Six Days of Creation, 182 Sollers, B. 60-62 soul, 7, 17, 26, 29, 38, 97, 101, 117, 131, 142, 161, 163-64, 167, 168, 178, 186-87, 208, 217, 238, 250, 251, 252 Source of Wisdom, 131 sparks (cf. netzotzim), 8, 27-28, 101, 164, 197, 217, 237, 251, 255, 260, 264 spiritual practice, 126 Stace, W.T. 73, 144, 201 states of affairs, 86-88, 105, 152, 193, 201, 209, 210-14 Steinsaltz, A. 38, 111, 251 strong author, 166 structuralism, 45, 46, 123 Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn), 226 sub-species aeternae, 147 substitutions, 67, 109, 256 superficial vs. deep truths, 129 Supernal Wisdom, 135 supplement (Derrida), 122, 140, 170, 226 symbols, xiv, 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 11, 17, 25, 30-32, 36, 38, 41-42, 50, 6566, 81, 123-124, 127, 132-133, 140-141, 149, 163, 196, 230-37, 247, 250, 253, 256 Symbols of the Kabbalah (Drob), 1, 11, 25, 31, 91, 117, 189 synchronic, 122 synoptic view, 109, 113, 117, 149 system, 2, 11-13, 16, 24-25, 29, 31, 32, 35, 40, 41, 54, 67-72, 74, 80, 85, 87, 92, 95, 100-105, 109-110, 114, , 119-124, 128, 132, 137,

140, 144, 150, 152, 156, 173, 179, 183, 185, 186, 191-99, 20205, 210, 211-13, 220, 230-32, 236, 248, 250, 256 systematic theology, 103, 108, 122

-TTalmud, 2, 163, 169, 171, 181, 183, 243 Tannaities, 163 Taylor, M. xv, 15, 19, 24, 29, 30, 32, 33, 36, 38-39, 43, 46, 111, 120, 142, 153, 169, 187, 227 tefillin, 176 tehiru (void), 27, 61, 86, 87 temple, destruction of, 93 temporary anchors, 115 ten crowns of evil, 228 ten divine utterances, 181 theism, 8, 9, 32, 34, 157, 199, 242 theodicy, 8 theology, theological xiii-xv, 1, 2, 4, 6- 11, 15-18, 20, 22-24, 30, 3233, 36, 38, 48, 51, 52, 55, 65, 7172, 75, 81, 88, 99, 102-08, 111131, 138, 140, 143, 145, 149, 151, 156, 167, 174, 180, 184, 188, 192-94, 207-09, 213, 218, 220-26, 237, 240, 241-43, 245, 248-49, 253 theological system, 2, 24, 75, 103, 105, 109, 127, 189 theosophical Kabbalah, 1, 2, 8, 10, 41, 123, 124, 143, 180 "There is nothing outside the text" (Derrida), 53, 151, 180 thing-in-itself, 45, 168, 184, 192-93, 224 things-beyond-language, 193 Tiferet (Beauty), 92, 117, 142, 241, 260 tikkun, 6, 8, 10-12, 17, 28-34, 36, 3840, 42, 45, 79, 83, 90, 91-95, 99101, 103, 110, 115, 118, 123,

Index 132-34, 164-65, 177, 197-98, 222, 234-38, 248-57, 261-62 Tikkun ha-Olam, 6, 8, 17, 28, 29, 34, 39, 45, 83, 92, 93, 95, 101, 110, 118, 132-33, 164, 234, 235, 237, 250-52 254, 256 Tishby, I. xv, 2, 175, 176 tohu and bohu, 227 Torah, 27, 33, 52-54, 58-60, 81, 84, 85, 104, 110, 125, 127, 137, 151, 155, 158-168, 171, 174-79, 18082, 187, 189, 213, 215, 228, 23031, 238, 248, 261 Torah as a single name of God, 174 Torah of the Tree of Knowledge, 175, 176, 178, 231 Torah of the Tree of Life, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 230 tower of Babel, 93 trace (Derrida), 4, 9, 15, 20, 22, 30, 36, 38, 52, 65, 69, 70, 74, 77, 78, 82, 83, 89, 122, 196, 199, 204, 224, 245 (cf. reshimu) tradition, xv, 1, 3, 4, 10, 16, 28, 30, 33, 39, 49, 51, 89, 107, 114, 116, 117, 121, 126-27, 137, 143, 155, 170, 171, 174, 196, 221-22, 23132, 236, 240, 243-44, 247, 255 tragedy, 36 transcendental object, 78, 79, 109, 116, 184, 186, 191, 195, 199, 225 traumatic, 96, 97, 245 tropes, 42 tropological mysticism (Karasick), 42 truth, xiii, 6, 8, 9, 11, 14, 19, 21, 23, 36, 40, 41, 43-44, 52, 55, 57-60, 62, 63, 69, 75, 80, 83-84, 98, 102, 105-108, 117, 123-125, 127, 135-39, 141, 148, 154, 168, 173, 196, 200, 210, 213, 225-26, 232, 236-38, 240, 241, 245 twenty-two foundational letters (cf. Otiyot Yesod), 257 Tzimtzum (cf. concealment, contraction), 6, 8, 9, 12, 17, 26,

337 27, 31-43, 57-58, 61, 65-67, 71, 74, 76-88, 90, 93-94, 99, 102, 104, 110, 115, 122-124, 128, 132, 134, 135, 141, 145, 150, 153, 155-56, 168, 181, 188, 190, 205, 218, 224-5, 237, 244-6, 248, 250, 253-9, 261-3

-Uunbelief, 31, 32, 52, 89, 131, 239 unconscious, 44, 70, 82, 110, 123, 139, 171, 225, 230, 264 undecidable (Derrida 141, 149 Unhappy Consciousness (Hegel), 43 UNICEF, 198 Unification of Opposites (see coindicence of opposites) unique solution, 128 uiversalism, 37-8 unknowing, 115, 124, 207, 216-7, 244, 252 unknown, 52-54, 62-3, 82, 96, 102, 128, 191, 195, 207, 216, 221-26 unpredictable, 125, 227 urge to philosophize, 125, 191

-VVajda, G. value firmament, 214 van Helmont, F. M. 234, 235 Visages (cf. Partzufim), 28, 45, 92, 117, 255 Vital, Chayyim, xiv, 25, 37, 66, 90, 106, 118, 124, 131-32, 163, 168, 178, 179, 231, 239, 247, 251, 256, 259 void, 74, 77, 86, 209, 210, 211, 254

-Wwave-particle physics, 148

Kabbalah and Postmodernism

338

Ways of Worldmaking (Goodman), 116 Weber, M. 55 wholly (holy) other, 222 wisdom, 65, 94, 135, 136, 162, 173, 176, 178, 206, 208, 217, 221, 240, 250, 251, 252 Wisdom (cf. Chochmah), 26, 92, 117, 135, 175, 207, 208, 217, 240 Wittgenstein, L., Wittgensteinian, xiv, 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 20, 21, 41, 46, 75, 105, 106, 112, 114, 115, 116, 125, 126, 151, 152, 182, 184, 185, 186, 191, 193, 198, 210, 224, 243, 265 Wolfson, E. xv, 20, 50-53, 62, 139, 151, 181 Wolosky, S. 51, 52 World of Points, 29, 45, 74, 255, 257 World of Tikkun, 29, 45, 74, 98, 255, 264 Worlds (cf. Olamot), 27, 107, 117 World-spirit (Hegel), 112 worst possible world, 111

-YYesh (existence, affirmation), 26, 30, 73, 133, 134, 136, 137, 208, 213, 217 Yesod (Foundation), 92 Yichud ha-elyon (higher unification), 137 Yichud ha-tachton (lower unification), 137 Yiddishkeit, xv

-ZZadoq ha-Kohen of Lublin, 52 Zohar, 4, 25, 42, 60, 66, 90, 94, 95, 107, 125, 127, 133, 135, 151, 159, 160, 162-64, 170, 175-79,

181, 187, 189, 203, 206, 228, 239-40, 254, 260-61

Studies in Judaism Yudit Kornberg Greenberg | General Editor

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